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Category Archives: Energy

ClimateEnergy

Johns Hopkins Feels the Power with Its Cogeneration Plant

Mike Specian November 21, 2013 Leave a Comment 8151 Views

Tucked away at the bottom of a small hill in a distant corner of Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus is a large brick building.  Metal pipes protrude horizontally from its side before diving perpendicularly into the ground.  Its tall, curved top windows, rooftop smokestack and mysterious purpose are vaguely reminiscent of the factory from the classic 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  And much like the Wonka factory, no student ever goes in and no student ever comes out.

This building is the Homewood Power Plant, the facility responsible for providing electricity, heating, and cooling to the Homewood campus in central Baltimore City.  As part of Earth Week @ Johns Hopkins, the university’s Department of Facilities Management granted me a walkthrough to learn exactly what happens within.

The JHU Power Plant plays the same role as an electric utility’s generation station.  Fuel goes in and electricity comes out.  BGE, Maryland’s electricity provider, achieves 35% efficiency in this process.  What this means is that for every 100 units of fuel energy that goes in, 35 units of electricity comes out.  The remaining 65 units are expelled as waste heat through the Chesapeake Bay Cooling Tower.

Principles of thermodynamics and engineering limitations make it difficult to achieve higher efficiencies.  This is unless, of course, you manage to reclaim that waste heat for something useful.  This is where Homewood’s Cogeneration Facility comes into play.  Cogeneration (which stands for Combined Heat and Power System) is a process in which both electricity and useful heat (steam) are simultaneously produced.  The 65 units of waste heat, which would otherwise be discarded, are diverted to a waste heat recovery system.

cogen-to-ceiling

 

jhu-cogeneration-10-18-2010-chp-floor-plan_page_7

 

Here are the basics.  Waste heat in the form of steam exits the primary generator at temperatures around 1000 °F.  The recovery system takes that steam and pumps it around the campus, eventually taking the form of building heat, hot water, and energy to feed Homewood campus’s four chilling plants.  All in all, the waste heat recovery system is able to wring about 45 extra units of steam energy from the 65 units of waste leading to an overall plant efficiency of 75-85%, approximately double what BGE could provide.  (For you wonks out there, the total electric capacity of the system is 3.8\times10^{7} kWh/year and total steam capacity is 210\times10^{6} pounds per year.)

cb-energy-recovery

 

jhu-cogeneration-10-18-2010-chp-floor-plan_page_5

 

set-point-viewer

 

“Cogen uses less energy to make electricity and heat and our process produces less greenhouse gases,” said Ed Kirk, a university energy engineer.  “Cogen reduces our energy use in one big chunk.”

The 4.2MW Power Plant, which opened in June 2010, is part of JHU’s plan to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in the next 12 years.  “Our approach has us looking at energy efficiency, energy conservation, more sustainable energy choices and renewable energy,” added Mr. Kirk.

jhu-cogeneration-10-18-2010-chp-floor-plan_page_8

 

If this system seems like a no-brainer, then why doesn’t BGE do it itself?  The problem is that piping steam over long distances is an incredibly inefficient operation.  Much of the steam’s heat will be lost in the process.  That’s not to say utilities don’t do it.  It’s just that circumstances have to be right.  For example, Con Edison, New York City’s utility provider, uses a collection of cogeneration plants to heat around 100,000 densely packed buildings in Manhattan.  This explains the familiar image of steam rising through city sewer grates.  It also explains why cogeneration plants must be closely located to end-users.

Closer proximity also lessens transmission and distribution losses over power lines and provides greater security in unstable energy markets.   The high energy requirements and dense arrangements of college campuses, hospitals, military bases, etc. make them attractive candidates for this type of technology.

The Homewood cogeneration unit joins a small handful of others in the region.  Two have been installed at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a couple others are at the University of Maryland at College Park and Mercy Medical in central Baltimore.

The limiting factor prohibiting everyone from installing cogen plants is cost.  The Homewood campus was fortunate in that it had a large, unused space directly above one of its on-site combustion turbines.  The facility cost $7.5 million to install and will pay for itself in energy savings in about seven years.

jhu-cogeneration-10-18-2010-chp-floor-plan_page_4

 

Despite the plant’s net energy savings, this project was not always economically viable.  It was Maryland’s deregulation of electric utilities in 1999 that turned the tide.

“When electricity was deregulated, electricity prices rose,” said Craig Macomber, Chief Engineer at the Power Plant.  “At the same time, natural gas prices were falling.  These two conditions made our project feasible.”

mr-macomber-shows-off-cogen-engine

 

jhu-cogeneration-10-18-2010-chp-floor-plan_page_6

 

The Homewood campus remains reliant on electricity purchased from BGE.  According to Mr. Macomber, when all things are considered the total amount of Homewood’s energy generated by the power plant is 20% in the summer and 30% in the winter.

Increased energy efficiency will lower the university’s carbon footprint by 8,650 metric tons per year, important for mitigating global climate change.  This falls in line with the goals of the JHU Office of Sustainability, whose stated mission is “to make Johns Hopkins University a showpiece of environmental leadership by demonstrating smart, sensible, and creative actions that promote the vision of sustainability.”

 

ClimateEnergyPolitics

Climate and Energy Primary Sources

Mike Specian August 16, 2013 Leave a Comment 5422 Views

There are tons of organizations that have done research related to energy, climate and policy.  Over the years I’ve aggregated a (non-comprehensive) list of those agencies.  If you would like to suggest additions, either post them in the comments or tweet them to me @mspecian and I’ll update the list.

Advanced Energy Economy

Alliance for Climate Protection

American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy

American Energy Innovation Council

American Security Project

American Wind Energy Association

Better Buildings Neighborhood Program from DOE

Bloomberg

Bloomberg New Energy Finance

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Carbon Tracker Initiative

Center for American Progress

Center for Climate Strategies

Center for Investigative Reporting

Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association

Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM)

Climate Nexus

Clinton Foundation

CLIVAR

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research – Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security

Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites

E3G – Change Elements for Sustainable Development

EcoGeek.org

Economics and Equity for the Environment (E3)

Economic Outlook Group

Energy Information Administration

Energy Self Reliant States

Environmental Defense Fund
Environmental Protection Agency

Environmental Research Letters

Environment American

EUMETSAT

European Wind Energy Association

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Forecast the Facts

Friends of the Earth UK

German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW)

Global CCS Institute

Global Warming Policy Foundation

Google Earth Engine

Green Scissors Project

Greenwire

GTM Research (and energy consultancy)

The Guardian

Hart Research

Institute for Local Self Reliance

Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (in Beijing)

Insurance Information Institute

International Council on Clean Transportation

International Research Institute for Climate and Society

InVEST – Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services & Tradeoffs

ITIF

Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory

League of Conservation Voters

Major Economies Forum

MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change

Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research

MyCity+20

National Center for Atmospheric Research

National Drought Mitigation Center

National Latino Coalition on Climate Change

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) – National Climatic Data Center

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy

National Wildlife Federation

Natural Resources Defense Council

The Nature Conservancy
North American Reliability Corporation

Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnership

Pecan Street – R&D on advanced technologies, advanced energy systems, and human interactions with them

Reuters

Rocky Mountain Institute

Safe Climate Campaign

Scott Polar research Institute at Cambridge University

Sierra Club

Solar Energy Industries Association

Southwest Climate Change Network

Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS)

Union of Concerned Scientists

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

US Climate Change Science Program

US Defense Department

US Energy Information Administration

US Global Change Research Program

US Historical Climate Network (USHCN)

US Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC)

US Transportation Department – Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration

Visual Carbon

World Climate Research Programme

World Resources and Environmental Law

World Resources Institute

Zero Emissions Platform

 

 

Journals

 

Environmental Research Letters

Journal of Climate

Journal of Geophysics Research

Geophysical Research Letters

Nature Geoscience

AstrophysicsClimateEnergyPersonalPolitics

Articles Archive Added

Mike Specian April 10, 2013 Leave a Comment 2089 Views

I recognize that my website is sorta oddball. “Serious” articles on topics like green development in Africa, sustainability and climate are interspersed with professional wrestling results, games and personal photography. This motley assortment of content precludes this site from being a pure issues blog. While I have considered going in that direction, I built mikespecian.com to be a reflection of me along multiple dimensions. So for now I intend to keep it as is.

With one exception. I have added a link entitled Articles to my main menu. This is will be the one-stop-shop for everything I have written and will continue to write on topics such as climate, energy, politics and science in general. Thank you all for reading!

EnergyPolitics

The Government’s Silence of Science

Mike Specian March 25, 2013 1 Comment 6906 Views

To understand the nature of the problem discussed in my last post, it is instructive to examine the story of coal ash in greater detail.  Scientists have known for many years that in sufficient doses, coal ash is toxic to human health.  The EPA first tried to regulate it in 1978, but a Congressional amendment two years later exempted it from oversight.1This condition would persist until December of 2014 when new rules would require coal ash impoundments to be lined and located away from sensitive areas.  Impoundment and landfuls prone to leaking would have to be phased out.  However, the EPA did not go so far as to classify coal ash as “hazardous waste”, a designation that would have required far stricter regulation.  In 2000 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed stricter federal standards to classify it as hazardous.  Their recommendations were met by fierce opposition from the coal industry, electric utilities and members of the Clinton administration.  The Edison Electric Institute, an association of electric companies, argued that a “hazardous” designation would force the industry to spend up to an additional $5 billion in cleanup costs.  The EPA was compelled to reverse course and issue a notice that coal ash need not be regulated.

In 2002, EPA scientists produced a study on coal ash dumps which revealed that they pose significant risks to human health and the environment.  Rather than publicize the results, agency officials decided to redact or simply not release significant portions of their data.

It wasn’t until May 2009 that the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) and Earthjustice uncovered the EPA’s original findings.  They learned not only that those in proximity to coal ash ponds were at a highly elevated risk of developing cancer but also that the Bush administration had been aware of those risks and actively chose to withhold them from the public.

Six months prior to this disclosure, the Kingston spill brought the problem into the national spotlight.  109 environmental organizations quickly pressured EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to respond to the coal fly ash problem.  The EPA soon revealed that the United States contained about 300 dry landfills and wet ponds used to store coal ash.  Many were unlined, increasing the risk of seepage into groundwater, rivers and ponds.  The agency concluded that of the 300, 44 posed a clear and present danger to local communities in the form of severe property damage or loss of life.

But the EPA was stymied again.  They were prohibited from releasing the locations of the 44 sites by the Department of Homeland Security who cited unspecified national security concerns.  A letter sent from the Army Corps of Engineers to the EPA and FEMA also demanded secrecy.  Steven L. Stocken, Army Corps’ director of civil works wrote, “Uncontrolled or unrestricted release (of the information) may pose a security risk to projects or communities by increasing its attractiveness as a potential target.”

“The industry has told us for decades that coal ash is perfectly safe,” said Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project.  “Now we’re told that some of their ash dumps are so dangerous, the federal government is afraid to tell us where they are. We need to move beyond this ‘see no evil’ approach, and regulate these unsafe practices.”

It required the continued efforts of environmentalists and the power of the US Senate to finally compel the EPA to reveal the locations of the 44 sites.  Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee,argued strongly for the disclosure “so that people have the information they need to quickly press for action to make these sites safer.”

Since the locations of the 44 hazardous sites have become public, the magnitude of the coal ash problem has become harder to ignore.  There have been cases ofradioactive leakage into an underground aquifer in Florida, drinking water contamination in Maryland and a massive 300+ million gallon coal-mining sludge spill in Martin County, KY.

Another EPA study in 2009 concluded that chromium in coal ash is “nearly 100 percent Cr(VI),” a well-established highly toxic carcinogen.  A report by Earthjustice and Appalachian Mountain Advocates in 2011 claimed that contrary to prior estimates, there are actually over 700 coal ash dams, many of which are unlined and unmonitored.  A November 2010 Duke University study found that river sediment downstream of the Kingston spill contained 2000 parts per billion of arsenic, 200 times the EPA threshold for safe drinking water.  The authors concluded that coal ash waste ought to be classified as a hazardous substance.

Despite ample scientific evidence to the contrary, the coal industry continued to argue vociferously that coal ash was nothing to worry about.  The Nebraska Power Association wrote that federal “non-hazardous waste regulation” was sufficient and the alternative would limit its ability to usefully recycle coal ash.  The Competitive Enterprise Institute claimed that proposed regulations were just part of Obama’s “war on coal.”  The American Coal Council put out a factsheet that describes coal ash as “safe,” “valuable” and “not a hazardous waste,” though it should be noted most of the citations supporting the final claim are from the late 1990’s.

It was with these competing forces at play that the EPA proposed another set of coal fly ash regulations to the White House.  But the response of the Obama administration was the same as Bush’s.  Lobbyists met with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and neutered their proposal.  According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the resulting bills’ weakness were “unprecedented” in environmental law.

And so today, after the largest environmental disaster of its kind in American history and despite numerous reports detailing its potentially lethal impacts, coal fly ash remains unregulated in the United States.2While this was true at the original writing of this article, new regulations were enacted in December 2014.

Government deregulation and secrecy are not limited to the energy sector.  In October 2012 Nicholas Kristof, an Op-Ed columnist at the NY Times, brought the hazardous nature of formaldehyde to light.  Formaldehyde is a chemical found in everything from furniture to fabric softeners to nail polish and, according to scientists at the publicly funded National Institutes of Health (NIH),”formaldehyde is known to be a human carcinogen.”  Despite this critical warning, the American Chemistry Council, on the behalf of the chemical industry, is furiously lobbying Congress to suppress the full 500 page consensus Report on Carcinogens because it would cause “public confusion.”

Startling though it may be, the lack of government intervention is understandable.  Politicians have an incentive to kill regulations perceived as being against the business interests of their campaign contributors.  The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) says that the mining industry which includes Murray Energy, theNational Mining Association, Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources poured more than $2.8 million to federal candidates during the 2012 elections.  Rep. David McKinley (R-WV), who sponsored a bill that would have prevented the EPA as designating coal ash as “hazardous,” received $230,000 in mining industry contributions, more than any other federal candidate.

Even when regulations are in place, federal agencies cannot always be trusted to enforce them.  In the 1960’s the Atomic Energy Commission, which had been charged with both promoting and regulating the atomic energy industry, became riddled with internal conflicts of interest.  Business considerations came to trump regulatory requirements to such an extraordinary extent that Congress decided to abolish the agency.

More recently the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the agency responsible for monitoring and regulating offshore oil drilling, became so cozy with the industry it was supposed to regulate that it literally let the American Petroleum Institute write its own regulatory rules.  Instead of acting as a watchdog of the public interest, the MMS referred to members of the oil industry as their “clients” and “partners.”  Environmental reviews were often waived altogether.  In the end, the lack of adequate safety standards contributed to the explosion of Deepwater Horizon, a catastrophe that killed 11 workers and polluted the Gulf of Mexico for three months.

The United States has a supposed remedy to this problem – a piece of legislation that grants the public the right to access federal agency records.  In the next article, I will demonstrate how the promise of this right often goes unmet.

Notes   [ + ]

1. ↑ This condition would persist until December of 2014 when new rules would require coal ash impoundments to be lined and located away from sensitive areas.  Impoundment and landfuls prone to leaking would have to be phased out.  However, the EPA did not go so far as to classify coal ash as “hazardous waste”, a designation that would have required far stricter regulation.
2. ↑ While this was true at the original writing of this article, new regulations were enacted in December 2014.
EnergyPolitics

The Kingston Disaster

Mike Specian March 18, 2013 3 Comments 6684 Views

In the early morning hours of December 22, 2008, a dike separating 5.4 million cubic yards of coal combustion waste product from the outside world breached.  The toxic sludge flowed out like a river, moving its way through a local Tennessee community and into a nearby waterway.  The magnitude of the spill was unprecedented.  It could have filled a container with a base the size of a football field to a height of 370 stories, or an amount 101 times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill.  The slurry pushed with enough strength to sweep one resident’s home entirely off its foundation.

Yet in many ways the Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, was typical.  As with most coal burning plants, its combustion process releases a gas of fine particles known as fly ash.  In large enough quantities fly ash, which contains a blend of metals including arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and thallium among others, is toxic.  It can cause cancer, kidney problems, and nervous-system diseases among other ailments.

Some coal ash is recycled for other uses.  The rest is mixed with a fluid transforming it into a metallic gray coal fly ash slurry.  With nowhere else to put it, the Kingston plant dug gigantic holes into the earth and deposited the sludge there.  The only thing separating the solid waste containment pond from the outside world was an earthen wall, that is, until the wall ruptured.

While the spill itself was devastating (and preventable), one resident, Deanna Copeland expressed an even greater worry.  “Our concern is, what happens if this liquid dries out?” Ms. Copeland said. “There are huge health concerns. It’s going to get in our house. We’re going to breathe it in. It would be like walking through a dust bowl, and we don’t know what’s in the dust.”

While residents and many emergency officials were ignorant of the dust’s effects, government scientists were not.  They had previously conducted research on coal fly ash and were well aware of its effects on human health.  And yet on this December day, just hours before Christmas, the victims of this tragedy were kept completely in the dark, denied access to the government studies that could have potentially saved their lives.

The Kingston calamity raises two important questions.  First, given a long history of leaks at the plant, why weren’t sufficient regulations in place to prevent the accident?  Second, under what possible justification were victims denied basic information about their exposure risk?

The answers to those questions expose a disconnect between government scientists and a public that requires access to their conclusions.  The culture of deregulation and secrecy is not unique to the Kingston plant, or even to the energy industry in general.  Instead, we find in America an epidemic of ignorance and denial that spans across sectors, affecting each and every one of us.

In the forthcoming series of articles, I expose the circumstances that led to the Kingston calamity and provide numerous examples of how similar practices in other industries continue to endanger human health.  Despite the Freedom of Information Act, which grants Americans access to government memos and reports, I will show how scientists are still routinely silenced and their studies are often redacted.  Numerous examples of industry being favored over public safety will be provided.  Finally, I will present evidence that suggests this problem has only worsened during the Obama administration before offering potential solutions.

ClimateEnergyPolitics

My Silver Bullet for Solving the Energy Crisis

Mike Specian May 21, 2012 Leave a Comment 8763 Views

In the course of traveling through life, I occasionally intersect with others as passionate as I am about our world’s climate and energy crisis.  I love to pick people’s brains and most of the time I can’t stop myself from asking them, “If you had one silver bullet policy in your pocket that you could implement today, what would it be?”

I have received responses ranging from “sign the Kyoto Protocol” (which I perceive as small beer) to “remove corporate money from politics” (which, while probably the correct answer, is wholly unrealistic).

Through these discussions, I believe I have settled (at least for today) on an answer of my own: “promote international development through green growth.”  At a time when economic concerns drown out calls for foreign aid, I’m reminded of the saying, “The cleanest power plant is the one you never have to build.”  And nowhere is the need for new power as acute as in the developing world.

For some, a Third World green intervention seems like a misallocation of limited resources.  Why not just let them build a bunch of coal plants?  For others (me included), this need provides real opportunity.  In locations where firewood is the the primary sustainable resource, intelligent green investment can be sustainable in its own way – through profitability.

But with hundreds of international initiatives underway to support green growth, it’s easy to suffer from paralysis of too many options.  What are the key strategies?  Who’s doing what well?  Where is there room for improvement?

In the United States, we look to Silicon Valley as the model of an innovation ecosystem.  It is there that raw talent, research capability, and venture capital’s business-building power converge to create the planet’s premier environment for the generation of new products and wealth.  While Silicon Valley itself has shown little interest in the developing world, their model remains a gold standard and its strategies are easily transferable.

Nurturing talent must start with education.  The status quo of having one professor teaching standard courses to 1000 students will not get the job done.  Training students in the basics is key, but education needs to become less abstract and more vocational.  Let brewing beer be a study in chemistry.  Let cows be a study in biology.  If HP cannot offer copying equipment to parts of Africa due to a lack of qualified technicians, as was recently the case, teach technology to match the need.

Then, for research to be effective the world must work together.  China and the United States are behemoths, and science agencies like the US’s National Science Foundation offer much in the way of support.  Africa, however, is challenged by having 45 separate, smaller science foundations.  Regional agencies must be formed to bring these groups together.  If Rwanda relies solely upon its own scientists, it’s going to miss 99% of knowledge generated elsewhere.

Consider General Electric’s ecoimagination, an enterprise they describe on their website as “GE’s commitment to imagine and build innovative solutions to today’s environmental challenges while driving economic growth.”  Thus far, their research has proven capable of meeting global needs like lowering carbon emissions, increasing energy efficiency, developing/deploying wind and solar, and maximizing water conservation.  GE possesses massive resources, benefits from economies of scale and has a global presence.  There’s still plenty of room for improvement, from geothermal investments in Indonesia to new public transport systems in Central America and Asia.

But while technology is the glue between green and growth, solving the R&D problem alone doesn’t mean you have a competitive product.  It certainly doesn’t guarantee a valid business model, nor is it necessarily scalable.  For instance, a company the size of GE is not optimized to sell solar panels to villages one at a time.

So while nations like Burundi will seldom outperform the science team of a company like GE, that shouldn’t be their role.  Developing nations are much better positioned to understand their own needs, constraints and goals.  Perhaps they can host franchises that spin-off First World tech to deploy on village-sized scales.  Then, the smaller region’s needs can spur local innovations of First World “big box” technologies.

For example, to process coffee, beans must be washed, hulled, polished, sorted, etc.  A developing nation relying on its own technology will be priced out of the market by big box technology that scales.  But since the final coffee product depends keenly on the details of the processing method, innovations of big tech at local sites can provide an end product neither the First nor Third Worlds could have achieved entirely on their own.

However, research and business can only do so much.  If conditions on the ground are not fertile for green growth, roots won’t take hold.  Electricity cannot be transported if the government fails to maintain electrical wires.  If the state heavily subsidizes coal or oil, green technologies competitive in a free market won’t survive in a rigged one.  Without patent protection and sharing of intellectual property, tech transfer will not occur.  Agencies like the World Bank can be coaxed into giving their assistance, but they rarely lead.  The bed must first be set by gathering global support for investment, e.g. by connecting principle investigators in neighboring countries or by getting the World Bank to fund distributed solar (perhaps by crowdsourcing) in developing markets.

Many of these issues will be discussed in June at the Rio+20 Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  If representatives can figure out how to link regional science foundations, introduce researchers to businesses (venture capital-style) and direct First World technology to Third World innovations, this might be the silver bullet most worth firing.

ClimateEnergyPolitics

Our Planet’s Carbon Budget: How Much Does Each Source Produce, How High Can We Go, and What Would Be the Impact of Keystone XL

Mike Specian November 9, 2011 1 Comment 2713 Views

The fate of our planet’s climate and its people depends largely on the total amount of carbon we emit into the atmosphere. It doesn’t matter how fast we emit it or where on the planet it spews from, like flood water into a valley, as it fills up we have to fend off the subsequent catastrophes.

In this post, I will briefly summarize the sizes of Earth’s fossil fuel carbon deposits and how much each will contribute to the deterioration of our planet’s climate system.

First, we ask, “how much warming is ‘safe’”? There’s no clear answer, of course, but a generally accepted benchmark is to limit global warming to 2^{\circ}C = 3.5^{\circ}F, which requires emitting no more than 5\times10^{14} kg of carbon (or approximately 1,400 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide) for the next thousands years or so. Here’s a table of major carbon sources and the percentage of the way they get to this total:

 

Fossil Fuel Type

Carbon Content (kg)

% towards 2^{\circ} C

Proven oil reserves 1.39\times10^{14}

28

Proven gas reserves 1\times10^{14}

20

Economically recoverable coal 8.46\times10^{14}

127

Tar Sands economically recoverable 0.23\times10^{14}

4.6

Tar Sands total 2.3\times10^{14}

46

 

It’s obvious that coal, which can get us above 2^{\circ}C all by itself, is the elephant in the room. Its massive time-bomb potential begs for the rapid deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technology (CCS), a plea which is unlikely to be answered given the preliminary and unsettled nature of the technology.

Proven oil and gas reserves are also large contributors, with gas being preferable to oil, though not by much. Note that all of these percentages could increase if A) new reserves are found or B) new technology or C) increases in fuel prices (through increased demand perhaps) makes extraction of these fuels less expensive.

Right now, the Alberta tar sands and the associated Keystone XL pipeline remains a hot-button political issue in Washington with environmentalists and residents of the Midwest, particularly Nebraska, staunchly against the pipeline.

Advocates of the pipeline who acknowledge its climate impacts argue that they are negligible in comparison to other sources of carbon and therefore deserve to be ignored. They further argue the pipeline will only ship 500,000-800,000 barrels a day, which is approximately 20 times less than the amount of crude oil the US imports every day.

However, two key points need to be remembered. First, the rate at which carbon is emitted is irrelevant. The total amount is what matters. So even if it were to take hundreds of years to drain the tar sands, the effect would be the same. Second, once the pipeline starts flowing, new technologies and fluctuations in fuel prices could quickly make larger amounts of the tar sands viable. If all were developed, which presently remains unrealistic, then this would be enough to get to 2^{\circ}C even if coal was removed from the equation.

From this perspective, we have an opportunity to cut off 5% of the remaining pie to 2^{\circ}C just by saying no to this pipeline, an option we lack with oil, coal, and gas. Getting 5% back for free would be a huge step in the right direction.

ClimateEnergyPolitics

My Keystone Op-Ed Has Been Picked Up by Two Major Newspapers

Mike Specian October 4, 2011 Leave a Comment 2013 Views

I’m happy to announce that my latest Op-Ed has been published in two major newspapers, the Baltimore Sun and New Jersey’s Star-Leger! I’ve placed links to the article below. I chose these two papers because I grew up in NJ and currently live in Baltimore.

The Star Ledger (NJ’s top newspaper, circulation of 230,000)
The Baltimore Sun (Maryland’s top newspaper, circulation of 196,000)
Pipeline Reviews (redirects to Star-Ledger)

Here’s the text of my original, unedited article:

The Keystone XL Pipeline, designed to pump unrefined oil tar sands from Alberta to Texas, won a critical victory Friday when the US State Department concluded the project posed “no significant impacts” to the environment. This conclusion is horribly misaligned with reality.

TransCanada, a Calgary firm, intends its XL to move over 500,000 highly pressurized barrels per day through what it calls “the safest pipeline in North America,” faint praise for a company whose existing Keystone pipeline has spilled 12 times in one year. That the 1711-mile long, half-inch thick pipeline traverses fragile ecosystems and public aquifers doesn’t aid matters.

More dangerous, though, is the resource-intensive extraction process. The EPA estimates carbon emissions from tar sand extraction to be 80% greater than average crude. Noted Columbia University climatologist Jim Hansen spoke bluntly of the project, claiming “exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts,” adding, “if the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially game over.”

But some advocates, including Cindy Schild (Baltimore Sun – “Keystone XL pipeline, bringing oil from Canada, is a step towards the future”, August 22), a spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute, claim the pipeline is needed to create jobs. Environmental effects aside, this misses the larger point. After the short-term stimulus provided by construction of the Keystone XL, the pipeline locks the US into a long-term dependency on Canadian crude. We will have sent a negative signal to our domestic renewable energy markets all while American energy dollars continue to leak abroad.

Environmental advocates have been vocal in their opposition, staging a two-week sit-in at the White House which culminated earlier this month. The peaceful protest resulted in over 1000 arrests including those of prominent climate scientists. That our nation’s scientific experts have been incarcerated for defending our shared environment is nothing short of an American embarrassment.

To be clear, this decision is out of the hands of Congress. Final approval of the pipeline lies entirely with the Obama administration’s State Department. Instead of striving for a future of crisp, clean, green American energy, the federal government seems desperate to prolong our addiction to finite, filthy, foreign fuels and tar sands are perhaps the dirtiest of the bunch. Their penetration through our American heartland should be staunchly opposed.

At last count, the Star-Ledger article had 1,426 Facebook Likes, 3 Facebook recommendations, and 7 tweets, one Google +1 (I’m not sure this is catching on yet), and 6 comments! Not too bad for a “boring” issue like a pipeline.

ClimateEnergyPolitics

Mythbusters: Oil Creates Jobs and Makes Us Safer Edition

Mike Specian September 27, 2011 Leave a Comment 2847 Views

Big Oil execs and their political counterparts love to sing the praises of the domestic oil sector.  They argue that the industry unleashes “job-creation activity” and will generate up to one million new jobs by 2018, according to the American Petroleum Institute.   They argue that increased domestic production will “enhance our energy security” by maximizing the quantity of liquid fuel obtained from “secure” North American sources.  Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) stated in a GOP weekly radio address, “Tapping our own vast resources will help lower energy costs for Americans, add high-paying jobs to our economy, and strengthen our security for future generations.”

The danger here is that many Big Oil advocates have defended expanded drilling and deregulation in pursuit of jobs and security without realizing that, unfettered, the oil industry will instead pursue its primary goal, profit.  In instances where these ideals run counter to each other, “pro-oil” policies intended to create jobs and security can more than just miss their target.  They can be directly counterproductive.

Consider a NY Times story published on September 27 (In North Dakota, Flames of Wasted Natural Gas Light the Prairie) which reports that petroleum outfits operating western North Dakota’s Bakken shale field are unintentionally releasing natural gas during the oil extraction process.  The industry has claimed that the infrastructure needed to capture the gas is expensive and has chosen to burn it off instead, a process known as flaring.  An estimated 30% of all natural gas produced in the state, the annual carbon equivalent of a medium-size coal-fired power plant, is combusted in this manner.

Ceres_logo_green_horizontal

 

There are no federal regulations against flaring and none are expected any time soon.  State governments have greater flexibility, but North Dakota has made no indication that it will act to restrict the process.

Let’s first examine how this fits into Big Oil’s jobs narrative.  In the case of the Bakken shale field, petroleum operators have a genuine opportunity to put people back to work creating, transporting, installing, and operating the infrastructure required to capture the available gas reserves.  But because collecting these natural gas resources fails to optimize profit, they have opted against it.  Now this is not to say that capturing the Bakken field’s natural gas reserves makes the entire enterprise unprofitable.  It simply makes it less profitable, and they view this as an unacceptable cost even if it creates jobs.

The simple truth is that the oil industry is not the engine of job growth that many advocates claim it is.  Between 2005 and 2010, ExxonMobile, BP, Shell and Chevron combined to reduce their US workforce by 11,200 while simultaneously raking in $546 billion in profits.  They, along with ConocoPhillips, followed up that performance in 2010 by shedding another 4,400 jobs amidst profits of $73 billion.  They reinvested a paltry 1.2% of their profit in alternative fuels R&D and instead chose to buy back their own stock, enriching their board of directors, senior executives and shareholders in the process.

Then there is the claim that “pro-oil” policies enhance domestic security.  In pursuit of greater domestic energy supply, the United States is presently promoting a wide array of risky fossil fuel acquisition projects.  The risks are warranted, so the argument goes, because maximizing our domestic supply of liquid-fuel energy is too important to sacrifice.

For example, Congress has failed to pass a single piece of legislative reform in the wake of last year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster (which killed 11 people), yet will allow BP to resume offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.  There is no proven method to clean up an oil spill in icy Arctic waters, yet the US has issued leases which will allow Royal Dutch Shell to explore for oil in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea.  TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline would pump over 500,000 barrels of highly pressurized tar sands per day straight through the American Heartland (an amount large enough to be “game over” for climate change according to one prominent climate scientist), yet the US government seems primed to approve it despite the risks.

The list goes on, but the essential point is that Big Oil and its government supporters expect Americans to suffer significant environmental and health burdens in defense of maximizing our domestic energy supply.  These are public costs worth bearing, they argue (if they chose to acknowledge them at all), in defense of the greater good.  Yet when the North Dakota oil firms are presented the opportunity to absorb their fair share of the cost in defense of our natural gas reserves, they balk.

The case of Keystone XL is particularly emblematic of profiteers’ other tactic, blatant distortion of the facts.  Cindy Schild, a refinery manager with the American Petroleum Institute, has defended the XL by arguing that “it will be a part of the nation’s energy future” without which “the oil will be shipped to other countries.”  What she fails to mention is that a full three-quarters of the tar sands have already been contracted out to five foreign companies and one domestic, Valero, whose business model is geared towards export.

Make no mistake, “job creation” and “energy security” are little more that thinly veiled justifications for policies designed to maximize corporate oil profits.  It is this obsession with profit that explains why taxpayers are needlessly lavishing oil companies with tens of billions of dollars in subsidies.  It explains why Americans are being placed in danger by weakened environmental standards and by refusals to strengthen pipeline safety rules.  It explains why some politicians have even supported shutting down the Environmental Protection Agency.  It’s the same reason companies like Exxon deliberately spread misinformation about the veracity of human-driven climate change and why oil billionaires like the Koch brothers support bogus studies discrediting offshore wind farms.

If politicians are truly concerned with creating jobs and increasing security, then the status quo of coarsely and broadly liberalizing the oil industry must be abandoned in favor of narrowly focused policy goals.  Require that natural gas in the Bakken field be collected, not flared.  Place a price on carbon pollution, which would level the playing field with other emergent sectors critical for energy security, like wind and solar.  Empower the Environmental Protection Agency to protect our water and air as much as our energy supply.

Until then, the fact remains that North Dakota is on fire, energy resources are being squandered, jobs lie fallow, and at least two million tons of carbon dioxide are being released into the atmosphere each year.  Big Oil will persist in telling us they are interested in creating jobs and preserving security.  If only it weren’t a bunch of hot air.

ClimateEnergyPolitics

Do Environmental Regulations Kill Jobs?

Mike Specian September 5, 2011 Leave a Comment 1785 Views

This question was the first sentence from last Sunday’s NY Times article A Debate Arises on Job Creation and Environment.  It’s particularly timely as environmentalists and conservatives/business interests have been battling ferociously over issues like the Keystone XL pipeline, ozone regulations, and the very existence of the EPA.  Environmental proponents contend these regulations protect health, business productivity, and a sustainable environment for future growth.  Their opponents contend these rules impose onerous business expenses and can lead to lost jobs and even the closure of facilities.

But who’s right?  Apparently, no one knows!  It’s striking to me that many government regulations are issued, but not followed-up on.  From the NY Times article,

 “Regulations are put on the books and largely stay there unexamined,” said Michael Greenstone, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “This is part of the reason that these debates about regulations have a Groundhog’s Day quality to them.”

Are the regulations having their intended effect?  Are there unintended consequences, and if so, how costly are they?  Can the rules be improved?

During my time working as a Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences, I came across a number of ostensibly “boring” studies of how several Department of Energy research programs were progressing.  Dull reading perhaps, but perpetual assessment and refinement of policy should be an absolute requirement of sound government.

In that spirit, I want to summarize the benefits and costs of environmental regulations presented in this article and others alongside some evidence to support those positions.

 

ARGUMENTS AGAINST REGULATION

  • Too expensive to implement in a depressed economy
  • High cost of clean-up can cause factories to close or relocate abroad
  • Can lead to a loss of jobs

 

ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF REGULATION

  • Numerous health benefits including reduced infant mortality and instances of autism, better health of children and the elderly, increased life spans, reductions in the number of hospitalizations, and other health benefits
  • Increase housing prices (e.g. lack of regulation makes living next to coal plants more hazardous than living next to nuclear plants)
  • Improve quality of life by maintaining a pristine environment with breathable air and clean ecosystems
  • Complying with regulations requires new job-creating projects and technologies that become less expensive over time as the the clean-tech sectors mature
  • Rules set far in advance can guide new investments; e.g. when choosing new technology, businesses will choose the greener one even if the initial cost is slightly greater
  • Preferable in down economies to invest in upgrades rather than sit on cash

 

But good golly there’s a lot of tit-for-tat.  Environmentalists claim that regulation is often the scapegoat for poor economic performance caused by other factors, such as low demand, poor tax and labor policies, and inadequate communication and transportation infrastructure.  They argue the costs of regulation are almost always exaggerated.

For example, the electric utility industry warned that amendments to the EPA’s Clean Air Act would cost $7.5 billion and tens of thousands of jobs but studies have shown the cost of the program to be closer to $1 billion and even suggested the law was a modest net creator of jobs by spurring new clean compliance technologies.  And while the cement industry projected 13,000 lost jobs and plant closures because of stricter sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide standards, EPA analysis claims the truth lies somewhere between 600 jobs lost and 1300 gained.

Even if the regulations are net beneficial, is implementing them now (i.e. in a down economy) the right thing to do?  Business leaders argue that regardless of whichever and whenever regulations are enacted, there must be stability and predictability.  They cannot be a “moving target.”

Some business leaders at least appear willing to strike a fair balance.  Spencer Weitman, president of the National Cement Company of Alabama has stated,  “we agree that we need to protect the environment and we need regulations in place to make sure that we all do it right. That’s not the argument that we’re coming up with. We do need regulations that are achievable and that make sense.”  The CEO of Caesars Entertainment has agreed to go green even if it means taking a slight economic loss.

What seems lost in this discussion, as always, is climate change, which I personally believe is the greatest existential crisis than humanity has ever faced (with the possible exception of nuclear proliferation).  Its long-term impacts on heat waves, agricultural yields, water availability, ecosystem vitality and sustainability, health, energy demand, transportation infrastructure, losses due to extreme weather, rising sea levels, forced migrations, violent conflict, etc. that will be forced irreversibly on future generations for hundreds to thousands of years decisively tilt the scales towards regulation.  Which regulations, however, may yet require deeper assessment.

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