'Smart' power meters herald future of our electricity use

Net metering, smart meters, smart grids, real-time pricing. These may all sound like pretty geeky terminology, but hopefully they will become household terms before too much longer.

When they do you will know that we are on the right track to simultaneously conserving huge amounts of electricity, saving customers significant amounts of money on their electric bills, ushering in the era of plug-in electric hybrid vehicles and making a real dent in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (GW)

Electric Utilities Test Peak-Use Pricing

Customers in Pilot Programs Adjust Routines to Take Advantage of Lower Rates

By Marc Levy
Washington Post
May 18, 2008

Determined to cut his electricity bill, Darrell Brubaker took the usual steps of raising his air conditioner's thermostat and cooking more on the grill.

But the key to maximum savings — as much as 6 percent a month last summer — was his grasp of the state of the electrical grid and his family's willingness to adjust their power usage accordingly.

His utility, PPL Corp., is among a growing number of electricity providers that are testing pricing plans in which rates are set higher during the hours of peak demand, roughly following the curves of supply and demand in the wholesale energy markets.

As more utilities install "smart" power meters that track how much electricity flows into a home in real time, they are freer to offer alternatives to the average monthly rate that they traditionally charged to consumers.

The pilot programs are the first step in what's expected to be a complete transformation of the century-old power grid. Once a silent supplier of electrons to homes and businesses, it's gaining the ability to talk back — not only to power companies, but to consumers and their appliances.

Armed with information, Brubaker, 56, took action. Besides switching his lamps to energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs, he chose to run his pool pump and dishwasher at night at his home in the suburbs and dairy country of south-central Pennsylvania.

"Essentially, it was just more conservation, being more cognizant of, 'Yes there are more savings here if we do things differently,'" Brubaker said.

By signing up tens of millions of people like Brubaker to change patterns of electric usage, the companies expect the new power meters and time-based rates to help avoid blackouts, curb greenhouse gas emissions and beat back the immediate need to build expensive new power plants.

Many utilities hope to make such rates available to all their customers within several years, with an eye toward shaving usage on the most demanding days of the year when electricity prices rise sharply.

While major industrial and commercial ratepayers have operated on time-based rates for years, the concept remains relatively foreign to residential users.

Various kinds of smart meters are available and in use around the country. Depending on its capabilities, a smart meter — at a cost of about $200 per home — also can play a role in how much information about energy use is made available to customers and how much money can be saved. The most advanced ones allow the utility and the customer to gauge usage and cost immediately, instead of once a month after a meter reader makes the rounds.

Utilities plan to offer a menu of rate plans. In its pilot, PPL offered something referred to as a "time-of-use" rate, where set periods of higher prices contrast with periods of lower prices. In this case, pilot participants paid more between noon and 7 p.m. on weekdays and less the rest of the time.

Some rates, called "real time," change throughout the day as the wholesale price floats up and down. People who sign up for such plans may receive signals, such as e-mails or cell phone messages, to tell them prices are climbing dangerously.

"Critical peak" rates would apply only on the dozen or more highest-demand days of the year.

So far, pilot programs have found that the average customer usually saves money. Critics note, however, that's not always the case.

In the pilot program Brubaker signed up for the past three summers, about one in four PPL customers accumulated bigger bills than they would have logged on the average rate. PPL officials chalked that up to people flying blind without enough information about how to save money, a shortcoming the utility is trying to address by things like putting a kilowatt calculator on its Web site.

In a Commonwealth Edison Co. pilot program in Illinois, the average participant paid about 7 percent more in 2005, a departure from the pilot tests of other years. Company officials blamed the increase on spiking prices during an unusually hot summer and the disruption of natural gas supplies caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Last year, about 95 percent of the participants saved money in Commonwealth Edison's open-enrollment residential real-time pricing program, thought to be the nation's first. The majority saved between 7 percent to 12 percent, the utility said. To date, about 4,000 of the utility's 3.3 million residential customers have signed up.

A brochure the utility mailed to customers advises the program might not be for them if, for instance, they don't work during the day, don't have electric heat or have a medical condition.

Some electricity consumers simply don't have much wiggle room when it comes to changing electricity consumption. For instance, families with small children who participated in an Ottawa Hydro pilot in 2006-07 later reported difficulty shaping their lives around the rates. They told surveyors that it was difficult to cut back on laundry loads during the higher-priced daytime periods.

Some consumer advocates remain skeptical. They warn that smart meters and fluctuating rates could be a multibillion dollar mistake that would shift people from the relative stability of an averaged, monthly rate and subject them to the unpredictable swings of the wholesale electricity market.

In Washington, D.C., ratepayer advocate Elizabeth A. Noel urged public service commissioners to ensure the $60 million smart-meter proposal by Potomac Electric and Power Co. will guarantee cost benefits before the utility can bill customers to recoup its investment plus a rate of return.

The testing ground will be a $2 million pilot set to begin in June, to be paid for by the utility.

"If you don't show consumers that there's something in it for them, then they're not going do to it," Noel said. "You have to show people what it means to them, and people look at the bottom line of their electric bills."

Gerald A. Norlander, the executive director of the Public Utility Law Project in Albany, N.Y., said that passing along the volatile price of wholesale electricity could shut down factories and devastate households. And he suggested that power plant owners could circumvent any conservation efforts by manipulating the supply of electricity to keep prices high.

Jon Wellinghoff, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who advocates smart meters, countered that his agency and state regulators will be closely watching to guard against market manipulation.

Utility officials say they do not expect such time-based rates to become mandatory for most ratepayers. Some utilities may offer their ratepayers incentives to enroll, like rebates, discounts and temporary guarantees against paying more.

"There will be benefits to everyone, but without the technology, it won't happen," said Dennis Wraase, the chief executive of Pepco Holdings Inc., which wants to install smart meters for the nearly 2 million customers under its three utilities in Washington, D.C., and the mid-Atlantic.

After all the changes he made, Brubaker, the PPL customer, said shutting off the pool pump during the day made the biggest impact: The swimming pool never warmed up.

"As far as hardships go," he said, "I can live with that one."

Natural signs of disaster

Shortly before the deadly 2004 tsunami struck Thailand, many people reported that they saw animals fleeing for high ground minutes before the tsunami arrived. And in fact, very few animal bodies were found in the aftermath of the tsunami.

Apparently the behavior of a number of animal species -- most notably toads, signaled that something ominous was about to happen right before China's worst earthquake in decades struck. Chinese seismologists suspected that something was about to happen as early as May 7th as reported in "The Epoch Times".

Does it not seem to make sense that a combination of sophisticated scientific monitoring and nature observations might provide a powerful and accurate early warning system to help save lives in the wake of some natural disasters?

As Yogi Berra advised us many years ago: "You can observe a lot by just watching".

Did animals predict China's earthquake?

Zoo creatures behaved strangely just hours before the disaster

By Henry Sanderson
The Associated Press
May 15, 2008

BEIJING - First, the water level in a pond inexplicably plunged. Then, thousands of toads appeared on streets in a nearby province. Finally, just hours before China's worst earthquake in three decades, animals at a local zoo began acting strangely.

As bodies are pulled from the wreckage of Monday's quake, Chinese online chat rooms and blogs are buzzing with a question: Why didn't these natural signs alert the government that a disaster was coming?

"If the seismological bureau were professional enough they could have predicted the earthquake ten days earlier, when several thousand cubic meters of water disappeared within an hour in Hubei, but the bureau there dismissed it," one commentator wrote.

In fact, seismologists say, it is nearly impossible to predict when and where an earthquake will strike.

Several countries, including China, have sought to use changes in nature — mostly animal behavior — as an early warning sign. But so far, no reliable way has been found to use animals to predict earthquakes, said Roger Musson, a seismologist with the British Geological Survey.

But that has not stopped a torrent of online discussion. Even the mainstream media has chimed in, with an article in Tuesday's China Daily newspaper questioning why the government did not predict the earthquake.

Online commentators say the first sign came about three weeks ago, when large amounts of water suddenly disappeared from a pond in Enshi city in Hubei province, around 350 miles east of the epicenter, according to media reports.

Then, three days before the earthquake, thousands of toads roamed the streets of Mianzhu, a hard-hit city where at least 2,000 people have been reported killed.

Zebras bang heads against door

Mianzhu residents feared the toads were a sign of an approaching natural disaster, but a local forestry bureau official said it was normal, the Huaxi Metropolitan newspaper reported May 10, two days before the earthquake.

The day of the earthquake, zebras were banging their heads against a door at the zoo in Wuhan, more than 600 miles east of the epicenter, according to the Wuhan Evening Paper.

Elephants swung their trunks wildly, almost hitting a staff member. The 20 lions and tigers, which normally would be asleep at midday, were walking around. Five minutes before the quake hit, dozens of peacocks started screeching.

There are a few possible reasons for such behavior, said Musson, the seismologist. The most likely is that the movement of underground rocks before an earthquake generates an electrical signal that some animals can perceive. Another theory holds that other animals can sense weak shocks before an earthquake that are imperceptible to humans.

Zhang Xiaodong, a researcher at the China Seismological Bureau, said his agency has used natural activity to predict earthquakes 20 times in the past 20 years, but that still represents a small proportion of China's earthquakes.

"The problem now is this kind of relationship is still quite vague," he said.

In winter 1975, Chinese officials ordered the evacuation of the city of Haicheng in northeastern Liaoning province the day before a 7.3 magnitude earthquake, based on reports of unusual animal behavior and changes in ground water levels. Still, more than 2,000 people died. Strange environmental phenomena including changes in well water levels, were also reported a year later before a 7.6 magnitude earthquake in Tangshan in northeastern China that killed 240,000, Musson said.

A team of Chinese seismologists was sent to the region but didn't find any evidence to suggest an earthquake. As the seismologists were going home, they stopped for the night in Tangshan and were killed in the quake.

There is no such thing as 'clean coal'

"But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

Bob Dylan - "All Along the Watchtower"

When it comes to the issues of energy and climate change it seems as if no one in the media is asking the tough questions and none of the candidates are offering honest answers. It's almost as if they've agreed not to talk about things that really matter.

We deserve more. Some of us certainly expected more from the Democrats. Who would have thought that "clean coal" would figure prominently as part of either a Clinton or Obama energy strategy? It does not bode well. Pandering politics and energy policy are definitely not a good mix. Not ever. Especially not now.

It's only fair that John McCain receive equal eco-time. His perspective on energy and the environment follows.

Have a great weekend. (GW)

Democratic candidates play up 'clean coal'

Reuters
May 12, 2008

CLEAR FORK, West Virginia (Reuters) - Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are talking more about "clean coal" and less about global warming as they woo voters in West Virginia and Kentucky -- two states that sit at the heart of the nation's coal economy.

In a bid to draw voters ahead of Democratic primaries in West Virginia on Tuesday and Kentucky on May 20, both candidates are playing up the ascendant role of commercially untested and so far economically nonviable ways of converting America's plentiful coal supplies into electricity without spewing massive quantities of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

"We need some big investments right now in figuring out how to capture and store carbon dioxide from coal," Clinton told a rally in the rural town of Clear Fork on Monday.

To get there, she took a windy road through the Appalachian Mountains that passed at least four big coal mines cut into the mountainside.

Not to be outdone, Obama's campaign has distributed flyers in Kentucky stating that "Barack Obama believes in clean Kentucky coal." The flyers show a picture of giant barges carrying coal down the Ohio River.

Coal-fired power plants generate about half of U.S. electricity supplies, and account for about 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions -- the biggest single industrial source.

Clinton has a plan to require U.S. industry to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, but she hasn't brought that up in numerous appearances in West Virginia and Kentucky in recent days.

But America has 250 years worth of coal, and will likely remain the backbone of its power generation system for decades. "I know how important coal is to West Virginia," Clinton said last week in the state's capitol rotunda in Charleston. "Coal is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future."

Candidates' support for clean coal indicates a tension between their need to bring along delegate-rich coal states like Pennsylvania and Illinois and their global warming platforms.

"There is no such animal as clean coal," said Brent Blackwelder, president of the environmental group Friends of the Earth. "We shouldn't be placing our bets on coal to bail us out. We need to be looking at getting rid of coal plants."

Among Eastern U.S. states, West Virginia and Kentucky lead the pack in coal production and employ about half of U.S. coal industry workers -- about 39,000 people.

Both candidates support legislation that could be debated by the Senate this summer that would require U.S. industry to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 70 percent by 2050.

Coal states don't hold the same clout as Farm Belt states who control about a quarter of U.S. Electoral College votes and have pushed for higher government mandates to boost U.S. consumption of ethanol -- made mostly from corn.

But "Big Coal" states are not to be ignored on the electoral map. And as the Democratic presidential process comes down to the wire, coal plays prominently in three of the six remaining primaries including Montana on June 3.

Coal industry officials said U.S. electric utilities are willing to embrace carbon-reduction strategies but cannot simply shut down coal-fired plants without a massive increase in electricity prices.

"The U.S. doesn't just have an environmental problem -- it has an energy supply problem," said Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association. "We simply cannot zero out coal use because it is not pristine."

Not all environmental groups take such a hard line on the clean coal, pointing out that it's only natural for politicians to craft their message to their audience.

"The candidates appear to be following a tried and true tradition which is telling the audience what they want to hear," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a nonpartisan environmental group. "It's politics as usual."

Even Al Gore, who has become a spokesman for the dangers of climate change, steered clear of talking about global warming when he campaigned in West Virginia ahead of the 2000 presidential elections, O'Donnell said.

The deletion did not pay off for Gore in the end -- West Virginia cast its lot with Republican George W. Bush instead.

Nukes are not 'renewable'

Read the following carefully. Is John McCain saying that he does NOT support subsidies for the nuclear energy industry?

The last time I looked, nuclear power plant developers were seeking status as renewables so they could qualify for federal production tax credits and state renewable energy credits. (GW)

McCain Raises Concerns About Subsidies for Solar Power

Laura Meckler and Stephen Power
Wall Street Journal
May 13, 2008

Sen. John McCain made clear today that he is not comfortable with subsidies for solar power, though he has supported incentives for nuclear power plants and thinks more federal support is needed to encourage the industry.

At a roundtable conducted in the foggy foothills of the Cascade Mountains in North Bend, Wash., McCain listened to the chief executive of REI, the outdoor recreation and clothing cooperative, explain what her company is doing to minimize its impact on the climate. He asked her a simple question: “What do you want me to do?”

Sally Jewel replied, “It’s a great question,” and went on to explain that REI plans to open 10 solar-powered stores in Arizona, California and Oregon (in sunnier markets, she noted, than the rain-soaked one he was in at the moment). The problem, she said, is there are no federal incentives to help defray the costs.

“There isn’t anything significant on the federal side to help us make the right decisions,” she said. “We’re trying to do the right thing without really any incentives.”

McCain replied that he preferred for the federal government to invest in research and development, not subsidies.

“I’m a little wary–I have to give you straight talk–about government subsidies,” he said. He cited his long-time opposition to ethanol subsidies, which have helped push up the price of corn and increase the price of food.

“When government jumps in and distorts the market, then there’s unintended consequences as well as intended,” he said.

He said over-subsidization of the solar industry in the 1970s led to “some pretty shoddy material.”

But he does support help for nuclear power plants, which he hails as a clean technology that can help reduce carbon emissions. He told reporters at a news conference that a pending Senate bill on climate change, which would establish industry limits on emissions that he favors, needs to add more help for nuclear power.

“It doesn’t go far enough as far as nuclear power is concerned in my estimation,” he said.

An aide to the Arizona senator said Tuesday that McCain hasn’t decided exactly what form of support is needed, but that it likely will be “consistent with” past measures he has supported that would have directed hundreds of millions of dollars to the construction of new nuclear plants.

During its darkest hours Juneau's residents shine

In 1978 I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts when Boston and its surrounding suburbs (which included Cambridge) was buried by what would become known as the Great Blizzard of '78. Wind-swept snow fell for 33 hours straight. The Greater Boston Metropolitan Area ground to a standstill in the aftermath of the storm. Vehicles were abandoned on the highway. Public transportation was shut down. All but essential businesses were closed.

Meanwhile everyday life took on a surreal Currier-and-Ives-like appearance and pace. Cars were banned from the streets that filled with people walking, sledding, skiing and in general enjoying one another's company. Almost everyone you talked to commented on how wonderful it felt.

And then...the second the ban on automobile traffic was lifted it was all over in a flash.

Recently in Juneau, Alaska an avalanche knocked down electric transmission lines. The ensuring combination of a diminished supply of electricity and soaring rates for that which is available prompted residents to adopt a crash program in energy efficiency and conservation. It has been extremely instructive and inspiring in terms of what people can achieve in very short order.

Question is: will it last once the transmission lines are repaired? (GW)

A City Cooler and Dimmer, and, Oh, Proving a Point

By William Yardley
New York Times
May 14, 2008

JUNEAU, Alaska — Conservationists swoon at the possibility of it all. Here in Alaska, where melting arctic ice and eroding coastlines have made global warming an urgent threat, this little city has cut its electricity use by more than 30 percent in a matter of weeks, instantly establishing itself as a role model for how to go green, and fast.

Comfort has been recalibrated. The public sauna has been closed and the lights have been dimmed at the indoor community pool. At the library, one of the two elevators was shut down after someone figured out it cost 20 cents for each round trip. The thermostat at the convention center was dialed down eight degrees, to 60. The marquee outside is dark.

Schoolchildren sacrifice Nintendo time and boast at show-and-tell of kilowatts saved. Hotels consult safety regulations to be sure they have not unscrewed too many light bulbs in the hallways. On a recent weekday, all but one of the dozens of television screens on display at the big Fred Meyer store were black — off, that is.

Yet even as they embrace a fluorescent future, the 31,000 residents of Juneau, the state capital, are not necessarily doing it for the greater good. They face a more local inconvenient truth. Electricity rates rocketed about 400 percent after an avalanche on April 16 destroyed several major transmission towers that delivered more than 80 percent of the city’s power from a hydroelectric dam about 40 miles south.

“People are suddenly interested in talking about their water heaters,” said Maria Gladziszewski, who handles special projects for the city manager’s office. “As they say, it’s a teachable moment.”

Until repairs are completed, possibly by late June, the city’s private electric utility will depend almost exclusively on diesel fuel. Hydropower is one of the cheapest and cleanest power sources, while diesel, at around $4 a gallon, is one of the most expensive and dirtiest.

With the first bills based on the increased rate scheduled to be sent out this week, fear is in the air. So is the laundry. Dryers eat up watts, and local stores ran out of clothespins because so many people started hanging their laundry outside. Never mind that it rains 220 days of the year and rarely gets truly warm here amid the fjords and forests of the Inside Passage.

“It takes about two days to get them dry,” Linda Augustine, 66, an elementary school teacher, said as she used plastic clothes hangers to dry blue jeans and T-shirts under the awning on the back porch of her mobile home. “And I don’t iron my clothes now. You massage them to get the wrinkles out while they’re still on the hanger.”

The new rate is about 53 cents per kilowatt-hour, up from about 11 cents — around the national average — before the avalanche. The average residential bill before the avalanche was about $86 a month.

The greening of Juneau has made for an unexpected moment in the spotlight for a city some Alaskans would like to see play a lesser role. Clear skies in Juneau reveal sheer, snow-capped mountains lining the Gastineau Channel and bald eagles coasting over the water the way crows might elsewhere. But the city’s remote location and abundant dreariness, coupled with the fact that Anchorage — a nearly 600-mile flight away — has the state’s economic power and 10 times Juneau’s population, have long led to calls to move the capital.

“Before this event on April 16, the public discourse in Juneau in terms of its future was all focused on the perennial threat of having the capital relocated,” said Mayor Bruce Botelho. “It was the subject of three different pieces of legislation, all of which had hearings this year.”

Gov. Sarah Palin, a Republican from an Anchorage suburb, has shown little interest in spending time in Juneau, one of the state’s few Democratic strongholds. While plenty of Juneau residents are irate that the electric utility, Alaska Electric Light and Power, could not prevent the avalanche damage and then passed on its costs to customers, they have also blamed Ms. Palin for rejecting a request for public money to help residents handle big bill increases.

“We need all the help we can get right now,” Ashley Richardson, of the Juneau People’s Power Project, said at a small protest on the Capitol steps on Friday. “This is not our responsibility.”

The governor has requested help from a federal loan program for small businesses hurt by the rate increase. Officials at the electric utility say they are looking at ways to ease the pain by allowing more residents to spread the higher costs over many months. The local United Way and other groups have received a city grant to help lower-income residents with their bills.

What the avalanche has underscored, however, is that Juneau is largely on its own, whether in meeting the energy challenge or facing the broader question of its future. The gold rush that helped create the city ended a century ago, and other resource-based industries, like other forms of mining and logging, have faded amid environmental pressures and economic changes. State government and tourism are the anchors now.

Many residents say they were at least relieved that the power problems started as the days were growing longer and warmer. Some, seeing a silver lining, wonder if the electricity challenge, and the conservation it has prompted, might spur a new economic creativity for a city recommitted to energy efficiency. (While residents have recently rushed to convert to compact fluorescent light bulbs, Juneau is still working toward mandatory curbside recycling and it has yet to complete an audit of its carbon footprint.)

Mr. Botelho, who said his in-box had been filling with messages from environmental start-up companies that want to make Juneau their proving ground, called the situation “the opportunity to be our own knights in shining armor.”

Evidence of the civic self-discipline is updated daily on the Web site of Alaska Electric Light and Power. The day before the avalanche, the city consumed 1,006 megawatt hours of electricity; on Friday, the number was 625.

The most important number on Earth

The clearer and nearer the realities of climate change become the more difficult they seem to be accepted. Perhaps it's because for many among the (privileged) entrenched status quo the cure consists of way too bitter pills to swallow.

NASA scientist Jim Hansen and his colleagues have now quantified the "tipping point" for climate change. It's 350 parts per million -- a target that we have already overshot.

As I prepare to post this another cyclone is forming off the coast of Myanmar. Is the tragedy unfolding there a manifestation of climate change? If so, it is probably mild compared to what's in store later on.

Given what scientists are telling us in the face of the evidence at hand, we can't take the risk that what's going on is not the result of atmospheric carbon loading by humans.

Bucky Fuller reminded us often that it's clear that Nature has endowed humans with mind -- the key "tool" that enable us to anticipate and avoid the path to extinction that every other species on the planet is inextricably bound to. At the same time he also reminded us that our survival is far from guaranteed. (GW)

Earth at 350

By Bill McKibben
The Nation
May 12, 2008

This article originally appeared on TomDispatch.

Even for Americans, constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start--even for us, the world looks a little Terminal right now.

It's not just the economy. We've gone through swoons before. It's that gas at $4 a gallon means we're running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It's that when we try to turn corn into gas, it sends the price of a loaf of bread shooting upwards and starts food riots on three continents. It's that everything is so inextricably tied together. It's that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the "limits to growth" suddenly seem... how best to put it, right.

All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth.

There's a number--a new number--that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA's Jim Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The abstract attached to it argued--and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper--"if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points--massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them--that we'll pass if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer's insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.

So it's a tough diagnosis. It's like the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high, and if you don't bring it down right away, you're going to have a stroke. So you take the pill, you swear off the cheese, and, if you're lucky, you get back into the safety zone before the coronary. It's like watching the tachometer edge into the red zone and knowing that you need to take your foot off the gas before you hear that clunk up front.

In this case, though, it's worse than that because we're not taking the pill and we are stomping on the gas--hard. Instead of slowing down, we're pouring on the coal, quite literally. Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year--two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast.

And suddenly, the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas, accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. Apparently, we've managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth.

And don't forget: China is building more power plants, India is pioneering the $2,500 car, and Americans are converting to TVs the size of windshields that suck juice ever faster.

Here's the thing. Hansen didn't just say that, if we didn't act, there was trouble coming; or, if we didn't yet know what was best for us, we'd certainly be better off below 350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. His phrase was: "...if we wish to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed." A planet with billions of people living near those oh-so- floodable coastlines. A planet with ever more vulnerable forests. (A beetle, encouraged by warmer temperatures, has already managed to kill ten times more trees this year than in any previous infestation across the northern reaches of Canada. This means far more carbon heading for the atmosphere, and apparently dooms Canada's efforts to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, already in doubt because of its decision to start producing oil for the US from Alberta's tar sands.)

We're the ones who kicked off the warming; now, the planet is starting to take over the job. Melt all that Arctic ice, for instance, and suddenly the nice white shield that reflected 80 percent of incoming solar radiation back into space has turned to blue water that absorbs 80 percent of the sun's heat. Such feedbacks are beyond history, though not in the sense that Francis Fukuyama had in mind.

And we have, at best, a few years to short-circuit them--to reverse course. Here's the Indian scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year (and, by the way, got his job when the Bush Administration, at the behest of Exxon Mobil, forced out his predecessor): "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

In the next two or three years, the nations of the world are supposed to be negotiating a successor treaty to the Kyoto Accord. When December 2009 rolls around, heads of state are supposed to converge on Copenhagen to sign a treaty--a treaty that would go into effect at the last plausible moment to heed the most basic and crucial of limits on atmospheric CO₂.

If we did everything right, says Hansen, we could see carbon emissions start to fall fairly rapidly and the oceans begin to pull some of that CO₂ out of the atmosphere. Before the century was out we might even be on track back to 350. We might stop just short of some of those tipping points, like the Road Runner screeching to a halt at the very edge of the cliff.

More likely, though, we're the Coyote--because "doing everything right" means that political systems around the world would have to take enormous and painful steps right away. It means no more new coal-fired power plants anywhere, and plans to quickly close the ones already in operation. (Coal-fired power plants operating the way they're supposed to are, in global warming terms, as dangerous as nuclear plants melting down.) It means making car factories turn out efficient hybrids next year, just the way we made them turn out tanks in six months at the start of World War II. It means making trains an absolute priority and planes a taboo.

It means making every decision wisely because we have so little time and so little money, at least relative to the task at hand. And hardest of all, it means the rich countries of the world sharing resources and technology freely with the poorest ones, so that they can develop dignified lives without burning their cheap coal.

That's possible--we launched a Marshall Plan once, and we could do it again, this time in relation to carbon. But in a month when the President has, once more, urged us to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, that seems unlikely. In a month when the alluring phrase "gas tax holiday" has danced into our vocabulary, it's hard to see (though it was encouraging to see that Clinton's gambit didn't sway many voters). And if it's hard to imagine sacrifice here, imagine China, where people produce a quarter as much carbon apiece as we do.

Still, as long as it's not impossible, we've got a duty to try. In fact, it's about the most obvious duty humans have ever faced.

A few of us have just launched a new campaign, 350.org. Its only goal is to spread this number around the world in the next eighteen months, via art and music and ruckuses of all kinds, in the hope that it will push those post-Kyoto negotiations in the direction of reality.

After all, those talks are our last chance; you just can't do this one light bulb at a time. And if this 350.org campaign is a Hail Mary pass, well, sometimes those passes get caught.

We do have one thing going for us: this new tool the web, which at least allows you to imagine something like a grassroots global effort. If the Internet was built for anything, it was built for sharing this number, for making people understand that "350" stands for a kind of safety, a kind of possibility, a kind of future.

Hansen's words were well-chosen: "a planet similar to that on which civilization developed." People will doubtless survive on a non-350 planet, but those who do will be so preoccupied, coping with the endless unintended consequences of an overheated planet, that civilization may not.

Civilization is what grows up in the margins of leisure and security provided by a workable relationship with the natural world. That margin won't exist, at least not for long, this side of 350. That's the limit we face.

Denmark's seven percent solution

So can you begin to envision a world that works for everyone? Such a world is definitely possible. It is a world that re-establishes millions of family farms operated locally by farmers practicing sustainable agriculture.

It is a world in which every new structure built adheres to strict "green" performance standards and electricity is generated from renewable energy sources including solar, wind and geothermal.

It is a world where the majority of motor vehicles are electric and powered by the same sources of renewable energy that lights our homes and businesses.

Now the United States Department of Energy has just released a report that states that it is technically feasible for us to generate 20% of our electricity from wind by 2030 (see the following post)!

The vision of the world that works for everyone may be closer than we think. (GW)

Renault seen investing up to $1 billion in electric car

By Tova Cohen
Reuters
May 11, 2008

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - The head of an Israeli-backed electric car project estimated on Sunday that its partner, the Renault-Nissan alliance, would likely invest $500 million to $1 billion in the swappable-battery electric cars.

"This is the cost for a three-year car program," Shai Agassi, the founder and chief executive of California-based Project Better Place, said on the sidelines of a news conference to introduce the electric car prototype.

Renault and Nissan signed a deal with Better Place in January to begin mass producing electric cars as a part of a project to develop alternative energy sources and slash oil dependency.

Better Place will build the first electric grids in Israel and Denmark, with initial deployment slated for 2010.

Denmark's DONG Energy recently signed a letter of intent with Better Place to introduce the electric cars to the Scandinavian country, where the batteries will be charged using wind power.

DONG Energy is the world's largest offshore wind power operator, with several wind farms in Denmark and Britain.

Agassi said that up to 20 percent of Denmark's electricity production comes from wind but that 7 percent was not being used -- enough to power every car in Scandinavia.

A few dozen cars will be available in Israel later in 2008, mainly for demonstration.

In Israel, much of the electricity is generated using fossil fuels such as coal, though natural gas is now being introduced. But Agassi said the plan was to use solar energy generated in Israel's Negev Desert to power the batteries.

"If all of Israel traveled by electric cars, you would need to add 6 percent of electricity production," Agassi said.

Renault will provide Better Place with vehicles while Nissan, through its joint venture with NEC, has created a lithium-ion battery pack. The project will also use batteries made by A123 Systems.

The batteries, weighing about 200 kg, will have a range of 160 to 200 km before needing to be recharged or swapped.

Agassi said the project was open to anyone who wants to join.

The initial $200 million investment in Better Place is led by holding company Israel Corp, and includes Morgan Stanley, venture capital firm Vantage Point and a group of private investors.

500,000 CHARGING SPOTS

Better Place in Israel will deploy more than 500,000 charging spots, including at the homes and offices of its clients, and hundreds of battery exchange stations.

Moshe Kaplinsky, CEO of Better Place Israel, said a study conducted by Israeli consultancy and research institute Geocartography Knowledge Group, showed that two thirds of the public have a positive opinion of electric cars.

"We are not operating in a climate of indifference. The Israeli public is interested in what we are doing," Kaplinsky said. "We need to stop our dependence on oil."

In Israel, where most of its oil comes from Russia, 1.2 million households own cars and 210,000 would consider purchasing an electric car, the study showed.

Agassi said Better Place was in discussions in other countries to introduce similar projects.

European countries are interested in Better Place for environmental reasons while Asia is seeking to reduce pollution, and Africa sees huge potential to generate solar energy in the Sahara Desert, Agassi said.

North America is seeking to reduce its oil dependence.

"What happens when oil producers say: 'We don't take dollars anymore,'" Agassi said.

"It's time for America to change the way we think about wind power"

"Humanity is about to discover
That whatever it needs to do
And knows how to do
It can always afford to do
And that in fact is only
And all it can afford to do."
R. Buckminster Fuller

We possess the vision and the know-how to effect a Design Science Revolution in energy and transportation.

The need to do so is overwhelmingly clear.

The resource is abundant and potentially inexhaustible.

Missing key ingredients are political courage and leadership. (GW)

Use of wind energy expected to grow dramatically

By H. Josef Hebert
The Associated Press
May 12, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two decades from now Americans could get as much electricity from windmills as from nuclear power plants, according to a government report that lays out a possible plan for wind energy growth.

The report, a collaboration between the Energy Department research labs and industry, concludes wind energy could generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity by 2030, about the same share now produced by nuclear reactors.

Such growth would pose a number of major challenges, but is achievable without the need of major new technological breakthroughs, said the report released Monday.

"The report indicates that we can do this nationally for less than half a cent per kilowatt hour if we have the vision," said Andrew Karsner, the Energy Department's assistant secretary for efficiency and renewable energy.

If achieved, it would be an astounding leap.

Wind energy today accounts for only about 1 percent of the nation's electricity, although the industry has been on a growth binge with a 45 percent jump in production last year.

To reach the 20 percent production level, wind turbines would have to produce 300,000 megawatts of power, compared to about 16,000 megawatts generated today. Such growth would envision more than 75,000 new wind turbines, many of them larger than those operating today. About 54,000 megawatts would be produced by turbines in offshore waters.

And it would require a major expansion of the electricity grid system to move power from high-wind areas to other parts of the country, the report said.

"The United States possesses abundant wind resources," said the report spearheaded by DOE's National Renewable Technology Laboratory in Golden, Colo., and a 20 percent share of electricity production "while ambitious, could be feasible."

But the report cautioned that its findings were not meant to predict that such growth would, in fact, be achieved, but only that it is technically possible. And it acknowledged "there are significant costs, challenges and impacts" associated with such rapid growth.

It would require improved turbine technology, "significant changes" and expansion of power line systems and a major expansion of markets for wind energy to accommodate an annual growth rate of 16,000 megawatts of electricity a year beginning in 2018, more than five times today's annual growth.

Randall Swisher, executive director of the American Wind Energy Association, said the report confirms that wind energy "is no longer a niche" in the power industry.

Dan Arvizu, director of the department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said that the 18-month study provides a "vision" of the kind of wind energy growth technically possible.

"First of all, it's doable, second of all it's desirable," said Arvizu at a news conference.

"It's time for America to change the way we think about wind power," said Bob Lukefahr of BP Alternative Energy North America. The oil company is a leading wind developer, said Lukefahr.

If wind energy's share of power production grows to 20 percent, natural gas consumption is expected to decline by 11 percent and coal consumption by 18 percent in 2030, said the report. As a result carbon dioxide emissions linked to global warming would be reduced by 825 million metric tons a year.

"This is the equivalent of taking 140 million cars off the road," said Swisher.

Wanted: fifty million local farmrs

I just finished reading "Fifty Million Farmers" -- a talk by Richard Heinberg that he delivered at the 2007 annual Schumacher Lectures. It appears in the current issue of Annals of Earth. Dr. Heinberg is the author of "The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Society". He predicts that industrial agriculture will be one of the first victims of our peaking oil and natural gas resources. Agribusiness' alarming dependence on fossil fuels in the form of fuel, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides makes it especially vulnerable to both high energy costs and disruption of supply.

He calls for an anticipatory transition to a localized sustainable agriculture system that would, among other things, reverse the trend of replacing warm-blooded farmers with "capital chemistry and machines". I his estimation it will take about 50 million farmers to support a truly sustainable U.S. agricultural system.

New York City chef Dan Barber also sees in the current energy crisis an opportunity to transform food production in this country for the better as described in his op-ed that ran in yesterday's New York Times. (GW)

Change We Can Stomach

By Dan Barber
New York Times
May 11, 2008

TARRYTOWN, N.Y.

COOKING, like farming, for all its down-home community spirit, is essentially a solitary craft. But lately it’s feeling more like a lonely burden. Finding guilt-free food for our menus — food that’s clean, green and humane — is about as easy as securing a housing loan. And we’re suddenly paying more — 75 percent more in the last six years — to stock our pantries. Around the world, from Cairo to Port-au-Prince, increases in food prices have governments facing riots born of shortages and hunger. It’s enough to make you want to toss in the toque.

But here’s the good news: if you’re a chef, or an eater who cares about where your food comes from (and there are a lot of you out there), we can have a hand in making food for the future downright delicious.

Farming has the potential to go through the greatest upheaval since the Green Revolution, bringing harvests that are more healthful, sustainable and, yes, even more flavorful. The change is being pushed along by market forces that influence how our farmers farm.

Until now, food production has been controlled by Big Agriculture, with its macho fixation on “average tonnage” and “record harvests.” But there’s a cost to its breadbasket-to-the-world bragging rights. Like those big Industrial Age factories that once billowed black smoke, American agriculture is mired in a mind-set that relies on capital, chemistry and machines. Food production is dependent on oil, in the form of fertilizers and pesticides, in the distances produce travels from farm to plate and in the energy it takes to process it.

For decades, environmentalists and small farmers have claimed that this is several kinds of madness. But industrial agriculture has simply responded that if we’re feeding more people more cheaply using less land, how terrible can our food system be?

Now that argument no longer holds true. With the price of oil at more than $120 a barrel (up from less than $30 for most of the last 50 years), small and midsize nonpolluting farms, the ones growing the healthiest and best-tasting food, are gaining a competitive advantage. They aren’t as reliant on oil, because they use fewer large machines and less pesticide and fertilizer.

In fact, small farms are the most productive on earth. A four-acre farm in the United States nets, on average, $1,400 per acre; a 1,364-acre farm nets $39 an acre. Big farms have long compensated for the disequilibrium with sheer quantity. But their economies of scale come from mass distribution, and with diesel fuel costing more than $4 per gallon in many locations, it’s no longer efficient to transport food 1,500 miles from where it’s grown.

The high cost of oil alone will not be enough to reform American agriculture, however. As long as agricultural companies exploit the poor and extract labor from them at slave wages, and as long as they aren’t required to pay the price for the pollution they so brazenly produce, their system will stay afloat. If financially pinched Americans opt for the cheapest (and the least healthful) foods rather than cook their own, the food industry will continue to reach for the lowest common denominator.

But it is possible to nudge the revolution along — for instance, by changing how we measure the value of food. If we stop calculating the cost per quantity and begin considering the cost per nutrient value, the demand for higher-quality food would rise.

Organic fruits and vegetables contain 40 percent more nutrients than their chemical-fed counterparts. And animals raised on pasture provide us with meat and dairy products containing more beta carotene and at least three times as much C.L.A. (conjugated linoleic acid, shown in animal studies to reduce the risk of cancer) than those raised on grain.

Where good nutrition goes, flavor tends to follow. Chefs are the first to admit that an impossibly sweet, flavor-filled carrot has nothing to do with our work. It has to do with growing the right seed in healthy, nutrient-rich soil.

Increasingly we can see the wisdom of diversified farming operations, where there are built-in relationships among plants and animals. A dairy farm can provide manure for a neighboring potato farm, for example, which can in turn offer potato scraps as extra feed for the herd. When crops and livestock are judiciously mixed, agriculture wisely mimics nature.

To encourage small, diversified farms is not to make a nostalgic bid to revert to the agrarian ways of our ancestors. It is to look toward the future, leapfrogging past the age of heavy machinery and pollution, to farms that take advantage of the sun’s free energy and use the waste of one species as food for another.

Chefs can help move our food system into the future by continuing to demand the most flavorful food. Our support of the local food movement is an important example of this approach, but it’s not enough. As demand for fresh, local food rises, we cannot continue to rely entirely on farmers’ markets. Asking every farmer to plant, harvest, drive his pickup truck to a market and sell his goods there is like asking me to cook, take reservations, serve and wash the dishes.

We now need to support a system of well-coordinated regional farm networks, each suited to the food it can best grow. Farmers organized into marketing networks that can promote their common brands (like the Organic Valley Family of Farms in the Midwest) can ease the economic and ecological burden of food production and transportation. They can also distribute their products to new markets, including poor communities that have relied mainly on food from convenience stores.

Similar networks could also operate in the countries that are now experiencing food shortages. For years, the United States has flooded the world with food exports, displacing small farmers and disrupting domestic markets. As escalating food prices threaten an additional 100 million people with hunger, a new concept of humanitarian aid is required. Local farming efforts focused on conserving natural resources and biodiversity are essential to improving food security in developing countries, as a report just published by the International Assessment of Agriculture Science and Technology for Development has concluded. We must build on these tenets, providing financial and technical assistance to small farmers across the world.

But regional systems will work only if there is enough small-scale farming going on to make them viable. With a less energy-intensive food system in place, we will need more muscle power devoted to food production, and more people on the farm. (The need is especially urgent when you consider that the average age of today’s American farmer is over 55.) In order to move gracefully into a post-industrial agriculture economy, we also need to rethink how we educate the people who will grow our food. Land-grant universities and agricultural schools, dependent on financing from agribusiness, focus on maximum extraction from the land — take more, sell more, waste more.

Leave our agricultural future to chefs and anyone who takes food and cooking seriously. We never bought into the “bigger is better” mantra, not because it left us too dependent on oil, but because it never produced anything really good to eat. Truly great cooking — not faddish 1.5-pound rib-eye steaks with butter sauce, but food that has evolved from the world’s thriving peasant cuisines — is based on the correspondence of good farming to a healthy environment and good nutrition. It’s never been any other way, and we should be grateful. The future belongs to the gourmet.

Dan Barber is the chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

Why we should be as mad as hell

Just in case you're still wondering why BP, Shell and Exxon backed out of the largest proposed offshore wind project off the coast of the U.K. that was the subject of a post last week, consider the following analysis provided by The Women's International Perspective.

As you read bear in mind that oil prices rose above $126 a barrel today. The Wall Street Journal predicts that prices will top $150/barrel threshold before year's end. (GW)

It's the Profits Stupid!

Exxon's Rising Take from America: Will the Proposed Gas Tax Holiday Really Help?

By Nomi Prins
The Women's International Perspective
May 5, 2008

How sad. Exxon Mobil, the universe’s largest publicly traded company, which also happens to be enjoying some of its biggest profits ever thanks to the almost doubled price of oil during the past year, didn’t quite live up to Wall Street expectations this week. In fact, its stock fell nearly 4% the day it announced its first quarter of 2008 earnings.

Unfortunately, this does not make the pain at the pump pulsing through the nation any more bearable. Apparently, Exxon could have made more profit, had it not chosen to hold back further gas price hikes. Instead, earnings in its refining business (which converts crude oil to gallons of useable gas) weren’t as strong as it had wanted. Yes, that’s right – Exxon would have made even more money had they passed more pain onto the public. They were just being “nice.” Right.

As people contemplate paying $4 per gallon for gas, not to mention the havoc those higher oil prices wreak on their home fuel costs, Exxon isn’t really skimming less off the top in order to be a Team America player. Nor does Exxon feel the same pain from these high oil prices that ordinary citizens feel while driving to school, work, the grocery store or childcare. The $21.7 million paycheck (18% more than last year) of Exxon’s CEO, Rex Tillerson, certainly covers a whole lot of gas.

No, that Exxon didn’t quite live up to Wall Street expectations is just pre-election spin, ensuring that whichever candidate gets into the Oval Office doesn’t try to take some of their profits away by taxing them. (Not that they’d have to worry if John McCain wins the election.)

Exxon posted an almost $11 billion profit for the first quarter of 2008 on a staggering $117 billion in total revenue, which was up from $87.2 billion in revenue last year (or, more than a third of the projected 2008 $311 billion US deficit.) Part of Exxon’s windfall still came from higher gas prices, which on average, rose about 30% over the year, as oil prices rose from $60 to $100 at the end of the last quarter it reported.

Plus, Exxon’s earnings were up 17% versus the same quarter last year, pulling in the second-highest quarterly earnings in US history for any corporation. To put it in perspective, Exxon’s last earnings for all of 2007 were a record $40.6 billion, which puts them in the running, if oil prices stay where they are, to come in at about 10% above that for 2008.

So, is Exxon joining the “go-green, don’t be dependent on foreign oil” mantras popular in this election cycle? Are they spending some of that hard-earned cash on alternative energy sources? Not so much. Instead it was busy investing in itself, buying back $31.8 billion of its own stock out of that $40.6 billion profit, compared with just $3.3 billion in US capital investment. Says Tyson Slocum, Energy Director at Public Citizen, “This discrepancy certainly shows that motorists aren’t getting any bank for their buck out of it.”

And Exxon wasn’t the only one struggling to beat their previous record profits. Oil companies around the world were feeling the love from record crude oil prices. Firms like BP and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, despite flat production over the quarter, posted stellar, even better than expected first quarter earnings, up 64% and 25% in profit respectively. ConocoPhillips’ first-quarter earnings increased 17% to $4.1 billion.

On Friday, Chevron added to the oil company euphoria, posting a net income rise of 37% for the first quarter of 2008, and revenues of $65 billion, up from $33 billion, though also citing more limited refining profits (the ‘downstream’ part of their business – upstream is oil production). Like Exxon, Chevron also chose to use its profits to buy its own stock – underscoring that the best investment for oil companies is – oil companies. The firm bought back $2 billion of its own stock during the first quarter.

Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton appropriately commented, “There is something seriously wrong with our economy when Exxon's record $11 billion in quarterly profits are seen as a disappointment by Wall Street. But on Main Street, middle-class families are facing devastating choices every day between buying groceries and filling up their gas tanks to get to work.”

Unfortunately, Clinton’s understanding didn’t translate into a fully useful policy suggestion. Both Clinton and John McCain suggested helping American drivers with a “gas-tax holiday,” in which the gas price at the pump would be temporarily exempt from certain federal taxes, providing consumers with an 18.4 cent-a-gallon price break. Clinton would make up for the money the federal budget would lose by not collecting that gas tax, by taking it from the current tax breaks oil companies already enjoy. McCain didn’t really elaborate on what he’d cut money from to compensate, but suggested the tax holiday would allow families to pay for school costs – an odd attempt at cause and effect logic (which would work only if school costs were a fraction of what they really are).

The gas-tax holiday proposal would only work if gas companies were not allowed to pocket that 18.4 cent difference by increasing pump prices anyway, to somewhere just below an 18.4 cent rise – which would leave the total price almost the same. Somehow, trusting and gas companies don’t quite fit together. Indeed according to Slocum, “This is pointless pandering. There’s no guarantee prices will actually fall 18.4 cents, plus the Highway Trust Fund that the tax promotes is in need of the money, particularly for mass transit investment (which would be energy-friendly).”

Senator Barack Obama didn’t back the proposed tax holiday, nor did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but both Obama and Clinton (in her Economic Blueprint) have proposed a windfall-profits tax before. In Obama’s case, he would impose a tax on each barrel of oil priced over $80, which his camp says would extract three times the $50 billion, 10-year windfall-profits tax that Clinton proposes collecting from oil companies.

Both are a start, but too tame. The reality is that gas companies can and do profit disproportionately from higher oil prices, limiting their need, without any enforced regulation or tax consequences, to either find alternative energy sources or support means to reduce energy dependency.

What’s needed is a major extraction from the pocket books of the oil giants that will steer them toward alternative energy. They must be brought to participate, by limiting their profits, in funding solutions for energy conservation – like more money for mass transit, rebates for motorists to buy super fuel-efficient cars, incentives for families to install solar panels, and other means of reducing oil dependency. Meanwhile, there are many Americans who simply have to drive to work, care for their kids or parents, get food, or get educated. Some must make their living in driving and transport. Others find that rents or homes near their work are unaffordable making a commute necessary. Providing more transportation alternatives with windfall profit money would be both cost and energy effective.

All this must be taken into account when determining practical energy policy, and in order to achieve cost benefits to more Americans now, and in the future.