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Wish I had more time to comment, but for now all I can say is this is interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

Barack Obama has a very comprehensive plan for developing a green economy. (While often derided for being inspiring but lacking substance, Obama has had detailed policies available on his Web site on a wide range of issues for a very long time. Obama's Blueprint for Change lays it all out.) With regard to his energy policies, they are good solid progressive policies for the most part (though cap and trade schemes are of dubious value). There is one other concern, which stems from this passage:

Barack Obama will use proceeds from the cap-and-trade auction program to invest in job training and transition programs to help workers and industries adapt to clean technology development and production.

This has been a key part of his stump speech in areas where he is claiming he will create millions of new jobs. From his own Web site:

"In this campaign, I've proposed a comprehensive solution to our energy crisis. It's a plan that will develop and deploy the next generation of energy – a plan that will create new industries and millions of new, good-paying jobs right here in America. They are jobs that can't be outsourced and won't disappear. They are jobs like ones right here at McKinstry, and they are the future of our economy," Obama said.

One has to wonder what type of jobs he exactly is referring to. If he is talking about the jobs that involve the scientists and designers who create the innovative new systems, there is potential there. However, there are serious questions about whether America currently has the brainpower to do this, given the declining numbers of our students who have been studying science and technology for the past 20 years. If he is talking about the actual construction of infrastructure—installing solar panels, upgrading the electrical grid to carry wind power, etc.—those are clearly jobs that cannot be outsourced, but they are jobs that could be done by low-paid immigrant labor if we do not first create a path to citizenship and strengthen the power of labor unions. If he is talking about the actual manufacturing of most of the components, he is out of his mind.

No serious economic commentator thinks there is any way the U.S. will ever be a manufacturing power again. since many of the folks he is talking to Michigan and Ohio are wanting exactly these types of jobs back, he is being a bit disingenuous if that is what he is alluding to. I doubt Obama is naive enough to believe himself on this accord, but he also probably knows that if gets down to brass tacks, which is that the jobs he is talking about are either white-collar engineers or those installing the new infrastructure, he might have a lot of blowback. So, he seems purposefully vague. And while the designers and innovators in the fields of science, technology, etc. will be valuable forever, once the basic infrastructure is developed, the jobs in that area will diminish as only those needed to maintain the systems will be needed. the reality is that the future hope for these workers (actually their children—as this infrastructure building will likely last an entire generation) is that they join the knowledge and design economy. Clearly, the most important thing that can be done for this country's future is to revitalize our educational system and drive more students into the fields where they can thrive. Moving past eight years of the most anti-science, anti-intellectual administration in American history will be an important first step.

Here is a form of alternative energy I was not formerly aware of: 

Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), also sometimes called engineered geothermal systems, offer great potential for more than 100 GW of geothermal power which 40 times more than present geothermal power. Sandia national labs indicates ultimately geothermal global resources amount to 50,000 times the energy of all oil and gas resources in the world.

Basically, it works by tapping deep into the earth where there is plenty of heat, and then sending water down, which becomes steam that can thence be used as energy. Supposedly, by 2050, it could provide all the energy needs for the entire planet. The US has a few projects that could power up to 6 million homes within five years. And it would be as cheap as 4 cents/kwh. There must be a catch. Probably opens a hellmouth.

The New Republic has an article on the effect that rising fuel prices and climate change may have on the airline industry, with far-reaching implications for many facets of modern life:

Early signs of an aviation apocalypse are already upon us. As oil prices flirt with $130 per barrel and the dollar struggles, airlines are paying nearly 80 percent more for fuel than they did a year ago. Twenty-five airlines have gone belly-up this year--three to four times the usual yearly rate. Major carriers like American, Northwest, and United, still reeling from the industry downturn after September 11, go barely a month without announcing layoffs and capacity cuts. 

MIT just announced what may be one of the most important breakthroughs of all time in the field of alternative energy. They have demonstrated how to use solar power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen to be stored inside a fuel cell:

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

The key component in Nocera and Kanan's new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity -- whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source -- runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.

Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

This process (known as electrolysis) is normally very expensive and thus is not useful for home storage of solar energy. If this pans out, Al Gore's vision will become a reality. It is now distinctly possible that within 10 years time all residential electricity in the U.S. could be generated using this method. If our cars were all electric or electric/solar fuel hybrids (totally speculating on that latter part), there's the other part of the equation.

Check out the video on MIT TechTV. 

The day has finally come. Read all about it:

City of Savannah residents are only months away from being able to recycle at curbside.

The appealing part: They won't have to sort at home. All papers, soda bottles, beer cans and the like can go into the same recycling container in early 2009.

And if a new public-private partnership takes root as city officials hope, it could ignite a regional recycling program that would set up easier, lower-cost recycling for communities throughout Georgia and South Carolina.

That, at least, was the expectation Thursday as the Savannah City Council approved a 10-year contract with Pratt Recycling of Atlanta. Council members voted 6-3, with Larry Stuber, Mary Ellen Sprague and Clifton Jones Jr. voting against. They supported a 20-year contract.

Biodiesel is often touted as a green alternative to gasoline. I was curious how green it really is, so I did a little investigating. This article from the Union of Concerned Scientists (a pro-green site) provided some helpful information. At the most fundamental level, there is this:

According to a model developed by the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), neat (100%) biodiesel from soybeans can cut global warming pollution by more than half relative to conventional petroleum based diesel. The emissions benefits are higher for canola oil.

Sounds like we are off a good start. There are a couple things to keep in mind as we proceed, though. Biodiesel produces greenhouse gases. If you convert to biodiesel and increase the amount you drive, thinking "it's all good'" you have made an error in judgment. Also, and we'll get back to this in a moment, these comparisons are being made to petroleum diesel, not conventional gasoline engines.

Much of the world's biodiesel is being produced from food crops, which involves either using existing crop land for fuel production or clearing of forests for planting. If forests are cleared for planting, we lose the carbon sequestration those trees would have provided. It is possible that the entire life cycle of carbon emissions created by producing biodiesel in this way is greater than that for petroleum. Now, the good news: "When biodiesel is made from recycled food oil or other waste products these land use considerations do not apply." The problem is that while you might think that using waste would be the obvious way to go, there are still a number of issues with using it on a large scale. In the mean time, the soybean biodiesel industry is growing.

So, if you are running your car off of waste oil you collect from restaurants, you are indeed cutting greenhouse gases. Same if you are converting waste oil to biodiesel in your backyard. But as we press forward in our search for alternative fuels, we need to keep in mind that most people will be using commercial fuels produced from food crops, which to reiterate, may give no lifecycle benefit at all. However, there are couple of future technologies that could change the equation dramatically. One is "biomass gasification [which] may allow the use of other waste streams to be converted to synthetic diesel fuels, expanding the pool of potentially low carbon diesel." Another is "non-conventional sources like algae [which] may have the potential to provide dramatic (90%) reductions in global warming pollution." But those are not going to be happening any time soon.

There is one more issue, and it's one that often seems to get little airtime these days. Remember when environmentalism was mainly about pollution—clean air, clean water, and all that. Well, when comparing biodiesel to petroleum diesel, the effects on pollution are mixed:

biodiesel can offer distinct environmental advantages over petroleum diesel fuel.  ... the use of biodiesel blends in an existing diesel vehicle can reduce the emissions of the tailpipe pollutants associated with conventional diesel including particulate matter (PM or soot) and hydrocarbons (HC).  However, using biodiesel may result in greater emissions of smog-forming nitrogen oxides than using conventional diesel.

So, some good and some bad news there. But here's the thing though, all diesels (bio and petrol) are bad for the environment in terms of emissions other than greenhouse gases relative to gasoline-powered vehicles:

Gasoline-powered models are better than traditional diesel and biodiesel vehicles on toxic soot and smog-forming emissions. Diesels can produce as much as 10 to 20 times more toxic particulates than their gasoline counterparts, more than can be made up for with the use of biodiesel. Diesels fair even worse when it comes to smog-forming nitrogen oxide emissions, with greater than 20 times the emissions of a comparable gasoline vehicle.

So, while biodiesel is better than petrol diesel in some ways and worse in others, both are far worse than gasoline in this regard. In the rush to slow global warming, we can't forget about the devastating effects of other emissions on the environment. And while global warming is a long term threat to our planet, these other emissions can cause very serious short term harm (as well as long term harm). You are thus doing a better thing for the planet if you buy a gasoline car that's gets 40 mpg than you are if you convert an older diesel that gets 20 mpg to run on 100% biodiesel. (Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that. The best cases scenarios for biodiesel assume you are using 100% of the fuel to run your vehicle. However, petrol diesels need to be converted to do this. That'll cost you about $2,000. One more thing: I just noticed that sites that are touting biodiesel and selling related products have a decidedly different analysis of the carbon emissions related to biodiesel—in fact, calling it carbon neutral.) For now, I am going to trust a non-profit group of scientists who are concerned with the overall issues over companies trying to make a buck. 

Al Gore has a plan:

Former Vice President Al Gore, seeking to shake up an energy debate that is focused mostly on drilling, challenged the United States to shift its entire electricity sector to carbon-free wind, solar and geothermal power within 10 years, and use that power to fuel a new fleet of electric vehicles.

Can it work? If indeed this is possible, it will take a lot of will and lot of money. It won't happen in the private sector alone. Someone is going to have to pony up the tax dollars. Interestingly, John McCain's response was:

that while he and Gore might disagree on some aspects of climate change, he supports the goals Gore outlined for developing wind and solar. "If the vice president says it's doable, I believe it's doable"

Obama was a little more enthusiastic:

I strongly agree with Vice President Gore that we cannot drill our way to energy independence, but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power and advanced biofuels, and those are the investments I will make as president.

Neither seemed willing to sign on to the whole agenda, though. However, it's pretty clear that Obama is committed to government investment to get the ball rolling. Perhaps McCain also is, but his mantra these days is the free market will prevail. So, it's hard to say which way he would go. Probably depends on whether he would be focused on a second term or a legacy. In Obama's case, it's unclear that he will have the will to raise the taxes necessary to do the job. We know he will be looking cautiously toward 2012 in his first term, so my optimism is guarded. One thing is for sure. We have to try. Current plans, like the agreement by the G-8 to halve carbon emissions by 2050, will be too little too late.

So, in the middle of economic crisis, are you willing to pay higher taxes if you make more than 75 or 100K a year? Are you willing to forgo any promised tax cuts or credits if you are in the middle or lower income brackets? How do we find the money to achieve this goal with the credit crisis, foreclosure crisis, and banking crisis. There are people (and probably companies) that need to be bailed out now or economic chaos could ensue. Meanwhile, we are trapped in an expensive war that no one is going to be able to extricate us from in the near short term, regardless of the campaign rhetoric. I think someone is going have to do the unthinkable. Ask the American people for some sacrifice. People might have to give up a lot of luxuries (eating out, vacationing, expensive toys, etc.) for a long time to come. And for a lot of people, it will be hard to make the argument that it will be worth it. I tend to be a technological optimist, but technology requires money and energy. A lot of amazing stuff could happen in the next few decades if we have a vibrant economy. Are you willing to suffer a little along the way?

I missed this post by Michael Maddox a few weeks back, so I thought I'd link to it up here. If you want to really walk the walk, you will definitely be interested in Green Bridge Farm.

Don't miss the next GreenDrinks!

WHO:
Anyone interested in a greener Savannah
 
WHAT:
Sustainability is good. Cocktails are good.
Sustainability + Cocktails = Better
 
WHEN:
Second Tuesday of the month from 5:30 - 7:30
Tuesday, July 8th
 
WHERE:
Indoor/outdoor at
Cha Bella
102 E. Broad Street
 
Join us for discounted beer/cocktail specials
& a yummy cocktail buffet
 
WHY:
The best way to battle the summer heat is with a COOL drink.
 
Plan to cap off your evening at GreenDrinks with an awesome lecture by Charles Landry! Landry is one of the leading world authorities on how to build "creative cities" and has literally written THE book on the topic. He is coming to speak in Savannah on July 8th at 7:00 pm at the Morris Center in Trustees Garden. That's like two steps from Cha Bella.
 
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