The arguments continue on whether or not the effects of man-made pollutants and energy policies CAUSE global warming.  Unfortunately it seems to have become a political debate with Anti Cap & Trade (mostly Republicans) on one side and Al Gore Democrats on the other.  I think whether it has raised, or will raise the globe’s temperature is not the reason to support the development of Alternative Energy.  The reason is economic.  Some simple rules to guide our continued investment in Alternative Energies and why it benefits the world economies.

My economic rules for energy production:

Economic Principle 1 – It should be as close to the source of usage as possible

This removes transportation costs and inefficiencies from our energy production.

Think of the cost of transporting you hundreds of barrels of heating oil from half way across the globe or the electricity loss carrying it hundreds of miles (estimated at 15% to 20%)

Economic Principle 2 – It should be renewable

Cost Principle 2 – This makes supply much easier to manager.  Will we run out of sunlight or wind? This removes the research (most), and exploration from the cost base.

Economic Principle 3 – The consumer harnesses energy as opposed to purchasing energy.

A big difference.  The wind and the sunlight are in the public domain.  Your investment is only in accessing the natural resources freely available. We can call this ‘Open Source Energy’.

Economic Principle 4 – It is cleaner

Whether the CO2 levels and Methane levels actually are impactful enough to cause Global Warming, doesn’t really matter.  It is still polluting and causing harm to all of us.  If there are alternatives that are clean, we have an obligation to use them.  Can anyone tell me that if they produce an affordable electric car that can go 1,000 miles on a charge, has recyclable batteries, can be charged from the Sun, and can go 200 miles an hour that people would not think it is better.  Cleaner is better, non-polluting is better.  Is this really an argument? Are we seriously debating, what we mean by ‘clean’ ?

Clean is cheaper.

Economic Principle 5 – International relations

Our foreign policy is influenced by the monetary interests surrounding energy acquisition.  I don’t think people would be surprised by this statement.  China is more aggressively pursuing the acquisition of natural resources than the USA is, and in most cases is winning.  A huge amount of time and money in both the Business sector and the halls of Government are aimed to securing energy assets.  What if this was dramatically downsized in importance?  How would our foreign policy change?  Would we accommodate the human rights violations in Russia, the economic and trade violations in Venezuela, the wars in the Middle East?

Maybe the USA could actually stand for something, be principled, disciplined and committed to the right, as opposed to compromising, look the other way policies for energy economics.

So, as they debate in Washington and actually miss the point, we as Energy Citizens, should keep in mind that we have a way forward.  A cleaner, more economical way forward that makes sense for many reasons.

Support alternative energies.

http://www.findsolar.com/

http://www.getsolar.com/

Once you have selected a provider, the first step is usually a quick suitability review from the installer.  With an address, they can pull up google maps and get a view of your house, determine the orientation and roof structure.  From that initial review you get some immediate feedback about solar applicability on your house.

A site review is usually next, some firms will charge for this survey.  I imagine in their mind it is a way to determine the seriousness of customers.  The survey in my case, consisted of a 90 min review of the house.  The technician was looking at potential places for the installation, roofing and support structure, trees and shading issues, sun orientation, location of the inverters in the basement – a vented cabinet size area is needed for that and finally a review of my electric bills for the past year. This cost me $100.

About 10 days later, I received a detailed proposal.  The proposal contained pictures of the proposed installation, it’s orientation, any trees or shading that would need to be addressed, estimated energy production on my specific installation, savings and the most importantly the state and federal credits available.

A well structured ROI ( return on investment was included), and a cash flow over the life of the system were included.

The details of this installation;

Rooftop Solar Array:
Azimuth (Direction of array): 240º
Inclination: 22º (flush with roof)
Solar Access: 92%
Derate factor: 0.708
Size of solar installation: 4.94 kW DC. (26 solar panels model ES-190)

Price of Solar Installation (all costs) $35,243
Instant Savings (Commonwealth Solar Rebate) -$20,995

Upfront Cost to You $14,248

Recovered costs in year one: (Tax Credits)
State Income Tax Credit1 -$1000
Federal Income Tax Credit2 -$4274

Cost to you after rebates and tax credits $8,974

Estimated savings over 25 year life of solar panels: $85,600
Estimated increase in home value $22,500 – (based on a study by the Appraisal Institute)
Payback including increase in home value Immediate
Payback not including increase in home value 5 years
Usable life of solar panels 25+ years
Estimated annual energy production 4900 KWH
Carbon Dioxide emissions displaced per year 4510 lbs

I know that I would believe in the increase in home values in today’s economy, but the payback without that is still only 5 years.  I also don’t know if I believe the 25 year life of the panels.

I am meeting with the installer to review the proposal and get more details on what I would need to do ahead of time.  They are recommending I remove some trees, and also replace the roof prior to installing the units.

The panels are from Evergreen, which is a quality company.

Some initial questions;

Review the tax credit and or rebate process, income level qualifications, paperwork process, and timing, when does paperwork need to be submitted when would I see a check

Part guaranty and installation guaranty.

Licensing and insurance of installers

Maintenance needed

Snow and ice

What else should I be asking?

American Clean Power ?

Please stop talking about Clean Coal as some kind of solution for energy independence and/or global warming issues.  It can not do either of these.  Let’s use some common sense.  Coal to replace gasoline ?  Coal to replace home heating oil?  We could build more coal fired electricity generating plants, but that does not reduce our dependency on foreign oil for the other two needs.

The picture used on the left comes from the ACCCE, a new group funded by Coal and Energy companies.  They are in the process of spending millions of dollars on ad campaigns to tell you

1.) Coal generates %50 of our electricity 2.) Coal is cleaner and can be even cleaner with investment in technology.  They run ads on TV, they have a web site http://www.americaspower.org/ Thanks for Sharing!

Clean coal !  Please.  Is there such a thing as clean coal ? It does seem peculiar to me that both Presidential candidates highlight Clean Coal, some oil drilling and nuclear plants (McCain, not Obama), for our short term energy solutions.  Other technologies are always mentioned as an afterthought, oh, yeah, “some of that Solar and Wind stuff too”. One characteristic of the commonly mentioned technologies is they exist (not clean coal), and they are backed by large existing corporate and union interests. I am sure that is just a coincidence.

Clean Coal is NOT ready for prime time.  The more we try to make old solutions work, the more money, time and energy we take away from building RENEWABLE solutions.  What is renewable about Coal, even if it was Clean.  Nothing.  It is currently plentiful so let’s use it, is the logic.  Talk about clinging to beliefs.

The same reasons many conservatives knock newer renewable energy sources, such as ‘it is not ready’, ‘it will not scale’, ‘it is to expensive’, ‘it is unproven technology’…. All apply to clean coal.

The three technologies currently being researched and mostly in a pilot phase are;

Clean it, Filter it, and Capture it.

‘IT’ is nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and of course your everyday mercury and other metals.

Clean it, consists of a bath for the coal prior to using.  It removes much of the sulfur, and some of nitrous oxide, BUT, it leaves a nice slurry of waste water that goes somewhere…oh yeah, in the ground, in a river, in the environment.  It does nothing to reduce carbon dioxide.

Filter it, means catalytic converter type filtering on the smokestake, or new oxygen purification systems where they cook the pollutants in a bath of oxygen.  This second approach is more effective but expensive.

Capture it, means Carbon Sequestration.  Even Al Gore talked about this during his powerpoint theater.  Is it just me, or does capturing the carbon dioxide and pumping it into the ground or better yet into active oil reserves make any sense ?  What a stupid idea.

I want to believe technology can solve most problems, and maybe it can reduce emissions so that Burning Coal produces NO pollutents.  But until that comes closer to reality, just shut up, and focus on alternative energies that actually work NOW and are clean.

Reprinted from ENS http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2008/2008-07-31-091.asp

CHAMPAIGN, Illinois, July 31, 2008 (ENS) – A giant perennial grass that tolerates poor soils, uses less acreage and produces more biofuel than either corn or switchgrass – it sounds too good to be true. But researchers at the University of Illinois have demonstrated that the the grass, Miscanthus x giganteus, outperforms current biofuels sources by a long shot.

Corn, switchgrass and Miscanthus have been grown side by side in experimental plots in Urbana, Illinois since 2005 in the largest field trials of their kind in the United States.

“What we’ve found with Miscanthus is that the amount of biomass generated each year would allow us to produce about two and a half times the amount of ethanol we can produce per acre of corn,” said University of Illinois crop sciences professor Stephen Long, who led the study.

University of Illinois crop sciences professor Stephen Long stands in a Miscanthus field. (Photo by Don Hamerman courtesy U. of I.)

Long is the deputy director of the BP-sponsored Energy Biosciences Institute, a multi-year, multi-institutional initiative aimed at finding low carbon or carbon neutral alternatives to petroleum fuels.

Using corn or switchgrass to produce enough ethanol to offset 20 percent of gasoline use – a current White House goal – would take 25 percent of current U.S. cropland out of food production, the researchers report.

Getting the same amount of ethanol from Miscanthus would require only 9.3 percent of current agricultural acreage.

In field trials in Illinois, researchers grew Miscanthus and switchgrass in adjoining plots. Miscanthus proved to be at least twice as productive as switchgrass.

In trials across Illinois, switchgrass, a perennial grass which, like Miscanthus, requires fewer chemical and mechanical inputs than corn, produced only about as much ethanol feedstock per acre as corn, Long said.

“It wasn’t that we didn’t know how to grow switchgrass because the yields we obtained were actually equal to the best yields that had been obtained elsewhere with switchgrass,” he said. Corn yields in Illinois are also among the best in the nation.

“One reason why Miscanthus yields more biomass than corn is that it produces green leaves about six weeks earlier in the growing season,” Long said. Miscanthus also stays green until late October in Illinois, while corn leaves wither at the end of August, he said.

The growing season for switchgrass is comparable to that of Miscanthus, but that grass is not nearly as efficient at converting sunlight to biomass as Miscanthus, found Frank Dohleman, a graduate student and co-author of the study.

“One of the criticisms of using any biomass as a biofuel source is it has been claimed that plants are not very efficient – about 0.1 percent efficiency of conversion of sunlight into biomass,” Long said. “What we show here is, on average, Miscanthus is in fact about one percent efficient, so about one percent of sunlight ends up as biomass.”

“Keep in mind that when we consider our energy use, a few hours of solar energy falling on the Earth are equal to all the energy that people use over a whole year, so you don’t really need that high an efficiency to be able to capture that in plant material and make use of it as a biofuel source,” he said.

The field trials also showed that Miscanthus is tolerant of poor soil quality, Long said.

“Our highest productivity is actually occurring in the south, on the poorest soils in the state,” he said. “So that also shows us that this type of crop may be very good for marginal land or land that is not even being used for crop production.”

Because Miscanthus is a perennial grass, it also accumulates much more carbon in the soil than an annual crop such as corn or soybeans, Long said.

“In the context of global climate change, that’s important because it means that by producing a biofuel on that land you’re taking carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it into the soil,” he said.

Using Miscanthus in an agricultural setting has not been without its challenges, explained Long. Because it is a sterile hybrid, it must be propagated by planting underground stems, called rhizomes.

This was initially a laborious process, Long said, but mechanization allows the team to plant about 15 acres a day.

In Europe, where Miscanthus has been grown for more than a decade, patented farm equipment can plant about 50 acres of Miscanthus rhizomes a day, he said.

Once established, Miscanthus returns annually without need for replanting. If harvested in December or January, after nutrients have returned to the soil, it requires little fertilizer.

This sterile form of Miscanthus has not been found to be invasive in Europe or the United States, Long said.

There are at least a dozen companies building or operating plants in the United States to produce ethanol from the non-edible parts of plants, called lignocellulosic feedstocks, and companies are propagating Miscanthus rhizomes for commercial sale, Long said.

Although research has led to improvements in productivity and growers are poised to begin using it as a biofuels crop on a large scale, Miscanthus is in its infancy as an agricultural product, Long said.

“Keep in mind that this Miscanthus is completely unimproved, so if we were to do the sorts of things that we’ve managed to do with corn, where we’ve increased its yield threefold over the last 50 years, then it’s not unreal to think that we could use even less than 10 percent of the available agricultural land,” Long said. “And if you can actually grow it on non-cropland that would be even better.”

Researchers at the University of Illinois are exploring all aspects of biofuels production, from the development of feedstocks such as Miscanthus, to planting, harvest, storage, transport, conversion to biofuels and carbon sequestration.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.

First a little background;

The three steps to cement manufacturing are:
1. Virgin raw materials such as limestone and small quantities of sand and clay come from a quarry usually located near the cement manufacturing plant. The materials are blended and ground together.
2. The materials are heated in a kiln, which reaches temperatures of 1,870 degrees Centigrade or 3,400 degrees Fahrenheit. During this process, an intermediate product called clinker is formed.
3. Once cooled, the clinker is ground with a small amount of gypsum, forming a fine gray-colored powder called portland cement.

The carbon dioxide releases are in step 2, and step 3.  Step 2, requires substantial energy, usually from coal plants to heat the materials.  Step 3, contributes greenhouse gases directly when calcium carbonate is heated, producing lime and carbon dioxide.

The biggest producers continued to be China, India and the US.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r89xQxZsaN8

When the hell do I get to use the power of a BMW, never.  The traffic around Boston is ridicuculous.  I loved the comfort of the BMW, the ride, the spacious beautiful cabin, the legroom, but the $75 fillup not so much.  Many would think, if you have a BMW 750LI why are you worried about gas prices.  Well, as I said talk is cheap.  I need to walk the walk.  Beyond gas savings the emission savings are substantial. The reduction in toxic gases being emitted from my metal commuter sled have been reduced.  I feel warm and fuzzy all over…

The Camry Hybrid performs well.  A good solid car.  I did not have to learn a new way to drive with the hybrid.  I did not worry about the fact that it is quiet or shuts down at stop lights, I took it as just a new better way to drive.  It is just another car.

I did get a short term lease (24 mths), mostly because I think in two years I can have my cake and eat it to.  Meaning there will be a nice comfortable, powerful car that gets 75MPG.  I have no doubt  that will be on the market in two years.  I have been watching the development of the new hydrogen series from BMW http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/automotive_news/4215177.html very cool.  Awesome car, awesome technology.

Annual carbon emissions reduction based on 20k miles per year = 23k carbon pounds for BMW (1,176 gallons of fuel), 11.8k carbon pounds for Camry (600 gallons of fuel), so a 50% reduction in carbon emissions and fuel usage.  Not bad.

This is the future.  The technology is there, people will buy them and we can then tell many puffed up dictators and countries around the world to stick it.  Can I send the email please !  Dear Mr Putin, Dear Mr Chavez, Dear Mr Iranian bunch of Clerics…

Proposal: In the short term focus on Methane reduction. Mid to Longer term focus on CO2 reductions.

Why?

Atul Jain, a U. of I. atmospheric scientist says;

“Most of these methane abatement technologies can be quickly implemented with existing technologies,”

“Because of its short atmospheric response time of about 12 years, methane concentrations will respond quickly to emission reductions, producing an immediate and significant impact on climate change”

There are five major sources of man-made methane in the United States — landfills, coal mining, bovine emissions, manure systems and the production and transmission of natural gas. A significant amount of these emissions can be reduced through the use of currently available, economically justified and easily verified options. Such options include capturing the methane and recovering the cost of the emission-reduction technology by selling the gas or using it to displace other energy inputs.

My favorite – Bovine ‘emissions’ – “Agriculture is responsible for producing 37 percent of global methane emissions, a gas that is 23 times more potent than CO2 when it comes to global warming. And much of this gas comes from the burps of ruminating animals such as cows and sheep. If a cow’s manners could be improved a bit, then the world might just stop warming quite so fast. And it could be as simple as getting them to graze on different types of plants. Scientists at the University of Aberystwyth are now working on using plant-breeding methods to develop new diets for livestock.

“Normally a cow’s stomach is pretty inefficient — 80 percent of food ingested comes out as waste or methane. The average cow produces between 300 and 500 liters of methane a day, most of it through belching. “There is a common misperception about how methane gets into the atmosphere,” Michael Abberton, a scientist at the Aberystwsth’s Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, said Monday. “It is actually through belching rather than the other end.”

Abberton told a briefing on farming and climate change at London’s Science Media Center that the key could be developing new varieties of legumes and grass, as well as planting more clover and birdsfoot trefoil, a common wildflower. These could change the way the bacteria in the cow’s gut breaks down food. According to the scientist, developing new varieties of plants which are easier to digest could allow farmers to avoid reducing stock while still cutting methane emissions.

Gee, easier to grow, easier to digest = easier to breathe.