Reverse the slowdown in Renewable Energy....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 4-29-2009
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At about the time of the Presidential election or slightly before that, it looked like we were on our way to a very rapid build up of renewable energy companies and construction of large scale solar electrical generation operations. Clearly doing just that is a critical path part of the solution to solve our problems just listed.
Since the need was so great, that was very good news indeed. Solar companies had contracts with utilities to build these solar “farms.” But suddenly, the banks who would have financed these projects in normal times, would not do so or could not do so due to their own fear or liquidity problems.
Some solar companies sold assets and laid off over 90 % of their employees; some changed to a business model that no longer included building large scale solar electrical generation operations; & others simply disappeared.
Now that we need these companies to exist and be hiring new people to work 3 shifts to build all the renewable energy we now know we need – AND our economy needs MORE jobs instead of less, this is a disaster times TEN !!
So, let’s ensure renewable energy projects and companies will be financed 100 % of the time instead of almost never. And let’s do it as close to immediately as we can manage!
As I’ve posted, feed-in tariffs are one solution. They make the repayment of the debt financing to build renewable energy generation of electricity projects predictable and very safe. One clean tech CEO said he knew of a boom and bust problem with Feed-in Tariffs in two locations. But the boom we need is so large and we need it so soon, I think that may be a problem to solve later or gradually as we get the needed feedback.
But for right now, we have hardly any Feed-in Tariffs in place in the United States. And, even if we begin using them it will take years to get done.
Here is a second and potentially faster way to regain or surpass the financing for renewable energy we once had.:
Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, is reported to have asked his board members to submit ideas for ways the Federal Reserve can use its powers to add jobs right away and be listening for usable answers.
There almost certainly is a way that the Federal Reserve can back banks that make renewable energy loans and do so in a way that also gives those banks an incentive to do so.
If several of us suggest that to him and to the Governor in our own Federal Reserve district, maybe it might happen.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Fossil fuels still in use....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 4-22-2009
Happy Earth Day!
There are a number of things that can begin to minimize the use of fossil fuels we still use & the damage their use causes.
Since we do not yet have 100 % coverage from renewable sources (or renewables plus nuclear ); and we do still have this huge installed infrastructure that is almost entirely based on fossil fuels, we need to minimize the harm from those fossil fuels we continue to use.
We can capture CO2 that is from large stationary plants that burn fossil fuels such as existing coal burning plants and store it.
We can make that much more practical by feeding the CO2 from such plants to algae that make biofuels and release oxygen so that we get multiple uses from the same carbon but less net increase in CO2. That also results in less CO2 to store.
We can make some coal into hydrocarbons such as gasoline which helps because they can replace petroleum which can help countries like the US, the UK, Germany, China, & India that have coal reduce their dependence on oil from the Middle East if nothing else.
And, we can combine that with locating some biofuel production from algae that use the CO2 from the coal that is still burned near the plants that make coal into liquid fuels. The fuels created from coal can then be added to the fuel from the algae and increase the production of fuels that can be used instead of petroleum. That way we can cut our petroleum use more while giving the coal mining industry more of a productive role and a more gradual reduction to give the companies and people more time to do something else as coal use declines.
We can begin to charge the cost of damage done by coal mining to the coal that is sold or begin to simply ban these short term less expensive, long term much more expensive methods of mining it.
We can simply stop allowing most new coal burning plants from being built or only allow those that reprocess or sequester 100 percent of the C02 generated as we’ve described here.
And, we can enact regulations that gradually phase out the fossil fuels or biofuels that are less helpful in fighting excess CO2 by rating the different ones and including their total real costs, not just their initial cost of production.
The state of California is in the process of doing just that according to a story published today, Weds, 4-22-2009 by the San Francisco Chronicle. It was on page A – 1 in the newspaper and also online at www.sfgate.com . (I found it online through Yahoo news.)
David R. Baker, their Chronicle Staff Writer who authors most of their energy related news, wrote the story.
The California Air Resources Board is expected to approve the “Low Carbon Fuel Standard” regulation tomorrow.
Beginning in 2011, this standard would steadily lower the allowable "carbon intensity" of fuels, or the amount of greenhouse gases released per unit of energy produced. Then by 2020, the overall carbon intensity of fuels by in California will be reduced by 10 percent.
To be sure, this is a tiny step. But we’re are clearly in a situation where we quite literally need every effective and doable step we can take. Even better, this regulation is “being studied by officials from other states, the federal government, and … the European Union.”
Best of all, this plan rates the different fuels in a way that DOES includes their real costs in CO2 production, not just by their upfront dollar cost.
But the most potentially valuable aspect is that this has touched off a fierce lobbying battle by the ethanol producers, and oil companies which each dislike having the true costs of their product being disclosed and penalized.
Given what’s at stake here and the apparent accuracy of the data used by the California Air Resources Board, these lobbying efforts are a grave mistake. This makes as much sense as throwing money at a tidal wave and imagining it will not run over them.
These companies would make a far better business decision to invest those funds into more productive efforts to lower the real costs of their products or move their people, resources, and technologies into a growing part of the economy as fast as possible to avoid ruin.
Corn ethanol producers dislike having the deforestation effects of forested land being switched to corn production be included as a real cost. The recent events seem to show that it is a real cost. So that’s money down the drain. Why not invest the money into facilities that combine corn ethanol from existing fields with ethanol from algae that has less environmental costs and switching to renewable energy sources to use for distillation instead of the coal generated power they use now to lower their real costs?
The Canadian government, meanwhile, fears it will hurt sales of oil from their tar sands as do the companies involved. But though the politics of oil will likely keep their industry viable for a while, the real costs involved in extracting oil from oil shale using current technology are so severe that they had better get used to it or invent a better extraction technology. For example, rather than massive mining operations and energy thirsty extraction methods, it might work to drill holes into the deposits and inject a catalyst and algae & thus use the algae to create biofuels from the oil shale.
The Western States Petroleum Association lobbying group for the oil industry is unhappy with the regulation since some kinds of ethanol and biofuels rate more highly than their petroleum does. They point out that we depend enough on their petroleum now that we might mess up the economy if we disrupt our use of it too much and too fast.
They are actually correct. But this is more a smoke screen for their real problem than a valid reason to not enact this regulation. We DO have a pressing need to move away from using their fuel and to begin to charge its total real costs into decisions about how much of it to use. In addition, the regulation IS already taking this point into account. It’s designed to do some good and get the process started while only changing the status quo by 10 % over a 9 year time period. That sounds safe to me and to be a reasonably soft landing for the oil companies. Their point would only be valid if the regulations called for something like 20% in 5 years. Something like that might cause the problem the oil companies are raising. The regulations the Chronicle reports are being considered would not.
Interestingly, one of the good guys, Bob Walsh, CEO of Aurora Biofuels, would prefer a delay that would rate the biofuels companies like his will produce from algae. (Such fuels ARE a valuable advance and will have lower real costs.) But, this ignores the fact that we are quite literally in a race for our collective lives and a race to prevent economic collapse from the costs of global warming or from running out of energy we can use safely. Even worse, we are getting a real start at least 35 years too late.
We need to follow the strategy of General George Patton who was perhaps the most effective military commander in history. He realized and used the fact that to get rapid results when time pressure is extreme, it is critically important to find something clearly useful even if not perfect and then to put it into action at the earliest possible moment and to execute it in a way likely to do the most good with the greatest focus and effort you can manage.
I think this Low Carbon Fuel Standard regulation meets that test and hope that it is enacted.
Of course if fuels now rated as superior begin to have increased real costs and as better fuels with lower costs, such as algae derived biofuels, begin to be rated, that new data can be used by this regulation or its successor in 2020.
So, I encourage Aurora Biofuels and Solazyme and other biofuel companies that use algae to generate the data to give to the California Air Resources Board rather than asking them to wait until the data is available.
(The regulation rates fuels by the number of grams of carbon dioxide released for every megajoule of energy produced. The regulation includes the indirect land-use effects of the biofuels they rate, which is a real and accurate cost in my view. As a result, corn ethanol from the Midwest rates worse than gasoline.)
In the table from the Chronicle article below, the first number is the cost without adding land-use effects while the second number the regulation will use includes it.
California gasoline 95.85 95.85 (with 10% ethanol)
Midwest ethanol 75.10 105.10 (with some of the plant's power coming from coal)
California ethanol 50.70 80.70 (with the plant's power coming from natural gas)
Brazilian ethanol 27.40 73.40 (made from sugarcane and shipped here)
Landfill bio-methane 11.26 11.26 (derived from landfills in California)
This overall set of things to begin to use fossil fuels more safely and less often is not perfect. But the more of such things we try, the sooner we begin, and the faster we adopt the ones that work best, the better off we will be.
Today’s post: Wednesday, 4-22-2009
Happy Earth Day!
There are a number of things that can begin to minimize the use of fossil fuels we still use & the damage their use causes.
Since we do not yet have 100 % coverage from renewable sources (or renewables plus nuclear ); and we do still have this huge installed infrastructure that is almost entirely based on fossil fuels, we need to minimize the harm from those fossil fuels we continue to use.
We can capture CO2 that is from large stationary plants that burn fossil fuels such as existing coal burning plants and store it.
We can make that much more practical by feeding the CO2 from such plants to algae that make biofuels and release oxygen so that we get multiple uses from the same carbon but less net increase in CO2. That also results in less CO2 to store.
We can make some coal into hydrocarbons such as gasoline which helps because they can replace petroleum which can help countries like the US, the UK, Germany, China, & India that have coal reduce their dependence on oil from the Middle East if nothing else.
And, we can combine that with locating some biofuel production from algae that use the CO2 from the coal that is still burned near the plants that make coal into liquid fuels. The fuels created from coal can then be added to the fuel from the algae and increase the production of fuels that can be used instead of petroleum. That way we can cut our petroleum use more while giving the coal mining industry more of a productive role and a more gradual reduction to give the companies and people more time to do something else as coal use declines.
We can begin to charge the cost of damage done by coal mining to the coal that is sold or begin to simply ban these short term less expensive, long term much more expensive methods of mining it.
We can simply stop allowing most new coal burning plants from being built or only allow those that reprocess or sequester 100 percent of the C02 generated as we’ve described here.
And, we can enact regulations that gradually phase out the fossil fuels or biofuels that are less helpful in fighting excess CO2 by rating the different ones and including their total real costs, not just their initial cost of production.
The state of California is in the process of doing just that according to a story published today, Weds, 4-22-2009 by the San Francisco Chronicle. It was on page A – 1 in the newspaper and also online at www.sfgate.com . (I found it online through Yahoo news.)
David R. Baker, their Chronicle Staff Writer who authors most of their energy related news, wrote the story.
The California Air Resources Board is expected to approve the “Low Carbon Fuel Standard” regulation tomorrow.
Beginning in 2011, this standard would steadily lower the allowable "carbon intensity" of fuels, or the amount of greenhouse gases released per unit of energy produced. Then by 2020, the overall carbon intensity of fuels by in California will be reduced by 10 percent.
To be sure, this is a tiny step. But we’re are clearly in a situation where we quite literally need every effective and doable step we can take. Even better, this regulation is “being studied by officials from other states, the federal government, and … the European Union.”
Best of all, this plan rates the different fuels in a way that DOES includes their real costs in CO2 production, not just by their upfront dollar cost.
But the most potentially valuable aspect is that this has touched off a fierce lobbying battle by the ethanol producers, and oil companies which each dislike having the true costs of their product being disclosed and penalized.
Given what’s at stake here and the apparent accuracy of the data used by the California Air Resources Board, these lobbying efforts are a grave mistake. This makes as much sense as throwing money at a tidal wave and imagining it will not run over them.
These companies would make a far better business decision to invest those funds into more productive efforts to lower the real costs of their products or move their people, resources, and technologies into a growing part of the economy as fast as possible to avoid ruin.
Corn ethanol producers dislike having the deforestation effects of forested land being switched to corn production be included as a real cost. The recent events seem to show that it is a real cost. So that’s money down the drain. Why not invest the money into facilities that combine corn ethanol from existing fields with ethanol from algae that has less environmental costs and switching to renewable energy sources to use for distillation instead of the coal generated power they use now to lower their real costs?
The Canadian government, meanwhile, fears it will hurt sales of oil from their tar sands as do the companies involved. But though the politics of oil will likely keep their industry viable for a while, the real costs involved in extracting oil from oil shale using current technology are so severe that they had better get used to it or invent a better extraction technology. For example, rather than massive mining operations and energy thirsty extraction methods, it might work to drill holes into the deposits and inject a catalyst and algae & thus use the algae to create biofuels from the oil shale.
The Western States Petroleum Association lobbying group for the oil industry is unhappy with the regulation since some kinds of ethanol and biofuels rate more highly than their petroleum does. They point out that we depend enough on their petroleum now that we might mess up the economy if we disrupt our use of it too much and too fast.
They are actually correct. But this is more a smoke screen for their real problem than a valid reason to not enact this regulation. We DO have a pressing need to move away from using their fuel and to begin to charge its total real costs into decisions about how much of it to use. In addition, the regulation IS already taking this point into account. It’s designed to do some good and get the process started while only changing the status quo by 10 % over a 9 year time period. That sounds safe to me and to be a reasonably soft landing for the oil companies. Their point would only be valid if the regulations called for something like 20% in 5 years. Something like that might cause the problem the oil companies are raising. The regulations the Chronicle reports are being considered would not.
Interestingly, one of the good guys, Bob Walsh, CEO of Aurora Biofuels, would prefer a delay that would rate the biofuels companies like his will produce from algae. (Such fuels ARE a valuable advance and will have lower real costs.) But, this ignores the fact that we are quite literally in a race for our collective lives and a race to prevent economic collapse from the costs of global warming or from running out of energy we can use safely. Even worse, we are getting a real start at least 35 years too late.
We need to follow the strategy of General George Patton who was perhaps the most effective military commander in history. He realized and used the fact that to get rapid results when time pressure is extreme, it is critically important to find something clearly useful even if not perfect and then to put it into action at the earliest possible moment and to execute it in a way likely to do the most good with the greatest focus and effort you can manage.
I think this Low Carbon Fuel Standard regulation meets that test and hope that it is enacted.
Of course if fuels now rated as superior begin to have increased real costs and as better fuels with lower costs, such as algae derived biofuels, begin to be rated, that new data can be used by this regulation or its successor in 2020.
So, I encourage Aurora Biofuels and Solazyme and other biofuel companies that use algae to generate the data to give to the California Air Resources Board rather than asking them to wait until the data is available.
(The regulation rates fuels by the number of grams of carbon dioxide released for every megajoule of energy produced. The regulation includes the indirect land-use effects of the biofuels they rate, which is a real and accurate cost in my view. As a result, corn ethanol from the Midwest rates worse than gasoline.)
In the table from the Chronicle article below, the first number is the cost without adding land-use effects while the second number the regulation will use includes it.
California gasoline 95.85 95.85 (with 10% ethanol)
Midwest ethanol 75.10 105.10 (with some of the plant's power coming from coal)
California ethanol 50.70 80.70 (with the plant's power coming from natural gas)
Brazilian ethanol 27.40 73.40 (made from sugarcane and shipped here)
Landfill bio-methane 11.26 11.26 (derived from landfills in California)
This overall set of things to begin to use fossil fuels more safely and less often is not perfect. But the more of such things we try, the sooner we begin, and the faster we adopt the ones that work best, the better off we will be.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Renewable energy ideas for Congress....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 4-15-2009
Here are my ideas on influencing key legislators to back increases in renewable energy that work.
That's the critical path item.
I include two ideas on how to do that below. One might be really powerful and the other has already been proven to work! -- but is not now in place in 99 % of this country. (Changing that IS doable.)
Some legislators are not in favor of cap & trade. Some fear its impact on a weak economy. (They have a legitimate point.) But those same legislators know that as many as 86 % of their constituents & voters believe that more renewable energy will create jobs. And those legislators also want more jobs. Plus even the most conservative want increased renewable energy here for energy independence from imported oil & national security.
I see two doable political compromises.
1. First pass a bill that massively increases our installation of renewable energy. Do it separately if necessary.
(If even compromise cap & trade proposals fail, the same people who voted them down might well support that bill. And once passed & we have a lot more renewable energy, future cap & trade proposals will do better.)
Both the compromises depend on that being done and being effective.
2. Pass cap & trade now; but make it not go into effect until we get 10 % of our energy from renewable energy other than hydropower.
Or --3. Pass cap & trade now that goes into effect right away but takes effect at double the percentage of renewable energy we generate. That way it's very mild now; but 50 % renewable energy would make it take 100 % effect. (That would be safe for the economy and produce disruptive changes within 15 or 20 years but at a pace that both does the job but avoids sudden shocks to the economy.)
Two ways to get more renewable energy installed.
Today, the incentives to install it are weak; and the credit crunch has removed so much financing it's harmed renewable energy companies that were doing great until the crunch shut off their debt financing.
1. First, the chairman of the Federal Reserve is willing to try new ideas to use his powers to finance new jobs. Why not have a bill passed that both requests he find a way to do that for banks that back renewable energy & gives him the authority to do so? (Even if congress won't do that, your group could request this directly from him. Based on what I read recently, he might well do it!)
2. Second, Germany has already proved that massive amounts of renewable energy will be built and readily financeable with no new taxes needed if a program exactly like theirs is enacted to provide feed-in tariffs that guarantee the utilities will buy the power generated at a price that makes it worth doing.
(These contracts make lending on renewable energy as safe as investing in T bills; & it pays better.)
If every state enacted one like Germany's, in 20 years more than 50 % of our energy will be from renewable sources. (They actually got 16 % in 15 years with far less renewable energy potential than we have here. This policy is proven to work.)
In addition in those 20 years we will create up to 6,000,000 jobs.
So ask congress to pass a law that describes in detail the content of the German feed-in tariff & request each state enact that policy and provide those that do some kind of incentive for doing so. (That avoids the states rights folks who might vote against a national requirement to use it that was mandatory.)
PS: A more complete write up on Feed-in tariffs and a story describing the boom in renewable energy when they were enacted in Gainesville Florida here in the US is in my blogpost:
"How renewable energy can reverse the recession....
Wednesday, 3-18-2009" at http://www.renewableenergyarrives.blogspot.com/ .
Today’s post: Wednesday, 4-15-2009
Here are my ideas on influencing key legislators to back increases in renewable energy that work.
That's the critical path item.
I include two ideas on how to do that below. One might be really powerful and the other has already been proven to work! -- but is not now in place in 99 % of this country. (Changing that IS doable.)
Some legislators are not in favor of cap & trade. Some fear its impact on a weak economy. (They have a legitimate point.) But those same legislators know that as many as 86 % of their constituents & voters believe that more renewable energy will create jobs. And those legislators also want more jobs. Plus even the most conservative want increased renewable energy here for energy independence from imported oil & national security.
I see two doable political compromises.
1. First pass a bill that massively increases our installation of renewable energy. Do it separately if necessary.
(If even compromise cap & trade proposals fail, the same people who voted them down might well support that bill. And once passed & we have a lot more renewable energy, future cap & trade proposals will do better.)
Both the compromises depend on that being done and being effective.
2. Pass cap & trade now; but make it not go into effect until we get 10 % of our energy from renewable energy other than hydropower.
Or --3. Pass cap & trade now that goes into effect right away but takes effect at double the percentage of renewable energy we generate. That way it's very mild now; but 50 % renewable energy would make it take 100 % effect. (That would be safe for the economy and produce disruptive changes within 15 or 20 years but at a pace that both does the job but avoids sudden shocks to the economy.)
Two ways to get more renewable energy installed.
Today, the incentives to install it are weak; and the credit crunch has removed so much financing it's harmed renewable energy companies that were doing great until the crunch shut off their debt financing.
1. First, the chairman of the Federal Reserve is willing to try new ideas to use his powers to finance new jobs. Why not have a bill passed that both requests he find a way to do that for banks that back renewable energy & gives him the authority to do so? (Even if congress won't do that, your group could request this directly from him. Based on what I read recently, he might well do it!)
2. Second, Germany has already proved that massive amounts of renewable energy will be built and readily financeable with no new taxes needed if a program exactly like theirs is enacted to provide feed-in tariffs that guarantee the utilities will buy the power generated at a price that makes it worth doing.
(These contracts make lending on renewable energy as safe as investing in T bills; & it pays better.)
If every state enacted one like Germany's, in 20 years more than 50 % of our energy will be from renewable sources. (They actually got 16 % in 15 years with far less renewable energy potential than we have here. This policy is proven to work.)
In addition in those 20 years we will create up to 6,000,000 jobs.
So ask congress to pass a law that describes in detail the content of the German feed-in tariff & request each state enact that policy and provide those that do some kind of incentive for doing so. (That avoids the states rights folks who might vote against a national requirement to use it that was mandatory.)
PS: A more complete write up on Feed-in tariffs and a story describing the boom in renewable energy when they were enacted in Gainesville Florida here in the US is in my blogpost:
"How renewable energy can reverse the recession....
Wednesday, 3-18-2009" at http://www.renewableenergyarrives.blogspot.com/ .
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Turning down global warming directly....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 4-8-2009
We have started far too late to reverse the increase of the level of CO2 in the earth’s air and the global warming that is clearly going on almost certainly because of this increase.
And, though we are making progress & there is reasonable hope for more soon, our progress is about 5% of what’s required to reverse the increase -- if that much.
It was in today’s news from AP that John Holdren, the president's new science adviser, said that the dangerous effects of global warming will be so damaging that the Obama administration is discussing radical ways to cool the Earth's air.
Two methods were in the news story.:
1. Purposely causing a dust cloud similar to the ones created by huge volcanoes that would cool the earth by preventing some of the thermal heating from the sun.
He did note that the negative side effects of using this would be quite severe.
2. Using a device that has been invented and apparently at least partly developed called “artificial trees” that effectively removes carbon dioxide from of the air and stores it was the second method listed. He also said that there may be a way to make this more affordable to do than was at first thought.
First the bad news.:
The first alternative simply has too many harsh side effects to be considering as more than an out of the box creative effort that we respond to by saying, let’s keep trying to generate some more, we might find one that we can do or upgrade to one we can.
Global warming will already reduce our food supply by floods and droughts in places we now grow food. Should we make this problem worse by shading the plants we grow as food or as animal feed? This alone makes this idea completely unusable. It would make a problem this potential solution is supposed to help worse instead!
Second, to avoid economic collapse when fossil fuels run out; &/or a repeat of price increases and shortages of energy from burning fossil fuels for energy for over 90 percent of our use of it; AND to begin to turn off CO2 induced global warming at its source and stop making that problem even worse, it is of critical path importance that we begin to switch to renewables and some nuclear and some biofuels and begin to stop using fossil fuels as close to 100 % as we can get.
Solar power, including both photovoltaics and solar thermal, has the potential to do close to 100 % of the job and so far, the sun is a far safer source than nuclear power. And, if we fully fund making nuclear terrorist proof and its waste safely stored, it costs at least 10 times as much. So, if we purposely turn off a significant enough percentage of solar energy the earth gets to cool our planet, we quite literally will be shooting ourselves in the foot.
Last but potentially the most important, we already are massively impacting the ecology of our planet in enough ways already that it may make the living system we depend on to live dangerously unstable if we do this sun shading and make it a permanent state of affairs also.
In short, purposely shading the earth to cool it has what the computer people call several “fatal errors.”
Desperation has nothing to do with it, planetary sun shading will cause more problems than it would solve and must not be used.
However, the second method sounds promising in the extreme. That’s part of the good news.
If every coal fired plant we keep using was able to send its exhaust to algae that use the CO2 to make biofuels and any left over went to these CO2 removing artificial trees, that would enable us to keep using the plants longer and still stop releasing CO2.
And, since the costs of doing this would be added to the cost of the energy produced at these plants, that would make renewable energy less expensive sooner.
Second, if every urban area planted trees and made an effort to preserve those it already has AND built thousands of these artificial trees and hundreds of algae growing for biofuel and artificial tree using stations, far more C02 would be removed from our air as we generate it.
If this technology is developed and the cost of doing this is added to the price of fossil fuels still in use, it will also make renewable energy less expensive sooner.
So, that one is potentially a game winner and should be very aggressively pursued.
The other part of the good news is that we already a have proven way to massively increase our supplies of renewable energy that we are not using yet.
If we simply begin using it everywhere, we will begin to make enough progress on switching to renewable energy it will make the problem of excess CO2 more manageable and less extreme. It even will eventually turn off excess CO2 production. The sooner it’s used everywhere the safer we will be & the more solvable global warming will become.
Germany has already perfected this method & proved it works well to create new sources of renewable energy and to create jobs. With relatively little solar light and heat coming in due to their distance from the equator, in about 15 years, Germany has built about half the world’s solar installations, begun to get 16 % of its energy from renewable sources, and created 300,000 jobs.
Do you think we cannot use it because it would be hard to finance in today’s economy? You may be surprised to know you would be wrong. One of the reasons it works so well is that it makes financing renewable energy projects as safe or safer than investing in T-bills; but it pays a higher return.
It’s called the feed-in tariff, or FIT by acronym.
If used in every state in the United States, it has the potential to produce close to 100 % of the energy we are now using from renewable sources alone while creating 6,000,000 jobs. That’s enough jobs to end the recession all by itself.
So if your state’s Governor and state legislators don’t already know this kind of Feed-in tariff exists or why it’s important, let them know ASAP.
The main reason it’s not being used is they don’t know yet. My guess is that less than 1% now do.
Given what’s at stake, that’s not acceptable. So, let’s change it.
Today’s post: Wednesday, 4-8-2009
We have started far too late to reverse the increase of the level of CO2 in the earth’s air and the global warming that is clearly going on almost certainly because of this increase.
And, though we are making progress & there is reasonable hope for more soon, our progress is about 5% of what’s required to reverse the increase -- if that much.
It was in today’s news from AP that John Holdren, the president's new science adviser, said that the dangerous effects of global warming will be so damaging that the Obama administration is discussing radical ways to cool the Earth's air.
Two methods were in the news story.:
1. Purposely causing a dust cloud similar to the ones created by huge volcanoes that would cool the earth by preventing some of the thermal heating from the sun.
He did note that the negative side effects of using this would be quite severe.
2. Using a device that has been invented and apparently at least partly developed called “artificial trees” that effectively removes carbon dioxide from of the air and stores it was the second method listed. He also said that there may be a way to make this more affordable to do than was at first thought.
First the bad news.:
The first alternative simply has too many harsh side effects to be considering as more than an out of the box creative effort that we respond to by saying, let’s keep trying to generate some more, we might find one that we can do or upgrade to one we can.
Global warming will already reduce our food supply by floods and droughts in places we now grow food. Should we make this problem worse by shading the plants we grow as food or as animal feed? This alone makes this idea completely unusable. It would make a problem this potential solution is supposed to help worse instead!
Second, to avoid economic collapse when fossil fuels run out; &/or a repeat of price increases and shortages of energy from burning fossil fuels for energy for over 90 percent of our use of it; AND to begin to turn off CO2 induced global warming at its source and stop making that problem even worse, it is of critical path importance that we begin to switch to renewables and some nuclear and some biofuels and begin to stop using fossil fuels as close to 100 % as we can get.
Solar power, including both photovoltaics and solar thermal, has the potential to do close to 100 % of the job and so far, the sun is a far safer source than nuclear power. And, if we fully fund making nuclear terrorist proof and its waste safely stored, it costs at least 10 times as much. So, if we purposely turn off a significant enough percentage of solar energy the earth gets to cool our planet, we quite literally will be shooting ourselves in the foot.
Last but potentially the most important, we already are massively impacting the ecology of our planet in enough ways already that it may make the living system we depend on to live dangerously unstable if we do this sun shading and make it a permanent state of affairs also.
In short, purposely shading the earth to cool it has what the computer people call several “fatal errors.”
Desperation has nothing to do with it, planetary sun shading will cause more problems than it would solve and must not be used.
However, the second method sounds promising in the extreme. That’s part of the good news.
If every coal fired plant we keep using was able to send its exhaust to algae that use the CO2 to make biofuels and any left over went to these CO2 removing artificial trees, that would enable us to keep using the plants longer and still stop releasing CO2.
And, since the costs of doing this would be added to the cost of the energy produced at these plants, that would make renewable energy less expensive sooner.
Second, if every urban area planted trees and made an effort to preserve those it already has AND built thousands of these artificial trees and hundreds of algae growing for biofuel and artificial tree using stations, far more C02 would be removed from our air as we generate it.
If this technology is developed and the cost of doing this is added to the price of fossil fuels still in use, it will also make renewable energy less expensive sooner.
So, that one is potentially a game winner and should be very aggressively pursued.
The other part of the good news is that we already a have proven way to massively increase our supplies of renewable energy that we are not using yet.
If we simply begin using it everywhere, we will begin to make enough progress on switching to renewable energy it will make the problem of excess CO2 more manageable and less extreme. It even will eventually turn off excess CO2 production. The sooner it’s used everywhere the safer we will be & the more solvable global warming will become.
Germany has already perfected this method & proved it works well to create new sources of renewable energy and to create jobs. With relatively little solar light and heat coming in due to their distance from the equator, in about 15 years, Germany has built about half the world’s solar installations, begun to get 16 % of its energy from renewable sources, and created 300,000 jobs.
Do you think we cannot use it because it would be hard to finance in today’s economy? You may be surprised to know you would be wrong. One of the reasons it works so well is that it makes financing renewable energy projects as safe or safer than investing in T-bills; but it pays a higher return.
It’s called the feed-in tariff, or FIT by acronym.
If used in every state in the United States, it has the potential to produce close to 100 % of the energy we are now using from renewable sources alone while creating 6,000,000 jobs. That’s enough jobs to end the recession all by itself.
So if your state’s Governor and state legislators don’t already know this kind of Feed-in tariff exists or why it’s important, let them know ASAP.
The main reason it’s not being used is they don’t know yet. My guess is that less than 1% now do.
Given what’s at stake, that’s not acceptable. So, let’s change it.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Dramatic increases in solar for California....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 4-1-2009
Two weeks ago, we posted “How renewable energy can reverse the recession....” on Wednesday, 3-18-2009.
In that post we described how a policy called Feed-in tariffs has incredibly positive effects that create new jobs, produce massive amounts of new renewable energy installations, & actually reduce the cost of the renewable energy by lowering the cost to finance it.
We described how Germany, with solar potential similar to British Columbia, has used it to produce half the world’s installed solar in just 15 years. (Since they also created 300,000 jobs and the United States has so much more solar potential, using the Feed-in Tariff everywhere here has the potential to create up to 6 million jobs here.)
We also note that the financing is so safe for the banks that the Feed-in tariff makes renewable energy financeable even in today’s economic conditions.
In addition, we quote a news story that Gainesville, Florida has begun to use the Feed-in tariff policy and which describes the real economic boom that this has produced there.
The reaction of many people when they really hear all about the Feed-in tariff is, “If it has been so well proven to do all these things, WHY on earth aren’t we already using it?”
There are several reasons. One is the political leaders and their key supporters and voters from their districts have to find out about it. They haven’t yet done so or have not done so in nearly enough numbers.
Then actual legislation has to be passed with the technical details included and which gets the important principles right that have made the Feed-in tariff work in place enough to have the legislation work well once enacted.
Here’s the good news. This looks to be about to happen in California. Such a detailed plan has been created and is called the REESA FIT. (FIT is an acronym for FeedInTariff.)
And, bills based on it will be introduced soon in both houses of the California legislature.
This is incredibly important news because if it is passed and signed into law, the following things all become likely.
California will build enough renewable energy capacity to meet its percentage of renewable energy goals on time.
It will create over 300,000 jobs in California.
And, it will revivify the renewable energy companies in California that have been so slammed lately by lack of normal financing. (Financing FIT projects is about as safe as investing in T Bills; and it pays better.)
But of even greater importance, every state in the United States that has somehow missed what the Feed-in tariff has done for Germany will see that it produces the benefits it provides and does so in this country. As a result, many if not most of them will also adopt it.
So, if you know any leader or politician in California, please pass on this post & our www.RenewableEnergyArrives.blogspot.com URL to them.
And, if you can only pass it on to ONE person, please do that. You never know, that one person may make a key difference it getting the FIT bill enacted in California.
Today’s post: Wednesday, 4-1-2009
Two weeks ago, we posted “How renewable energy can reverse the recession....” on Wednesday, 3-18-2009.
In that post we described how a policy called Feed-in tariffs has incredibly positive effects that create new jobs, produce massive amounts of new renewable energy installations, & actually reduce the cost of the renewable energy by lowering the cost to finance it.
We described how Germany, with solar potential similar to British Columbia, has used it to produce half the world’s installed solar in just 15 years. (Since they also created 300,000 jobs and the United States has so much more solar potential, using the Feed-in Tariff everywhere here has the potential to create up to 6 million jobs here.)
We also note that the financing is so safe for the banks that the Feed-in tariff makes renewable energy financeable even in today’s economic conditions.
In addition, we quote a news story that Gainesville, Florida has begun to use the Feed-in tariff policy and which describes the real economic boom that this has produced there.
The reaction of many people when they really hear all about the Feed-in tariff is, “If it has been so well proven to do all these things, WHY on earth aren’t we already using it?”
There are several reasons. One is the political leaders and their key supporters and voters from their districts have to find out about it. They haven’t yet done so or have not done so in nearly enough numbers.
Then actual legislation has to be passed with the technical details included and which gets the important principles right that have made the Feed-in tariff work in place enough to have the legislation work well once enacted.
Here’s the good news. This looks to be about to happen in California. Such a detailed plan has been created and is called the REESA FIT. (FIT is an acronym for FeedInTariff.)
And, bills based on it will be introduced soon in both houses of the California legislature.
This is incredibly important news because if it is passed and signed into law, the following things all become likely.
California will build enough renewable energy capacity to meet its percentage of renewable energy goals on time.
It will create over 300,000 jobs in California.
And, it will revivify the renewable energy companies in California that have been so slammed lately by lack of normal financing. (Financing FIT projects is about as safe as investing in T Bills; and it pays better.)
But of even greater importance, every state in the United States that has somehow missed what the Feed-in tariff has done for Germany will see that it produces the benefits it provides and does so in this country. As a result, many if not most of them will also adopt it.
So, if you know any leader or politician in California, please pass on this post & our www.RenewableEnergyArrives.blogspot.com URL to them.
And, if you can only pass it on to ONE person, please do that. You never know, that one person may make a key difference it getting the FIT bill enacted in California.
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