The Climate Post Offers a Rundown of the Week in Climate and Energy News
In 1865 William Stanley Jevons pointed out something paradoxical: historically, the better we get at efficiently using a resource, the more of that resource we use. Known as the "Jevons paradox," it's been the elephant in the room for advocates of energy efficiency, who cite it as one of the core technologies that could reduce the carbon intensity of our industrial civilization. But perhaps it's time to lay this "rule" to rest, says Energy Circle Founder Peter Troast, who points out that increased resource usage has always taken place in the context of ever-increasing supplies of energy and an expanding economy.
In the same vein, a new study from researchers at Stanford suggests the appetite for travel has reached saturation in the developed world, meaning further gains in transportation energy efficiency "could leave the absolute levels of [transport-related greenhouse gas] emissions in 2020 or 2030 lower than today."
Meanwhile, oil prices are creeping back up, leading the chief economist at the International Energy Agency to warn that the price of a barrel of crude imperils the current global economic recovery.
EPA's New Climate Rules Spur Intense Debate
The industry response to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's forthcoming regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act has led to a war of words at the National Journal, where representatives from the National Mining Association and the George C. Marshall Institute duke it out with the likes of Jon A. Anda of UBS Securities, who says EPA regulations "may hurt today's economy, but not materially because de-carbonization will come gradually over decades, new energy technologies tend to be more domestic and labor-intensive, and U.S. investment in long-lived plant and equipment is already stymied by policy uncertainty."
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) equates the new regulations to "a new gas tax."
"The fight [over EPA's new climate rules] has gotten so ugly that the EPA took the unprecedented step this month of announcing it will directly issue greenhouse gas permits to Texas industries beginning in January after the state openly refused to comply with new federal regulations."
Predictably, the tussle has since been cited by a member of the Texas Nationalist Movement as the latest, best reason for the state to secede.
The New York Times says the new regulations carry significant political risk to the current administration.
Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones reports Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) -- the incoming chair of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is currently formulating ways to block the rules -- used to advocate for action on global warming, but has since expunged his website (and public pronouncements) of this view.
White House Science Advisor John Holdren Thinks Forthcoming Congressional Hearings on Climate Science Will Be "Educational"
"I think in the new Congress, there will unquestionably be hearings on climate science -- I think those hearings are going to end up being educational. I think we'll probably move the opinions of some of the members of Congress who currently call themselves skeptics, because I think a lot of good scientists are going to come in and explain very clearly what we know and how we know it and what it means, and it's a very persuasive case," Holdren told Energy Now.
Related: Climate change is still a national security threat.
Will It Be Centuries Before Warming-Enhanced Storm Damage Is Quantifiable?
A controversial new paper argues that extracting the signal of climate change effects from the noise of variable weather in order to put a price tag on global warming could take centuries, but Climate Progress cites a report by the reinsurer Munich Re, "Large number of weather extremes as strong indication of climate change," as a counter-example.
Depending on your opinions on the issue, it might seem ironic that even as this debate is taking place, biblical levels of extreme weather in Australia have shut down exports of coal.
World Population of Cars to Hit 2 Billion, Good Thing For These New Sources of Solar Power, Nuclear Energy and Liquid Fuel
Growth in the developing world -- all right, mostly China -- will soon push the number of cars on the planet past the 2 billion mark, reports Scientific American. In other words, a new method for thermochemically creating automotive fuel directly from sunlight might come in handy. Qantas is also testing jets run on biofuels made exclusively from waste.
Or, if you prefer getting off the internal combustion engine altogether, Slate's gadget guy loves,/a> the new all-electric Nissan Leaf, calling it a "Prius-killer." If you'd like to charge up that Leaf with electricity from something other than fossil fuels, free solar panels are real, and they're here -- as long as you're ready to pay for the cheaper-than-market-rate electricity they produce. Todd Woody of Grist points out that solar thermal power -- easily the cheapest form of solar energy we have, per watt -- is experiencing boom times.
Chinese media are reporting the country's scientists have come up with a new way to reprocess spent uranium, one which will ensure "China [will] have sufficient nuclear fuel for at least 3,000 years." Nuclear power aside, the European Union is on target to produce one-fifth of all its energy from renewable sources by 2020.
The Climate Post is produced each Thursday by Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.
Rooftop PV solar, Offshore wind, wind are already the cheapest energy for millions of people in the US, and billions of people worldwide. Rooftop PV decreases grid load, the opposite of big energy. Variations on wind turbines, like underwater turbines also look very good. Waste bio Char can clean up our wastes, stop our dumping, provide carbon negative fertilizer and bio fuels to back up Solar and Wind and for transport.
Nuclear power suffers from 4 unsolved critical problems: proliferation, accidents, terrorism and waste. Geothermal causes earthquakes. growing crops for energy causes starvation and high food prices. Fossil fuels are running out and dirty. Desert algae and big solar destroy ecosystems, though the vast deserts can supply tremendous amounts of solar, they have problems with sand storms and transmission costs.
As far as I can figure, rooftop pv solar, offshore wind/water turbines and waste bio char/bio fuels is the only set of technologies that can solve our energy needs cleanly, cheaper in the long run, quickly and forever.
This path will need hybrid plug in electric cars for commuting, which will cut 90% of our transport fuel use so Waste Bio fuels can keep up.
in-city PV is actually at least as cheap, and usually cheaper. not to mention, it doesn't slaughter our wilderness like Big Solar, deplete our water, create massive erosion, emit HUGE AMOUNTS OF GHGS, or monopolize a ubiquitous resource that should be free to us all...
Research Germany's feed in tariff if you want to see a success story - they install multiple GIGAWATTS of clean power every year on rooftops, and PAY THE PEOPLE FOR IT. increased property values, decentralization and democratization of the grid, increased energy efficiency and reduced GHGs without killing wilderness or ripping people off.
CSP was a Big Lie. the LAST thing we need is more thermoelectric power in a country that already wastes 49% of its total water usage on it. PV. In the built environment. No new transmission. No dead planet.
secondly, siting CSP in extremely hot climates means that air cooling reduces the output of the plant by ~12-15% when power is needed most - the steam just can't cool back into liquid quickly when it's 120 outside...
CSP is rapidly falling out of favor even in the Big Solar circles. They thought it was gonna be the Next Big Thing but it didn't pan out.
solar thermal should definitely be used to heat water, which can heat homes and other structures, and be used for domestic and industrial purposes - this will reduce a huge amount of GHGs currently emitted by heating of water/interior spaces. it really should never be used to industrialize huge areas of wilderness since it runs at the same capacity factor as PV, which can be used at point of use and within the built environment...
http://beyondzeroemissions.org/zero-carbon-australia-2020
The reason they appeal to academics and other theoreticians (but never to any informed biologists) is because there is huge money to be made for Big Solar developers. That is not a "win" for the planet or for ratepayers or the economy. Local solar creates twice as many jobs as Big Solar, which is why rooftop costs a bit more, but at least the money is going to real people in our communities instead of being offshored and spent on lavish Big Energy executive compensation.
As an aside, with the flooding you are seeing now, I sincerely hope you will reconsider this program and work on increasing democracy, economic benefits to real people, ACTUALLY reducing GHGs, and sparing our open spaces for total devastation for Big Energy profits. The same people who bring us oil spills, radiation, toxic dumps and poisoned water will own and control Big Solar...
We're her to help you make this happen. If you live in the San Jose/San Francisco area then check us out:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/WATT-Electric-Inc/10150131616140076?v=info
Tax credits at the federal, state, and local level make it cheaper than ever to add solar to your home, plus it can increase the value of your home as well.
Thanks!