Energywise

A lot of bureaucracies have been slapping their letter of the alphabet onto the ARPA bandwagon the past couple of years (HSARPA, IARPA). Late last summer, President Bush passed the America COMPETES Act, which included a provision to establish an Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy(ARPA-E). I think we should give the intelligence community all the cool new toys it needs, but I really think energy independence takes priority.

Bart Gordon, the House Science and Technology chair who shepherded ARPA-E along the gruesome path of "house resolution" to actual law, is also beating this drum. Today, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Gordon had some sharp words for the people who are taking their sweet time establishing the new agency.

One of the issues seems to be funding. Congress has repeatedly voted to repeal between $13 billion and $18 billion in tax incentives for the oil industry, but so far it hasn't happened. "I don't believe the Federal government should be subsidizing an industry that is already seeing the highest profits on record," Gordon said. In the shadow of last year's oil company profits ($123 billion), $18 billion seems kind of anemic. But funding ARPA-E with that $18 billion would give it 6 times the annual funding allotted to DARPA, the original Advanced Research Agency. Just some perspective.

The Northwest Compact just turned down Energy Solutions' proposal to bury some of Italy's nuclear waste in the fair state of Utah.

Why is that important? Because it's going to set off serious fireworks of drama this summer. Just you wait.

Here's the back story: Last fall, EnergySolutions a nuclear waste disposal company that's been accused of some shady dealings in the past, applied with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to import 20,000 tons of low-level nuclear waste (LLW) from Italy for burial in their nuclear waste dump in Clive, Utah. LLW isn't the bubbling containers of green goo of Troma Films. It's the lowest class of nuclear waste-- tissues you sneeze into on the hot side of the reactor; boots or gloves that have some contamination but not enough to merit disposal with high level waste. But still. It's other countries' nuclear waste, the ultimate NIMBY. And this isn't a one-time deal: EnergySolutions plans to make importing other countries' LLW its business.

Well, Bart Gordon's head fell off. Gordon, who is chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, immediately introduced a bill banning all importation of foreign LLW. You can't blame him. This would set a terrible precedent for other countries that have no place for their nuclear waste, basically telling them that the western US is a logical choice for the world's nuclear waste dump. (It didn't work in Australia either.)

The Northwest Compact is the federally mandated entity in charge of the Northwestern US' low level nuclear waste. Utah is within the NW Compact's purview. So, earlier today, the NW compact handily smacked EnergySolutions down.

But here's the catch. EnergySolutions is a private company. As such, the company maintains that its private nuclear waste dump is not bound by the rules that govern the federally controlled nuclear waste dumps. So on Monday, probably anticipating today's outcome, they filed a pre-emptive suit.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, meanwhile, is letting people comment until June 10. (Over 1000 comments so far.) Then it will issue its own decision. If the NRC trumps the NW compact and rules in favor of EnergySolutions, there will be a huge catfight in Utah. If Rep. Gordon's bill gets passed, there will be a huge catfight in Congress, as all of the NRC appointees were put there by President Bush. They're not going to enjoy being told how to do their jobs.

Stay tuned.

For feelings of timelessness, unboundedness, and permanence, nothing beats the Sahara Desert. Yet as recently as 14,800 years ago, vast reaches of it were green, as a stronger summer monsoon enabled lakes, wetlands, grass and shrubland to expand upwards from the Sahel. Then around 6,000 years ago, with increased incoming sunlight and a weakening monsoon, desertification set it. But was that process fast or slow? Is it a case in point for those sounding alarms about "abrupt climate change"--change that takes place too fast for humans and ecosystems to adapt?

Research appearing tomorrow (May 9) in Science magazine, with an accompanying commentary by Jonathan A. Holmes of the Environmental Change Research Centre at London's University College, finds that the change in fact was gradual. S. Krâ''â''pelin of the University of Cologne (Kâ''â''ln) and colleagues studied sediments in Lake Yoa to extract information about pollens, salinity, and dustiness. "The continuous and well-dated pollen record for this site shows no abrupt change in vegetation in the mid-Holocene," comments Holmes. "The rise in Lak Yoa's salinity was rapid, but this was almost certainly a response to a local threshold being crossed as the lake changed from hydrologically open to hydrologically closed, rather than to abrupt climatic drying."

Last week's Science (May 2) contained a report by Kiel University's Lothar Stramma and colleagues reporting a different kind of desertification. Studying intermediate-depth waters in selected tropical ocean regions, they constructed a 50-year history of oxygen concentrations. What they found was that huge underwater oxygen-starved deserts are rapidly expanding.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain cosponsored the first major U.S. bill to establish a carbon trading system, and the likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama is cosponsoring a lineal descendant of that bill. So it's a foregone conclusion that we'll have legislation next year regulating and cutting carbon emissions, right? Not necessarily, to judge from the degree to which criticism is rising, not just on the political right but on the left as well, of the mainstream approach to reducing climate change risks.

In March this blogger reported on a conference in New York where climate skeptics showed force. Many of them were sponsored by small research organizations of neoliberal complexion (to use the European lingo; in the United States, at least as far as economic theory and policy is concerned, we'd say neoclassical). In those circles, the idea of mandating carbon trading is seen as statist and almost communistic.

Ironically, the carbon trading concept has come under considerable attack on the political left as well, to judge from a conference that took place a month later in New York, the Left Forum. Many socialists, it was apparent, viscerally dislike the idea of handing out emissions permits to big corporations that the companies can then trade, possibly for illicit profit. In one session, Karen Charman, the managing editor of a journal called Capitalism, Nature, Socialism argued that the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism--the rules that allow emitters in first-world countries to obtain permits to pollute by funding emissions-reduction projects in third-world countries--involves conjuring with imagined futures that corporations can shamelessly manipulate. When it was pointed out to her that her arguments were similar to those offered up by libertarians and climate skeptics, she said, irrefutably, "That doesn't mean they're wrong.

For a sampling of left critical opinion about carbon trading, find the December 2007 issue of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, which contains a long scholarly article drawing attention to a huge dump in Durban, South Africa, which local anti-pollution activists sought to close but which now is getting a new lease on life under the CDM, with plans to capture and burn methane to generate electricity. The February 2008 issue of Z Magazine contained an article by Anne Petermann detailing attempts by organizations representing indigenous peoples to get their voices heard at the Bali climate conference last fall: "Carbon finance mechanisms [like CDM] result in forests being transferred or sold off to large companies who aim to acquire profitable 'carbon credits' at some point in the future," a petition by the organizations complained.

The Carbon Connection, a short documentary film produced by Fenceline Films in partnership with TNI Environmental Justice Project and Carbon Trade Watch, juxtaposes two communities, one in Scotland, one in tropical Brazil. Though utterly lacking in "production values," not to mention context, narrative or analysis, the film vividly captures the essence of the left critique. In the Scottish town, a huge BP refinery continues to pollute, in part because it is able to obtain carbon emissions permits by funding reforestation in Brazil. But in a Brazilian community near where forest plantations are being expanded, water is diverted to feed the trees, leaving people who have depended on it for generations high and dry.

Not only are there a lot of startup companies developing and building innovative fuel-efficient vehicles, but top designers and engineers are leaving the big auto companies to manage those efforts. That's the main message of an article about new green car companies, appearing in the The Wall Street Journal today, May 6.

Among those who have left the mainstream for the vehicular counter-culture: Henrik Fisker, a former design director at Ford, who now heads a California company, Fisker Automotive, which is developing a plug-in hybrid sports car; Gordon Murray, former technical director at McLaren, has a new company, Gordon Murray Design, which is using skills honed on racing and sports cars to make a new little city car. Murat Guenak, former head of design for Volkswagen, has joined Mindset AG in Swizterland, to work on hybrids.

Speaking of hybrids, a Journal article that appeared last Friday discusses the problems electric utilities face if plug-in hybrids really take off. Basically executives are brooding about whether owners will charge their cars at night, when electricity is cheap and plentiful, or whether it will be during the day. Smart metering will help, which puts California ahead of this game. The state's three big electricity distributors expect virtually all customers to have meters within a few years that will enable them, in effect, to tell their suppliers when they're using electricity and what they're using it for. San Diego Power & Light already has set up a rate plan that enables customers to charge their cars at half the daytime electricity price.

It never rains but it pours, as they say. No sooner had our feature on the Sawyer family's plug-in Prius hit your screens (and mailboxes) than fast-breaking news overtook us: Hymotion announced a plug-in hybrid conversion kit for less than $10 000.

The company is now called A123 Hymotion, to reflect its purchase by battery maker A123 Systems. Their new L5 Plug-In Conversion Module supplements the Prius's stock 1.3-kWh nickel-metal-hydride battery pack with a 5-kWh pack based on A123's iron-nanophosphate lithium-ion cells.

Several features distinguish this kit from others now being offered, including the Sawyers' conversion, performed by Hybrids Plus of Boulder, Colorado. For one thing, it's been engineered and crash-tested to meet all applicable Federal new-car safety standards. For another, the converted car meets new-car emissions standards--which not every plug-in conversion does, including earlier versions of Hymotion's own kit.

And finally, it costs a lot less than the Sawyer family's conversion did: They paid Hybrids Plus $30,000 for a "PHEV-30," meaning their plug-in gets roughly 30 miles of pure electric range from its 4.5-kWh replacement pack plus another 4.5-kWh auxiliary pack. Those packs, by the way, also use A123's cells. Hymotion, on the other hand, quotes 30 to 40 miles of "electrically assisted" range for a third of that: $9,995.

Left unspecified, however, is the distance that the Hymotion kit will run in pure electric mode, without switching on the internal-combustion engine. The answer, as always, lies in the car's duty cycle: how heavily it's loaded, how agressively it's driven, the mix of speeds, and even such factors as how many hills it climbs.

We'll leave it to road testers to offer their real-world experience. And no doubt the highly active PHEV community will weigh in, from the always-energetic Felix Kramer at CalCars to the many members of the Electric Auto Association's very active PHEV mailing list.

After you read the feature on the Sawyers' car, by the way, check out both the audio slideshow on the conversion steps (my first audio slideshow) and the web-only summary of automakers' plans to introduce production versions of plug-in hybrids.

A year ago yesterday, May 4, a maximum strength tornado with winds raging at 300 mph demolished the town of Greensburg, Kansas, killing 11. Organizations like Environmental Defense soon sought, somewhat dubiously, to make the name Greensburg a posterboard example, with Hurricane Katrina, for the increasingly frequent and violent storms expected to result from global warming. Maybe more credibly, the residents and friends of Greensburg now are seeking to make the town's name synonymous with green, environmentally conscious design.

Residents of the town, 95 percent destroyed last year, are trying to make each new private and public building as energy-efficient, conserving, and environment-friendly as possible by drawing on renewable energy, conserving energy, and recycling wastes. Solar panels and geothermal pumps are among the technologies being deployed, and the intention is for new buildings to conform to the U.S. Green Building Council's platinum rating.

Meanwhile, 14 Kansas State architecture students have offered their support by designing a group of green "cubes"--a system for capturing and recycling water, for example--and delivering them to the town May 4.

Speaking at the town's high school graduation ceremony yesterday, President Bush hailed the town for envisioning "a future where new jobs flourish, where every public building meets the highest environmental standards, and where the beauty of rural America meets the great possibilities of new technology."

No doubt, planning a green future is paying off for Greensburg, and probably not just in reduced utility and home heating bills. Its efforts have been publicized on the leading U.S. television networks and in Britain's Guardian. In June, Discovery's new green channel will feature Greensburg in a series produced by Leonardio DiCaprio.

Data released yesterday, May 1, confirm earlier indications that sky-high gasoline prices are finally beginning to have a distinct impact on consumer behavior. Total U.S. auto sales in April were at their lowest level in 15 years, with sales of SUVs down drastically but subcompacts like Chevrolet's Malibu up 43 percent and Ford's Focus up 32 percent. Sales of Toyota's hybrid, the Prius, climbed 54 percent--the biggest increase among the 15 most popular vehicles highlighted by The New York Times.

The U.S. big three manufacturers all registered double-digit sales declines, while Honda, Nissan, and Toyota came close to holding sales flat.

With U.S. gasoline prices at an all-time high, having climbed in fits and starts for five years, the logical results appear to be finally showing up in lower gasoline consumption and a distaste for large cars and light trucks. According to a report in the May 5 issue of Business Week, the number of vehicles on the roads dropped 1.4 percent last year, and gasoline consumption is expected to dip 0.7 percent this year. Sales of SUVs and pickup trucks plummeted 27 percent in the first quarter of 2008, with total auto sales down 8 percent.

Will oil and gasoline prices continue to trend upward and stay there, or is the current situation just a blip? That is the question. If high prices are here to stay, then of course those who immediately replace their big cars with smaller ones will come out ahead of the game, and those automakers who anticipate that behavior will be the winners. Ford Motor, which reported a surprisingly large first-quarter profit last week, is among those betting that high prices are here to stay, says Business Week.

Ironically, if gasoline prices stay in the stratosphere, the United States may be off the hook when it comes to the atmosphere. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that if one wanted to halve carbon emissions from the U.S. automotive sector--enough to get the country into step with international efforts to reduce greenhouse gases--gasoline prices would have to double from their average levels of the past few years, which have been around $2.50. That calculus underlay a blue-ribbon report sponsored by Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School last year, which recommended increasing gasoline prices by $2.50 per gallon over a period of 10 years--in effect doubling the gasoline price as a matter of policy.

Of course that's a far cry from any policy being discussed out on the campaign trails. McCain, joined by Clinton, has proposed suspending the Federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents for the summer months, to help out drivers and give the economy a little boost. Obama has dismissed the idea as ineffectual.

If however market forces were allowed to drive the gasoline price to $5, and American consumers started to believe it was really going to stay that high, then--arguably!--policy wouldn't be necessary. Over time, if econometric studies are to be believed, American drivers would spontaneously use half as much gasoline and emit half as much carbon.

To hear some climate skeptics say it, you'd think the greenhouse effect was just a theory, concocted by dangerous radicals to undermine the American way of life; and to hear some of the climate alarmists, you'd think 100 percent of the science was nailed down, with nothing new to learn and nothing left to argue about. Well, a report by French and Russian scientists in Physical Review Letters, the world's premier publisher of new physics discoveries, finds that the mechanisms responsible for trapping the Sun's radiation in the Earth's atmosphere have been imperfectly understood. (Journalists can obtain pre-publication copies of the article at the American Institute of Physics' physics news/select.)

As every basic textbook in atmospheric science will tell you on page 1, the greenhouse effect is something of a misnomer: in an actual greenhouse, warming occurs because the glass roof stops the convection currents that normally carry warmer air up and away; in Earth's atmosphere, warming occurs because the infrared radiation reflected back from the Earth's surface is trapped by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere--natural water vapor is by far the most important among them but human-generated carbon dioxide is increasingly significant.

Michael Chrysos and colleagues at the University of Angers and collaborators at the University of Saint Petersburg confirmed that absorption of IR radiation by triatomic carbon dioxide molecules is governed by the laws of quantum physics, involving their internal vibrations. But they found that IR absorption also occurs in collisions between CO2 molecules--and in collisions of diatomic molecules such as O2 and N2 as well--and that this kind of absorption is explained by Newtonian mechanics.

The Chrysos team estimates that the collisional IR absorption accounts for about 10 percent of the total greenhouse effect on Earth. On Venus, which has a super-hothouse climate, they believe the collisional absorption explained by classical mechanics may account for more than half the effect.