Tag: climate

Cooling clothing

Air-conditioning uses 5% of all the electricity produced in the US Not only are most clothes opaque to visible light, they are also opaque to infrared. This traps infrared radiation, causing the body to heat up. new materials would provide the equivalent of at least 23W of cooling. Crucially these materials should still be opaque at visible wavelengths.

$5.3T Energy Subsidy waste

Subsidies for coal, oil and natural gas were $5.3T worldwide in 2015 (6.5% of global GDP). Undercharging for global warming accounts for 22% of the subsidy, air pollution 46%, broader vehicle externalities 13%, supply costs 11%, and general consumer taxes 8%. China was the biggest subsidizer ($1.8T), followed by the United States ($0.6T), and Russia, the European Union, and India (each with about $0.3T). Eliminating subsidies would have reduced global CO2 emissions by 21% and fossil fuel air pollution deaths 55%, while raising revenue of 4%, and social welfare by 2.2% of global GDP. The figure likely exceeds government health spending across the world, estimated by the World Health Organization at 6% of global GDP, but for the different year of 2013. They correspond to one of the largest negative externality ever estimated.

No Little Ice Age

Our results suggest that the existing consensus over a Little Ice Age in Europe is a statistical artifact, where the standard climatological practice of smoothing what turn out to be random data prior to analysis gives the spurious appearance of irregular oscillations. This is an example of the ‘Slutsky effect’ where filtering of purely random variations can produce spurious cycles

Earth, population 500M

There are only ~500M of us left, after the convulsive transformations caused by climate change severely diminished the planet’s carrying capacity. Most of us now live in ‘lifeboats’, in places that were once Canada, China, Russia and the Scandinavian countries, shoehorned into cities created virtually overnight to accommodate the millions of desperate refugees where the climate remains marginally tolerable.

Before the seismic shocks of the great upheavals, people’s movements were unfettered, and they could breathe unfiltered air, roam in the woods or simply watch their kids play soccer outdoors. Today, the unprotected strips of land exposed to the elements are forbidden zones, plagued by drenching rains with howling 160-km-an-hour winds, alternating with fierce dust storms, the deadly soil tsunamis that rumble up from the deserts that blanket what used to be the United States. When there is a break in the wild weather, the scorching sun relentlessly cooks the atmosphere to temperatures of 82 celsius or more by midday, making it impossible to step outside without body armor and oxygen tanks.

Ocean vs Atmosphere Climate

Circulation of the ocean plays an equally important role in regulating the earth’s climate as the atmosphere. Major cooling of Earth and continental ice build-up in the Northern Hemisphere 2.7M years ago coincided with a shift in the circulation of the ocean – which pulls in heat and CO2 in the Atlantic and moves them through the deep ocean from north to south until it’s released in the Pacific. The ocean conveyor system changed at the same time as a major expansion in the volume of the glaciers in the northern hemisphere as well as a substantial fall in sea levels. It was the Antarctic ice that cut off heat exchange at the ocean’s surface and forced it into deep water. This caused global climate change at that time, not CO2 in the atmosphere.

NYC CO2 reduction goals

Let’s see if NYC takes the opportunity to lead seriously.

I testified today before the New York CIty Council on Int. No. 738-2014 which calls for New York City to adopt the goal of reducing CO2 emissions 80% by 2050. (i.e. 80×50).

What follows are the notes I used in making my comments.

The 80×50 target is a good start, but we must consider several implications that aren’t well explored in the Mayor’s Plan:
Cleaner systems are typically cheaper when total cost of ownership (TCOE) is considered. Thus, 80×50 makes sense even if the climate change deniers are right and CO2 emissions aren’t important. Because cleaner is cheaper, we should target 80% reduction sooner than 2050.

Efficiency: The cleanest and cheapest energy is the energy you don’t buy or use. Efficiency can often have high up-front costs but pays off through lower energy and operating costs.

Thermal Energy: We focus electrical energy while ignoring thermal energy even though many buildings dump vast amounts of waste heat. We need to find ways for buildings to sell their excess thermal energy to neighboring buildings. Waste heat could be a profit center!

Fuel Switching: We must replace direct-use of fossil fuels with cheaper electric systems and increase the proportion of energy delivered and consumed as electricity.

2M vehicles are registered in our city. Most burn fossil fuels and would be both cheaper and cleaner if powered by electricity. Already, total cost of ownership of some electric vehicles is lower than their internal combustion equivalents. Electric vehicle costs will only drop further in the future.

The 1M buildings in our city are mostly heated with fossil fuels. But, Columbia University researchers estimate that as many as 80% of our buildings, mostly outside Manhattan, could be heated and cooled using often cheaper and always cleaner Ground Source Heat Pumps. Clean heat is cheap heat.

Today, PSC and NYSERDA policy discourages fuel switching!

The Second Great Electrification of our society:

Electricity is the fuel of the future even though it only accounts for one-third of the delivered energy in the US today. It is cleaner and cheaper than direct-use fossil fuels and will get even cleaner and cheaper in the future as renewable energy resources grow.

The First Electrification focused on lighting, communications, and appliances. The Second Great Electrification will focus on the transportation and heating/thermal applications which consume two-thirds of delivered energy in the US today and primarily rely on direct-use of burned, dirty fossil fuels.

While utilities seem focused on losses of market share to distributed generation, they should instead be preparing to double or triple the amount of electricity produced.

A Shift from Operating Expense to Capital Expense will require substantial support through financing programs. More money is needed than can be provided by cash subsidy programs.

Today, you pay for energy at or near the time when you consume it. In the future, you’ll pay more for “capacity” and you’ll pay less or even nothing as you actually consume energy.

Fossil fueled systems offer lower up-front costs, but their operating costs are higher. It is like giving razors away for free and then charging for the blades. Pay-As-You-Go is often more convenient than Pay-Up-Front, but it is much more expensive in the long run.
It takes money to save money. Today, only the relatively wealthy, with good credit, can afford the cheaper, cleaner alternatives. This must change.

The solar industry has proven that large amounts of private capital can be attracted to clean energy technology that delivers good yield.
NYCEEC, NYSERDA and our Capital Markets can profitably provide the financing we need via leases, PPA’s, loans, loan guarantees, bonds, securitization, etc.

Notes:
Some Electric Vehicles are already cheaper than their “same-class” alternatives. For detailed comparison, see 79 in the World Resources Institute paper “Seeing is Believing: Creating a New Climate Economy in the United States

Heat Pumps are both cleaner and cheaper than fossil fueled heating/cooling systems.

Grid powered heating/cooling systems, particularly ground source heat pumps, are cleaner than fossil fueled systems and usually cheaper. This is particularly true in New York City and Upstate New York since we have some of the cleanest grid-supplied power in the country.

The New York City/Westchester “sub-grid” delivers power with an average CO2 cost of 300 grams/kWh after transmission losses are considered. Furnaces that burn No. 2 oil at average efficiencies produce thermal energy at a CO2 cost of 324 grams/kWh_t. The CO2 cost for propane is 275 grams/kWh_t and for natural gas it is 221 grams/kWh_t.

Thus, using “clean” New York City grid power, any heating/cooling system that is 90% efficient will produce heat more cleanly than No. 2 oil. Any system with an efficiency of at least 110% will be cleaner than propane and any system with an efficiency of 140% will be cleaner than natural gas.

The EnergyStar minimum efficiency rating for Ground Source Heat Pumps is 310% (i.e. COP=3.1). Thus, any EnergyStar-compliant GSHP in New York City will be much cleaner than an equivalent fossil fueled system. GSHP augments grid-power with locally harvested thermal energy for > 100% efficiency.

Given 2013 New York City power and fuel prices, a ground source heat pump system with a COP = 3.1 would have “fuel” costs of only 53% that of a No. 2 oil burner and 51% of the cost of a propane powered system. At COP=3.1, natural gas would be cheaper. However, if the heat pump ran with an efficiency of 400% (COP=4), which is more typical of current industry standards, the GSHP would be 5% cheaper than the natural gas burner. COP’s will increase in the future.