The Vision

As we fuel our 100 mile per gallon, zero emission cars with natural gas and power our houses and businesses with electricity from wind and solar power, the vision of green energy will unfold before us.

It was once a dream that our energy needs could be provided to us in an inexpensive and green fashion. The day has arrived when it is all possible and happening. The T. Boone Pickens wind project alone will go a long way in shifting our need away from oil as a major energy source, by capturing the unlimited energy of the wind belt that runs from Texas to Canada. Solar energy has come of age as the technology needed to store energy had evolved becoming reliable and cost effective.

Energy independence is a dynamic and exciting prospect. Not only are we looking to gain independence from foreign oil we are also playing with the idea that many of our states, cities or even buildings could become energy independent. Kansas has enough potential wind generated power that it could become completely independent from outside sources. California has enough sun and shoreline to provide itself with an unlimited supply of solar desalinated water. A large manufacturing facility could now with wind and solar retrofits go completely off grid with its energy needs.

This is the fork in the road and we have seen the vision of green independent energy become the reality before us. The cooperative thinking taking place in this endeavor has brought us together on a global scale. The world is moving as one in this vision and it will be a better world in which to live.

Leaders Drop The Ball

The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, died after a procedural vote in the Senate. So, once again our leaders are not leading. Whatever position you may have on the details of the bill, the point is nothing truly productive is being done by our representatives in Washington to address global climate issues.

November gives us our chance to send a strong message. A new leadership will go to work on 1 – 20 – 09 and they need to hear our voice loud and clear.

Passing Less GHG

Scientists in Australia and New Zealand are working to create a variety of grass that would lower the amount of Methane produced by cud-chewing cattle. This story shows just how many ways we can approach the GHG issue. The old story of Stone Soup illustrates how with the cooperation and enthusiasm of the villagers a great feast can come together from modest beginnings.

These scientists from Gramina and PGG Wrightson Genomics are using their expertise in Molecular Plant Breeding to contribute what they can to the global stone soup of GHG reduction. This new variety of low-gas grass is engineered to suppress an enzyme called O-methyl transferase, which makes the complex cellulose structure of the grass more easily digestible.

The effort is being made to make this grass viable in hotter climates which shows that these scientists are thinking ahead to time when grazing land could become dependant on heat-tolerant grass.

Methane is many times more polluting than the CO2 that much of the Carbon Community is busy working to reduce. Since most every animal on earth produces methane as a natural by-product of digestion, this is an area that needs more investigation.

Quick Invent a Tailpipe Insert

The EPA almost approved a plan by California to limit tailpipe emissions. This move screams out for some inventor to present a “Tailpipe Insert” that can be installed by the consumer that would capture particulate matter from a car’s exhaust.

This could easily be done with a filament designed to absorb and filter out certain pollutants. The technology is there and could be mass produced. This device would limit pollution from the exhaust until the car is replaced, preventing a wholesale panic among owners of older cars.

On The Right Track In Maryland

Now this is the way to think. Prince George’s and Montgomery counties in Maryland, have worked out a 10 year contract to use wind power for 30% of their energy needs. As a direct result of this move, wind generated electricity is being purchased from Pennsylvania to power water and sewage treatment for 460,000 homes in Maryland.

By using the energy produced by just 14 wind turbines over the life of this agreement 10 billion pounds of carbon that would have been put into the atmosphere by coal generated energy, will be eliminated.

Maryland has put forth a mandate that the large companies doing business in the state are required to get 20% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020. The encouraging response to this mandate was real action and a workable solution to the energy needs of two Maryland counties.

I trust that this example will prove that the need for wailing and gnashing of teeth as a response to energy reduction measures is behind us. There is a task to complete that has been clearly defined, that of reducing energy usage and therefore carbon output. There are many ways to approach and complete this task and Maryland has presented one example of how it is done.

The Impact of Your Carbon Footprint

The quantifying and reduction of your companies Carbon Footprint will become mandatory very soon. You will be asked to leave no stone unturned in a company wide effort to reduce carbon emissions. For those of you who operate large complexes such as power plants, the retrofitting that you could be asked to undertake to comply with a mandated cap on your energy use and then therefore carbon emissions, could cost millions to complete. You could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on scrubbers and refitting to convert your plant from the use of one fuel source to another.

Even Hospitals, Schools, Hotels and large Manufacturing Plants will need to invest capital to bring carbon emissions in line with carbon caps. Tools such as sub-meters will become necessary to gather a true picture of your company’s energy consumption. A review of your building’s insulation, windows and HVAC systems will need to be completed.

This is not to say that every change has to be monumental to impact your carbon footprint. There are many low or no cost changes that you make in the office areas of your plant. Remember things like recycling, passive solar, unplugging or turning off equipment, these add no costs and are easy to bring online. Motion sensors are another low cost item that can lower your lighting costs by eliminating the need for lighting to be operating in unoccupied rooms. This type of system is used widely now in the hotel business.

Shifts can also be made in an ongoing fashion inline with normal operations or capital improvements. In the regular rotation of your fleet of vehicles for example there is an opportunity to shift to the use of alternative fuels, electric vehicles or more fuel efficient conventional fuel vehicles. These shifts are part of the annual operating budget and are implemented with less impact to bottom line than something like a newly mandated retrofit.

The footsteps you hear behind you will be the echo of you own carbon footprint and it will be up to you to reduce the impact of that footprint on your workers, community and your company’s bottom line.

Remove Your Torchières

Hiding in the corner of many an executive office is an energy black hole; the Torchière. A Torchière is the name of that floor lamp with the Halogen bulb that everyone bought years ago because it was cheap and provided pleasing, ceiling reflected, indirect lighting.

These popular, now very dated floor lamps, burn up an astonishing 500 watts of electricity. That is the amount of wattage that is used by 40 compact fluorescent bulbs (CFB). Just the simple act of removing these energy vacuums and replacing them with lamps that use CFB’s will create dramatic savings on your electricity bill.

Incremental steps like this one quickly add up and get everyone in the mindset of seeking out ways that their department can take part in your energy reducing plans. After you have removed your Torchières, all the lighting in your building can be rethought.

With your lighting audit complete and upgrades made, your Facilities Manager will be able to replicate this audit and upgrade procedure throughout the diverse energy consuming systems in your building.

The Greening Process

How “Green” can we get? The greening of our lives is an ongoing process that will continue to evolve and progress with the advent of new technologies and continued education on the sources and effects of Greenhouse Gas emissions. That critical first step is to get an accurate accounting of your building’s Carbon Footprint.

Your Carbon Footprint is the total carbon that is created during the daily use of your building. This requires a comprehensive audit of your building that can be achieved by the use of energy auditing software. This data will show clearly the areas that can be addressed in an effort to lower energy use and therefore carbon emissions. When the audit is complete there will be many changes that can be made from shifting fuel sources or upgrading facilities components to changes in worker habits that impact your carbon footprint. As the mindset of the company is changed and energy cost savings is realized; new ideas and technologies will continue to lead your company to a greener way of conducting business. Greening your business is one of the best public relations and marketing efforts that can be made in the growing global mindset of lowering carbon emissions.

How green can we get? The answer is Carbon Neutral. Companies that have made the necessary modifications and set up programs to offset their remaining carbon output have achieved a carbon neutral position. In the growing world of carbon trading many of these carbon neutral companies can now trade credits from their energy reductions on an open market for profits. How far is your operation from a Carbon Neutral position? Once this question is answered the next question is; how would your company profit by achieving such a position?

Think Wind

I just can’t see the problem. Why is it that we have the technology and the resources to build wind farms and yet we sit on our hands and watch countries all over Europe build a power infrastructure that will free them from the dependency on foreign oil? I understand all the arguments out there but none of them have convinced me that wind is a bad idea.

From every angle wind works. For a price cheaper than an oil refinery or a nuclear power plant or even a natural gas plant you could build a wind farm and get free, green, renewable, sustainable, non-polluting energy. For the price of one year of war in Iraq we could erect enough wind turbines to power Indiana. So money is not the issue.

I have heard that wind turbines make a whooshing sound; big deal. The whole idea of a wind farm is to place it where the wind blows consistently and free of obstruction so that means in the open spaces where there are no homes to hear the whooshing sound. There are places in the wind belt of this county where you could drive for hours and never see a man made dwelling. So it gets cold in the northern states; we can equip the turbines with on board heaters and heat the blades so they don’t ice up. The wind can get very strong in our mid-western states so we would need to use turbines that operate with clutch systems that would compensate for the excessive wind speed. I can’t see the problem.

The states of Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming and the Dakotas could produce as much energy as Saudi Arabia and do it without the economic strong-arming or CO2 emissions that we get from the oil producing countries. I have heard that the oil companies don’t want wind farms because they would compete with oil profits. This is simply not true; Oil Companies are the biggest investors in wind technology. Wind farms make money. If you want to get rich just design a better battery system or a more efficient turbine and you will be rich beyond your dreams.

Wind is simply our best bet to affect change right now. Wind farms can be set up in a matter of months, whereas power plants that use most other types of fuel would take years to build. So now is the time for land owners to contact their local utilities and set up a meeting to explore the economical advantages of leasing out land for wind turbine use.

#1 Green Priority – Food

The global food situation is getting ridiculous. Our planet has the capacity to feed us very well and meet all our nutritional needs with plenty to spare. One of the side effects of global warming is the expansion of available cropland in the northern latitudes. The excess CO2 in the atmosphere is a plus for plant growth, so the only reason there can be for a shortage of available and affordable food is mismanagement of resources.

Locally grown food requires less transportation costs and therefore if we shop for our produce from the local farmers we can save on food costs. If the farmers markets charge similar prices to large chain grocery stores, that transport their produce from around the world, then they will be punishing us for our support of them and for our green efforts.

If every Church, Temple, Mosque and Synagogue were to set up and sponsor community gardens then our seniors and low income families would not have to make the choice of sacrificing their nutritional health for the sake of transportation or heating costs. These organizations have a non-profit status, not because of their religious views but because of their pledge to serve the community and this would serve one of our greatest needs.

On a much larger scale, developing countries still need the help of the global community to provide them with the types of crops that would be sustainable and inexpensively abundant in their climate regions. We have the science and the management skills to work this out. The large populations in India and China can feed themselves if they continue to look for new approaches the food production. Every large building in an urban center could use its rooftop for a garden. Hydroponics and other methods of crop growth are underused around the world. The water from all these melting glaciers is going somewhere; why not create lakes that could provide drinking and irrigation water as well as a place to farm cold water fish. You can grow crops under the windmills on a wind farm and get duel use of the land.

We all need to work together at all levels of this global community to think through this and remove hunger as an issue around the world.

Becoming Personally Neutral

I have calculated my personal carbon footprint to be about 3 tons per year. The national average is about 7.5 tons per year. In an effort to lower my footprint to neutral I have set forth a personal plan of action.

I will reduce my driving miles and start saving for a more fuel efficient or hybrid car. Changing the lighting in my house and office to compact fluorescent lighting and lowering my thermostats will make further reductions of my CO2 output. I am in the process of making arrangements for three trees a year to be planted to offset my carbon footprint; this move alone would greatly help make me carbon neutral since tress absorb 1 ton of carbon over their lifetime. I have a head start on outputting carbon but I will only live 30 more years or so and the trees will be able to keep absorbing my mess after I’m gone.

These steps are easy to do and will not effect my lifestyle to any great extent. There is nothing new about these steps either, which proves that we all know what we could do on a daily basis to contribute to the lowering of carbon emissions. The next step is to explore what new technologies or personal habits I could employ to become personally neutral.

Green Leadership from Gov. Sebelius

From the wind swept plains of Kansas, Governor Sebelius fights against the building of two new coal-fired power plants while strongly advocating the use of wind power to provide Kansas with clean renewable energy.

State Senate Bill 148 was set to allow the building of two plants by Sunflower Electric that would have produced about 11 million tons of CO2 annually. The Kansas legislators in favor of the bill pushed the idea that the project would bring jobs and low-cost energy to the region. Governor Sebelius vetoed the bill and the legislators brought it back but failed the post enough votes to override the veto.

After the rise and fall of corn based Ethanol as the “savior” of the global ecosystem, a movement that affected the Kansas farmers greatly, groups like “The Alliance for Sound Energy Policy” are now steering the people of Kansas into the pit of cheap energy at the cost of their health and the environment. Governor Sebelius is promoting wind as an obvious alternative power source, capitalizing on the abundance of wind available throughout the Great Plains region.

In today’s world, the people who we elect to represent us in State Government need to understand that the jobs on the line here are theirs, if they fail to lead in these issues.

The Recycling of CO2

I am asked to explain on a daily basis why we can’t spend our intellectual resources on finding ways to recycle carbon by “Capture and Reuse,” instead of creating the largest commodities market in the world around trading carbon. This is absolutely a direction we should head. Until we find a way to eliminate excess CO2 output, we need to look at all our options. One of these options is recycling CO2.

Scientists are looking into ways to combine CO2 with chemicals or minerals to create compounds that can be used for fertilizers, fuels, resins, chemicals and a range of other products that reuse the CO2 that we emit. At a range of around 30Gt/y of anthropogenic CO2 emissions we have an abundant supply from which to draw. CO2 can be extracted even before combustion of fuels in a power plant further reducing total CO2 emissions.

The age of static ideas on how things are done and how things are used or can be used is long gone. We now have the greatest number of educated minds we have ever had in history which affords us an unprecedented opportunity to invent and create our way out of this current challenge.

Goodbye Coal

Coal has been a major contributor to our power supply for the last 200 years and now it’s time to say goodbye. There have been many moves lately to cutback or eliminate the use of coal as a source of power throughout the world. The burning of coal produces 2 billion tons of GHG’s annually in the US alone. Since coal produces a greater amount of GHG emissions through its use than most of the fuels available today, the world is calling for the end of coals use or at least a halt in new coal plant construction. The biggest hurtle may be the reduction of coal use in China.

Canada has set a ban on new dirty coal power plants by 2012 in a move to provide greener energy. Duke energy who is the third largest consumer of coal in the US is considering shutting down a number of coal plants to meet emission targets set for 2030 while warning customers that such a move could affect energy bills by as much as 60 percent. In January the DOE canceled a “clean coal” research project under their restructuring plan. Further, DOE moves include funding only the capture and sequester component of any clean coal plant and not the entire plant construction costs and previously considered.

These are steps by major coal users that will make some impact on global GHG emissions. Consumers will need to absorb the costs associated with shifting fuel sources and these costs should intensify the speedy search for economical ways to provide carbon free energy sources.

Leadership From Portugal

Portugal is showing us the way with their many alternative energy projects and a willingness to move quickly and decisively. Even with a GDP lower than many of the states in the US, they are planning and building Dams, Solar, Wave and Wind power plants to bring their people and the people of the EU green energy. The EU plans to provide 20 percent of its power through the use of clean sources by 2020, and Portugal is not wasting any time.

Near Amareleja, a six hundred acre field of solar panels is set to provide power to 30,000 homes. This will cost about $400 million dollars to complete. There are eleven dams in the planning stages on Portugal’s many large rivers. An extensive wind farm is in the works that could power 750,000 homes. A wave power generating plant will be built on the coast. This is a very impressive list of projects that will produce 10,000 new jobs for the Portuguese economy.

The $12 billion effort seems large until compared to the amount spent on military efforts by large western nations. We have an opportunity at this time in our history to beat our swords into plow shares and get to the higher work of serving humanity and protecting our home. The Portuguese are leading us.

The Genie Called Cap And Trade

The Global Warming situation has opened the door to the greatest change since the Industrial Revolution. Everything in the world of commerce and economics is going to change very quickly and our children will live in a very different world. We are going to see a rebirth of scientific discovery and invention on a monumental scale and carbon markets will be created that will make many people, companies and countries very rich.

In an effort to get a handle on global carbon emissions many ideas are going to surface. By now we have all heard of Cap and Trade, an idea that was launched to deal with CO2 output and how to manage needed reductions. This has brought about the creation of huge carbon trading markets. The big reason the trading markets are being created is because they can. At least for the foreseeable future we are going to emit massive amounts of carbon waste and someone is creating a market for a commodity that can easily be traded for profit.

Most people believe that the cap part is a good and timely idea. The amount of carbon output worldwide needs to be lowered so a mandatory cap that is periodically lowered would be a great vehicle to facilitate lower emissions. However, the ability of governments to lower a cap and force companies to spend capital to become more efficient feels a bit like a credit cards ability to raise interest rates on their customers.

Even though many companies are voluntarily lowering their output through improved energy efficiencies, governments at all levels are designing caps to legislate into law. Canada is in the midst of a policy change that would send proceeds from carbon credits to a fund that the government controls effectively creating a carbon tax. This mandatory income into the government coffers may look good to a state or country that needs to build its tax base. So even though we think caps are a good thing they hit us right in the wallet. Companies need to pay for the credits or offsets required to meet the caps with funds from somewhere and they have a bank to draw from called their customers.

This will all continue to shift and change as markets are developed and carbon prices fluctuate. In order to have carbon to trade the markets will have to pressure governments to regulate their reduction limits to create a supply while at the same time regulating to create a demand. The markets will lead the governments by the nose. If the government tries to rebel and strike to massively lower emissions it will upset the supply and demand balance. It would be like the governments requiring all cars that get less than 50 mpg to cease operation; the price of gas would skyrocket do to the lower demand because the oil companies, who have no competition, would need to make up for the loss in sales with higher prices.

Consider the scenario where huge carbon centered commodity markets are created throughout the world, trading billions of Dollars a day, until one day when the global community finally reaches the goal of an emissions free world. In this scenario the markets would crash do to a lack of carbon to trade. Do you think the markets would let that happen? Once a market is created for cigarettes, I mean carbon; do you think there will ever not be a market? As long as there are more than 6 billion people in the world exhaling and cutting down trees, there will be excess carbon to cap and trade.

So before these systems take a firm grip on our economy we need to find a way to join in on the profits or find other ways to deal with our CO2 output. We need to figure out how to lower emissions without creating a genie that we can not put back in the bottle.

Green Buildings - Surrounded in Energy Efficiency

I have shared a number of exciting discussions of late on the subject of “Green Buildings.” One surprisingly simple design that I have discussed was that of a manufacturing plant that is built as a series of squares in increasing sizes.

The central, main square contains the office complex that is the most climate comfort sensitive. Built around that is a square of support areas such as storage, meeting rooms, cafeteria, and offices for those who shuttle back and forth on a regular basis from operations into manufacturing. These are the supervisors, purchasing, quality assurance and control and the like. Around that is the manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping and receiving areas.

A building like this takes up the smallest amount of space and uses a system of heat exchange between sectors to lower energy needs. Non occupied rooms would be shut off from heating and A/C until needed. This is a very efficient design from many standpoints with even shorter distances for employees to travel between sectors saving time, the most expensive commodity.

If you added solar water heating, windmills on each corner for supplemental power, passive solar heating and sky lighting you could reduce normal energy costs by a huge percentage. All in-house vehicles could be electric, powered by the windmills. Carbon capturing would eliminate a large percentage of GHG’s that would assure a cleaner bubble for the community. Waste water from the office areas and cafeteria could be filtered and used by manufacturing for cooling machinery. Plantings would lower internal air pollution.

This is a very exciting area and as we are faced with the reality of Carbon Caps becoming a fact of life, we will need to set to work on these ideas. Some of these ideas will require more upfront costs than others and that needs to be addressed in the design. All of the ideas that I have described are current technologies and readily available. We will need to explore new ideas and see how they could fit into such a project. We could also explore how these ideas could be incorporated into public buildings such as schools and civic buildings.

With an eye toward being carbon neutral these buildings would help communities meet local emission regulations. We owe it to ourselves to aggressively work on this idea with our local city planners, building designers and incoming businesses. We can make this or other ideas like this work.

Power Grid Integration

The step by step efforts made by utilities to integrate alternative energy sources into the power grid will continue to improve our ability to lower total CO2 emissions. These technologies need time to be proven. With these changes come possible side effects that need to be addressed. However, the forward effort is necessary and requires the brightest minds to troubleshoot these new technologies.

The following article announces the use of batteries to store wind generated energy.

This would be a great advance in power grid integration although there will be a period of working the bugs out of the system and thought needs to go into the disposal of battery component materials once the batteries have completed their working lifecycle. I look forward to studying this project and reviewing the successes and shortcomings that manifest.

Xcel Energy to Test Storage of Wind Power Using 1 MW Battery System

February 29, 2008
Source: Clean Edge News

Xcel Energy soon will begin testing a cutting-edge technology to store wind energy in batteries. It will be the first use of the technology in the United States for direct wind energy storage.

Integrating variable wind and solar power production with the needs of the power grid is an ongoing issue for the utility industry. Xcel Energy will begin testing a one-megawatt battery-storage technology to demonstrate its ability to store wind energy and move it to the electricity grid when needed. Fully charged, the battery could power 500 homes for over 7 hours.

Xcel Energy has signed a contract to purchase a battery from NGK Insulators Ltd. that will be an integral part of a project. The sodium-sulfur battery is commercially available and versions of this technology are already being used in Japan and in a few US applications, but this is the first U.S. application of the battery as a direct wind energy storage device.

The 20 50-kilowatt battery modules will be roughly the size of two semi trailers and weigh approximately 80 tons. They will be able to store about 7.2 megawatt-hours of electricity, with a charge/discharge capacity of one megawatt. When the wind blows, the batteries are charged. When the wind calms down, the batteries supplement the power flow.

The project will take place in Luverne, Minn., about 30 miles east of Sioux Falls, S.D., with the battery installation beginning this spring adjacent and connected to a nearby 11-megawatt wind farm owned by Minwind Energy, LLC. S&C Electric Company will install the battery and all associated interconnection components. The battery is expected to go on-line in October 2008.

Partners in the project with Xcel Energy include the University of Minnesota, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Great Plains Institute and Minwind Energy, LLC. Xcel Energy is testing emerging technology and energy storage devices as part of its overall Smart Grid strategy, which modernizes and upgrades the grid to allow for easier integration of renewable energy sources.

The project has been selected to receive a $1 million grant from Minnesota's Renewable Development Fund, pending Minnesota Public Utilities Commission approval this spring.

Educating the Public

Clearly the most important thing that the leaders in the Carbon community can do right now is continue to educate the public on what is currently transpiring around the globe concerning carbon emissions, greenhouse gas and what they can do to contribute to the effort.

The size and depth of the growing carbon markets, the complexities of legislation, regulation and the ever changing impact that prices and policies have on our daily lives makes it necessary that we stay actively engaged in the process.

We can easily see that the best efforts of the developed countries to lower emissions and convert to alternative, greener fuels can be negated by a lack of that same effort by developing countries to do the same. It is therefore imperative that we work together on this as a Global Community.