Long term fiscal stimulus: a New Deal

Renewable energy and energy efficiency could be the foundation for long term economic sustainability.  And it could provide an outlet for government to provide substantial economic stimulus in the short term.

Flat panel TV helps global warming?

If it wasn't enough to find out that LCD televisions are power hungry beasts, now we find out that you're helping contribute to global warming, too.

Manufacturers use a greenhouse gas called nitrogen trifluoride to make the televisions, and as the sets have become more popular, annual production of the gas has risen to about 4,000 tonnes.

As a driver of global warming, nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, yet no one knows how much of it is being released into the atmosphere by the industry.

 I guess my old TV set is just fine...

Good energy policy: efficiency pays back 2 to 1

From wind power to biofuels, there's a lot of time and money spent on replacing our carbon-emitting fossil fuel power sources with renewable and green ones. But the cheapest and most effective way to save the planet (and money) is energy efficiency. And a new study finds that for every dollar states spent on energy efficiency in the past 15 years, it paid back two.

Support energy efficiency standards, it may be the easiest way to save the planet.

Homebuyers prefer glitz to green

A new survey of consumers shows that "energy efficiency" isn't a very popular home improvement option:

Just 69% of the 504 consumers polled in August by Shelton Group, a Knoxville, Tenn., marketing firm, would favor one house over another based on energy efficiency, down from 86% a year ago.

However, the other survey results are more complicated:

Consumers want proof that an energy-efficient home will save them money in the long run in order to justify the generally higher cost of such a home, Shelton claims.

Of course they do. That's kind of the point of energy efficiency, isn't it?

As it stands, ‘energy-efficient’ is consistently equated to ‘more expensive’ in the minds of consumers for products across the board,” Shelton said.

Well, that's probably because no one talks about "payback periods." If light bulb A costs twice that of bulb B, I may choose B. And then discover two years later that bulb A would still be working while B has been replaced. Think ahead, people.

When asked what they would buy if given an extra $10,000 to build a new home, 26% of survey respondents chose granite countertops, compared with 24% who favored an energy-efficient HVAC system. Twenty-one percent chose “additional tile or hardwood,” the same percentage who favored “upgraded or additional energy-efficient kitchen appliances.” (emphasis original)

This just makes me sad. Granite countertops are the latest home improvement fad, like stainless steel appliances or track lighting. Just wait 10 years and let's see what ends up being more valuable: those stone countertops or a high-efficiency air conditioner that gives you more disposable income...

Hilarious video about energy efficient lightbulb

Courtesy of Nevada Power: "the little dog wins."

1100 miles per gallon!

Looking for a more fuel efficient vehicle? How about one that costs less than $500, can fill up at the supermarket, and gets 1100 miles to the gallon? While some of the figures could probably use an update, the chapter from this report - Kilowatt Counter, 1975 - on "Testing Your Energy Awareness" (pdf) reveals that your bicycle is the best way to get good mileage.

From the report:

A non-athletic person of about 150 pounds can manage to leisurely maintain a speed of 11 mph on a 30-pound, 10-speed bicycle for an extended period of time. This person will need to add about 1500 Calories to his diet for each five hours he cycles, or about 300 Calories per hour. One gallon of gasoline equals about 30,000 Calories. Therefore, a bicyclist can travel 100 hours (30,000/300) on one "gallon". [100hrs/gal x 11 mph = 1,100 miles per gallon]

I should consult my bike-shop-working friend SPH or bicycling enthusiast EKM, but I doubt most bikes these days weigh 30 pounds. Of course, most Americans don't weigh 150, either.

Making efficient lighting pretty, too

The compact fluorescent has gotten a lot of flack for buzz, flicker, stark color, and slow warm-up.* So what's getting the lighting industry to take more interest in this energy efficient incandescent replacement?

See the video at Energy Roundup

*Note: these problems have largely been solved.

Saving the Planet? Or easing your conscience?

This story from the Minneapolis Star Tribune is meant to highlight how average people can help reduce carbon emissions and conserve electricity. And it's the perfect illustration of the incompatibility of the American way of life with living sustainably.

Susan Levere's 4-day-old refrigerator looks great in her family's newly remodeled kitchen. The stainless steel gleams, and the French doors are great for the occasional wide tray of food.

How about the fact that it uses only $1 a week in electricity?

"I don't want to be too sanctimonious about it," said Levere

I should hope not. That energy efficient model touted in the article is a behemoth at 25 cu. ft. Whirlpool, a company that sells refrigerators, says that "For an average family of four, 19-22 cubic feet is ideal." By why go small when you can go large? (note: Levere has one child at home - that's a family of three).

Shrinking the fridge down to the "ideal" size would mean a reduction in energy use from 562 kWh per year to 445 kWh, a 20% decrease.* Since Minnesota gets two-thirds of its electricity from coal, that's a significant decrease in carbon emissions.

Showering praise on folks who buy "efficient" oversize appliances is like the federal policy of providing tax credits to buyers of hybrid SUVs. This is energy policy?

*Computed from the average energy use figures for models in each size class on the Energy Star list.

The battle of the bulbs

The Washington Post has an interesting video story (and print story) on one of the main challenges to the spread of compact fluorescent bulbs in the United States: the "wife test." Energy-savvy husbands purchase efficient CFLs for the home, forgetting to clear the lighting change with their partner or sometimes surreptitiously replacing incandescent bulbs without warning. And the wife is not always pleased.

Despite (or because of?) the occasional marital discord sparked by bulb replacements, the United States clearly lags behind the developed world in adopting more efficient lighting. Japan's lights are 80% CFL, Germany's 50%, and even the UK has 20% of its lights replaced by CFLs. The United States has only switched 6%. This interesting tidbit suggests that female shoppers are less enthused about the bulbs whose history involved humming, flickers, long warm-ups, and steep bulb prices:

In groceries and drugstores, where 70 percent to 90 percent of light bulbs historically have been sold and where women usually have been the ones doing the buying, CFLs have not taken off nearly as fast as they have in home-improvement stores such as Home Depot and Lowe's, where men do much of the shopping.

I'd really like to see a scientific study on whether women are more likely than men to discern the difference in light cast by the two types of bulbs or if women have greater sensitivity to light color and quality. Because with over 100 billion kilowatt-hours (kW-hrs) used for lighting each year (and CFLs using a quarter of an incandescent) that's a lot of potential energy savings.

Why a roundabout could save you gas

My favorite green engineer is at it again, this time evaluating the energy efficiency of driving. Today, part II in the series examines the energy of accelerating and also discusses the benefits of roundabouts versus stop signs.

What's a roundabout? Get your answer in the image below:

When moralists forget economics

Energy Roundup's been doing a lot on companies "going green," and today they quoted a guy from the Ayn Rand Institute who took issue with companies becoming more environmentally sustainable:

In a debate on CNBC today, however, Peter Schwartz of the Ayn Rand Institute suggested Corporate America was only hurting itself, saying it was bending to the demands of environmentalists. “Businesses should be ashamed of themselves for doing it,” he said. “They shouldn’t appease enviromentalists any more than we should appease Islamists by making women wear veils.” (emphasis original)

I criticized Yahoo yesterday for its green plan, but that's because it was planning to spend money on carbon offsets. As noted in the Energy Roundup, Coca-Cola plans to reduce carbon emissions by becoming more energy efficient. For the amateur economists out there, that means they will save money. As I recall from my read of Atlas Shrugged, making money was pretty much the only thing a person should concern themselves with.

If Coca-Cola should be ashamed of improving energy efficiency, call me a socialist.

Carbon neutral - indulgences for the American "environmentalist"

From several sources, Yahoo! has announced that it's "going carbon neutral." A lot of companies are hopping on the green bandwagon lately, and this is the latest large company to say that it will offset its carbon emissions. That word - offset - is a crucial one.

Offsets are a lot like Catholics in the Middle Ages buying indulgences to sin. When Yahoo! "offsets" its carbon emissions, it will not have to improve server energy efficiency, switch to energy efficient lighting, or even put out a single ounce less of carbon. Instead, they'll go to a place like Carbonfund.org, which will sell them offsets for $5.50 per ton of carbon (a tenth of what studies show is the real cost of solving climate change). Carbonfund will then invest that money in alternative energy projects (like wind), energy efficiency projects, and reforestation. In theory, the money will work to reduce carbon emissions (or increase carbon sinks) somewhere in the world where it can be done cheapest. It's outsourcing for Kyoto and it has several drawbacks.

To be truly carbon neutral, Yahoo! would have to get all of its electricity from a carbon neutral source (such as wind power), would have to buy servers that were constructed in a carbon neutral fashion, and ensure that its employees came to work in a carbon neutral way.

Yahoo's "carbon neutral" commitment is sadly in harmony with attitudes of the American public about global warming. A new poll reveals that 60% now believe that global warming is a problem requiring action. But when it comes to making a personal commitment to solving it?

Most people are wary of any government effort to protect the environment by imposing restrictions on how they live, work or get around. A majority of those surveyed in the poll, conducted March 23-25, said they wouldn't want a surcharge added to their utility bill if their homes exceeded certain energy-use levels. And most Americans would oppose any laws requiring cars sold in the USA to dramatically improve their gas mileage or restrictions on development to try to limit suburban sprawl.

Because the carbon problem is so vast, it's silly to try to target policies to individual aspects of society such as utility bills or gas mileage, or providing "carbon offsets." Instead, the United States could implement a universal carbon tax. It would send a clear market-based price signal to all Americans that your lifestyle has costs and you will actually have to pay them. And a carbon tax cuts out the middleman. Do we really need a Carbonfund to manage climate change if we're all paying a fair price?

While effective carbon mitigation really requires national policy, if you want to start offsetting your carbon use (personally), get some tips here.

Energy efficient appliances not the lowest energy users

When is energy efficiency not equivalent to energy savings? When Americans keep believing that "bigger is better." In the same way that a hybrid Lexus can't compare in fuel efficiency to a conventional Honda Civic, Heather Rae at the Cleantech blog notes that shopping for energy efficient appliances isn't the same as looking for energy sipping ones.

Armed with the latest Energy Star data on refrigerators, she shopped around to find the best deal on an energy efficient appliance. Her discovery?

I opened the doors of every refrigerator in every one of those stores and read the average annual kWh consumption printed on their yellow Energy Guide tags. I consoled myself that I could not even consider purchasing a high-end refrigerator -- basically anything with side-by-side doors and a through-the-door water/ice dispenser, because, comparatively speaking, they consume too much electricity. That was my rationale, anyway. As with most everything in fixing up this house, the refrigerator would be a compromise of desire, quality and price...

...On outings to appliance stores, I carried a list of EPA's Energy Star-rated refrigerators...

...If I were to buy a refrigerator on the low end of the price spectrum (a top freezer model) it would more than likely be more energy efficient than all of the high-end Energy Star-rated side-by-sides and some of the bottom freezer models -- even if it did not carry the Energy Star label.... (emphasis mine)

Europe goes lighting efficient

As I continue to catch up on news I missed while on vacation last week, I found a story on Europe's plan to effectively phase out incandescent light bulbs by 2009. By using an energy efficiency requirement for bulbs, the new laws will not a priori ban the incandescent, but it will quickly go the way of the Dodo without substantial energy improvements. The writer notes that the de facto replacement - the compact fluorescent - contains traces of mercury, a toxic metal.

Two thoughts:

1. It's great that the law focuses on energy efficiency instead of a particular bulb technology. The problem of "government picking winners" is thus avoided.
2. Compact fluorescents are a major improvement over the incandescent, but I think it's a little naive to dismiss the mercury problem. Over its lifetime, a CFL will displace more mercury than it contains, assuming that a significant portion of its electricity comes from coal. However, with a strong push toward renewable and environmentally-friendlier energy coming along, it's silly to assume that's always going to be true. Conclusion: don't hesitate to buy a CFL rather than an incandescent, but don't stop looking for something better.

CFLs: higher efficiency, but a little Hg

Compact fluorescents are the new sliced bread of energy efficiency, with Wal-Mart committed to selling 100 million in the next year. But as I mentioned in that post on Wal-Mart, the Wall Street Journal Energy Roundup discusses the one drawback in mass producing CFLs - they contain mercury.

Mercury is toxic, which means that CFLs should not be discarded and landfilled (or incinerated) but should be recycled. But that's a big change for a population used to discarding burnt out bulbs.

The good news is that the CFL tends to reduce overall mercury emissions into the environment because reducing electricity use tends to reduce coal burning, which also releases mercury. But we still shouldn't be trading one mercury emission for another.

Update 10:23: For Anagram, who likes his solutions on a silver platter, some possible ways to deal with the mercury in CFLs:
1) Make a CFL without mercury (although one manufacturer says that's not possible)
2) Create an aggressive CFL recycling campaign
3) Your idea here, smarty pants
4) Pay for (1) - (3) with a small tax on light bulbs based on the quantity of toxic material

Al Gore's personal call to action

Before you hear the mainstream media account of Al Gore's energy usage, reported by the conservative Tennessee Center for Policy Research, here's a few thoughts offered by energy blogger Robert Rapier:

1. As the most prominent environmentalist in the US (and perhaps the world), it's a shame that Gore hasn't done more to reduce his ecological footprint. Even George W. Bush's Texas ranch is more environmentally sound.
   
2. Buying carbon offsets to combat global warming is like buying a hybrid SUV to reduce gas usage.
   
3. Gore's personal energy use should not detract from his message - global warming is going to be extremely costly and action is necessary now.
   

To Mr. Gore:
Preventing global warming starts at home - try some energy reduction.

To Matt Drudge and the rest of the conservative chattering class:
How's your energy usage? What have you done to solve global warming (other than accosting one leading activist for his hypocrisy)?

This hypocrisy call is valid, but let's not kill Paul Revere just because he bought some English tea, eh?

Government and technology - don't try to pick winners

This excellent post on Slashdot reminded me why letting government pick technology winners is dangerous. GE has just announced a more efficient incandescent light bulb, hoping to reap the benefits of increasing consumer focus on energy efficiency with an accepted technology. The bulb will allegedly approach the efficiency of a compact fluorescent over time.

So, instead of the recent proposals to ban the incandescent light bulb, an energy-conscious governing body could simply ban less efficient bulbs (as measured by lumens produced per watt consumed) or tax bulbs on a per watt basis. This lets the market help filter out the most effective way to meet the energy efficiency goal.

Lesson: let government set the goal and structure the market, not pick the market.

Other examples: renewable fuels mandates instead of ethanol mandates; renewable electricity mandates instead of wind mandates; higher CAFE standards instead of banning Hummers (though I'd be okay with banning those things anyway :-)

Update 2/27/07: Energista picked up the same story and came to the same conclusion - efficiency standards are better than bulb bans.

AskPablo: my personal energy efficiency checker

This guy is great. He has an engineering degree and could probably spend weekends watching Indianapolis pull out a victory over New England. Instead, he answers the age-old question: is it more energy-efficient to wash dishes by hand or via dishwasher?

With the help of his handy third-grade assistant, Pablo discovers that a dishwasher causes about 4 times the energy use (and carbon emissions) as hand washing. So ditch the dishwasher and pull on those sexy yellow gloves!

(Note: Pablo did not factor in the other cost of hand washing, however - a good moisturizer to keep your hands silky soft after the brutal bite of dish soap :-)

When capitalism meets electricity

For many years, so-called free marketers have insisted that the key to driving costs down, creating competition, and generally improving efficiency in the electric market means deregulation of energy companies. Of course, the Enron debacle and the 2000-01 California energy crisis have provided a sharp education that deregulation is not the best way about bringing free markets to electricity consumption.

Instead, it's time to try smart meters on a large scale. By allowing consumers to see the exact price they are paying for electricity at any given time, smart meters allow customers to tailor their electricity usage to off-peak hours, when utilities generally have excess capacity. The difference between peak and off-peak rates is 10 cents per kilowatt-hour for one Colorado utility, but can be as much as 40 cents per kwh (the average retail rate for electricity is around 11 cents/kwh).

In other words, consumers can choose to do laundry, wash dishes, or charge portable electronics at night, when rates are very low, and minimize their use during the day. Not only do households save money, but utilities can more effectively balance their load, reducing the need for new power plants. That's a win-win.

Is big boxing CFLs the future of green?

I've posted recently about Wal-Mart's newfound interest in environmentalism, but some of the news stories are starting to lose that veneer of skepticism about the company's motives. A recent clip from the New York Times notes that Wal-Mart wants to sell 100 million compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) by 2008. While that's still fewer than the 350 million regular incandescent bulbs sold in 2005, if Wal-Mart reaches their goal they'll have increased total sales of CFLs by 50% and save a bunch of energy to boot. Wal-Mart is pushing the bulbs by using them in in-store lighting fixtures, posting educational information near the bulbs, and even giving them prime eye-height real estate on the shelves. (no doubt that they're also applying their famous price pressure on suppliers to drive costs down and drive production to China).

While I sincerely applaud Wal-Mart's effort to make CFLs the primary lighting source for Americans, CFLs still contain some mercury, which makes them hazardous waste. And while Americans might be quick to embrace a cost-saving bulb, they may be less focused when it comes time to dispose of "burnt out" bulbs. 10 years from now, assuming that about half of bulbs are disposed of properly (which may be optimistic), we'll be dumping about 200kg of mercury into landfills.

This EPA fact sheet (pdf) points out that the relative level of mercury is small compared to other household sources. Furthermore, by reducing electricity use (which typically comes from coal power in the U.S.), overall mercury exposure is actually less using a CFL than an incandescent bulb because we burn less coal. But as CFL use increases - as no doubt it will - I hope Wal-Mart tells its suppliers to cut the mercury as well as the costs.