The Hard Look

A Growth Opportunity

While the rich nations of the earth spin out of control over climate change, the poor nations are about to erupt, and in Haiti food riots have already begun.  Fact is, we have exported everything but agricultural self-sufficiency.  On top of that, we are shifting resources from food production into fuels production.  A fifth of the nation’s corn crop is now used to brew ethanol for motor fuel, and as farmers have planted more corn, they have cut acreage of other crops, particularly soybeans. That, in turn, has contributed to a global shortfall of cooking oil, as well as corn meal.

You can expect to see an expansion in agriculture and an increase in farm subsidies.  In some perverse way, this may make sense because it is far less expensive to subsidise farmers to ensure enough food for the world than it is to put down regional food riots and wars.  Oh - and there is the moral element.  I'm not prepared to take responsibility for starving the poorest people on earth so that I can feel good about my 85% ethanol fueled car. 

I note in passing, by the way, that many environmental activists quietly rejoice over the potential of millions (billions?) of starving people.  They think we need population control and food riots prove their point at the same time that it reduces population.  These activists are very sick people and they constitute the leadership of most of the national environmental movement.  But we've known about that for years, so I don't suppose any of us should be particularly surprised about that.

In any case, here are a couple of news reports that show the mainstream media is beginning to get the picture.  NYT and the Telegraph.

Climate Change Emergency Plans

The sad fact is -- we have already passed the point of no return on global warming, if . . .

The "IF" is the point.  If the only way we intend to address the warming associated with climate change is to reduce carbon emissions, we are too late to prevent catastrophic ocean rise and massive shifts in local climates.  Since carbon emissions reduction seems to be all anyone is willing to discuss, then the rationalists among us suggest doing one additional thing - develop an emergency plan to cool the planet once we fail to stop it from reaching critical levels.  Here's a commentary on this issue.  "Emergency Preparedness for Climate Change."  It's a quick read.

Wise County Coal

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is now considering granting a Clean Air Act pre-construction permit to Dominion Power for a new coal-fired powerplant in Wise County.  This plant will provide needed jobs to a job-strapped part of our state.  It will provide the Commonwealth needed electrical generation capacity - most of which is needed by folks in Northern Virginia.  It will be the cleanest coal-fired plant in the state and its priority pollutants will have no adverse effect on northern Virginia.  Indeed, the company modeled pollution effects to within 35 miles of Fairfax County, showing no adverse effect.  So, what's the problem?

The problem is coal.  Better said, it is that the plant will produce CO2 emissions.  That's what happens when one combusts coal, natural gas, trash (yes we burn that for energy too).  So what's the problem with CO2?  Well, it is a greenhouse gas and the general consensus is that the world needs to cut back on CO2 emissions.  Indeed, the nation's foremost global warming scientist, Jim Hansen, claims we need to reduce our CO2 emissions to near zero, and within the next 12 years. 

Well, that isn't going to happen.  We don't have the capacity to stop using existing coal-fired power plants.  Look at what happened in Florida just this week when a single power generating plant had to be taken offline on an emergency basis.  The whole electrical grid in Florida crashed. 

So, if we don't want coal, what's left?  Well, not wind power and not solar power.  We don't have enough places to reliably generate enough wind power to equal what we have in coal power now.  In fact, we don't even have enough places to reliably generate enough wind power to equal the capacity of the proposed Wise County facility.  Our alternative is nuclear power.  It is clean (no traditional pollutants).  It doesn't emit CO2.  We have uranium deposits in the state, so coal miners can become uranium miners.  And about a third of the state's power now comes from nuclear, so we know how to run the plants safely, efficiently and reliably. 

If someone wants to make a statement about the Wise County facility, they have but one option - recommend using nuclear instead of coal.  Any other recommendation would be disingenuous on its face.  Fairfax County's Chief Executive pulled the letter that was supposed to go before the Board of Supervisors which would have cast some doubt on the wisdom of building the Wise County plant.  He probably did not do it on the basis that controlling CO2 is a responsibility the courts have now stated is pre-empted by federal law, so that it isn't a local or even a state duty.  He probably did not pull the letter because it failed to recommend nuclear as a replacement for coal (it didn't).  He probably pulled it because it make Fairfax County look like they didn't care about people who need jobs in Wise County, and because the position is a political non-starter in Richmond.

So, it looks like the COG is going to be given the opportunity to say they don't like the proposed plant.  I will bet you dollars to donuts they won't mention nuclear either.  But the COG doesn't really care about the politics in Richmond or the people who need jobs in Wise County.  They don't even care about Northern Virginia's need for reliable electricity.  Afterall, the District gets its electricity from Alexandria and from Maryland, and Maryland doesn't need Dominion Power at all. 

The question is whether Fairfax County's representatives to the COG on this issue will go along with the crowd or take a principled stand on the issue.  Time will tell.

Costs of solar photovoltaic panels substantially eclipse benefits

Costs of solar photovoltaic panels substantially eclipse benefits, says study by UC Energy Institute director

Berkeley — Despite increasing popular support for solar photovoltaic panels in the United States, their costs far outweigh the benefits, according to a new analysis by Severin Borenstein, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and director of the UC Energy Institute. “Solar photovoltaic (PV) is a very exciting technology, but the current technology is not economic,” said Borenstein. “We are throwing money away by installing the current solar PV technology, which is a loser.”

In his January working paper, “The Market Value and Cost of Solar Photovoltaic Electricity Product,” Borenstein also found that, even after considering that the panels reduce greenhouse gases, their costs still far outweigh their social benefits.

Borenstein’s paper is online (pdf alert).

The bottom line, Borenstein argues in his paper, is that solar PV panels are not ready for widespread installation…. He favors more state and federal funding for research and development. “We need a major scientific breakthrough, and we won’t get it by putting panels up on houses,” he said….

His analysis deconstructs the argument that solar panels produce power at the location of the end-user and therefore can reduce the costs of transmission and distribution infrastructure investments. Examining 26,522 solar PV systems in California, Borenstein found they are not concentrated in locations where they would reduce transmission congestion and reduce the
need for investment in transmission infrastructure.

“Solar PV is not clustered in the most valuable locations,” his paper concludes.

Borenstein took his analysis a step further by calculating the discounted net present value (a financial tool to calculate the value of a dollar in the future compared to its value now) of power produced by a 10 kilowatt solar photovoltaic system and then compared that to the cost of installing and operating such a system over its lifetime. He found the cost for an installation ranges from nearly $86,000 to $91,000, while the value of the power produced ranges from $19,000 to $51,000….

Given that a coal-fired electricity generation plant produces about 1 ton of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour, Borenstein estimated that the price of greenhouse gas reductions would have to range from about $150 to $500 per ton of greenhouse gases to make the current solar PV technology a worthwhile investment when greenhouse gas reductions are considered.

But Borenstein noted that policymakers are considering a far lower price - $20 per ton of greenhouse gases - as the maximum that industry could be charged in proposed tradable emissions permit programs.

The Staff Got it Right - Dump Cool Counties Goal

The 2007 Annual Report on the Environment, prepared by the County's Environmental Quality Advisory Council, states that the county staff recommended against participation in the Cool Cities program.  In part, this was because of the silly goal of trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an unreachable amount.  Even today, after all the hoopla about the replacement program ("cool counties"), the staff remains unpersuaded that the goal is within reasonable reach or a meaningful part of the program.

The staff was (and is) correct in not serioiusly embracing this silly goal.  The fact is, the goal doesn't matter.  Here's why. 

Solar Radiation Management & Global Warming

The Virginia Military Institute asked me to present a paper at their recent Conference on Virginia Energy (COVE) dealing with the implications of assuming that the only way to deal with global warming is to reduce greenhouse gases, and what alternatives could be used besides these extremely high cost approaches. 

I ended up making two presentations.  Both explain why it is too late to rely exclusively on greenhouse gas reduction, even if we could afford it.  One discusses the non-regulatory approach that would rely on solar radiation management - essentially a sunscreen to be used over the polar regions to prevent melting of the ice sheets.  This approach would prevent the catastrophy of 23 foot ocean rises at a cost so small, it is considered "costless".  You can find that presentation here:  Download schnare_nonreg_alternatives.ppt

The second paper explains why reliance on, and vigorous implementation of greenhouse gas reduction is basically a racist approach with progressive tax-like implications that will further divide the rich from the poor.  It also shows that the Virginia Energy Plan is sensible, non-racist and not progressive, at least as it stands today.  You can find that presentation here: Download schnare_environmental_justice.ppt

Senate Testimony on Climate Change - Updated

At the invitation of Senators' Boxer and Inhofe, I have prepared testimony for delivery before the Senate's Committee for the Environment and Public Works on Wednesday, September 26th.  The Committee seeks input on the relationship between man-made climate change and harm to the Chesapeake Bay.

I testified that the oceans will not rise and flood the bay because before that can happen, before the Greenland Ice Sheet can melt, someone is going to employ "geo-engineering" to turn down the global temperature.  They will do that by replicating what volcanos do.  They will put small reflective particles into the troposphere that will create a sunscreen that will stabilize the global temperature at a level that will prevent melting of the glaciers and thus prevent a rise in ocean level.  They will do this because it will be one one-thousandth less expensive than trying to control emission of greenhouse gases.  They will do this because it means they will be able to grow their economies, develop their nations and still not suffer the worst effects of climate change.  They will do it so that they, and the rest of the world, will have a few centuries to find a way to transition to non-carbon energy sources.

I also testified that the current legislative proposals, and worse, those offered by mainline environmental groups who raise the alarm about potential catastrophies, will not prevent global warming because nations like China, India and the developing nations of Africa and South America refuse to give up their hopes for a style of life like that we enjoy in the U.S., Europe and the developed nations of Asia.  Since a strategy of relying exclusively on reduction of greenhouse gases is doomed to failure, the U.S. would be better served to use a two-part strategy.  They should work with other nations to ensure a cheap, sensible, incremental and safe application of geo-engineering as a first response to reduce global temperatures.  And, they should work with the international community to support research needed to find cost-competitive non-carbon energy alternatives. 

During the hearing, Senator Mikulski asked me to prepare a Framework for implementation of geo-engineering and submit that for the record.  That appears below as "Supplemental Testimony" and lays out a five year program to research and implement an international response to global warming using geo-engineering in the form of solar radiation management and is based on work done at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Lawrence Livermore Labratory and Standford University's Carnegie Institute.

Here is the testimony.  Attached to it are seminal papers by Scott Barrett (Johns Hopkins) and Alan Carlin (U.S. EPA) explaining further geo-engineering and why it will supplant the unaffordable and fatally flawed greenhouse gas reduction strategy.

Download schnare_senate_epw_testimony_9262007.pdf

Here is the supplemental testimony, the Framework for Implementation of Geo-Engineering

Download schnare_supplemental_testimony_a_framework_for_geoengineering.pdf

Why “Cool Counties” Is Irrelevant

The Chairman of Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors is running for reelection on the shoulders of his “Cool Counties” initiative, the principle element of which is to reduce green house gases by 80% over the next 46 years. Indeed, he unilaterally committed the county to this goal and now trumpets it on the county’s web pages.    Gerry Connolly promotes himself through this action by pandering to the general public ignorance on global warming.  This may reflect legitimate political self-preservation, and perhaps even political acumen, but it does not reflect honest statesmanship, especially because Connolly already knows that the Cool Counties goal is bankrupt.  The public deserves the truth on these issues and hence this posting.

In a paper soon to be published, Scott Barrett explains why we are not facing a global emergency, why we need not act precipitously and without sufficient regard to the economic consequences, and why we will never reach, nor need to reach an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases.  So who is Scott Barrett and why should anyone listen to him?

Dr. Barrett is the Director of the Energy, Environment, Science & Technology Program, and a Professor of Environmental Economics & International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.  If you care about degrees, he graduated summa cum laude in resource economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and earned his doctorate in economics at the London School of Economics.  He is also on the board of directors of the Climate Policy Center, a more or less centerist group that gets its money from foundations, many of which also fund climate alarmists and some of which fund climate deniers (if either of those terms mean anything).

In other words, this is the person to whom the political left goes for advice.  In still other words, it’s ok to listen to him because he is not any kind of climate change “denier”.  So what does he have to say?  In essence he makes three points, together which explain why Cool Counties is irrelevant:

1.      The world will never cooperate enough to reach an 80% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2050.

2.      Geoengineering by seeding the atmosphere with reflective particles, in the same way as does a volcanic eruption, is virtually “costless”, has immediate results, and extends indefinitely the time we have to move from a carbon based economy to a non-CO2 producing energy.

3.      Because the costs of geoengineering are so small, because the technology already exists, and because the economic consequences of increased warming are unacceptable to any of the major developed and developing nations, someone is going to do this with or without the rest of the world’s permission.

Here are a couple of important quotations from his paper, entitled, “The Incredible Economics of Geoengineering”.  [When the paper has been posted to the web, I’ll provide a link here.] 

Geoengineering is the deliberate modification of the climate by means other than by changing the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases.  It is a concept that needs to be taken seriously.

It has been widely suggested that global mean temperature should not be allowed to increase by more than 2º C. At a concentration level of 550 parts per million CO2, mean global temperature is likely to rise 1.5º to 4.5º C.   Put differently, to be confident (but not certain) of limiting temperature change to 2º C, concentrations would have to be capped at a level far below 550 ppm—to a level more like 380 ppm. This goal is essentially unattainable. Geoengineering might therefore be an indispensable ingredient of a policy aiming to ensure that mean global temperature rises by no more than 2º C.

Like volcanic eruptions, geoengineering would change the color of the sky. Volcanic particles whiten the sky by day (an environmental loss, presumably, though one that is already being caused by atmospheric pollution), but make sunsets and sunrises more vibrant (Crutzen 2006).

Nordhaus concluded that offsetting all greenhouse gas emissions today would cost about $8 billion per year—an amount so low that he treats the geoengineering option as being costless. According to Teller et al., engineered particles would be even cheaper; they estimate that the sunlight scattering needed to offset the warming effect of rising greenhouse gas concentrations by the year 2100 would cost just $1 billion per year. Keith thinks this is an optimistic estimate, but says that, “it is unlikely that cost would play any significant role in a decision to deploy stratospheric scatterers because the cost of any such system is trivial compared to the cost of other mitigation options.”

Taking into account the effect of engineered particles on scattering harmful UV radiation, Teller and his colleagues calculate that this health-related benefit for the U.S. alone would exceed the total cost of geoengineering by more than an order of magnitude. Deliberate climate modification would also allow carbon dioxide concentrations to remain elevated—an aid to agriculture.

Just as important as the cost of geoengineering relative to emission reductions is the nature of these two options. Geoengineering constitutes a large project (Schelling 1996).  By means of this technology, a single country, acting alone, can offset its own emissions—and those of every other country. By contrast, mitigating climate change by reducing emissions requires unprecedented international cooperation and very substantial costs. Stabilizing atmospheric concentrations requires a 60 to 80 percent cut in CO2 emissions worldwide. In the years since the Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted, global emissions have risen about 20 percent. Even if the Kyoto Protocol is implemented to the letter, global emissions will keep on rising. So will concentrations.  Theory points to the difficulty in achieving substantial and wide scale cooperation for this problem, and the record to date sadly supports this prediction.

According to Nordhaus and Boyer, climate change might cost the United States alone about $82 billion in present value terms. Using a three percent rate of discount, this is equivalent to an annual loss of about $2.5 billion. If the United States cut its emissions, it could reduce this damage somewhat. If it turned to geoengineering, it could eliminate this damage. If geoengineering is as cheap and effective as is claimed, the U.S. might prefer the geoengineering option. So, of course, might other countries.

Notably, Dr. Barrett is neither the first nor the only individual to discuss geoengineering as the most likely candidate for moderating global warming (whether man made or not). See, for example, Joel Schwartz’s comments on National Review Online  , or Cruzen’s seminal paper.  Indeed, as early as 1992, the National Research Council concluded geoengineering would be effective and inexpensive.  Dr. Barrett places the period at the end of the sentence – concluding that it geoengineering is inevitable. 

We may now politely say goodbye to the 80% goal and instead concentrate on means to reduce energy costs, improve the local environment and move to new, non-carbon energy sources.

The Moose Did It

Apparently, the Scandinavian moose emits 2,100 kg of methane a year, equivalent to the green house gases emitted by an automobile trip of 13,000 km.  Here's the report.  Thank goodness hunters shoot 35,000 of them each year.  That's like taking 40,000 cars off the road. 

Whew!  Thank goodness they've got that sorted out!

Walking Away From Cool Counties?

On August 6^th, the Fairfax County Board directed its staff to work with outside interest groups to explore the desirability of statewide tax incentives that might encourage the widespread application of green building practices.  It was a clever move to appear to be green while avoiding the cost of being green.  Here’s why.

On March 13, 2007, the Virginia Legislature passed a bill, subsequently signed into law, creating tax incentives for green building practices -  but a county that wanted to promote these green building would have to bear the cost as the tax losses would come out of the county’s tax base.   Hence, the Fairfax County Board proposal.  They want a “statewide” incentive program that takes the cost out of the state revenues, not their own. 

Here’s the policy trade-off:  Roads and Medicare versus fireman, police men and affordable housing.  The first two are state responsibilities, the last three are the county’s.   

Here’s an example of what this really means:  If Fairfax County used the same system as Maryland, a nice little building worth only $12.5 million would reduce tax revenues by ONE MILLION DOLLARS.  That equals one mile of bike lanes or about 10 affordable housing units.  The Board has demanded both, and can get both as long as the state pays the freight for global warming. 

Of course, the State Legislature figured this out before the Fairfax County Board did, which is why they will respond to any proposal from the County with the simple refrain – we gave you authority to create these tax breaks so if you want them, go ahead and use them. 

It’s another way of saying, if you want a Cool County, then you are going to have to pay for it yourself.  Sort of a “walk the walk” kind of thing.  Wonder whether the Fairfax County Board is going to walk that walk and take a big hit on revenues by creating the tax incentive for green buildings, or whether it’s more hot air?