Choices & Kyoto

Every day we make choices in how will we interact with the world. We choose to drive, bike, walk, or commute in order to get where we need to go. Sometimes we do not think of the choices we make as an option. Yet they are, in most cases, a choice made.

I choose to drive to work because I do not want to bike two miles back up the hill I live on after work. I have biked many times, but it basically comes down to laziness. I would rather spend the $2 it takes for a roundtrip at the end of the day than the time to get back up hill. Yet, some days I do bike, as it is great exercise.

I did the math, and this saves something like 2.25 lbs of carbon emissions each time I bike rather than drive. This doesn't seem like much, but that is about 11lbs of carbon per week, or around 600 lbs a year by biking rather than driving, not to mention the exercise, 130 gallons of gasoline = ~$500, and the cost of car insurance and maintenance.

However, there are some other choices I have made consciously in order to reduce my own greenhouse gas emissions. When I last purchased a computer I made sure it was one of the new efficient power supplies. This one is >80% efficient, meaning less than 20% of the electricity coming in is lost to other factors such as heat. Not only did I need a smaller power supply because of this (saving me money), but it also extends the computers life because heat = death for computers.

Rather than turn up the heat, I put an extra blanket on the bed, or wear warmer clothing.

While these are small changes, they all add up. If half of all drivers turned one day a week of driving to biking, we'd get cleaner air, and save a lot of carbon.

When looking at the bigger picture, if the US had ratified the Kyoto Protocol and we had to reduce emissions by 20%, reducing transportation emissions by half would exceed the Kyoto Protocol targets. More or less that would be cutting commuting time in half, everyone carpooling to work (so half the number of cars on the road), biking every other day (or walking, taking mass transit), or any number of other ways.

We could also look at swapping out the infernal internal combustion engine for something more efficient - like plug-in hybrids. Most people aren't driving more than 100 miles in an average day. The engine could get you farther, while the battery could keep you commuting around town. This also has better efficiency on many, many levels.

The first is that the energy grid already connects most of us to power plants. All in all, power plants can be very efficient, somewhere around 50%. Transmission lines lose around 3% getting energy to our houses. An an electric motor for driving is somewhere around 90% efficient. The power plant can also use a variety of energy sources - coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, solar, hydro, biomass, wind. The list goes on and on, and many sources are cleaner than burning gas in your tank (or can do it more efficiently than your car).

(.5*.97*.9) = ~44% of the energy getting in coming out as kinetic energy to push the car. It may even consist entirely of green energy, or energy you produce at home (if you had a wind turbine, or a battery you charged with solar during the daytime). It also is highly secure, unless there were attacks against all the power plants in the US. Good luck taking them all out. It also sends that revenue back into the US rather than overseas.

Now, compare this to the internal combustion engine. It gets somewhere between 1% and 5% (I'll be generous) of energy consumed to propel the actual passenger. Off the top of my head, 20% of the energy produced actually goes towards pushing the car.

In sum, we all make decisions. Biking, walking, mass transit, driving, are all choices we elect to take. Even when driving the method and mechanism for driving are alterable to more fuel-efficient options. Swap from a SUV to a crossover SUV or a regular car. Move from a heavy truck to a light truck.

Or find your own way. When I said I don't like biking back up my hill (also because part of the trip is on the highway, something I do not like to do on a bike), I also didn't mention that I do not drive all the way to work. I park at the bottom of the hill where there are good walking trails, and I walk the other mile to work. So in a given day, I drive about four miles round trip and walk about two miles round trip.

I choose to make my own path towards a healthier self and lower energy consumption. What's yours?

"Drill, baby, drill"

Yesterdays speech and reaction by Republican party members, resulting in the chant of "Drill, Baby, Drill" reveals the continued delusion by Americans that drilling and cheap oil is possible again. This is not limited to just the Republican party, but to Democrats as well who view offshore drilling as the solution to America's energy problem.

It also shows the American solution - build, buy, or bust. After 9/11 the solution was keep spending. Today's oil solution is keep sinking drill bits into the ocean to suck up more oil.

I believe that this is fueled by the misunderstandings and odd interpretations of the term "peak oil". Rather than "peak oil" it should be called "peak cheap oil". There is a veritable ocean of oil underneath us, but concerns about recoverability (aka economics) dictate what the oil companies can recover.

In other words, a deposit might have 1 billion barrels available at $10, another billion at $100, and 3 billion at $200. If price is at $10, there are 1 billion barrels "in reserve", if $100, it becomes 2 billion, and so forth.

Two standards set what is recoverable. Price and Cost. Price changes with market. Hence today there is more "recoverable" oil, all else held equal than ten years ago with oil under $100. Cost changes with technology. As technology improves either harder to reach oil can be reached, or the cost of extraction decreases. This also makes it more economically manageable to recover.

However, what we should instead be looking at is how to reduce our consumption of what we already get. Improving home efficiency and automobile efficiency is one of the better ways to do this. Overall fleet economy standards, particularly for light trucks and SUVs, will reduce American dependence on foreign oil. Even better would be an all-electric + all-gas hybrid for SUVs and Trucks. Plug it in for going around town, yet the capacity to use gas when on long trips.

We are getting there with electric cars and hybrids, but this is tackling the market that is already fuel efficient. Moving from a ~35MPG civic to a ~45MPG hybrid civic is only a 30% increase in efficiency. However, improving an SUV or a truck from ~20 MPG (I'll be optimistic on this number) to 30MPG is a 50% increase. More realistically, older SUVs and trucks probably get 15MPG.

Nat Skinner

First Posting

Within this blog I will attempt to enter my thoughts on topics related to energy security and the environment. Any comments or posts are welcome!

Nat Skinner