Portland State University
Center for Transportation Studies
Spring 2010 Transportation Seminar Series
Speaker: Lewisom Lem, Principal Consultant and Climate Change Practice Leader, Jack Faucett Associates
Topic: Promising Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Strategies for the Transportation Sector: Low Carbon Fuels, Leveraging Transit with Smart Growth, and Ports and Goods Movement Opportunities
When: Friday, April 16, 2010, 12:00 – 1:00pm
Where: PSU Urban Center Building, SW 6th and Mill, Room 204
28 responses to “Greenhouse Gas Strategies”
Probably, periodic crises in the Middle East will continue to keep petroleum and fuel prices high, thus propping up the market for fuel efficient and alternative energy automobiles.
[Moderator: Antithetical and off-topic pro-drilling, pro-coal-to-oil comment removed. – Bob R.]
[Moderator: Debate-over-existence of human-caused global warming and alleged scientific fraud/conspiracy theories removed. This is not an existence-of-global-warming debate site. You’ve been told this dozens of times before, JK. – Bob R.]
The thread topic is greenhouse gas reduction!!
Thanks
JK
[Moderator: Yes, it is. When you’re ready to post something helpful and on-topic about how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, please do so. – Bob R.]
There are only two things that can significantly (by a measurable level) reduce greenhouse gas, carbon, or whatever the next green fad might be:
1. Stop having children.
2. Drastically cut the population that is already here.
I propose the following strategies in order to meet these goals:
1. Provide a large financial incentive to people who get permanently sterilized. Remove any incentives that exist that encourage breeding and marriage.
2. Provide an even larger financial incentive for people to commit suicide. Yes, it sounds morbid, but the greenest thing that any one person could ever do would be to stop breathing.
I would expect hundreds of millions of people to jump at an opportunity like this, unless of course, being “green” is merely a fad.
And I get accused of social engineering? :-)
Maybe a little, Chris, but a program like I suggest would cost much less then any cap n trade scheme and be 100% voluntary.
Those who truly care about GHG and the environment would do their part and reduce the population, while those who could care less could continue to live however they want and whatever impacts they may have would be offset by the drastic drop in numbers.
Its win-win no matter how you look at it :)
Not to be rude, Anthony–and I’m not in the slightest suggesting that you should consider your own proposal–but what would your price be (for you or your estate) to undertake any of your proposals?
And for #1–are only the childless eligible, or can us dads who are done having kids get gubmint money for a visit to the urologist for a snip-and-stitch? :) (Similar question for moms, of course)?
High mpg diesel hybrid autos ( VW has a 170 mpg model for 2013, so they say) or, conceivably, Ford could hybridize its 65 mpg Fiesta–to get 80-90 mpg—-would make a bio diesel industry more practical. Or the ethanol-boosted Ford V-8, Bobcat, could introduce high mpg to heavy trucks.
Probably Europeans will continue to be the early adopters—although better heeled people in developing world areas would buy these too. So even if the US doesn’t buy these, our intransigence would be offset by others, on the global scale.
Perhaps the EPA needs to relax its ppm standards for vehicles rated over a certain mpg—such as 50 mpg.
As long as Iran remains in rogue status, Hezbollah or Hamas threatens Israel, Sunnis and Shiites are at loggerheads, Hugo Chavez continues to be cranky—-there are plenty of chances the price of gasoline will be high—or higher. I have been warned to expect 4.00/gallon gas by later this summer.
Now… on to “carbon reduction strategies” in other lifestyle choices.. About those big, drafty natural gas and heating oil-consuming residences…..Do they get a free pass, while car drivers bite the bullet?
If the narrow issue is “carbon reduction strategies” in transportation, then yeah, the big drafty homes get a pass because — other than the trip-generating aspects of their location — they don’t have much to do with transport.
Getting this region off of coal while increasing electrical production will be critical to create a transport system built around electric cars and plug-in hybrids, as well as an expanding network of trolley-buses and electrified trains. In Oregon and Washington, we can do a lot with aggressive development of “bio-coal” — torrefied wood and agricultural waste to feed the Boardman and Centralia coal-fired plants, reducing and eventually phasing out coal from our regional electrical grid.
If this region could convert a pair of coal-burning plants to run on locally-produced and processed biomass, we could then build new bio-coal plants that generate additional electricity to fuel our state-wide vehicle fleets. Added bonus: producing the fuel could actually remove carbon from the atmosphere by using some of the product as fertilizer, helping turn the Northwest into a massive carbon sink.
Of course the ONLY proven, utility scale, carbon free source of low cost electricity is Nuclear. France is already almost all nuke.
Wind and solar are both much more expensive than coal or Nuclear.
Wind & solar both go away at night. And frequently during the day, requiring expensive 100% backup
We will probably never have enough biomass to satisfy our current needs.
Thanks
JK
The transportation “solution” to CO2 is to do nothing.
The feds have already mandated 35 mpg cars, so in a few years the energy consumption of cars will be much less than today’s 22 mpg which already beats most transit systems.
To increase transit usage will only take money from other measures and, even if it succeeded, would be unlikely to reduce CO2. For guidance we can look at the biggest transit systems in the country and find thy actually use more energy than cars! They use much MORE that the newly mandated 35 mpg cars. See http://www.portlandfacts.com/top10bus.html
Further, transit will be a hard sell for most people because of its inconvenience and slowness – transit commutes actually take about double the time of car commutes. ( http://www.portlandfacts.com/commutetime.html )
NO action is required to encourage electric cars, because we are already on the path to a practical electric car with unlimited range! Of course that path is the plug in electric hybrid that runs the first few miles each day on pure electric. As batteries get better, the pure electric range will get longer and our oil consumption will go down, naturally (without reordering society to some planners wet dream of how others should live.) At all stages of this -progression, long trips are possible merely by stopping at an EXISTING gas station, instead of crackpot schemes like swapping batteries, fast charging stations OR requiring two cars (one for trips and one for short commutes.)
As to high density saving energy – Is there any credible evidence of this? (And I don’t mean corporate propaganda pieces from the smart growth or transit industries.)
Besides, who wants to raise a family in a pearl district condo bunker? And have the kids play on the streetcar tracks? OOPs, I forgot, we are supposed to quit having children, so that modern civilization can wither away and the remainder can go back to a hunter gather life style with a life span of about 30 years.
Finally the biggest advantage of doing nothing is that is saves money and does not disrupt people’s lives and is more likely to succeed anyway.
Thanks
JK
Well, cooling may be on the way already from volcanic eruptions. This could happen anytime, as soon as a major volcano blows up. The current Icelandic eruption may cause some local cooling over Scandinavia, though hardly any to make a difference globally. That would take an eruption on the order of Mt. Pinatubo (Phillipines, 1991).
If Iceland’s active volcano gets even more active, Icelanders and air travelers won’t be the only ones impacted. Gases from past large volcanoes have actually lowered Earth’s temperatures, triggered lung ailments, caused acid rain and thinned our protective ozone layer.
The Eyjafjallajokull volcano isn’t there yet.
But the potential is there. The new eruption is 10 times more powerful than another nearby last month, threw up a cloud of ash nearly seven miles high and closed down air traffic across northern Europe.
Three previous eruptions of Eyjafjallajokull are known in the 1,100 years of Iceland’s recorded history. The most recent began in December 1821 and lasted for more than a year, then a neighboring volcano erupted in 1823. Other eruptions include one around 1612 and 920.
The article goes on to say:
Indeed, Pinatubo is known to have cooled the planet by 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit.
Hey, but saving money on fuel is fine. And people who don’t want to drive can take the bus.
Besides, who wants to raise a family in a pearl district condo bunker? And have the kids play on the streetcar tracks? OOPs, I forgot, we are supposed to quit having children, so that modern civilization can wither away and the remainder can go back to a hunter gather life style with a life span of about 30 years.
So because some people want kids, everyone should? I don’t have kids and don’t want them. Why should I pay for someone elses’ kids? Why do you want to deny me of the type of housing I want?
JK, amazingly, got something right for once: plug-in hybrids and electric cars will reduce the need for fossil fuels as long as the electricity is generated by water, wind, sunlight, vulcanism, tides, waves, plants, or fission.
We will probably never have enough biomass to satisfy our current needs.
Right now 90% of our crops go to feed heavily subsidized livestock. And we have a massive problem with agricultural overproduction in this country, address with billions of dollars a year in federal subsidies. Somehow, I think we’ll have no trouble at all producing enough biomass to feed all of our coal plants, as long as we find a cost-effective way to torrefy it into compact, energy-dense biochar. “Unreliable” solar and wind would work beautifully there, since the process could run on a start-and-stop basis as long as you get a fairly consistent volume of biochar over the long run.
As to high density saving energy – Is there any credible evidence of this?
David Owens makes a pretty damn persuasive case. If you want the short version: when you walk to shopping and restaurants and pretty much everything in your life, and subway-pool to work with a couple thousand of your neighbors, you use minimal energy in transportation. And when your home is insulated by homes sharing walls on three sides, plus overhead and underneath, you use damn little heat compared to a sprawling, detached single-family dwelling. And when you’re living in 600 square feet, you don’t buy as much useless crap to full up your living space.
who wants to raise a family in a pearl district condo bunker? And have the kids play on the streetcar tracks?
Judging by the demand-driven prices in the Pearl, a whole LOT of people want to live there. If there wasn’t any demand, all those condos would be going cheap. The people I know who are raising families in the sprawling suburbs aren’t out there for the yards or the space; they’re out there because it was all they could afford. The dense, close-in neighborhoods they’d prefer to live in simply cost too much.
As for where kids can play in the Pearl, have you ever dropped by Jamison Square on a warm day?
Douglas K:
JK, amazingly, got something right for once: plug-in hybrids and electric cars will reduce the need for fossil fuels as long as the electricity is generated by water, wind, sunlight, vulcanism, tides, waves, plants, or fission.
JK: And which of wind, sunlight, vulcanism, tides, waves, plants have actually provided utility quantities of energy? (That’s like 100-1000 mw, 24, 7 with >80% up time)
Douglas K: Somehow, I think we’ll have no trouble at all producing enough biomass to feed all of our coal plants, as long as we find a cost-effective way to torrefy it into compact, energy-dense biochar.
JK: Lets see some numbers like land area to continuously feed a 1000 mw plant.
Douglas K: “Unreliable” solar and wind would work beautifully there, since the process could run on a start-and-stop basis as long as you get a fairly consistent volume of biochar over the long run.
JK: How does one “start-and-stop” a plant making energy from biochar as the wind and clouds come and go?
Douglas K: David Owens makes a pretty damn persuasive case. If you want the short version: when you walk to shopping and restaurants and pretty much everything in your life, and subway-pool to work with a couple thousand of your neighbors, you use minimal energy in transportation. And when your home is insulated by homes sharing walls on three sides, plus overhead and underneath, you use damn little heat compared to a sprawling, detached single-family dwelling. And when you’re living in 600 square feet, you don’t buy as much useless crap to full up your living space.
JK: Nice little line of BS from a greenie writer. There is probably only ONE thing we need to know about him:
A former resident of Manhattan who has lived for many years in a rather remote Connecticut town, Owen finds in New York City, Manhattan in particular, a model that the rest of the country could profitably emulate. A city of “extreme compactness,” New York “is the greenest community in the United States.” (Bold added) (http://www.amazon.com/Green-Metropolis-Teach-Country-Sustainability/dp/1594488827)
He is a hipprocrite living on a farm in Connecuttt while telling others to live in a 600 sqft rat cage. That is so typical of city planners!
Douglas K: Judging by the demand-driven prices in the Pearl, a whole LOT of people want to live there.
JK: Good point. Most people cannot afford to live in high density – it simply costs too much! Would you have people give up feeding their kids or give up paying for their kid’s college so that they can save energy living crammed into 600 sqft. (They could save even more energy in prison.)
Douglas K: The people I know who are raising families in the sprawling suburbs aren’t out there for the yards or the space; they’re out there because it was all they could afford. The dense, close-in neighborhoods they’d prefer to live in simply cost too much.
JK: Now you re hitting on just one of the realities of life. WHO PAYS? Where would the money come from to cram everyone into your high density dream condos? BTW Many people prefer to live away from the congested, polluted city with the bad schools.
Douglas K: As for where kids can play in the Pearl, have you ever dropped by Jamison Square on a warm day?
JK: Oh, did they finally replace some of that concrete jungle with grass? Nice million dollar fountain, though. Think they’ll ever plant real trees (like you see in many backyards), instead of those scrawny bushes?
Most of all, the Pearl district shows what you can do for a neighborhood with $200 million taken from the rest of the city’s schools, social services, fire and police services through tax subsidies, including urban renewal. http://www.portlandfacts.com/ur/priceofur.htm
The reality is that there is not enough money it the county for everyone to live as you would like others to live.
Now if we all had 1-3 acres, we could generate ALL of our own energy, live off of collected rainwater and our garden produce and handle waste locally – in other words have ZERO carbon footprint and damn near zero effect on our surroundings. Exactly the goals of the green zealots, but accomplished exactly opposite of their rhetoric. Makes you think that the real reason for their recommendations is to feed money to the developer weasels that get rich off of tax subsidies and (their) land supply restriction causing their land values to increase.
Thanks
JK
Rest of comment:
Douglas K: As for where kids can play in the Pearl, have you ever dropped by Jamison Square on a warm day?
JK: Oh, did they finally replace some of that concrete jungle with grass? Nice million dollar fountain, though. Think they’ll ever plant real trees (like you see in many backyards), instead of those scrawny bushes?
Most of all, the Pearl district shows what you can do for a neighborhood with $200 million taken from the rest of the city’s schools, social services, fire and police services through tax subsidies, including urban renewal. http://www.portlandfacts.com/ur/priceofur.htm
The reality is that there is not enough money it the county for everyone to live as you would like others to live.
Now if we all had 1-3 acres, we could generate ALL of our own energy, live off of collected rainwater and our garden produce and handle waste locally – in other words have ZERO carbon footprint and damn near zero effect on our surroundings. Exactly the goals of the green zealots, but accomplished exactly opposite of their rhetoric. Makes you think that the real reason for their recommendations is to feed money to the developer weasels that get rich off of tax subsidies and (their) land supply restriction causing their land values to increase.
Thanks
JK
OOPS
I noticed that JK doesn’t bother refuting that density is extremely energy efficient — he just launches a preposterous ad hominem attack at the writer. As if math varies depending on the street address of the mathematician.
As for how “start and stop power” would work to produce biochar — use solar power (including direct light and heat, solar cooker style) augmented by wind power (electricity) to create the very high temperatures needed to torrefy the biomass. All you need is to maintain high temperatures in a well-insulated industrial cooker to torrefy the wood. If the power is intermittent, it won’t matter as long as the heat stays high. Turn off an oven at 350, keep the door shut, and think about how long it takes to cool. If the cooker cools down a bit, the wind picks up and you heat it up again. (You also could burn a little biochar to augment heat from time to time, as needed.)
The point is, “unreliable” energy would keep the temperatures high while the wood “cooks” into biochar. And if there’s an absence of both sun and wind for a while, production slows, and then starts up again when sun and wind resume. Low productivity and high productivity balance out, and some of the plant’s output can even feed the plant. As long as there’s enough coming out of the “oven” over the long run to keep a nice stack of bio-coal piled up at the coal-burning power plant, that’s all that matters.
In the long run, that lets us “even out” fluctuating wind and solar energy into steady, reliable power. Turn wood and agricultural waste (both also in intermittent supply, varying by season) into char at an uneven rate. The char stores the energy for weeks or months, and is then turned into electricity as needed to meet day-to-day demand.
You know … just like coal, only without the environmentally destructive mining and CO2 emissions and black lung disease and stuff.
Douglas K: I noticed that JK doesn’t bother refuting that density is extremely energy efficient
JK: So is prision. What ‘s you point?
If your point is that we should all live in high density then why are so many of the proponents of high density living actually living in low density? Why should we place energy saving above our comfort and ignore its high cost? The writer didn’t – he chooses to live in low density. That is why it is appropriate to criticize the messenger. You will note this is pointing out a hipprocracy not attacking his religion or something irrelevant.
Douglas K: As for how “start and stop power” would work to produce biochar
JK: I asked how your scheme would produce utility scale power 24/7/365 with good uptime and how much land area would it take to feed each 1000 mw plant.
If you can’t answer those questions, you have no idea if it is a practical substitute for today’s power generation.
Douglas K:In the long run, that lets us “even out” fluctuating wind and solar energy into steady, reliable power. Turn wood and agricultural waste (both also in intermittent supply, varying by season) into char at an uneven rate. The char stores the energy for weeks or months, and is then turned into electricity as needed to meet day-to-day demand.
JK: How does the cost of this added step, and all the solar panels and wind mills, affect the cost of electricity?
BTW have you looked at the efficiency of turning electric power (the wind input) into carbon then burning it to make electricity? Seems to me you will be throwing away most of energy. Why insert the biochar+power plant in-between the wind gen & the power grid?
Thanks
JK
JK expounds: So is prision.
So much for objectivity. You could just as easily have said “so is a luxury hotel” when comparing per-capita energy consumption. But you’re welcome to your own subjective evaluation.
However, notwithstanding past efforts at simulating a prison experience, the market just doesn’t seem to be clamoring to purchase a simulated prison experience, but (recent price fluctuations, slackening of demand, and larger economic issues aside) people still seem to be willing to pay to live in condos in urban neighborhoods. If you view that as being in a “prison”, fine, don’t buy one.
Having visited a detention facility in the past (as a grand juror on tour, not as an involuntary guest), I can objectively say that the people I know who live, work, or shop in dense urban neighborhoods seem a great deal happier with their surroundings than do those incarcerated folks I’ve encountered.
So much for objectivity. You could just as easily have said “so is a luxury hotel”
That was a choice of an emotionally loaded comparison.
You know, like choosing the word “livable” to represent high density with congestion so severe, it is difficult to drive,
Thanks
JK
edited to fix link
A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation:
From the Oregonian article I linked to previously: PGE estimates it would need about 2 million tons of torrefied biomass a year to operate Boardman
Land put into hemp yields an average of nine dry tons per acre per year. Even if you loose half of that weight in moisture when turning it into pellets, that’s 4.5 tons per acre. 450,000 acres in hemp should do it.
Oregon has 62 million acres, 15.5 million of which is exclusive farm use. Less than 1% of our state’s land area, or less than 3% of our “exclusive” farmland, should be sufficient to feed Boardman.
I seriously doubt that “biomass supply” is any limitation on the US producing its own energy.
like choosing the word “livable” to represent high density with congestion so severe, it is difficult to drive
People pay through the nose to live in that kind of density. They wouldn’t do that if it wasn’t highly livable. That it isn’t your preferred lifestyle doesn’t invalidate the objective fact that many, MANY other people find it preferable. Why is this so difficult for you to comprehend?
I think Jim should relocate out of the city of Portland if he hates it so much! I did!
No, he should not. Although JK and the rest of us argue about many things, it is absolutely the right of anyone in a free society to advocate for change in their own community.
Douglas K. Says: From the Oregonian article I linked to previously: PGE estimates it would need about 2 million tons of torrefied biomass a year to operate Boardman
Land put into hemp yields an average of nine dry tons per acre per year. Even if you loose half of that weight in moisture when turning it into pellets, that’s 4.5 tons per acre. 450,000 acres in hemp should do it.
Oregon has 62 million acres, 15.5 million of which is exclusive farm use. Less than 1% of our state’s land area, or less than 3% of our “exclusive” farmland, should be sufficient to feed Boardman.
I seriously doubt that “biomass supply” is any limitation on the US producing its own energy.
JK: Now multiply that 450,000 acres by 3.5 to get the amount to replace both major CO2 sources, coal + gas. Now you are at 1.6 million acres, 2.6% of Oregon land or 9.7% of our “exclusive” farmland. BTW, we have big fights over allowing people to live on another % or two of Oregon land
Fuel Sources for Electric Power Generation in Oregon in 2005:
Coal: 35.4 Trillion BTU
Gas: 89.9 Trillion BTU
From: http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/states/electricity.cfm/state=OR#fuel
JK: You didn’t address the energy loss going from electric wind to char to electricity.
JK: You didn’t address the Cost of bichar. Will it raise electric prices?
Thanks
JK
It seems my estimate was high. According to the graphic provided with the Oregonian article, 90,000 acres in giant cane, producing two crops a year, would be sufficient to feed the Boardman plant.
Torrefaction requires high temperatures. Probably some of it can be done with cogeneration at any industrial facility that generates waste heat in excess of 800 F. If cogeneration is available, the marginal cost of cooking up “bio-coal” should be quite low. Creating and powering a special facility to process cane into char would be where the cost is.
Solar power towers using molten salt would generate very high temperatures, and generate electricity directly. The technology is experimental and not yet market-ready, although per the Wikipedia article, it is expected to be at a competitive 5.47 cents per kWh by 2020. At that point, we could build dozens of them. Once in place, the high temperatures could also be used for biomass torrefaction, producing fuel for nearby coal-fired power plants. Perhaps if solar power towers could be doubled up with effective torrefaction, they might be market-ready a lot sooner.
Most likely, biochar would be no more expensive than coal once the infrastructure to produce it was in place, although I’m sure a lot will depend on how labor-intensive the processing is. A lot of the cost of coal power is in transporting the fuel from the mine to the plant. Producing “bio-coal” close to the facility would be a lot less expensive in that respect.