Tag Archives: energy

What Does Sarah Palin Have Against the Department of Energy?

by ansonsten Posted on September 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sarah Palin says she wants to eliminate the Department of Energy. This is a perennial conservative hobbyhorse, so let’s dig in a little bit. Just what does this bureaucratic tax sinkhole do, anyway? Here’s a brief summary:

Program
Cost
Comment
Nuclear weapons R&D and cleanup
$18 billion
Can’t do without this, can we?
National laboratories (Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Yucca Mountain, etc.)
$5 billion
This is mostly basic science, including accelerators, fossil/nuclear/renewable energy research, and nuclear waste disposal. I don’t think Palin has anything against this, does she?
Dams and hydro power
$0
Does Palin want to sell off all the dams we built over the past century? If not, we might as well pay for their upkeep by selling the hydro power they generate.
Energy efficiency
$3 billion
Perhaps this is what she wants to cut? Republicans hate energy efficiency.
Miscellaneous
$3 billion
Good luck finding anything of substance to get rid of here.

Hmmm. There might be some bits and pieces that Republicans object to here, but not much. So why all the hate for the Energy Department? Is it just because it was created by Jimmy Carter? Nah. Who would be childish enough to hold a grudge like that?

In any case, even Republicans agree that we need to do the vast majority of this stuff. So even if Palin managed to kill off the Department of Energy, its functions would just get disbursed to other departments. Would that make any difference? I suppose it means one less chair at cabinet meetings, but it’s hard to see the point otherwise.

One intriguing possibility, raised by Brad Plumer, is that Palin was actually thinking of the Interior Department. He makes a good case. But Palin told Jake Tapper, “I think a lot about the Department of Energy, because energy is my baby.” That being so, it seems unlikely she’d make a mistake so boneheaded. Right?

POSTSCRIPT: It’s worth noting that this is the same con behind nearly every call to eliminate the Department of ______. It sounds dynamic! It cuts the budget! It slashes red tape!

But departments don’t matter. Functions matter, and they just go somewhere else if their department is eliminated. Unless a presidential candidate is willing to specify exactly which functions they want to defund, they aren’t serious. They’re just hawking snake oil to the rubes.

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What Does Sarah Palin Have Against the Department of Energy?

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10 Steps To Save Money With An Energy Efficient Home

by KendrickNorthfie Posted on September 2, 2015

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10 Steps To Save Money With An Energy Efficient Home

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Gamers guzzle a crazy amount of energy

by PrinceKilfoyle8 Posted on September 1, 2015

Gamers guzzle a crazy amount of energy

By on 1 Sep 2015commentsShare

The average gaming computer guzzles as much energy as three refrigerators — three refrigerators! And since gaming isn’t complete without snacks, we should probably make that four.

That’s because gaming computers are to your average PC what this tricked out monstrosity is to your mom’s Acura. Hardcore gamers enhance their machines with amped-up processors, fancy computer monitors, and fast graphics cards, so battling virtual monsters can end up requiring a lot of computing power. Here’s more from Motherboard:

A new study published in the journal Energy Efficiency finds that worldwide, gaming computers suck down $10 billion worth of electricity (or 75 terawatt hours) a year. Given that sales rates are projected to double by 2020, that figure is expected to do the same. The study finds that while gaming computers comprise just 2.5 percent of personal computers worldwide, they account for 20 percent of global computer energy use.

Evan Mills, a UC Berkeley energy researcher and the study’s co-author, calculates that “a typical gaming computer uses 1,400 kilowatt-hours per year, or six times more energy than a typical PC and 10 times more than a gaming console.”

Worldwide, “it’s like 25 standard electric power plants,” Mills tells me in an email. Imagine that: 25 massive power plants, the kind that power entire cities, running their electricity directly to people playing Counter-Strike and League of Legend. “It’s also like 160 million refrigerators, globally. Or, 7 billion LED light bulbs running 3 hours per day.”

Fortunately, gamers can cut down their energy consumption by as much as 75 percent by just “switching some settings and replacing a few components,” Motherboard reports. For more information, interested gamers can check out Greening the Beast, a website that Mills runs with his son, Nathaniel.

So the next time you’re trying to destroy your opponents’ nexus in League of Legends, think about all those emissions that you’re responsible for and consider making a few changes. And if you want to be really popular among your virtual teammates, tell them to follow suit. (Grist is not responsible for any virtual harm done to your avatar for telling others to green their beasts.)

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Gaming Computers Use a Truly Astonishing Amount of Energy

, Motherboard.

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Gamers guzzle a crazy amount of energy

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Obama Is a Climate Hypocrite. His Trip to Alaska Proves It.

by Julienn20I Posted on September 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

On Monday morning President Obama headed to Alaska—the front lines of climate change—for a trip the White House is calling “a spotlight on what Alaskans in particular have come to know: Climate change is one of the biggest threats we face, it is being driven by human activity, and it is disrupting Americans’ lives right now.”

Problem is, those words fall flat when compared with Obama’s mixed record on climate. The widely publicized trip comes at a delicate moment for the president. Barely two weeks ago, his administration gave Royal Dutch Shell final approval to drill for oil offshore from Alaska’s northwest Arctic coast—not exactly the sort of thing you’d expect from someone who professes to be “leading by example.”

The leases that allow Shell to drill in the Arctic were awarded by the George W. Bush administration, and the president had limited options to block them. Still, as Think Progress notes, Obama could have outright canceled Shell’s lease, or begun a process to declare the region a marine protected area, making future leases nearly impossible. Neither of these actions would be easy to do, but either would have sent a powerful message to industry: Starting now, climate change concerns trump energy exploration, period.

Climate activists vociferously opposed the approval of Shell’s permit: Last month a group of protesters in kayaks briefly blockaded an Arctic-bound Shell support ship while it was in a Portland, Oregon, port. In recent days Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic candidate for president, has also voiced her opposition.

One progressive activist group, Credo Action, has called the unfortunate juxtaposition of Obama’s words and actions his “Mission Accomplished” moment, in reference to Bush’s declaration of victory in the Iraq war. I agree.

“It’s such an odd own goal to first hand Shell a shovel and then go for a visit,” climate activist Bill McKibben told me today. Earlier this year McKibben wrote in the New York Times that the president was guilty of “climate denial of the status quo sort” should Shell’s drilling permit be approved. “Even in this most extreme circumstance, no one seems able to stand up to the power of the fossil fuel industry. No one ever says no,” McKibben wrote.

After decades of delay, scientists now say the world—especially countries like the United States with historically high emissions—needs to immediately embark on a radical path of truly bold action on climate change. So far, Obama’s plan for carbon cutting, despite being loudly trumpeted by the administration, has been middling at best. For many environmental activists, Obama’s approval of Shell’s Arctic drilling permit is the icing on an extremely hypocritical cake.

Credo’s Elijah Zarlin, who worked for Obama’s 2008 election campaign, calls the rhetoric from the White House surrounding Obama’s visit to Alaska “stunningly brazen,” given the go-ahead for Shell to drill in the Arctic.

“The hypocrisy just speaks for itself when you hear him saying things like ‘this is our wakeup call,’ given his record on oil, gas, and coal extraction,” Zarlin said. “His words on climate change, which are powerful, just ring more and more hollow. Ultimately, it just makes me sad, because I believed in the guy.”

On the trip, Obama will become the first sitting American president to visit the Alaskan Arctic. He’ll travel to the coastal village of Kotzebue, where Shell has some drilling equipment stationed, to view the effects of rising seas and melting permafrost firsthand. He’ll also film an episode of Running Wild With Bear Grylls, in which he will discuss climate change and receive a “crash course in survival techniques,” according to a statement from NBC.

The effects of global warming in Alaska continue to accelerate. This year’s off-the-charts wildfire season was a record-breaker, burning through even the permafrost. Just last week, another startling “haul-out” of walruses was observed as thousands of animals were forced ashore by the lack of sea ice in the Alaskan Arctic, not far from where Obama will visit. On Sunday the administration announced that Alaska’s Mt. McKinley would be officially renamed Denali. What the president didn’t emphasize enough: Denali is losing its glaciers at a rapid clip.

In his weekly address on Saturday, Obama addressed the Shell controversy, saying “we don’t rubber-stamp permits.” But what the president seems to miss is that environmental activists aren’t as concerned with the potentially devastating impacts of an oil spill in the Arctic as the message it sends to the rest of the world: Bold action on climate change doesn’t look so different from the status quo. In reality, the scale of action that climate science demands is far beyond what Obama has put in place. America can’t solve climate change on its own, but it could offer a truly heroic leader. It just doesn’t seem like Obama is the person for the job.

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Obama Is a Climate Hypocrite. His Trip to Alaska Proves It.

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A Hawaiian clean energy plant makes electricity from seawater and ammonia

by HansNorthcote Posted on August 25, 2015

A Hawaiian clean energy plant makes electricity from seawater and ammonia

By on 25 Aug 2015commentsShare

The ocean is often considered to be the final frontier for energy, whether we’re talking about Arctic oil reserves or giant floating wind turbines. Now, a 40-foot tall tower on the Big Island of Hawai’i will harvest the oceans’ energy using a method that has renewable energy advocates drooling. It’s part of a new research facility and demo power plant that uses seawater of different temperatures to power a generator via turbine.

Most sources of energy (even the naughty ones!) originate from the sun’s rays, and the technology at the demo plant — a joint project of Makai Ocean Engineering and the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority — is simply experimenting with a different way to capture them. Oceans cover upward of 70 percent of the earth’s surface, which means that 70 percent of Earth-bound sunlight strikes the ocean — and that makes for a lot of unharnessed heat. The Makai project extracts this thermal energy from the warmed ocean water.

Popular Science has the story:

The plant uses a concept called Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). Inside the system is a liquid that has a very low boiling point (meaning that it requires less energy to evaporate), like ammonia. As ammonia passes through the closed system of pipes, it goes through a section of pipes that have been warmed by seawater taken from the warm (77 degrees Fahrenheit), shallow waters. The ammonia vaporizes into a gas, which pushes a turbine, and generates power. Then, that ammonia gas passes through a section of pipes that are cooled by frigid (41 degrees Fahrenheit) seawater pumped up from depths of around 3,000 feet. The gas condenses in the cold temperatures, turning back into a liquid, and repeats the process all over again. The warm and cold waters are combined, and pumped back into the ocean.

Despite the cool factor, the type of OTEC technology powering the Makai plant isn’t the most efficient out there. It takes a good chunk of electricity to pump in (and out) all that deep seawater. The demo plant currently uses a 55 inch-wide pipeline pumping 270,000 gallons per minute in order to operate. There are also relatively few ocean sites — off the U.S. coast or otherwise — that allow for the depth and temperature gradients necessary for ideal OTEC conditions. But above all else, the Makai plant is a research facility, and teams of engineers are constantly fiddling with the heat exchangers in the name of efficiency gains.

Of course, the thermal plant would also be more efficient if it were actually offshore, closer to the chilly ocean depths. Making the expansionary move could boost the plant’s capacity to powering upwards of 120,000 homes — 1,000 times as many as Makai expects the demo plant to power today. The energy company projects that a single full-scale offshore plant would prevent the burning of 1.3 million barrels of oil annually.

Watch the rather patriotic video above for more info.

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A new energy plant in Hawaii generates power from ocean temperature extremes

, Popular Science.

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A Hawaiian clean energy plant makes electricity from seawater and ammonia

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This Democrat Wants to Double the Gas Tax

by Emilia38Kex Posted on August 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was first published by CityLab and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The federal gas tax that pays for America’s highways hasn’t been raised in decades, but that doesn’t stop some determined lawmakers from trying. The latest effort comes via Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, who has introduced a plan to raise the tax four cents a year for four years then index it to inflation so it remains effective over time. The move would ultimately bring the fuel tax to 34 cents a gallon—nearly double the existing rate of 18.4 cents.

That might seem like a big bump, but even a gas tax twice as high as the current one would be incredibly low by global standards. A US Department of Energy review of fuel taxes among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in 2011 placed the US just about at the bottom of the pack. Kyle Pomerleau of the Tax Foundation recently updated these figures to reflect 2013 tax rates via OECD data—and found very little change.

We’ve charted Pomerleau’s findings here:

CityLab

The US rate of 53 cents a gallon reflects the federal gas tax as well as the average state tax. Adding Carper’s 16 cents wouldn’t budge the US position way at the back of the pack—nor would doubling the entire 53 cent average. As the numbers stand, lawmakers would have to raise the average gas tax at least eight-fold for Americans to pay the steepest rate in the world.

In that context, Carper’s plan seems like quite the bargain. A higher gas tax would help stabilize the Highway Trust Fund, which has staved off bankruptcy in recent years through a series of short-term funding patches and dubious transfers from the general taxpayer fund. And 34 cents is about what the gas tax would be today if it were indexed to inflation anyway, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The legislation even comes with a tax credit to reduce the hardship high fueled costs cause for the car-dependent middle class.

So what’s not to like? The short answer if you’re a federal lawmaker: the entire discussion. Official routinely dismiss gas tax hikes out of hand; as Paul Ryan said this June, We’re not going to raise the gas tax.” As James Surowiecki recently wrote in The New Yorker, the opposition begins with anti-tax conservatives but extends to liberals who fear political reprisal—creating a bloc of Congressional inaction that defies general bipartisan support for road maintenance, as well as common sense:

Indeed, the refusal of Congress to raise the gas tax is the ultimate expression of how reflexive and irrational the resistance to taxes has become. Opposition to higher income taxes has some theoretical justification: higher marginal rates discourage people from working more and investing. Seen in one light, they’re a penalty for success. But no such argument exists against the gas tax: all it does, in essence, is ask drivers to pay for the roads they use.

There are arguably better ways to get drivers to pay for roads—a per-mile driving fee chief among them—but none with the ease of implementation and immediate funding relief that even a modest gas tax hike like Carper’s would provide. Americans should one day strive to pay the full social cost of driving. Until then, recovering enough money to pay for basic highway upkeep is the least that good government can do.

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This Democrat Wants to Double the Gas Tax

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Power plant emissions hit a 27-year low — and Obama’s plan hasn’t even kicked in yet

by GeraldoMatters Posted on August 6, 2015

Power plant emissions hit a 27-year low — and Obama’s plan hasn’t even kicked in yet

By on 6 Aug 2015commentsShare

Politico’s Michael Grunwald, among others, has been arguing that Obama’s Clean Power Plan is not actually as ambitious as some analysts make it out to be. The plan, which aims to cut emissions from the electric sector, is “pretty weak,” he argues, largely because emissions are already falling markedly. Today there’s a new data point to support that argument: Greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants hit a 27-year low in April 2015, the most recent month for which data were available.

The Energy Information Administration, which tracks energy sector data as part of the Federal Statistical System, reported on Wednesday that the electric sector released 128.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that month — the lowest since April 1988.

The EIA breaks down the numbers:

In any year, April is typically the month with the lowest carbon dioxide emissions from the electric power sector, mainly because of mild weather, as low heating and cooling demand are reflected in low overall electricity demand. Two fuels, coal and natural gas, account for almost all the carbon dioxide emissions from the electric power sector. In April 2015, electricity generation from both coal and natural gas fell from their March values, but because coal fell more than natural gas (18% versus 6%, respectively), generation from natural gas surpassed generation from coal in April. …

A longer historical perspective shows more significant changes in the electric power sector fuel mix. Comparing April 1988 to April 2015 (27 years), natural gas consumption in the sector more than tripled, renewable energy consumption more than doubled, nuclear energy consumption increased 47%, and coal consumption decreased 17%. Electricity generation has become less energy and carbon intensive over time. Compared to April 1998, April 2015 generation in the electric power sector was 44% higher, but the associated primary energy use and carbon dioxide emissions increased by only 33% and 4%, respectively.

See the visualization below to get a better sense of the emissions trend. (You can mouse over for monthly values.)

The EPA estimates the state-centric plan will cut emissions from the power sector by 32 percent of 2005 levels by 2030. As Grunwald and other analysts point out, power plant emissions have already fallen by about 15 percent since 2005, getting us halfway to the administration’s goal before the plan even kicks into gear.

Another notable low point from April 1988: Celine Dion pulled off a win at the Eurovision Song Contest for “Ne partez pas sans moi.”

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Monthly power sector carbon dioxide emissions reach 27-year low in April

, Energy Information Administration.

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Power plant emissions hit a 27-year low — and Obama’s plan hasn’t even kicked in yet

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Power plant emissions hit a 27-year low — and Obama’s plan hasn’t even kicked in yet

Fracking sites might be leakier than we thought

by EldonChauvin Posted on August 4, 2015

Fracking sites might be leakier than we thought

By on 4 Aug 2015commentsShare

I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, this story is about a man named Touché. The bad news is, Touché thinks we could be drastically underestimating the amount of methane that leaks out of industrial fracking operations.

Of course, a lot of people think a lot of things. But Touché Howard is different. He’s a semiretired gas industry consultant who also happens to be the patent holder on the very measuring device that he thinks could be malfunctioning. Here’s the gist from The New York Times:

The problem, according to the author of the paper, Touché Howard, is that the backpack-size tool uses two sensors: one for low levels of methane emissions and one for higher levels. As methane levels rise beyond the capacity of the first sensor, the device hands off to the second, high-level sensor.

Mr. Howard found that under some conditions, unless the sampler is carefully and frequently recalibrated, the switchover from the first sampler to the second can fail. When that occurs, the device does not measure the amount of methane that the second sensor would capture, and so it underrecords methane leakage rates.

Howard published his concerns in the journal Energy Science & Engineering. He wrote that unless there’s a backup device operating at the same time, there’s no way to account for the missed methane, which, for especially big leaks, could be ten or a hundred times the amount that gets reported.

If Howard’s claim holds true, it calls into question a major study on methane leakage funded by the Environmental Defense Fund back in 2013. David T. Allen, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Texas and lead author on that study, told The New York Times that he thinks their results are still valid:

“There may be issues with some of these instruments, but we tested our instruments pretty thoroughly and when we went out into the field we had multiple instruments, all of which gave us information,” he said. Alternate measurement methods were used at some sites, he said, and “we didn’t see any evidence that we were missing any large numbers.”

Meanwhile, the company that makes the instrument has already said it will update its user manual to recommend frequent recalibration, The New York Times reports.

Methane is a nasty greenhouse gas. It doesn’t stick around in the atmosphere as long as CO2 does, which is good, but it’s 72 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year time period, which is bad. So if the fracking industry doesn’t clean up all these leaks, it’s going to stop looking like such a nice little bridge to the clean energy future.

Source:
Methane Leaks May Greatly Exceed Estimates, Report Says

, The New York Times.

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Fracking sites might be leakier than we thought

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"Lawless and Radical": What the 2016 Candidates Think of Obama’s New Climate Change Plan

by YolandaFoust Posted on August 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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President Barack Obama just unveiled the final version of rules that crack down on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants—the most significant contributor to global warming in the United States. “Climate change is not a problem for another generation, not anymore,” Obama said in a video released on Sunday. But not everyone agrees. Here’s what some of the leading 2016 presidential candidates think of Obama’s Clean Power Plan:

Marco Rubio

On Sunday, at an event hosted by the Koch Brothers, the Florida senator slammed the plan. “So if there’s some billionaire somewhere who is a pro-environmental, cap and trade person, yeah, they can probably afford for their electric bill to go up a couple of hundred dollars,” Rubio said, according to The Huffington Post. “But if you’re a single mom in Tampa, Florida, and your electric bill goes up by thirty dollars a month, that is catastrophic.” Experts disagree with Rubio’s suggestion that the new rules will be costly for ratepayers. As Tim McDonnell explains, “even though electric rates will probably go up, monthly electric bills are likely to go down, thanks to efficiency improvements.”

Jeb Bush

The former Florida governor released an official statement, calling the plan “overreaching” and “irresponsible.” Bush argued that the new rules would raise energy prices while also trampling on the powers of state governments. Bush went so far as to say that the plan would “hollow out our economy” for the sake of addressing climate change.

Mike Huckabee

The former Arkansas governor has been adamant about his opposition to the Clean Power Plan, saying that it would “bankrupt families.” On Monday he doubled down on his opposition to the plan, characterizing it as the president’s “carbon crusade”:

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"Lawless and Radical": What the 2016 Candidates Think of Obama’s New Climate Change Plan

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President Obama Just Finalized His Plan to Fight Climate Change

by FloreneGKQN Posted on August 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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President Barack Obama has been more vocal than any previous president about the need to combat climate change, and on Monday his administration is releasing a package of rules that will likely be the most important—and most controversial—piece of his climate legacy.

“Climate change is not a problem for another generation,” Obama said in a video released early Sunday morning. The Clean Power Plan, as the rules finalized Monday are known, is “the biggest, most important step we’ve ever taken to combat climate change.”

Coal-fired power plants are the country’s biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions and the chief culprit driving global warming. They’re responsible for even more CO2 pollution than all the nation’s passenger vehicles. The new plan aims to slash those emissions by requiring every state to reduce the carbon “intensity” (that is, emissions per unit of energy produced) of its energy sector. By 2030, the plan is expected to slash the carbon footprint of the nation’s power sector by 32 percent below 2005 levels—a more rigorous target than the 30 percent reduction outlined in a draft version of the rules released last summer.

In the final draft, the administration has relaxed deadlines for meeting the new carbon targets—states will now have until 2018 to propose a carbon-cutting strategy and until 2022 to implement it, according to leaked versions—a serious concern for environmentalists who have stressed the necessity of immediate action to limit climate change. And although the targets might sound ambitious, they might not actually be too different from what many states would achieve without them, thanks to a boom in clean energy that is already underway. Moreover, many of the changes required by the rules will play out under Obama’s successor, leaving open the possibility that they could be undermined by a climate change-denying president.

Still, the significance of this official crackdown on the gas behind global warming is hard to overstate, said David Doniger, director of the clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“The very fact that they’re regulating carbon pollution from power plants is a historic step, a huge step,” he said. “This is part of using the existing law to turn the US from doing nothing, to playing a leadership role to curb climate change.”

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President Obama Just Finalized His Plan to Fight Climate Change

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