Apple HQ, Cupertino, California

Back in 1965, IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson, Jr, wrote, in IBM’s Basic Beliefs & Principles,

“We accept our responsibilities as a corporate citizen in community, national, and world affairs; we serve our interests best when we serve the public interest…. We want to be at the forefront of those companies which are working to make the world a better place.”

Today, IBM says “Sustainability is no longer an option. Sustainability is an imperative.” IBM is focused on making data centers and supply chains more efficient, and providing their customers with tools to become less unsustainable (IBM green blog). The European Commission awarded IBM for energy efficiency at 27 data centers (IBM Press Release).

However, it looks to me that Google and Apple are one or two steps ahead of IBM. Google has invested $915 Million in solar arrays, which should be 1.0 to 1.5 MW. Apple is putting a 5MW solar array on the roof of it’s headquarters in Cupertino, pictured above, and described here on Treehugger and here on 9to5mac. Apple is also using solar and biofuel to power it’s new data center in South Carolina (article in Renewable Energy World). Essentially:

• A 100-acre, 20 megawatt (MW) solar array, supplying 42 million kWh of energy each year.
• A 5 MW biogas system to come online later this year, providing another 40 million kWh of 24×7 baseload renewable energy annually. Apple claims this will be the largest non-utility-owned fuel cell installation in the US.
• Combined, that’s 82 million kWh/year of onsite renewable energy generation at the facility.

For more details, see the 2012 Apple Facilities Report.

Apple’s building may be a derivative design of the Widex headquarters, in Allerød, Denmark, described on Widex home page,  here. The Widex building is a ring that surrounds a large atrium courtyard to be planted with grass, flowers and trees and is according to Widex,”designed to be both pleasant to look at and be in…. and environmentally friendly

Heat for the building will be supplied by a geothermal system, where groundwater is used like a heat reservoir; excess heat in summer can be stored and used when needed during winter. Our ambition is to reduce energy consumption by 75 percent compared to traditional technology.

Apple, Google, and IBM report high profits. Their stock prices are also high, perhaps demonstrating the correlation between doing well and doing good.

Does Freedom of Speech imply the responsibility to speak honestly – even when what is not what people want to hear?  John Ehrenfeld, on his blog, in discussing the US Presidential Campaign, noted (here),

“[M]y concerns and consternation at the virtually complete absence of truth from [a GOP debate in New hampshire]. Not only was the truth gone, but the participants appeared almost gleeful about speaking freed from the constraints that truth-telling creates…. I recall an interview with Eric Fehrnstrom, Mitt Romney’s campaign manager, who said, in response to a question about the untruths being uttered by Romney, that this was none of his concern; it was up to the media to provide the facts.”

I addressed this in a wry manner with “Ridin’ the Magic Carpet” on XB Cold Fingers.

Richard Seireeni, on the Chelsea Green site (here), suggests that our biggest challenges, perhaps threats, come from outsoucing manufacturing of American branded consumer goods to China.

And in the New York Times, Paul Krugman explains how America is not a corporation (here).

For one thing, there’s no simple bottom line. For another, the economy is vastly more complex than even the largest private company.

Most relevant…, however, is … giant corporations sell the great bulk of what they produce to other people, not to their own employees — whereas even small countries sell most of what they produce to themselves, and big countries like America are overwhelmingly their own main customers.

Yes, there’s a global economy. But six out of seven American workers are employed in service industries, which are largely insulated from international competition, and even our manufacturers sell much of their production to the domestic market.

And the fact that we mostly sell to ourselves makes an enormous difference when you think about policy.

Consider what happens when a business engages in ruthless cost-cutting. From the point of view of the firm’s owners (though not its workers), the more costs that are cut, the better. Any dollars taken off the cost side of the balance sheet are added to the bottom line.

But the story is very different when a government slashes spending in the face of a depressed economy. Look at Greece, Spain, and Ireland, all of which have adopted harsh austerity policies. In each case, unemployment soared, because cuts in government spending mainly hit domestic producers. And, in each case, the reduction in budget deficits was much less than expected, because tax receipts fell as output and employment collapsed.

Ehrenfeld, observing the irony in a GOP Debate on the day of Vaclav Havel’s death, wrote about truth;

Havel’s signature accomplishment [was] pointing out that people have to live in truth or lose their freedom…

Truth, as Havel says, is essential to our existence as a free people at all times, but perhaps even more now as we become ever more aware of the complexity of the world we live in. Ideologies are the epitome of denial of the interconnectedness of this world, where ties grow more in number and strength everyday. Actions here have effect in places and times we do not expect or ignore. Are we really going to bomb away the so-called threat of Iranian nuclear weapons with no other consequences? Will freeing the market from all government oversight and restraints create wealth for everybody when the results of the last few decades show us the exact opposite? Ideologies, either from the left or right, are all dangerous, but our two-party system and the means their leaders communicate with us pushes themes into ideological positions frequently compressed into tiny sound bites or political ads….

There are many, many truths out there that are getting clobbered. If any of these men (no women left) are elected, they will be expected to act in accordance to these statements, ignoring what they find. Obama was faced with a financial crisis and its fallout on the economy as he moved in. He certainly was not the creator of these problems. It is interesting and ironic that the name Bush, on whose watch these problems started to arise, has been barely mentioned during this campaign, and not at all during these recent “debates.” I continue to put quotes around this word as real debates require some depth in discussing issues and solutions. Truthfulness would require putting the current messes into context, a least attempting to do so. I admit that would be difficult because the big messes are all a result of our failures to recognize complexity and act accordingly.

Richard Seireeni on the Chelsea Green site (here) wrote:

In the run up to the Republican Convention, we’ve heard everything and nothing. We’ve heard Newt, Mitt and Ron go on about issues that have little if any impact on jobs and national security, but not a single word about the real reason we have massive and permanent unemployment….In 2010, we imported 364 billion dollars in goods from China while we exported only 91 billion to them. That is nearly a 4 to 1 trade imbalance….

The Chinese people have become admirable competitors, but their hybrid Totalitarian-Capitalist government is not our friend. They don’t share our philosophies on human rights, labor rights, or geo-political issues, like containment of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. In fact, China is a major importer of Iranian oil, in opposition to U.S.-sponsored trade restrictions, and has probably received access to our recently downed drone aircraft as a reward.

While GOP candidates are preoccupied with Terrorism and Obamacare, the People’s Liberation Army has been quietly developing a new advanced stealth fighter, Predator-style drones, the first in a planned fleet of blue water aircraft carriers, an advanced rocket and space program, and a growing nuclear arsenal. Those cheap consumer products have turned China into a super power one purchase at a time. Every time an American patriot buys a Made-in-China product at Walmart, he or she is investing in China’s military expansion, which forces us to invest more in our military to counter the threat.

Green Living Festival

Tweet I am presenting “Beyond Fuel: From Consuming Natural Resources to Harnessing Natural Processes,” a discussion of the hidden costs, or “economic externalities,” of nuclear power, coal, and oil, and the non-obvious benefits of wind, solar, marine hydro and efficiency at the Space Coast Green Living Festival, Cocoa Beach, Florida, Sept 17, 2011.

The festival  is sponsored by the Cocoa Beach Surfrider Foundation and the Sierra Club Turtle Coast Group. It will be at the Cocoa Beach Courtyard by Marriott.

Cocoa Beach is about 60 miles east of Orlando and 120 miles north of West Palm Beach. It is easily accessible by air, land, sea and space.

This will be similar to the presentation I recently gave to the NYC Business Sustainability Minded Action Round Table (Click here or here).

It is during hurricane season. Hopefully life will not be imitating art as portrayed in Vapor Trails, by Roger Saillant and Bob Siegel, and the conference will not be cut short by a hurricane of Katrina-like proportions.

courtesy NASA (our tax dollars at work)

  Tweet  It sounds too good to be true:

*   100 gigawatts of offshore wind, $300 Billion,
*   100 gw of landbased wind, $200 Billion,
*   75 gw of solar, $300 Billion,
*   75 gw of geothermal, $200 Billion.
*   200 gigawatt equivalents of efficiency – $200 Billion.
*   100 & Clean, Renewable, Sustaianble Energy: 1.2 Trillion.
*   2.7 Million New Jobs and a Healthy Economy: Priceless!

This is happening, slowly, inexorably, by the “invisible hand of the market.” But it will happen faster if the “invisible mind of the community” acts. This means the government!

In his “General Theory on Employment, Interest, and Money ” John Maynard Keynes argued that the only employer with the resources to create large numbers of jobs and dramatically unemployment is the government. It can take risks entrepreneurs cannot because it can’t go out of business. The Keynsians are not arging that government spending – when done correctly – will create jobs and stimulate the economy. They know it does. The only question is “How many jobs will be created?”

To raise revenues the government can either borrow money or raise taxes. It made sense to cut taxes to eliminate the surplus that Bill Clinton’s Presidency facilitated. And it makes sense to raise taxes to deal with the deficits today. Tax rates are such, particularly for wealthy people, that they can help finance investment in infrastructure projects that will create jobs and position the United States for the future.

Investment in shifting our energy infrastructure from coal, oil, methane and nuclear power to a sustainable framework built around wind, solar, geothermal, bio-fuels, and efficiency – clean, renewable, sustainable energy will, according to Bruce Katz at the Brookings Institution, create 2.7 million jobs. By itself this will lower the unemployment rate from 9.2% to 7.4% and cut unemployment from about 13.5 million people to about 10.8 million people. In addition, it will spur growth in other sectors – cars, housing, entertainment.

But will it work? Even if we can power our economy by a paradigm shift to sustainable energy, can we power our lifestyles with wind, solar, geothermal, renewable fuels and efficiency? Between 2000 and 2010, before Fukushima, Germany cut nuclear from 29% to 20%. Renewables make up the difference. After Fukishima, Angela Merkel announced that Germany will accelerate its transition from nuclear and coal to wind, solar and efficiency technologies. Germany will be at 40% renewable by 2025. They will be at 100% renewables by mid-century.

We can do this here – 100% renewable for about $1.2 Trillion – about the cost of the war in Iraq:

*   100 gigawatts of offshore wind, $300 Billion,
*   100 gw of landbase wind, $200 Billion,
*   75 gw of solar, $300 Billion,
*   75 gw of geothermal, $200 Billion,
*   200 gigawatt equivalents of efficiency – $200 Billion,
*   100 & Clean, Renewable, Sustaianble Energy: 1.2 Trillion,
*   2.7 Million New Jobs and a Healthy Economy, Priceless!

There are environmental impacts – wind turbines make noise, solar energy require various heavy metals in the manufacturing processes. However, these are negligible compared to the arsenic, lead, mercury, uranium, zinc and other heavy metals released when coal is mined, processed, transported and burn, or the tritium and the other radioactive wastes produced by “business as usual” operation of nuclear power.

New renewable energy systems are also cheaper to build than new coal, oil, methane, and nuclear.  New nuclear is probably on the order of $6 to $10 billion per gw, new coal w carbon sequestration is $18 b / gw. The costs of new oil and methane w sequestration are probably on the order of coal.

But … it means the government must act!

Earth from Space, courtesy of the American taxpayer. Reto Stöckli, Nazmi El Saleous, and Marit Jentoft-Nilsen, NASA GSFC

Tweet

Earth Day, 2010, I looked to the future on Popular Logistics. In 2009, I wrote about water pollution and agricultural waste in the Chesapeake. Today I am looking at the present and recent past. While a comprehensive look at where we are can be found on the web pages of the World Watch Institute, the New York Times, and the World Factbook of the Central Intelligence Agency, I want to make a few points.

Our energy policy is “when you flip a switch, the juice gotta flow.” It ain’t magic. It’s engineering and classical physics, with an understanding of radioactive fission and decay and a profound lack of long term thinking. It ain’t magic, but it might as well be. But we really need to base our energy policy on an understanding of ecological economics and sustainability.

We’ve had a few problems with nuclear power and fossil fuel in the last few years. Yet, there’s some light on the horizon.

Regarding those problems with fossil fuel …

December 22, 2008, a flood of 1.2 billion gallons of toxic coal ash at the Kingston Steam Plant on the Clinch and Emory Rivers, upstream of Kingston, Tennessee, here or here. April, 2010, a disaster at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia (here). One of the results of the accident was that Massey Energy, the company that operated the mine, was sued by institutional investors who alleged corporate malfeasance. And then there was the catastrophic spill of 50,000 to 70,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico for three months. These, I said, were the “Fossil Fuel Trifecta of Disaster.” My series began with “Fossil Fuels and a Walk on the Moon.”  BP’s stock – and “market capitalization” was cut in half. While it has since recovered somewhat, it is still well below the level immediately prior to the spill. BP has also lost good executives to the nascent biofuels industry.

Also back in 2009, I started covering the “Purgen Plant,” a “Rube Goldberg” design for a coal plant with carbon sequestration, here.  The technology is incredibly expensive – $16 to $18 per watt – and spectacularly stupid. The plan is to use 25% to 40% of the output of the plant to capture 90% of the carbon, then compress it and pipe it 70 miles along the sea floor, then bury it 1 mile beneath the bottom of the ocean. It will cost the taxpayers billions, as long as nothing goes wrong.

More recently I’ve been writing about the unfolding earthquake – tsunami – nuclear disaster in Japan beginning with  Earthquake, Tsunami, and Energy Policy and concluding with Nuclear Power, What Future? But there are two important points – under “normal” conditions nuclear power produces less radioactive waste than coal, and the wastes from nuclear power plants are regulated. Under real world conditions, nuclear plants leak tritium and other radioisotopes into the biosphere. Look to this blog for more posts on this in the future.

Yet, there is some good news.

• Cape Wind, LLC finally got the permits they need to build America’s first offshore wind farm (see Cape Wind, Leadership and Vision).
• The solar energy industry is strong in New Jersey and California, and expanding.
• The FDA expects America’s rural electric coops to continue to move into renewable energy.
• Bright, dedicated, passionate and beautiful people are thinking about sustainability in places like Bainbridge, Columbia Earth Institute, the Fowler Center at Case Western, Marlboro College, the Presidio, UVM.
• Large institutions such as Deutsche Bank – one of the 10 largest banks – and Zurich Reinsurance are concerned about climate change. Click here and here. concerned about climate change.

In addition to my work on this blog, my song “Sunbathing in Siberia” may not be “American Idol” fare (and that’s part of the problem) but my friends dig it, and my “Earth Energy Haikus” were posted on Amida’s web site. The problems we write about on Popular Logistics are complex “systems” problems. They have developed over the last 50 or 100 or 200 years. They can’t be fixed with a magic wand. We need to look long and hard at various paradigms, such as energy and consumption, and how they need to shift. In his lectures, his book, “Sustainability by Design” and on his blog, John Ehrenfeld defines “Sustainability” as “Flourishing forever.” Doing it is the conundrum.

–

The image of the “Blue Marble” was created by Reto Stöckli, Nazmi El Saleous, and Marit Jentoft-Nilsen, at the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA GSFC. It is described here.  “This true-color image shows North and South America as they would appear from space 35,000 km (22,000 miles) above the Earth. The image is a combination of data from two satellites. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite collected the land surface data over 16 days, while NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) produced a snapshot of the Earth’s clouds.”

NY Times Special (Business As Usual) Energy Section

Clifford Krauss’ “Can We Do Without the Mideast?” sets the tone for the “Special Energy Section” in the NY Times, March 31, 2011. “The path to independence – or at least an end to dependence on the Mideast – could well be dirty, expensive and politically explosive.” Is this an April Fool’s Day joke? The path to sustainable energy requires vision and hard work. a solar array on every roof and insulation in every wall and every attic. It will be better for the economy, better for the environment, and better for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren.

There is an article about the demand for new nuclear power installations in “China, India and other regions” (like Pakistan and Iran). Matt Wald’s article about carbon sequestration suggests that it is far from proven technology, but we know it will be expensive. This is not news. While there are ads for renewable energy, one by an oil company, the other by Scotland, there are no articles about wind, solar, hydro, including small hydro and marine,  geothermal, and the negawatt virtual turbines of conservation and efficiency.

Krauss cites President Nixon and the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo, President Carter “calling an effort to reduce our dependency on foreign oil “the moral equivalent of war,” President G. W. Bush, Krauss said “called oil an addiction.” And President Obama said, “We cannot keep going from shock when gas prices go up to trance when prices go back down.”

And we have seen, in addition to the economic, banking, housing bubble pop, and employment crises, the energy system Trifecta of Disaster Plus One.

1. 12/22/08: Flood of 1.2 Billion Gallons of coal ash – laden with toxic heavy metals from arsenic to lead to mercury to zinc, and including uranium 235, U 238 and thorium.
2. 4/7/10: the accident at the Big Branch mine in Montcoal, W. Virginia. 29 miners dead.
3. 4/22/10: the Deepwater Horizon Catastrophe: 5.1 million barrels of crude gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, plus an unknown quantity of (toxic) dispersants poured into the spill like a magic potion to make it seem to disappear.
4. 3/11/11: earthquake, tsunami, irreparable damage to six to 12 nuclear reactors at three complexes in Japan, fires in the spent fuel storage pools, and release of clouds of radioactive gases and the release of radioactive materials into the Pacific.

On Jan. 25, 2011, in the State of the Union, President Obama called for an infrastructure shift to 80 % clean energy by 2035.  (See my analysis here.) This is the bold vision and strong action we need. We need to redesign our energy infrastructure and rebuild it around clean, renewable, sustainable energy and efficiency. For example: 200 gigawatts of nameplate capacity wind, 100 gigawatts of nameplate capacity solar. Rather than a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage, we want a solar array on every roof and insulation in every wall and every attic. It will be better for the economy, better for the environment, and better for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren.

-
Lawrence J. Furman, MBA.
The author, who earned his MBA in Managing for Sustainability at Marlboro College writes on energy, sustainability, and systems dynamics.

Offshore Wind Energy: Its potential to mitigate climate change

Sunrise

(For Webinar Click Here) New England Faculty Colloquium: Climate Change, Policy, and Energy Solutions Wednesday, March 2, 2011 – 2:30 pm

James Manwell, U Mass Amherst, Director, Wind Energy Center, (Press Release: Renewable Energy Research Laboratory)

Wind power in the United States has grown from 1,800 MW in 1990 to 35,000 MW by the end 2009. And off-shore wind farms are planned from Virginia to Massachusetts.  The costs have dropped ten-fold.  Electricity from wind is now less expensive than electricity from coal and nuclear – with none of the environmental costs.

Wind and solar are the opposite of fossil fuels and nuclear. With fossil fuels and nuclear it is easy to regulate the electricity the plant produces, but the wastes can be a problem.  With wind and solar there is no waste, but we can not regulate the output. Or rather, we can easily turn it down, but we can’t turn it up.  If we are to shift to a clean, sustainable energy paradigm we need to develop a more flexible grid and other technologies for a combined cycle system. The  Wind Energy Center at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is, in their words, “responding to the need for superior, cutting edge research solutions to these issues.”

Arklow Bank Wind Farm, offshore of Ireland. Copyright, C, GE Energy. Used with permission.

Conferences -

• In New Bedford, Mass, the Marion Institute presents Bioneers by the Bay. Van Jones delivered the keynote. I was there last year. It was great.
• In Washington, DC, The Green Festival. A friend of mine from the Pentagon will be there.
• In Long Branch, NJ, The Social Venture Network Fall Invitational.  Ralph Meima, MBA, PhD, and Director of the Marlboro College, MBA in Managing for Sustainability will be there.
• Back in DC, the USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo is on the National Mall.
• AEE presents the WORLD ENERGY ENGINEERING CONGRESS (WEEC) in  Washington, DC for 2010.

Academics – An MBA for Changing the Climate of Business (click here).

I will be thinking about offshore wind, solar power, and the world we are creating for our children, grandchildren, and the MBA in Managing for Sustainability. Their tag-line is “Changing the Climate of Business.” It’s more than slogan. It’s what they teach and it’s what their students and alumni do.  The photo on the Marlboro MBA in M for S web-site shows Ralph, that is Dr. Meima, with actual students – John T. at the board, and in rapt attention or meditating on the meaning of sustainability, Jonathan C., Iryna M., Kevin L., Beth M., Scott B.

This is a terrific and rigorous 60-credit course of study in Accounting,Neoclassical Economics, Ecological Economics, Finance, Operations, Systems Thinking – everything you would expect at an MBA plus everything you should find in an MBA in Managing for Sustainability, There are 10 intensive weekends per year (and tons of work between intensives). The next Intensive weekends are November 12-14, December 3-5, and January 14-16. Guests are welcome. Classes begin in Jan. for the cohorts of 2012 and 2013. To apply contact Joe Heslin, via email J Heslin {at} gradcenter . marlboro . edu – or call him at area code 802 . 258 . 9209.

Apple, Blackberry, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Motorola, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba and other consumer electronics companies can be less unsustainable than their competitors and less unsustainable tomorrow than they are today. However, given:

1. The state of the art in manufacturing,
2. Electronics are made with designs that are supplanted before they wear out, and
3. Recycling consumer electronics is expensive and releases toxins,

the consumer electronics industry can not, almost by definition,  be “Sustainable.” For what they need to do, click beneath the fold.

Here we go:

1. Design products in environmentally neutral facilities, powered by clean, renewable energy.
2. Manufacture the products in environmentally neutral facilities.
3. Use 100% biodegradable packaging.
4. Manufacture the products out of easily recyclable materials.
   

   

   SONY EX 7

5. Offset the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released in shipping
6. Pay employees a living wage.
7. Verify that contract employees, including those in third world manufacturing houses are paid a living wage rather than a slave wage.
8. And End the “Built In Obsolescence” / Consumer schtick.

The Apple iPad may point the way.   The suicides at the Foxconn manufacturing  plant in China, which also makes widgets for Dell, HP and others, nonwithstanding, the iPad has no moving parts, other than elementary particles, which are hard to keep stationary.

I use a 20-year old stereo and a 10-year old car. Development on the Newton platform started in 1987 and ended in 1998. You can still find them, used, and functioning. My 4-year old Blackberry works as well as it did when it was brand new. Why should the Blackberry or an iPad not last 20 years?

They would have to be upgradable in software via flash ROM. Apple would have to support it for a reasonable amount of time, but that’s a management decision, not a technical question.

Abstract. By burning fossil fuels we have put 3.6 trillion tons of Carbon Dioxide, CO₂ in the atmosphere¹ in the last 200 years – most in the last 60. This has changed the concentration of atmospheric CO₂ from 270 parts per Million, ppm, to 390 ppm, an increase of approximately 31%. This increase of atmospheric CO₂ is resulting in changing precipitation and rising temperatures, from the equator to the poles.

The typical modern reductionist approach is to simplify the problem to develop a solution:

“Burning coal, oil, and natural gas puts CO₂ into the atmosphere. All we need to do to solve the problem is modify the machines so they burn fossil fuel without releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere. How do we do that? We should capture the carbon dioxide, and the arsenic, mercury, other heavy metals, radionucleotides, etc, and store it somewhere.”

But we need to remember that we are burning coal, oil, and natural gas for a reason: to generate heat, hot water, electricity and transportation. There are alternative energy technologies, including nuclear, solar, and wind.

Coal with Carbon Sequestration is estimated to cost $10 to $15 Billion per gigawatt, without considering the costs of mining, processing and transporting the coal, cleaning up after mining, and isolating the arsenicals, mercury, and radionucleotides released from burning coal.  Solar is estimated to cost $6.5 Billion per gigawatt – with no fuel and no wastes. Wind $2 to $3 Billion per gigawatt – with no fuel and no wastes.

We at Popular Logistics think, feel and believe that we need to replace coal with solar and wind immediately.

Body.  The Brundtland Commission defined “sustainability” as “meeting the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” I see sustainability as arising from systems that harness one or more natural processes. Unsustainable systems are built around consuming nonrenewable resources. So whether or not carbon sequestration works, there are questions of sustainability that should be raised in conjunction with the use of carbon based fuel systems.

The sun shines. The winds blow. Plant an apple, a maple, or an olive tree, you get apples, maple syrup, or olives. Put a polar panel in the sun, you get power or hot water, depending on the panel. Put a wind turbine in the path of the wind; you convert the kinetic energy in the particles of air into electricity.

Is Carbon Sequestration Sustainable or Less Unsustainable? The Toyota Prius, and the Honda Insight, which get 40 to 50 miles per gallon, and the 100 mpg Bright Automotive Idea are less unsustainable than the 8 – 20 mpg SUV. But a 20 mpg biodiesel vehicle is sustainable, when it comes to fuel.

Carbon Capture and Sequestration

Our reliance of fossil fuels for energy has put 3.6 trillion tons of Carbon Dioxide, CO₂ in the atmosphere¹ in the last 200 years – most in the last 60. This changed the concentration of atmospheric CO₂ from 270 parts per Million, ppm, to 390 ppm, an increase of approximately 31%. This increase of atmospheric CO₂ is resulting in changing precipitation and rising temperatures, from the equator to the poles.

The typical modern reductionist approach is to simplify the problem to develop a solution:

“Burning coal, oil, and natural gas puts CO₂ into the atmosphere. All we need to do to solve the problem is modify the machines so they burn fossil fuel without releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere. How do we do that? We should capture the carbon dioxide, and the arsenic, mercury, other heavy metals, radionucleotides, etc, and store it somewhere.”

But we need to remember that we are burning coal, oil, and natural gas for a reason: to generate heat, hot water, electricity and transportation. There are alternative energy technologies, including nuclear, solar, and wind.

If capturing, storing, and cleaning up the carbon dioxide and other toxic products of burning fossil fuels is less expensive then other energy technologies, then clearly we should burn fossil fuels. But if, after looking at the system as a whole and factoring in the costs of coal mining, oil and gas drilling, processing, and transport, and the costs of isolating pollutants such as carbon dioxide, arsenic, mercury, other heavy metals, and radionucleotides is higher, we need to choose the least expensive alternatives.

This discussion focuses on techniques for capturing and storage of carbon when it is released by burning coal, and asks a few questions about carbon capture and sequestration. A comparison is made between coal, solar and wind. Nuclear power is not considered because it is understood to be the most expensive energy alternative available today.

Some Questions about Carbon Sequestration:

1. How much will it cost, in terms of money and energy?

2. What can go wrong? What happens then? What will natural and man-made disasters do to the ecology, biochemistry and chemistry of the ecosystems in the vicinity of carbon sinks? What is the effect of a spill of Millions of gallons of liquid carbon dioxide at the bottom of the ocean?

3. What happens if nothing goes wrong? The side-effects of strip mining are devastated local ecosystems in the vicinity of the mines. The side-effects of burning coal include mercury in fish and in the biosphere. What are the side-effects of CCS?

4. The idea is to pull or rip carbon out of the ground, process it somehow, transport it to where it needs to be burned, process it some more, then burn it, which converts some of the chemical energy into electricity, and push the carbon dioxide back into the ground. Does this really make sense?

Burial At Sea

The NY Times² reported that SCS Energy, of Concord, Mass., has a plan to build the “Purgen” plant, a new CCS equipped coal plant in Linden, NJ. 90% of the carbon dioxide released by burning coal at this plant will be captured, compressed, pushed into a 24 inch diameter pipe, pumped approximately 70 miles south-east, and a half-mile down along the ocean floor, past Staten Island, New York, and Middlesex, Monmouth, and Ocean Counties in New Jersey, to a point 25 or 30 miles east of Atlantic City, New Jersey,and injected into a well drilled a mile beneath the sandstone floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

The pipe will have to be monitored for leaks along its 70 mile length. Leaks will have to be repaired. Maintanence and repair costs could be significant.

CCS is energy intensive. It is projected to use 25% or more to the plant’s energy to compress, cool, and pump the CO₂ into the sub-sea well in which it will be sequestered.

According to the NY Times, the plant will cost $5 billion if completed on time and on budget. It will also need $100 Million a year in Federal Government subsidies, which amounts to another $3 Billion to $4 Billion of taxpayer money, over the plant’s 30 to 40 year operating life span. Plus fuel costs and normal operating and maintenance costs. The total: $8 or $9 Billion. The article left out a crucial detail: the size of the plant. If it’s a 500 MW plant, then the cost is $16 or $18 Million per megawatt ($M/mw). If it’s a 2.0 gigawatt plant, the cost is $4.0 to $4.5 M/mw. According to the Highland Park Mirror³, and the Green Party of Essex County, NJ⁴, this would be a 750 MW plant, so the capital costs are $6.67M/mw up front and $10.67 M/mw to $12.0 M/mw over the life of the plant.

CCS Prototype on Land

Industry Week reported another CCS prototype at American Electric’s Mountaineer facility in New Haven, W. Virginia.⁵ He states: “the pilot facility captures and stores around 20 megawatts of carbon dioxide…. The unit can handle only a fraction of Mountaineer’s 1,300 megawatt capacity.” According to the New York Times⁶ the 20 MW carbon sequestration subsystem at the Mountaineer Plant will cost approximately $146 Million, $7.3 Million per megawatt of capacity.

In comparison, utility scale photovoltaic solar costs approximately $6.5 Million per megawatt. Wind power is approximately $2 Million per megawatt; offshore wind is estimated at $3 Million per megawatt. Wind and solar energy systems do not require mining, drilling, processing or transportation of fuel, or clean-up of by-products. These data are summarized in Tables 1 and 2 below.

Beauty, Elegance, and Simplicity

Destroying mountains, shipping rocks 1,000 miles, or 2,000 miles, from Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia or Montana to California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Texas, etc., is not simple. Capturing the waste, compressing it, and burying it under the coal plant, or piping it another 50 or 100 miles under tremendous pressure and burying it a mile under the ocean floor is not beautiful, elegant, or simple.

A battery of wind turbines planted on and bolted to the sea floor and rising 300 feet into the air is not simple either. One 3.5 megawatt turbine can meet the electric power requirements for about 4,000 people, so we would be looking at 2,000 turbines to meet the electricity requirements for the 8,000,000 residents of state of New Jersey, and another 5,000 for the 20,000,000 New Yorkers. Once the system is installed, however, there is no fuel to mine or pump out of the ground and transport 1000 miles or 2000 miles, there are no wastes to “manage” discard.

Conclusion

Cutting the carbon footprint of coal would make it less unsustainable. But we still have to mine, ship, and burn the coal, then manage the waste, which is where sequestration comes in.

The Carbon Capture and Sequestration, CCS, technology that exists is expensive and still being developed. CCS therefore shouldn’t be considered “proven” or “state of the art” but should be considered prototypes. Furthormore, since solar and wind power technologies are clearly cleaner and less expensive, the use of fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and natural gas should be phased out as soon as possible.

Notes:

1DB Climate Change Advisors, Deutsche Bank Group, “Greenhouse Gases Cause Climate Change”, http://www.dbcca.com

2Gailbraith, Kate, “A Plan for US Emissions to be buried at Sea,” New York Times, May 18, 2009,

www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/business/energy-environment/18clean.htm?_r=1

3Davis, Leigh, Oceanic carbon interment plan draws local objections

, Highland Park Mirror, Oct. 15, 2009, http://www.highlandparkmirror.com/pp/story/oceanic-carbon-interment-plan-draws-local-objections

4Green Party of Essex County, NJ, http://www.essexcountygreens.org/, Facts about the Proposed Coal Plant in Linden, http://www.essexcountygreens.org/PurGenFactSheet.html

5Beatty, Andrew, Alstom Pushes Carbon Capture Solution at U. S. Coal Plant, Industry Week, Nov. 1, 2009, http://www.industryweek.com/articles/alstom_pushes_carbon_capture_solution_at_u-s-_coal_plant_20303.aspx?Page=1

6This $7.3 Million per mw is based on the statement that American Electric is spending “$73 Million on the capture and storage effort, which includes half the cost of the factory.” Riddell, Kevin, Retrofitted to Bury Emissions, Plant Draws Attention, New York Times, Sept. 22, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/science/earth/22coal.html

7http://www.scribacrc.org/uploads/24__45.3_Billion_in_Coal_Plants_Canceled_in_07.pdf

8The subsidies that appear to be needed for solar would not be needed if there were no subsidies for coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power. That hypothesis, however, is beyond the scope of this paper.