Clean Water

Think clean energy is a big, big deal?  Take a look at clean, drinkable water.  In the US, we foul an incredible volume of potable water every day.  Water that should be saved for drinking, cooking and washing gets flushed, poisoned, etc.

Climate change will only exacerbate the problem by melting glaciers, reducing rain/snow fall, shifting the snowpack melt season earlier in the year and increasing sea levels will inundate freshwater systems and aquifers.

We must reduce demand and change how we handle water by adding more gray water systems to our homes.  Creating drinkable water from sea water and natural and man-made foul water will be vital.

Link above goes to one company that has a compact water treatment facility (looks like it fits in a boxcar) and converts the tailings from gas wells into safe drinking water.  Say what you will about continued fossil fuel exploration, this idea has value.

Cycling Calorie Rates

Here's a table of caloric rates.

Sustainable Wines

Looking to make your wine consumption sustainable?  Try wine from Parducci in Mendocino County, CA.  It's drinkable.  I've had better, but I've had a lot worse.  Cooked a marinara with it the other night and drank it with dinner.  Delicious.

Ironically, I was in Whole Foods looking at their wine section when I came across their "Eco Friendly" offerings.  They had a bottle from France.  Nothing against France, but I had to quiz the wine stocker to find out how it could be "Eco Friendly".  They said it was for the organic aspects of the wine production.  That's all fine and good, but if the wine was shipped on anything burning fossil fuel, BOOM, any sustainable, organic and carbon-neutral product creation just went flying out the window and into our atmosphere.

It's the little things

Do you think you can't make a difference?  Collectively, we all can.  Buying recycled household paper products for tissues, toilet paper and paper towels makes a large difference.  See the above article.

Enough said.

Parenting in the Age of Climate Change

Great article! I look forward to reading her book.

It seems that parenting responsibly means handing your children a better life than you were given. At least, we should not make things worse. How then do we deal with this issue - one that seems bigger than anything we have ever seen before? What other threats have we seen and felt unleashed seemingly upon the whole world?

Any local or regional threat (drought, war, famine, fire, flood) creates upheaval, but people can move. We cannot, yet, leave the planet for better pastures.

True world-wide threats almost seem sublime. Atomic bombs? Rational actors realize that MAD (Mutual Assured Distruction) seems to prevent a full world bombing. Asteroid impact? Either we ignore the problem as remote (physically, temporarily and statistically) or place our faith in science to discover a way to deflect or destroy the invader. Epidemic? Visit the country or seal ourselves off.

Global Warming? For those of us who can no longer ignore the awful truth, what is left to do? We can't pick and move. Well, we can, but to where? What land will be under water? Will there be fresh water? Will it get warmer or colder? Will it be wetter or drier? Who can I blame? What can I fix?

Almost everything I eat originates with petroleum unless I try really, really hard. Almost everything I buy originates with petroleum. Almost everything I do (the bits on your screen, right now) originates with petroleum.

We built this economy for over 100 years to be based upon a very cheap available resource. To solve the problem, we require a tremendous worldwide effort to change to something new, something sustainable, something with much lower impact.

We will all be better for it. Healthier and happier. I hope we can do it and that it will be enough. I would hate to leave these things for my grandchildren to clean up. I'd much prefer they get to enjoy the almost comical story of how we all managed to escape a global catasrophy.

PS: For a cynical view of this, read James Lovelock's opinion.

VC Taskforce: Next Generation Biofuels

This past Wednesday, the VC Taskforce held a panel discussion: "Next Generation Biofuels: The Prospects and the Challenges of Non Food Crop Energy". This link may work for the summary.

Moderator: Michael Ward, Partner, Morrison & Foerster
Panelists:
Jim Mullen, Partner, Morrison & Foerster
Michael Burnside, President & CEO, Catchlight Energy
Jim Imbler, President & CEO, Zeachem Inc
Neal Gutterson, President & CEO, Mendel Biotechnology

Without much editorializing, here are the highlights of the panel discussion.

First generation fuels were "small kernel" (corn, soy) -- contrast this with using the entire plant's biomass. In addition, this first gen fuels created tension between crops as food and crops as fuel. The positives for these first generation fuels is that humanity knows how to create ethanol from them, we've been doing it for a long time. Second generation biofuels require more science, but are better long term. On an interesting historical note, Diesel (inventor of the eponymous engine) powered his original engine using peanut oil.

A key component of biofuel production must be sustainability: minimize food conflict, minimize biodiversity issues (no monoculture crops), minimize acreage used (especially, land for food production).

Another consideration is feedstocks: engineered vs. existing. Engineering creates concerns over GMOs (Genetically Modified Organizisms), whereas existing plant material may be less efficient during conversion process.

There was some discussion regarding residuals (e.g. McDonald's fryer oil). The fryer oil is considered a hazardous pollutant and restaurants used to pay to have it removed and processed. At first, they were giving it away to anyone who wanted it. After a while, they began to sell it. Finally, organized crime has gotten involved and steals it. However, the ultimate challenge for residuals is one of distribution and scale. If fryer oil is to be used as a fuel in vehicles, can it really be an infrastructure play?

For the biofuel industry, it's important to take into account public reaction to the entire process. The facts/myths behind the food reducing first generation products should be a warning to those wading in, now. Fuel generation facilities should be built with aesthetic qualities and low/no emissions to reduce NIMBY reactions. Crop diversity (mosaic of feedstocks) is vital, both from a sustainability and economic perspective.

Switchgrass and miscanthus are excellent, fast-growing, non-food plants. The estimate is that 200-400 million acres could produce enough biomass to meet the world's needs. However, the dangers of monoculture must be avoided. Pestiticide use must be low/no. Plants should grow on their own with minimal water, minimal chemicals and minimal work. Another important point was that perenials (vs. annuals) must be used. Generally, we don't eat perenials and they are better for the soil. They renew it, retain water, fix nitrogen, add to the top-soil and grow well on lands that currently make poor food production lands and are not used for grazing. 40-50 Million acres of unused annual production land could well serve the US biofuel needs.

That brings us to the key to making biofuels profitable: efficiency. The beautiful thing about efficiency is that when achieved it is both environmentally sound and makes money. The objective is to plant as little as possible while reaping the rewards.

Three elements of efficiency are: biomass (great CO2 footprint, no chem/H2O), conversion (high biomass to fuel conversion ratio), mileage (fuel allows higher mileage, transportation is more efficient).

Another critical part of making biofuels work is energy density. I didn't quite follow the numbers, but the comparison was made between petroleum and biofuel production (150-200K barrels/day petro vs. 7.5K barrels/day biofuel). There's a 20x difference between the two, right now. In addition, petro refineries are very efficient at extracting, while bio refineries are around 5-10x for their production costs.

Investment opportunities are in the movement of feedstocks from farm to production plant as well as various fuel conversion pathways (biochemical, thermochemical, biological).

However, the key for the big dogs to jump in the game is in the Execution phase kicks in. During R&D phase, most energy companies just cannot think in high risk terms, and R&D looks like high-risk. Once R&D is completed and execution phase starts, then the large energy conglomerates would be willing to venture.

Some economic figures were tossed around. $50/ton of biomass is roughly equivalent to $0.50/gallon. That becomes a baseline, on top of which everything else must be added, profit margin is slim. The figure of $70/barrel for petro was felt to be the critical point where biofuel begins to make sense. This is quite similar to the coal liquidation number (unfortunately).

Sometime in the next few posts, I'll write an analysis of all of this.

Boo: Carbon Offsets and Cap-N-Trade

Sure, carbon offsets and cap-and-trade schemes sound like a really, really great idea. Lots of smart people think so. The idea is we could solve the world's environmental problem if we could only create the right kind of carbon sinks on a grand scale and allow market forces (via the selling and buying of carbon credits) match money to carbon. So, a company in Europe exceeds their carbon cap and they offset the remainder by getting another project in Asia to sink their carbon somewhere.

As always, the devil is in the details, and there is plenty of devil to go around for this one. Summary of the linked article: China builds dam it was going to build anyway (not building coal plants it wasn't going to build anyway) while German company pays for offsets by funding dam project. Net effect? More carbon released, unlikely progress made.

The thing is, this isn't a one time occurance. Indonesian peat bogs are being drained to plant forests to offset European carbon excesses. However, draining the peat bogs releases much more stored carbon than planting trees will ever hope to hold. In effect, the very situation that Europe was hoping improve (carbon reduction) through their funding is being made worse.

Then, we have crackpots running around trying to dump tons of finely ground iron into international waters to promote algal blooms with the optimistic hope of burying carbon and intending to sell carbon credits for it. There "research" is flimsy, at best.

Now, you may ask why turn such a jaundiced eye on these projects? Each of these ignores the Law of Unintended Consequences. The people involved may be well meaning, or perhaps they just want to find a way to fund their project or make a buck or relieve their guilt.

The problem is that the Earth's air and water can't absorb our guilt anymore than it can absorb our carbon emissions. Let's make progress via thoughtful and realistic changes backed by detailed study and science. I'm not arguing for analysis-paralysis, and, Yes, I recognized that perfection is the enemy of the good.

This, however, is not a call for perfection. It is, instead, a call for testable progress. Quite frankly, there may be a fundamental problem with cap-and-trade -- it may never work.

That said, any project purporting to be a true carbon sink project (worthy of offset) must be requried to build a realistic, published carbon offset model. That model must be independently confirmed by a couple of third-parties and those third-parties must disclose their financial funding. The model must be tested over time, and if it fails to perform as expected, the money invested must be returned to those buying offsets. Let the carbon companies buy offset insurance, if they like and leave the insurance companies to investigate offset claims (not a fan of this, but the more watchdogs, the better).

If you're a believer in buying carbon credits to assuage your carbon guilt, do your homework. Don't just take as gospel the offset literature published on your favorite offset website. Dig into their information. Go find counter opinions. Become a skeptic.

I think there's a better way than "Captain Trade" and will blog about this tomorrow.

PS: Some other links on this topic

1. Can technology clear the air?
2. Burying biomass to fight climate change
3. Artist releases CO2 as performance

#1 and perhaps #2 may be methods for real offsetting of carbon. #3 hopes to expose the problems of Captain Trade.