Combined Renewable Energy Powerplant

PG&E Gives Away 1 Million CFLs

PG&E Gives Away 1 Million Energy Efficient Light Bulbs
October 3, 2007 -- By Todd Woody, Green Wombat

In the U.S.' biggest compact fluorescent light bulb giveaway, California utility PG&E began handing out 1 million energy-efficient CFLs today. The bulbs use 75 percent less electricity than conventional incandescent lighting and they've become something of an icon in the fight against global warming given that lighting accounts for a big chunk of greenhouse gas emissions. Wal-Mart (WMT) in particular has jumped on the CFL bandwagon, announcing Tuesday it had already exceeded its goal of selling 100 million bulbs by the end of 2007.

The PG&E (PCG) giveaway is part of its efforts to push 20 million CFLs into customers' homes by the end of the year. PG&E spokesperson Keely Wachs told Green Wombat that the utility will spend $1.25 million on the freebies. Or more accurately, PG&E customers will spend that as the giveaway comes under the utility's state-mandated energy efficiency efforts whose costs regulators permit to be recouped through electricity rates. "The benefits of handing these out and the energy efficiency that will be realized far outweigh our costs to customers," Wachs says.

PG&E estimates over the lifetime of the 1 million bulbs - if they're installed in California homes - will save more 400,000 megawatts of electricity and eliminate 200,000 tons of greenhouse gases. Tomorrow PG&E will announce a deal with Safeway (SWY) grocery stores to sell CFLs at a discount.

Production and Consumption

The revolution of production and consumption
May 29, 2006 -- By Timo Mäkelä, Sitra

Growing numbers of decision-makers, scientists and economists believe that the world economy is heading towards a crisis because of diminishing natural resources and their consequently high prices. What is more, the race after energy and natural resources will lead to ever wider and more acute environmental problems. The climate will change while storms and draughts will become commoner and the environment impoverished and polluted. The Earth simply cannot long support the accelerating rate of production and consumption.

We do not need to look far for an example. At its current growth rate, the amount of grain and paper that China would need in 25 years’ time equals 70% of all grain production in the world and 200% of paper production. More oil would be consumed than the global oil production of today put together.

The UN and the World Bank issued recently an extensive report on the state of the world. It did not make for an amusing read.

Out of the 25 natural resources sustaining life on Earth, nearly 20 are endangered. If every single person in the world consumed like Europeans do, it would take more than two Earths to sustain it. The Americans consume even more, at a rate that according to the same calculation would require four Earths.

Some companies and investors are beginning to worry. A sustainable development classification will be gradually introduced and required of companies as evidence that their ethics are high and the environmental risks under control. In fact, we are moving towards a new industrial revolution, this time directed by the limits of our planet and environmental risks.

Part of this revolution is the rapid growth of global markets for new environmental technologies and services. According to estimates, the markets have already exceeded €500 billion, which is close to those of pharmaceutical and aviation industries. The annual growth rate is 5–10%. As much as 15% of new risk investments in the world are made in the production of renewable energy sources, environmentally friendly technologies and cleaner production. Here, Japanese and American companies are striving for market leadership.

The largest corporation in the world, the American General Electric, has recently revamped its strategy and launched its “Ecomagination” programme. The company will focus in the future on producing more sustainable and environmentally friendlier technologies.

Japan, on the other hand, is ahead of Europe in the efficient use of both energy and natural resources. Japanese products and technologies are taking markets by storm.

Europe is still the leader in environmental technology markets. The German recycling industry produces technologies and innovations for global markets, and Spain is one of the leading utilisers and producers of wind and solar energy. In Denmark, wind energy has surpassed meat products as an export.

But time is running out. That is why Europe is keen to seize this new opportunity. Ecological innovations and the more efficient use of natural resources and energy are an integral part of the EU’s growth and jobs strategy, the Lisbon strategy.

EU’s new environmental technology programme promises research and risk funding for companies investing in environmental technologies. The programme also aims to improve the pull and functionality of the markets. Public procurement, financial steering mechanisms and new product regulations and standards play a key role. Many of the EU Member States, including Finland, have issued their own national environmental technology programmes.

The new and more efficient technologies and methods that save natural resources and energy are a rational choice now and in the future. More efficient production decreases environmental damage but is also financially justified, as it simply saves money.

The industrial revolution geared towards sustainable development will mean efficient recycling of natural resources, extensive use of renewable energy sources, innovative production, materials and technologies, as well as new concepts of how we should move from one place to another. Nothing less will suffice, and as long there is a will, there are plenty of ways. New companies and innovations are in great demand.

Sustainable Development: A 21st Century American Vision?

As I watched E.O. Wilson speak on BookTV today I was reminded once again of how finite the world's resources are for ourselves and future generations. If every human consumed at equal rates to Americans, it would require four Earths to sustain it. This somber statistic persuaded me to post this snippet I read during a recent BART ride.

Excerpts from:
Learning from History: U.S. Environmental Politics, Policies, and the Common Good
November 2006 -- By Richard N.L. Andrews, Environment

In 2005, the United Nations commissioned Millennium Ecosystem Assessment reported that over the past 50 years, rapid and extensive change in human ecosystems has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth. More land has been converted to cropland since 1945 than in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries combined, and water withdrawals from rivers and lakes have doubled since 1960. Since 1750, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the major contributor to global warming, has increased, with 60 percent of that increase happening between 1959 and the present. Fifty percent of all the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer ever used has been applied since 1985; flows of biologically available nitrogen in terrestrial ecosystems have doubled since 1960 and may increase by two-thirds more by 2050. An estimated 10 to 30 percent of all mammal, bird, and amphibian species are currently threatened with extinction.

These changes have contributed to substantial gains in human well-being and economic development at growing costs to the essential services that ecosystems provide to human societies: providing food, water, fuel, wood, and fiber, supporting and regulating natural processes that are necessary for human life and health (nutrient cycling, soil formation, water purification, the climate system, and the control of disease organisms), and providing spiritual and recreational values. These damaging trends are substantially reducing the availability of these services for future use.

U.S. environmental policies have been prominent causes of these damaging trends and must be part of any solution. Throughout American history, the United States' dominant policies have been to promote the economic exploitation of natural resources, first nationally and now globally...

At times throughout this history, U.S. environmental policies also have included initiatives to manage and protect the natural environment...

The net effect of these policies has been to provide unprecedented levels of material comfort to many people and extraordinary affluence to a few and to reduce and even repair some environmental damage.

It would be a mistake to attribute the vast environmental changes in the United States entirely to public policies. Policies tend to lag behind economic and social trends, because government typically acts only in response to a buildup of pressure for collective action...

The enduring challenge for U.S. environmental policy is to build, maintain, and constantly renew public support for effective environmental governance, at home and worldwide. To meet that need, U.S. environmental policy today must recover an essential missing element: a broadly shared vision of the common environmental good. Such visions have emerged at several points in the past. Examples include the sanitation movement of the nineteenth century; the City Beautiful movement of the 1890s; the Progressive civic reform and conservation movements that followed it; the New Deal vision of combining ecological, social, and economic recovery; and the vision of a modern society in harmony with its natural environment that was articulated in NEPA and widely voiced by the American public on Earth Day in 1970...

The closest current approximation to such a vision is perhaps the idea of sustainable development, as articulated by the United Nations' World Commission for Environment and Development in 1987 and in the Agenda 21 document endorsed by the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The commission envisioned sustainable development as a pattern of development that would meet the needs of human communities today without jeopardizing those of the future, and its vision specifically included economic development, ecological sustainability, and social equity as essential and interdependent elements...

Barring some new defining crisis or leadership commitment, the future of U.S. environmental policy will be shaped by the reemergence--or failure to emerge--of a new broad-based national coalition for an ecologically sustainable economy and inclusive and democratic society.

Banning Incandescent Light Bulbs: Economic Rationality

BAN THE BULB
May 9, 2007 -- By Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute

ECO-ECONOMY UPDATE:
BAN THE BULB: Worldwide Shift from Incandescents to Compact Fluorescents Could Close 270 Coal-Fired Power Plants

On February 20, 2007, Australia announced it would phase out the sale of inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2010, replacing them with highly efficient compact fluorescent bulbs that use one fourth as much electricity. If the rest of the world joins Australia in this simple step to sharply cut carbon emissions, the worldwide drop in electricity use would permit the closing of more than 270 coal-fired (500 megawatt) power plants. For the United States, this bulb switch would facilitate shutting down 80 coal-fired plants.

The good news is that the world may be approaching a social tipping point in this shift to efficient light bulbs. On April 25, 2007, just two months after Australia’s announcement, the Canadian government announced it would phase out sales of incandescents by 2012. Mounting concerns about climate change are driving the bulb replacement movement.

In mid-March, a U.S. coalition of environmental groups—including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Alliance to Save Energy, the American Coalition for an Energy-Efficient Economy, and the Earth Day Network—along with Philips Lighting launched an initiative to shift to the more-efficient bulbs in all of the country’s estimated 4 billion sockets by 2016.

In California, the most populous state, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine is proposing that his state phase out the sale of incandescent light bulbs by 2012, four years ahead of the coalition’s deadline. Levine calls his proposed law the “How Many Legislators Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb Act.” On the East Coast, the New Jersey legislature is on the verge of requiring state government buildings to replace all incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents by 2010 as part of a broader statewide effort to promote the shift to more-efficient lighting. (See additional initiatives.)

The European Union, now numbering 27 countries, announced in March 2007 that it plans to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020. Part of this cut will be achieved by replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents. In the United Kingdom, a nongovernmental group called Ban the Bulb has been vigorously pushing for a ban on incandescents since early 2006. Further east, Moscow is urging residents to switch to compact fluorescents. In New Zealand, Climate Change Minister, David Parker, has announced that his country may take similar measures to those adopted by Australia.

In April, Greenpeace urged the government of India to ban incandescents in order to cut carbon emissions. Since roughly 640 million of the 650 million bulbs sold each year in this fast-growing economy are incandescents, the potential for cutting carbon emissions, reducing air pollution, and saving consumers money is huge.

At the industry level, Philips, the world’s largest lighting manufacturer, has announced plans to discontinue marketing incandescents in Europe and the United States by 2016. More broadly, the European Lamp Companies Federation (the bulb manufacturers’ trade association) is supporting a rise in EU lighting efficiency standards that would lead to a phase-out of incandescent bulbs.

At the commercial level, Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, announced a marketing campaign in November 2006 to boost its sales of compact fluorescents to 100 million by the end of 2007, more than doubling its annual sales. In the U.K., Currys, Britain’s largest electrical retail chain, has announced that it will discontinue selling incandescent light bulbs.

Switching light bulbs is an easy way of realizing large immediate gains in energy efficiency. A study for the U.S. government calculated that the gasoline equivalent of the energy saved over the lifetime of one 24 watt compact fluorescent bulb is sufficient to drive a Prius from New York to San Francisco. While a worldwide phase out of the inefficient incandescents would reduce world electricity use by more than 3 percent, shifting to more-efficient street lighting and replacing older fluorescent tubes with newer, more-efficient ones might double this reduction in power use.

Although highly efficient compact fluorescent bulbs have been around for a generation, they have until recently been on the fringe, used only by environmentally-minded consumers and typically sold in hardware stores, but not in supermarkets. One reason consumers lacked interest was that the new bulbs can cost five times as much as incandescents. Only the more knowledgeable consumers knew that a compact fluorescent bulb uses only one fourth as much electricity as an incandescent bulb, lasts 10 times as long, and easily saves $50 during its lifetime.

One disadvantage of compact fluorescents is that each bulb contains a small amount of mercury, roughly one fifth the amount in a watch battery. This mercury is only a small fraction of that released into the atmosphere by the additional coal burned to power an incandescent.

Mercury released by coal-fired power plants is the principal reason why 44 of the 50 states in the United States have issued mercury intake advisories limiting the consumption of fish from freshwater streams and lakes. Nonetheless, worn-out compact fluorescents, watch batteries, and other items that contain mercury still need to be recycled properly. Fortunately, this is possible, whereas the mercury spewing from coal smokestacks blankets the countryside, ending up in the water and food supply.

Shifting to the highly efficient bulbs sharply reduces monthly electricity bills and cuts carbon emissions, since each standard (13 watt) compact fluorescent over its lifetime reduces coal use by more than 210 pounds. Such a shift also substantially reduces air pollution, making it obviously attractive for fast-growing economies plagued with bad air like China and India.

In the United States, an ingenious website called 18seconds.org (the name derives from the time it takes to change a light bulb), provides a running tally of compact fluorescents sold nationwide since January 1, 2007. As of early May, it totaled nearly 37 million bulbs, yielding a reduction in carbon emissions comparable to taking 260,000 cars off the road. Sponsored by Yahoo! and Nielson, the site also provides data on how many dollars are being saved and how much less coal is burned. Data are available on the website for each state, providing a convenient way of monitoring local progress in replacing incandescents.

The challenge for each of us, of course, is to shift to compact fluorescents in our own homes if we have not already. But far more important, we need to contact our elected representatives at the city, provincial, or state level and at the national level to introduce legislation to raise lighting efficiency standards, in effect phasing out inefficient incandescent light bulbs. Few things can cut carbon emissions faster than this simple step.

In a world facing almost daily new evidence of global warming and its consequences, there is a need for a quick decisive victory in the effort to cut carbon emissions and stabilize climate. If we can engineer a rapid phase-out of incandescent light bulbs it would provide just such a victory, generating momentum for even greater advances in climate stabilization.

Related post: Economic Irrationality

Economic Irrationality

Irrational Incandescence
May 31, 2007 -- By The Economist via Energy Bulletin

Some ways of cutting carbon are cheaper than others. So, at different carbon prices, different sorts of methods of abatement become worthwhile. Vattenfall, a Swedish power utility, has tried to quantify which ones would be worth undertaking at what price (see chart 3).

The result is a testament to economic irrationality. The measures below the horizontal line have a negative abatement cost—in other words, by carrying them out, people and companies could both cut emissions and save money. At a macroeconomic level they would boost, rather than reduce, economic growth.Lighting, for instance, accounts for some 19% of the world's electricity use. A standard incandescent light bulb costs around €1, says Theo van Deursen, chief executive of Philips Lighting, and uses €15-worth of electricity a year. A low-energy one costs €5-6 and uses €3-worth. The payback on investing in a compact fluorescent bulb, therefore, is less than a year. Yet low-energy lighting makes up only 30% of Philips's sales. Mr van Deursen admits to being disappointed. Sales are rising faster in the developing world: there, people pay more attention to electricity bills than they do in the rich world.

Economists trying to explain this apparent irrationality suggest that the savings are too small and the effort involved in change too large. People find their electricity bills too boring to think about; within companies, those responsible for keeping bills down may not have the authority to spend the necessary capital. Another explanation is the agency problem: that the developer who would have to pay higher capital costs up front will not be forking out for the electricity bills. Besides, people buy houses not because they have good insulation but because they have pretty views.

Compared with pursuing greater energy efficiency, the abatement measures into which so much money is now being poured look rather expensive. Carbon capture and storage and wind and solar power, for instance, all have positive, and relatively high, abatement costs.

But the cheapest sources of abatement are difficult for policymakers to get at. Billions of different actors are involved. They cannot be targeted in the way that a few hundred factories can. What is more, a moderate carbon price is not likely to be effective, since people clearly do not care enough about cost.

One policy option is to decouple the utilities' revenues from the amount of electricity they sell. That gives them an incentive to increase the efficiency of power usage rather than to produce and sell extra power. California is already doing this, which is presumably why electricity prices there are among the highest in America, while consumption is relatively low.

Energy-efficiency standards, such as building regulations, are another option. Economists generally prefer to avoid rules that specify what companies can produce and how, because they require governments, rather than markets, to allocate resources, and markets tend to do a better job. But if, as in this case, a public as well as a private good is involved, and the market does not seem to be doing its job properly, there is an argument for governments giving it a nudge.

There are lots of energy-efficiency regulations in place already, and they are being tightened. Incandescent light bulbs are the top target at the moment. Both the European Union and Australia said earlier this year that they are planning to ban them. But the man in the vanguard of this green revolution is Fidel Castro, who started phasing them out two years ago.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes (Energy Bulletin) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nice piece by The Economist (UK). Another good one from the Economist: The truth about recycling. Conservatives and libertarians in search of an intelligent way to approach environmentalism might have a good role model in the (conservative) Economist...

The Vattenfall website has a big section on climate change.

The chief executive of Vattenfall, Lars Josefsson, was recently profiled: Hero or villain? A carbon critic relies on coal (International Herald Tribune).

Europe seems to be further along than the USA in its sense of urgency about conservation. Der Spiegel had a long series about it: Why Conservation Is the World's Best Energy Source.

UPDATE (June 13)
Two posters at The Oil Drum found source documents for the striking graphic in the article. The graphics in those documents are more readable and more complete than the graphic in the above article.

Marco located a bigger and better version of the figure on page 7 or 8 of Vattenfall’s Global Climate Impact Abatement Map (25-page PDF).

Peaknik located another version of the graphic on page 10 or 11 of Global Mapping of Greenhouse Gas Abatement Opportunities (54-page PDF).

David Jeffery's response to Irrational Incandescence:
Cheap ways to reduce greenhouse emissions
June 28, 2007 -- By David Jeffery, Oikos

An interesting article in The Economist last month took a look at the cost of various options for reducing greenhouse emissions (summarised in the graph above).

Two things are particularly notable:

* There are a number of options that have a negative cost. In other words, not only would they reduce emissions, they’d also save us money. The biggest one is insulation and low-energy lighting is also up there.

* The solutions we hear a lot about – such as wind, solar and carbon capture – are among the most expensive options.

So why are we not voluntarily making decisions that would not only reduce emissions but also save us money?

The Economist identifies a couple of possible reasons, the most compelling to my mind is that the people who make the choices are not the people who pay the costs of those decisions. For example, property developers have to pay for insulation but they won’t get the benefits of lower electricity bills, so their incentive is to go cheap on insulation. If the property is to be rented out, it’s not even the buyer who pay those bills – it’s a tenant.

How to solve this? In theory, awareness of the issue should be enough: if tenants and buyers of new houses (or other buildings) are aware that good insulation can save them substantial amounts of money, they should demand it and be prepared to pay more for it – in the same way they’d be prepared to pay more for a good bathroom or kitchen.

So why isn't this happening? And seeing as it doesn’t seem to be happening, is there a role for government in mandating it in building standards or requiring developers and sellers to at least provide understandable information (eg, energy efficiency ratings)?

Is There A Green Business Bubble?

Excerpt from:
Is There A Green Business Bubble?
May 2, 2007 -- By Joel Makower, Two Steps Forward

Here, in no particular order, are ten reasons why I think the greening of business will be an enduring issue for years to come, regardless of the media's attention span:

1. The problems aren't getting any better. This is fairly obvious, especially if you've seen The Movie. The environmental movement, it's been said, is rapidly morphing into the climate movement, and there's a parallel shift taking place on the business side. The motivations may be different -- for activists, climate has become a rallying cry that gives disparate groups a singular focus; for companies, it's about the need to squeeze efficiency out of every operational nook and cranny while reducing risk and enhancing image -- but the upshot is the same: Until the climate problem is under control, it will be Job One, environmentally speaking, inside most companies. And as concern, regulation, and market-based mechanisms to address climate change ramp up, this will be a key business focus for a long, long time.

2. The political will is finally emerging. Again, climate is the reason. In the U.S. and elsewhere, political leaders are realizing that this isn't a topic that will go away; indeed, it is gaining steam and could even be a focus of the 2008 U.S. election. That could increase public scrutiny of how company lobbyists are pressing for favorable treatment, and some of this pressure could come from companies otherwise seen as "leaders" in corporate climate action, leading to activist charges of greenwashing or worse. If there's evidence of a parade of public concern over climate change, politicians will certainly want to get in front of it, and companies may end up finding that there's simply no longer enough lobbying money to buy their way out of the problem -- or, better still, not enough politicians willing to be bought.

3. Consumers are waking up. This remains to be seen, of course, but there are encouraging signs that the American public is finally ready to vote with their pocketbooks, choosing greener products, or products from companies perceived to be green leaders. One thing is certain: the pipeline of greener products from household brands is filling up. We'll see a new wave of green product introductions starting later this year, including some from companies that haven't previously been in the green marketplace. If their products catch on, that pipeline could become a gusher.

4. The supply chain is gaining power. Wal-Mart, which is pushing its 60,000 suppliers to perform all sorts of sustainability somersaults, is one big reason, but they're hardly alone. Corporate and institutional buyers of everything from carpets to car parts are looking upstream for solutions, asking suppliers to, variously, reduce packaging, eliminate hazardous materials, use more organic or biobased ingredients, and take other measures to "green up" their products and operations. That's moving some markets toward cleaner production methods far faster than any mass consumer movement could.

5. The environment has become a fiduciary issue. The past twelve months has seen an almost weekly stream of stories and reports from large financial institutions -- banks, insurance companies, and investment houses -- talking about the risks of climate change, toxics, and other environmental issues to shareholders. And shareholders, especially pension funds and large faith-based institutional investors, are starting to hammer hard on companies to acknowledge, reduce, and report on their risk profiles in these areas.

6. The bar keeps moving. One theme of my presentations lately is the question, "How good is good enough?" Simply put, it bemoans the lack of standards or general agreement on what constitutes a "green business." That lack of standards frustrates many companies' efforts to be seen as "good guys"; instead, they never seem to be good enough. But there may be an upside to the lack of definitions: With no standards, the bar is free to drift continually higher. And that seems to be what is happening. For example, as more companies claim some form of carbon neutrality, the value of carbon neutral as a marketing claim becomes increasingly devalued. And as the bar rises, laggard companies, even if fully compliant on the regulatory front, are finding themselves further and further behind, from a reputational perspective.

7. Companies are moving beyond "sustainability." Given the rising bar, it would follow that companies are continually innovating, and that the cutting edge moves increasingly farther out. Within the next two years, it would not surprise me if being a "sustainable" company was no longer seen as a leadership goal. The real leaders will have focused their sights on being restorative -- for example, not being merely carbon neutral, but being carbon negative, taking more carbon out of the atmosphere than they put in.

8. More companies are telling their stories. It's no longer good enough for companies to be quiet and humble on things green. That doesn't necessarily mean they should be needlessly boastful, especially if it's not in their nature to do so. But doing the right thing and keeping it quiet is less of an option these days. Customers -- both consumers and business customers -- want green heroes, companies they feel are setting the pace. Companies holding on to the belief that walking more than talking can insulate them from criticism will find that the risks of being overly exposed may be outweighed by the risks of being seen as a laggard. Expect green advertising and marketing campaigns to mushroom in the coming months.

9. Clean technology is changing the game. The clean-tech boom (which, indeed, may be a bubble unto itself) is making it easier and cheaper for companies to transform their products, processes, and performance to use more renewable energy, biobased or lightweight materials, and fewer toxic ingredients. Given that some of the most promising, game-changing technologies are only just now reaching their intended markets, we are on the cusp of a new generation of clean-tech products and services. As they roll out, whether from startups or mega-conglomerates, they'll enable a wide range of new green products, services, and business opportunities.

10. There's money to be made. That's the real bottom line: The environment is now being seen increasingly as a potential value-add, not merely a cost to be minimized. Hence, green leaders are emerging throughout companies, not just in the environmental departments, as forward-thinking entrepreneurs (and intrapreneurs) identify and exploit new ways to leverage green thinking into new products and markets. As the number of success stories moves beyond hybrid automobiles and organic foods to include other categories products and services, green will be seen as a more "normal" part of the marketplace.

A response can be found at Clean Tech For A Better World

Carbon Footprint Labels Are Expensive

Not on the label
May 17, 2007 -- The Economist (Subscription)

Why adding “carbon footprint” labels to foods and other products is tricky

Would you like a footprint on your food? Labels already show fat, salt and sugar content, among other things. But now several British food companies and retailers plan to add “carbon footprint” labels showing the quantity (in grams) of carbon-dioxide emissions associated with making and transporting foods and other goods. The first such labels appeared on packets of Walkers crisps in April. Boots, a British pharmacy chain, will add carbon labels to some of its own-brand shampoos in July. These labels were produced in conjunction with the Carbon Trust, an environmental consultancy funded by the British government, as part of a trial scheme. Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, has also announced plans to apply carbon labels across its product range and many other firms plan to do the same.

If the idea can be made to work, carbon labels will allow shoppers to choose the products with the smallest carbon footprints and make it possible for them to compare locally produced and imported foods, as well as conventionally farmed and organic products. Claims that some kinds of food are more energy-efficient than others and worries about “food miles” would give way to “a much more rounded, inclusive picture,” says Euan Murray of the Carbon Trust.

But calculating the carbon footprint of a product is far from easy. Unlike the fat or sugar content, it cannot be measured directly. For a start, how far back up the supply chain do you go? Academic “life-cycle analyses” go into painstaking detail, factoring in the emissions associated with building factories in which food is produced, for example. But doing this for thousands of products would be a mammoth undertaking. The trick, says Mr Murray, is to find the right trade-off between rigour and a methodology that works across thousands of items. The Carbon Trust's approach is to include carbon dioxide produced in the manufacturing but not, say, that from employees commuting to work.

How far down the supply chain do you go? The Carbon Trust's labels aim to show the carbon emissions associated with making something, packaging it, getting it to the store and disposing of it. Because bags of crisps delivered to far-flung shops will have travelled farther from the factory, the auditors use an average figure for transport emissions. Similarly, national averages feed into calculations of whether a product or its packaging are recycled, incinerated or put into landfill.

The labels do not count the energy needed for refrigeration, lighting and heating in shops. Nor do they include the emissions that come from using a product. The carbon footprint of boiled potatoes, for example, is dominated by the emissions associated with cooking them. Whether you put a lid on the pan can make more of a difference than how they were farmed, or whether they were produced locally or not. Similarly, the emissions of shampoo depend on how long you spend in the shower, how hot the water is and the quality of your boiler. Such things cannot be captured in a carbon label, so they are not included, says Mr Murray.

A particularly difficult area is agricultural modelling. Some sources of farm emissions, such as the electricity consumption of a milking shed, can be measured directly. Others, such as nitrous-oxide emissions from soils and methane emissions from animals, cannot. For the latter, mathematical models are used instead, says Adrian Williams, an agri-environmental scientist at Cranfield University in England. Such models contain assumptions that not everyone may agree with, however. A recent report funded by DEFRA, Britain's environment agency, found that some organic foods had larger carbon footprints than conventional ones. It was criticised by the Soil Association, Britain's main organic lobby, which took issue with the models used for the calculations.

To complicate matters further, nitrous-oxide and methane emissions from farms far outweigh carbon-dioxide emissions in global-warming potential. Methane and nitrous oxide are taken into account by converting them into “carbon-dioxide equivalent” emissions using conversion factors provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But the quantification of nitrous-oxide emissions is still not well understood, says Dr Williams, so it is not clear which model to use.

Getting agreement on how best to calculate carbon footprints depends on debate between scientists, retailers, farmers, lobbyists and others. The Carbon Trust has begun a year-long consultation and this month a meeting took place at the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, which is looking into carbon labelling for Tesco. Agreement is vital because the labels will be useful only if there is a common standard. Otherwise consumers will not be able to compare apples with apples, as it were.

Forest Ethics: Paper Campaign Facts

Here are some slightly dated, but interesting, facts on forests and paper consumption:

Paper Campaign Facts
Forest Ethics

- Old growth forests make up 16% of the virgin tree fiber used each year to make paper products. (Abromovitz & Mattoon, Paper Cuts: Recovering the Paper Landscape (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute 1999, p21))

- Nearly 80% of the world's original old growth forests have been logged or severely degraded already and in the US we have lost 95% of our old growth forests. (source: Bryant et al., The Last Frontier Forests: Ecosystems and Economies on the Edge (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute 1997; US Forest Service, 1997 Resources Planning Act Assessment, Final Statistics, July 2000))

- 77% of the pulpwood harvested in the US is harvested in the South. (Smith & Sheffield 2000, A Brief Overview of the Forest Resources of the United States, USDA Forest Service, Washington DC and Asheville, NC).

- More than 90% of the printing and writing paper made in the US is from virgin tree fiber. (Abromovitz & Mattoon, Paper Cuts: Recovering the Paper Landscape (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute 1999))

- 40% of the world's industrial logging goes into making paper and this is expected to reach 50% in the near future. (Abromovitz, Taking a Stand: Cultivating a New Relationship with the World's Forests (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute 1998))

- Nearly a ton of new recycled paper can be made from a ton of recycled stock compared to the 2-3.5 tons of trees required to make a ton of virgin paper. This is one of the reasons recycled paper results in lower solid waste byproducts and uses less energy, water and chemicals. (Abromovitz & Mattoon, Paper Cuts: Recovering the Paper Landscape (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute 1999))

- Worldwide, the pulp and paper industry is the 5th largest industrial consumer of energy - in the US it is the 2nd largest industrial user of energy. (Abromovitz & Mattoon, Paper Cuts: Recovering the Paper Landscape (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute 1999))

- Paper comprises roughly 40% of the municipal solid waste burden in many industrial countries (Abromovitz & Mattoon, Paper Cuts: Recovering the Paper Landscape (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute 1999))

Tackling Climate Change: A bargain

Tackling Climate Change: A bargain
May 4, 2007 -- The Economist (Subscription)

About 0.1% of world GDP would do it

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up under the auspices of the United Nations to establish a consensus on global warming and what to do about it, has now completed its fourth assessment report. The first two parts, published earlier this year, about the science and the impacts of climate change, were designed to spread gloom. Change was happening, they said; it was mankind’s fault; and it was going to be damaging. The third part, released on Friday May 4th in Bangkok, is about mitigating climate change, and is designed to spread hope. Just as mankind caused the problem, it says, so mankind can stop it—and at a reasonable cost.

In some areas of economic activity, emissions could be cut with no cost to consumers or taxpayers. The heating and lighting systems of many buildings, for instance, are startlingly inefficient. Improving this would cut both emissions and bills. Economists are troubled by this, for it implies that people and businesses are not maximising their economic self-interest; yet the low take-up of energy-efficient lightbulbs suggests this is indeed the case. Governments are therefore beginning to tighten regulations on the energy efficiency of buildings, and to talk about, for instance, banning incandescent lightbulbs. The IPCC reckons that such measures could cut 30% of projected emissions from this sector at no extra cost.

Transport is trickier, because car ownership is rocketing and the demand for fuel is fairly inelastic. If people want to drive they are going to drive, unless governments jack up petrol prices to levels that are politically unacceptable. So for emissions to fall in the transport sector, new technologies, such as more efficient biofuels or electric cars, are needed. Given a big R&D effort in this sector, there is a good chance that those will be forthcoming.

Similarly, in power generation, there is scope for cutting emissions. The cost of renewable energy, such as wind and solar, has been falling. Nuclear generating technology has improved. Carbon capture and storage, which involves taking the carbon dioxide (or C02) out of power station flue gases and injecting it back into the earth, is also a possibility, though that technology is at an early stage.

Technological solutions to climate change, then, are available. But most of those on offer in the power and transport sectors cost more than fossil-fuel generated energy. Fortunately, economics comes to the rescue. Burning fossil fuels imposes a cost to society that is not reflected in their price. Economics says that it should be; and if it were, the price of using fossil fuels would rise in relation to the price of using renewable energy.

Unfortunately, the social cost of carbon is hard to calculate. Plenty of economists have tried, with unconvincing results. It requires estimating the impact of climate change on economic growth, which involves too many unknowns. So the IPCC report starts from the other end. Rather than trying to work out the social cost of carbon, and letting it feed through to reduce greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere, it starts from a manageable greenhouse-gas concentration and works backwards to a carbon price. Conveniently, it says the “social cost of carbon is at least comparable to, and possibly higher than carbon prices for even the most stringent scenarios assessed by the IPCC”.

And what is the right price? The report says that to stabilise greenhouse-gas concentrations at 550 parts per million (a level most scientists think safeish) would require a price of $20-50 per tonne of carbon by 2020-30. That is along the lines of the carbon price established the European Emissions-Trading Scheme, which varied between $6 and $40 in 2005-06. It has not bankrupted the European economy so far. The IPCC’s economic models reckon, on average, that if the world adopted such a price the global economy would be 1.3% smaller than it otherwise would have been by 2050; or, put another way, global economic growth would be 0.1% a year lower than it otherwise would have been.

The world would barely notice such figures; so one might think that climate change can be easily sorted. The problem, of course, is that the numbers work only if they are applied globally. If a few countries—even a few big countries—adopt a carbon price, it will make little difference. All the world’s big emitters need to do it. Which brings the world straight back to the problem that sank Kyoto. No country alone can make a difference, and it is in every country’s interest to ensure that everybody else bears the burden. As the IPCC report convincingly argues, the technology and the economics of this problem are easily soluble. It is the politics that is so difficult.

Designing Cities For People

Designing Cities For People
May 1, 2007 -- By Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute

As I was being driven through Tel Aviv from my hotel to a conference center a few years ago, I could not help but note the overwhelming presence of cars and parking lots. Tel Aviv, expanding from a small settlement a half-century ago to a city of some 3 million today, evolved during the automobile era. It occurred to me that the ratio of parks to parking lots may be the best single indicator of the livability of a city--whether a city is designed for people or for cars.

The world's cities are in trouble. In Mexico City, Tehran, Bangkok, Shanghai, and hundreds of other cities, the quality of daily life is deteriorating. Breathing the air in some cities is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes per day. In the United States, the number of hours commuters spend sitting in traffic going nowhere climbs higher each year.

In response to these conditions, we are seeing the emergence of a new urbanism. One of the most remarkable modern urban transformations has occurred in Bogotá, Colombia, where Enrique Peñalosa served as Mayor for three years, beginning in 1998. When he took office he did not ask how life could be improved for the 30 percent who owned cars; he wanted to know what could be done for the 70 percent--the majority--who did not own cars.

Peñalosa realized that a city that is a pleasant environment for children and the elderly would work for everyone. In just a few years, he transformed the quality of urban life with his vision of a city designed for people. Under his leadership, the city banned the parking of cars on sidewalks, created or renovated 1,200 parks, introduced a highly successful bus-based rapid transit system, built hundreds of kilometers of bicycle paths and pedestrian streets, reduced rush hour traffic by 40 percent, planted 100,000 trees, and involved local citizens directly in the improvement of their neighborhoods. In doing this, he created a sense of civic pride among the city's 8 million residents, making the streets of Bogotá in strife-torn Colombia safer than those in Washington, D.C.

Enrique Peñalosa observes that "high quality public pedestrian space in general and parks in particular are evidence of a true democracy at work." He further observes: "Parks and public space are also important to a democratic society because they are the only places where people meet as equals. In a city, parks are as essential to the physical and emotional health of a city as the water supply." He notes this is not obvious from most city budgets, where parks are deemed a luxury. By contrast, roads, the public space for cars, receive infinitely more resources and less budget cuts than parks, the public space for children. Why, he asks, are the public spaces for cars deemed more important than the public spaces for children?

Now government planners everywhere are experimenting, seeking ways to design cities for people not cars. Cars promise mobility, and they provide it in a largely rural setting. But in an urbanizing world there is an inherent conflict between the automobile and the city. After a point, as their numbers multiply, automobiles provide not mobility but immobility. Congestion also takes a direct economic toll in rising costs in time and gasoline. And urban air pollution, often from automobiles, claims millions of lives.

Another cost of cities that are devoted to cars is a psychological one, a deprivation of contact with the natural world--an "asphalt complex." There is a growing body of evidence that there is an innate human need for contact with nature. Both ecologists and psychologists have been aware of this for some time. Ecologists, led by Harvard University biologist E.O. Wilson, have formulated the "biophilia hypothesis," which argues that those who are deprived of contact with nature suffer psychologically and that this deprivation leads to a measurable decline in well-being.

Throughout the modern era, budget allocations for transportation in most countries--and in the United States, in particular--have been heavily biased toward the construction and maintenance of highways and streets. Creating more livable cities and the mobility that people desire depends on reallocating budgets to emphasize the development of rail- or bus-based public transport and bicycle support facilities.

The exciting news is that there are signs of change, daily indications of an interest in redesigning cities for people, not for cars. One encouraging trend comes from the United States. Public transit ridership nationwide rising by 2.1 percent a year since 1996 indicates that people are gradually abandoning their cars for buses, subways, and light rail. Rising gasoline prices are encouraging still more commuters to abandon their cars and take the bus or subway or get on a bicycle.

When Beijing decided to promote an automobile-centered transportation system, a group of eminent scientists in China protested. They pointed out that the country does not have enough land to accommodate the automobile and to feed its people. What is true for China is also true for India and dozens of other densely populated developing countries.
Some cities are far better at planning their growth than others. They plan transport systems that provide mobility, clean air, and exercise--a sharp contrast to cities that offer congestion, unhealthy air, and little opportunity for exercise. When 95 percent of a city's workers depend on the automobile for commuting, as in Atlanta, Georgia, the city is in trouble.

By contrast, in Amsterdam only 40 percent of workers commute by car; 35 percent bike or walk, while 25 percent use public transit. Copenhagen's commuting patterns are almost identical to Amsterdam's. In Paris, just under half of commuters rely on cars. Even though these European cities are older, with narrow streets, they have far less congestion than Atlanta.

Not surprisingly, car-dependent cities have more congestion and less mobility than those that offer a wider range of commuting options. The very vehicle whose great promise was personal mobility is in fact virtually immobilizing entire urban populations, making it difficult for rich and poor alike to move about.

Existing long-term transportation strategies in many developing countries assume that everyone will one day be able to own a car. Unfortunately, given the constraints of land available for cars, not to mention those imposed by oil reserves, this is simply not realistic. These countries will provide more mobility if they support public transportation and the bicycle.

Gore, Gandhi, and Dioum

Al Gore at TED

March, 2008







Here is an excellent presentation on issues pertaining to the new environmental movement--global climatic disruption and resource constraints (in comparison to the previous environmental movement--biodiversity, toxins, air/water quality, and population). In the past, I have been skeptical towards Al Gore for a few reasons. The most prevalent being that he flies around the world, after leaving one of his mansions, to tell the general public to reduce emissions.



"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

-Mohandas Gandhi



However, I am beginning to think less about his vanity and more about his ability to promote ideas in a compelling way.



"For in the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."

-Baba Dioum



He is one of many voices that need to be listened to as humanity attempts to reduce the tragedy of the commons and improve the living conditions for all of life.

Compact Fluorescents Release Poisonous Mercury

Mercury in Energy-Saving Bulbs Worries Scientists
March 28, 2007 -- By Lisa Von Ahn, Reuters via ENN

There's an old joke about the number of people it takes to change a light bulb. But because the newer energy-efficient kinds contain tiny amounts of mercury, the hard part is getting rid of them when they burn out.

Mercury is poisonous, but it's also a necessary part of most compact fluorescent bulbs, the kind that environmentalists and some governments are pushing as a way to cut energy use.

With an estimated 150 million CFLs sold in the United States in 2006 and with Wal-Mart alone hoping to sell 100 million this year, some scientists and environmentalists are worried that most are ending up in garbage dumps.

Mercury is probably best-known for its effects on the nervous system. The Mad Hatter in the classic children's book "Alice in Wonderland" was based on 19th-century hat makers who were continually exposed to the toxin.

Mercury can also damage the kidneys and liver, and in sufficient quantities can cause death.

U.S. regulators, manufacturers and environmentalists note that, because CFLs require less electricity than traditional incandescent bulbs, they reduce overall mercury in the atmosphere by cutting emissions from coal-fired power plants.

But some of the mercury emitted from landfills is in the form of vaprous methyl-mercury, which can get into the food chain more readily than inorganic elemental mercury released directly from a broken bulb or even coal-fired power plants, according to government scientist Steve Lindberg.

"Disposal of any mercury-contaminated material in landfills is absolutely alarming to me," said Lindberg, emeritus fellow of the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The mercury content in the average CFL -- now about 5 milligrams -- would fit on the tip of a ballpoint pen, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and manufacturers have committed to cap the amount in most CFLs to 5 milligrams or 6 milligrams per bulb.

The majority of Philips Lighting's bulbs contain less than 3 milligrams, and some have as little as 1.23 milligrams, said spokesman Steve Goldmacher.

To prevent mercury from getting into landfills, the EPA, CFL makers and various organizations advocate recycling.
Besides commercial recyclers and some municipal waste collection services, some retailers accept used CFLs.

IKEA, the Swedish home furnishings chain, has free drop-off programs at all of its 234 stores, 29 of which are in the United States. Spokeswoman Mona Astra Liss said response was slow at first, but has since picked up.

Now advocacy groups are calling on Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other big chains to get involved.

Andy Ruben, vice president for corporate sustainability at Wal-Mart, said the company was working with the EPA's Office of Solid Waste and others to find mercury and recycling solutions.

RECYCLING HURDLES

One problem with recycling is that it isn't cheap.

Larry Chalfan, executive director of the Zero Waste Alliance environmental group, said the value of the metal, glass and mercury reclaimed from recycling fails to offset the cost of the process. "Someone has to pay," he said.

Costs can range from 20 cents to 50 cents per bulb -- not a paltry sum when some CFLs sell for less than $2 at Wal-Mart.

But, compared with the overall lifecycle cost of buying and using a bulb, recycling would be less than 1 percent, said Paul Abernathy, executive director of the Association of Lighting & Mercury Recyclers, "a small price to keep the mercury out of the environment."

Another obstacle lies in the fragility of the bulbs and their mercury content.

"People who are going to accumulate these things from the public are going to have to address the fact that breakage will happen," Abernathy said. "There's the potential for contamination, and I think right now people are a little hesitant to volunteer to take on this liability."

The U.S. government has no single recycling plan in mind, said Matt Hale, director of the EPA's Office of Solid Waste.

Among the alternatives are special curbside collections by municipalities, mail-back programs by manufacturers and drop-off programs at various places, including retail stores that sell CFLs, he said.

Some methods lend themselves to certain geographic areas more than others, Hale said, because of differences in population density, transportation infrastructure and proximity to recycling sites.

State laws are also a factor.

Federal regulations mandate recycling of fluorescent lighting, while exempting households and other small users. Some states, however, are strict. For example, California no longer allows anyone to throw CFLs in the trash, while Massachusetts requires manufacturers to implement recycling programs and meet certain targets.

As technology advances, however, mercury could become less of an issue, at least as far as light bulbs are concerned.

Last month General Electric Co. said it was working on doubling the energy efficiency of incandescent lights and eventually developing versions comparable with CFLs. These bulbs, which the company hopes to begin marketing in 2010, will cost less than fluorescents but they won't last as long.

Meanwhile, some environmentally minded consumers are embracing CFLs and doing their best to dispose of them responsibly.

"I have CFLs throughout my house," said Lindberg, who lives in California. "None of them have burned out yet. I can't tell you what I'll do with them when they've burned out, but I won't throw them in the garbage."

San Francisco Lawmakers Vote To Ban Plastic Bags

San Francisco Lawmakers Vote To Ban Plastic Bags
March 28, 2007 -- By Reuters via ENN

San Francisco's city council voted Tuesday to become the first U.S. city to ban plastic bags from large supermarkets to help promote recycling.

Under the legislation approved by the city's Board of Supervisors, large supermarkets and drugstores will not be allowed to offer plastic bags made from petroleum products starting in six months.

"Many (foreign) cities and nations have already implemented very similar legislation," said Ross Mirkarimi, the city legislator who championed the new law. "It's astounding that San Francisco would be the first U.S. city to follow suit."

"I am hopeful that other U.S. cities will also adopt similar legislation," he said. "Why wait for the federal government to enact legislation that gets to the core of this problem when local governments can just step up to the plate?"

The city's Department of the Environment said San Francisco uses 181 million plastic grocery bags annually. Plans dating back a decade to encourage recycling of the bags have largely failed, with shoppers returning just one percent of bags, said department spokesman Mark Westland.

Mirkarimi said the ban would save 450,000 gallons of oil a year and remove the need to send 1,400 tons of debris now sent annually to land fills. The new rules would however allow recyclable plastic bags which are not widely used today.

A spokesman for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who must approve or veto the legislation, called it sensible. "Chances are good that he is going to sign it," said Nathan Ballard.

Corn Can't Solve Our Problem

Corn Can't Solve Our Problem
March 25, 2007 -- By David Tilman and Jason Hill, The Washington Post

The world has come full circle. A century ago our first transportation biofuels -- the hay and oats fed to our horses -- were replaced by gasoline. Today, ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soybeans have begun edging out gasoline and diesel.

This has been hailed as an overwhelmingly positive development that will help us reduce the threat of climate change and ease our dependence on foreign oil. In political circles, ethanol is the flavor of the day, and presidential candidates have been cycling through Iowa extolling its benefits. Lost in the ethanol-induced euphoria, however, is the fact that three of our most fundamental needs -- food, energy, and a livable and sustainable environment -- are now in direct conflict. Moreover, our recent analyses of the full costs and benefits of various biofuels, performed at the University of Minnesota, present a markedly different and more nuanced picture than has been heard on the campaign trail.

Some biofuels, if properly produced, do have the potential to provide climate-friendly energy, but where and how can we grow them? Our most fertile lands are already dedicated to food production. As demand for both food and energy increases, competition for fertile lands could raise food prices enough to drive the poorer third of the globe into malnourishment. The destruction of rainforests and other ecosystems to make new farmland would threaten the continued existence of countless animal and plant species and would increase the amount of climate-changing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Finding and implementing solutions to the food, fuel and environment conflict is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. But solutions will be neither adopted nor sought until we understand the interlinked problems we face.

Fossil fuel use has pushed atmospheric carbon dioxide higher than at any time during the past half-million years. The global population has increased threefold in the past century and will increase by half again, to 9 billion people, by 2050. Global food and fossil energy consumption are on trajectories to double by 2050.

Biofuels, such as ethanol made from corn, have the potential to provide us with cleaner energy. But because of how corn ethanol currently is made, only about 20 percent of each gallon is "new" energy. That is because it takes a lot of "old" fossil energy to make it: diesel to run tractors, natural gas to make fertilizer and, of course, fuel to run the refineries that convert corn to ethanol.

If every one of the 70 million acres on which corn was grown in 2006 was used for ethanol, the amount produced would displace only 12 percent of the U.S. gasoline market. Moreover, the "new" (non-fossil) energy gained would be very small -- just 2.4 percent of the market. Car tune-ups and proper tire air pressure would save more energy.

There is another problem with relying on a food-based biofuel, such as corn ethanol, as the poor of Mexico can attest. In recent months, soaring corn prices, sparked by demand from ethanol plants, have doubled the price of tortillas, a staple food. Tens of thousands of Mexico City's poor recently protested this "ethanol tax" in the streets.

In the United States, the protests have also begun -- in Congress. Representatives of the dairy, poultry and livestock industries, which rely on corn as a principal animal feed, are seeking an end to subsidies for corn ethanol in the hope of stabilizing corn prices. (It takes about three pounds of corn to produce a pound of chicken, and seven or eight pounds to grow a pound of beef.) Profit margins are being squeezed, and meat prices are rising.

U.S. soybeans, which are used to make biodiesel, may be about to follow corn's trajectory, escalating the food vs. fuel conflict. The National Biodiesel Board recently reported that 77 biodiesel production plants are under construction and that eight established plants are expanding capacity.

In terms of environmental impact, all biofuels are not created equal. Ethanol is the same chemical product no matter what its source. But ethanol made from prairie grasses, from corn grown in Illinois and from sugar cane grown on newly cleared land in Brazil have radically different impacts on greenhouse gases.

Corn, like all plants, is a natural part of the global carbon cycle. The growing crop absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so burning corn ethanol does not directly create any additional carbon. But that is only part of the story. All of the fossil fuels used to grow corn and change it into ethanol release new carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The net effect is that ethanol from corn grown in the Corn Belt does increase atmospheric greenhouse gases, and this increase is only about 15 percent less than the increase caused by an equivalent amount of gasoline. Soybean biodiesel does better, causing a greenhouse gas increase that is about 40 percent less than that from petroleum diesel.

In Brazil, ethanol made from sugar cane produces about twice as much ethanol per acre as corn. Brazilian ethanol refineries get much of their power from burning cane residue, in effect recycling carbon from the atmosphere. The environmental benefit is large. Sugar-cane ethanol grown on established soils releases 80 percent less greenhouse gases than gasoline.

But that isn't the case for sugar-cane ethanol or soybean biodiesel from Brazil's newly cleared lands, including tropical forests and savannas. Clearing land releases immense amounts of greenhouse gases into the air, because much of the material in the plants and soil is broken down into carbon dioxide.

Plants and soil contain three times more carbon than the atmosphere. The trees and soil of an acre of rainforest -- which, once cleared, is suitable for growing soybeans -- contain about 120 tons of organic carbon. An acre of tropical woodland or savanna, suitable for sugar cane, contains about half this amount. About a fourth of the carbon in an ecosystem is released to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide when trees are clear-cut, brush and branches are burned or rot, and roots decay. Even more is lost during the first 20 to 50 years of farming, as soil carbon decomposes into carbon dioxide and as wood products are burned or decay.

This means that when tropical woodland is cleared to produce sugar cane for ethanol, the greenhouse gas released is about 50 percent greater than what occurs from the production and use of the same amount of gasoline. And that statistic holds for at least two decades.

Simply being "renewable" does not automatically make a fuel better for the atmosphere than the fossil fuel it replaces, nor guarantee that society gains any new energy by its production. The European Union was recently shocked to learn that some of its imported biodiesel, derived from palm trees planted on rain-forest lands, was more than twice as bad for climate warming as petroleum diesel. So much for the "benefits" of that form of biodiesel.

Although current Brazilian ethanol is environmentally friendly, the long-term environmental implications of buying more ethanol and biodiesel from Brazil, a possibility raised recently during President Bush's trip to that country, are cloudy. It could be harmful to both the climate and the preservation of tropical plant and animal species if it involved, directly or indirectly, additional clearing of native ecosystems.

Concerns about the environmental effects of ethanol production are starting to be felt in the United States as well. It appears that American farmers may add 10 million acres of corn this year to meet booming demand for ethanol. Some of this land could come from millions of acres now set aside nationwide for conservation under a government-subsidized program. Those uncultivated acres absorb atmospheric carbon, so farming them and converting the corn into ethanol could release more carbon dioxide into the air than would burning gasoline.

There are biofuel crops that can be grown with much less energy and chemicals than the food crops we currently use for biofuels. And they can be grown on our less fertile land, especially land that has been degraded by farming. This would decrease competition between food and biofuel. The United States has about 60 million acres of such land -- in the Conservation Reserve Program, road edge rights-of-way and abandoned farmlands.

In a 10-year experiment reported in Science magazine in December, we explored how much bioenergy could be produced by 18 different native prairie plant species grown on highly degraded and infertile soil. We planted 172 plots in central Minnesota with various combinations of these species, randomly chosen. We found, on this highly degraded land, that the plots planted with mixtures of many native prairie perennial species yielded 238 percent more bioenergy than those planted with single species. High plant diversity led to high productivity, and little fertilizer or chemical weed or pest killers was required.

The prairie "hay" harvested from these plots can be used to create high-value energy sources. For instance, it can be mixed with coal and burned for electricity generation. It can be "gasified," then chemically combined to make ethanol or synthetic gasoline. Or it can be burned in a turbine engine to make electricity. A technique that is undergoing rapid development involves bioengineering enzymes that digest parts of plants (the cellulose) into sugars that are then fermented into ethanol.

Whether converted into electricity, ethanol or synthetic gasoline, the high-diversity hay from infertile land produced as much or more new usable energy per acre as corn for ethanol on fertile land. And it could be harvested year after year.

Even more surprising were the greenhouse gas benefits. When high-diversity mixtures of native plants are grown on degraded soils, they remove carbon dioxide from the air. Much of this carbon ends up stored in the soil. In essence, mixtures of native plants gradually restore the carbon levels that degraded soils had before being cleared and farmed. This benefit lasts for about a century.

Across the full process of growing high-diversity prairie hay, converting it into an energy source and using that energy, we found a net removal and storage of about a ton and a half of atmospheric carbon dioxide per acre. The net effect is that ethanol or synthetic gasoline produced from this grass on degraded land can provide energy that actually reduces atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.

When one of these carbon-negative biofuels is mixed with gasoline, the resulting blend releases less carbon dioxide than traditional gasoline.

Biofuels, if used properly, can help us balance our need for food, energy and a habitable and sustainable environment. To help this happen, though, we need a national biofuels policy that favors our best options. We must determine the carbon impacts of each method of making these fuels, then mandate fuel blending that achieves a prescribed greenhouse gas reduction. We have the knowledge and technology to start solving these problems.

Food to Fuel Increases World Food Prices

Massive Diversion of U.S. Grain To Fuel Cars Is Raising World Food Prices
March 21, 2007 -- By Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute

ECO-ECONOMY UPDATE:
Massive Diversion of U.S. Grain To Fuel Cars Is Raising World Food Prices

If you think you are spending more each week at the supermarket, you may be right. The escalating share of the U.S. grain harvest going to ethanol distilleries is driving up food prices worldwide.

Corn prices have doubled over the last year, wheat futures are trading at their highest level in 10 years, and rice prices are rising too. In addition, soybean futures have risen by half. A Bloomberg analysis notes that the soaring use of corn as the feedstock for fuel ethanol “is creating unintended consequences throughout the global food chain.”

The countries initially hit by rising food prices are those where corn is the staple food. In Mexico, one of more than 20 countries with a corn-based diet, the price of tortillas is up by 60 percent. Angry Mexicans in crowds of up to 75,000 have taken to the streets in protest, forcing the government to institute price controls on tortillas.

Food prices are also rising in China, India, and the United States, countries that contain 40 percent of the world’s people. While relatively little corn is eaten directly in these countries, vast quantities are consumed indirectly in meat, milk, and eggs in both China and the United States.

Rising grain and soybean prices are driving up meat and egg prices in China. January pork prices were up 20 percent above a year earlier, eggs were up 16 percent, while beef, which is less dependent on grain, was up 6 percent.

In India, the overall food price index in January 2007 was 10 percent higher than a year earlier. The price of wheat, the staple food in northern India, has jumped 11 percent, moving above the world market price.

In the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that the wholesale price of chicken in 2007 will be 10 percent higher on average than in 2006, the price of a dozen eggs will be up a whopping 21 percent, and milk will be 14 percent higher. And this is only the beginning.

In the past, food price rises have usually been weather related and always temporary. This situation is different. As more and more fuel ethanol distilleries are built, world grain prices are starting to move up toward their oil-equivalent value in what appears to be the beginning of a long-term rise.

The food and energy economies, historically separate, are now merging. In this new economy, if the fuel value of grain exceeds its food value, the market will move it into the energy economy. As the price of oil climbs so will the price of food.

Some 16 percent of the 2006 U.S. grain harvest was used to produce ethanol. With 80 or so ethanol distilleries now under construction, enough to more than double existing ethanol production capacity, nearly a third of the 2008 grain harvest will be going to ethanol.

Since the United States is the leading exporter of grain, shipping more than Canada, Australia, and Argentina combined, what happens to the U.S. grain crop affects the entire world. With the massive diversion of grain to produce fuel for cars, exports will drop. The world’s breadbasket is fast becoming the U.S. fuel tank.

The number of hungry people in the world has been declining for several decades, but in the late 1990s the trend reversed and the number began to rise. The United Nations currently lists 34 countries as needing emergency food assistance. Many of these are considered failed and failing states, including Chad, Iraq, Liberia, Haiti, and Zimbabwe. Since food aid programs typically have fixed budgets, if the price of grain doubles, food aid will be reduced by half.

Urban food protests in response to rising food prices in low and middle income countries, such as Mexico, could lead to political instability that would add to the growing list of failed and failing states. At some point, spreading political instability could disrupt global economic progress.

Against this backdrop, Washington is consumed with “ethanol euphoria.” President Bush in his State of the Union address set a production goal for 2017 of 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels, including grain-based and cellulosic ethanol, and liquefied coal. Given the current difficulties in producing cellulosic ethanol at a competitive cost and given the mounting public opposition to liquefied coal, which is far more carbon-intensive than gasoline, most of the fuel to meet this goal might well have to come from grain. This could take most of the U.S. grain harvest, leaving little grain to meet U.S. needs, much less those of the hundred or so countries that import grain.

The stage is now set for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles, and the world’s 2 billion poorest people. The risk is that millions of those on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder will start falling off as higher food prices drop their consumption below the survival level.

In February 2007 the World Food Programme Director James T. Morris reported that 18,000 children are now dying every day from hunger and malnutrition. This daily loss of life is six times the number of U.S. combat fatalities in Iraq over the last four years.

There are alternatives to this grim scenario. A rise in auto fuel efficiency standards of 20 percent, phased in over the next decade would save as much oil as converting the entire U.S. grain harvest into ethanol.

One option that is gaining momentum is a shift to plug-in hybrids. Adding a second storage battery to a gas-electric hybrid car along with a plug-in capacity so that the batteries can be recharged at night allows most short-distance driving—daily commuting and grocery shopping, for example—to be done with electricity. If this shift were accompanied by investment in thousands of wind farms that could feed cheap electricity into the grid, then cars could run largely on electricity for the equivalent cost of $1 per gallon gasoline.

Encouragingly, three auto manufacturers—Toyota, Nissan, and GM—have announced plans to bring plug-in hybrid cars to market. Plug-In Partners, which is spearheading a national campaign to shift to plug-in hybrid cars, already has 508 partners, including electrical utilities, corporations, state and city governments, and farm and environmental groups. Among its fast-growing list of partners are the American Public Power Association, Electric Power Research Institute, American Wind Energy Association, American Corn Growers Association, and the cities of Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, and Boston. Already a number of Partners have collectively pledged to purchase for their own fleets more than 8,000 plug-in hybrids as soon as they reach the market.

Ethanol euphoria is not an acceptable substitute for a carefully thought through policy. For Washington, it is time to decide whether to continue with the current policy of subsidizing more and more grain-based fuel distilleries or to encourage a shift to more fuel-efficient cars and a new automotive fuel economy centered on plug-in hybrid cars and wind energy. The choice is between a future of rising world food prices, spreading hunger, and growing political instability, or one of stable food prices, sharply reduced dependence on oil, and much lower carbon emissions.

Water Prices Rising Worldwide

Water Prices Rising Worldwide
March 7, 2007 -- By Edwin H. Clark, II, Earth Policy Institute

ECO-ECONOMY UPDATE:
Water Prices Rising Worldwide

The price of water is increasing—sometimes dramatically—throughout the world. Over the past five years, municipal water rates have increased by an average of 27 percent in the United States, 32 percent in the United Kingdom, 45 percent in Australia, 50 percent in South Africa, and 58 percent in Canada. In Tunisia, the price of irrigation water increased fourfold over a decade.

A recent survey of 14 countries indicates that average municipal water prices range from 66¢ per cubic meter in the United States up to $2.25 in Denmark and Germany. Yet consumers rarely pay the actual cost of water. In fact, many governments practically (and sometimes literally) give water away for nothing.

The average American household consumes about 480 cubic meters (127,400 gallons) of water during a year. Homeowners in Washington, DC, pay about $350 (72¢ per cubic meter) for that amount. Buying that same amount of water from a vendor in the slums of Guatemala City would cost more than $1,700.

The price people pay for water is largely determined by three factors: the cost of transport from its source to the user, total demand for the water, and price subsidies. Treatment to remove contaminants also can add to the cost.

The cost of transporting water is determined largely by how far it has to be carried and how high it has to be lifted. Growing cities and towns may have to go hundreds of kilometers to find the water needed to satisfy their increasing thirst. California cities have long imported water from hundreds of kilometers away. And China is constructing three canals that are 1,156 kilometers, 1,267 kilometers, and 260 kilometers long to transfer water from the Yangtze River to Beijing and other rapidly growing areas in the northern provinces.

Pumping water out of the ground or over land to higher elevations is energy-intensive. Pumping 480 cubic meters of water a height of 100 meters requires some 200 kilowatt-hours of electricity. At a price of 10¢ per kilowatt-hour, the cost is $20—not including the cost of the pump, the well, and the piping. One hundred meters is not an unusual lift for wells tapping falling supplies of groundwater. In Beijing and other areas in northern China, for instance, lifts of 1,000 meters are sometimes required.

Mexico City, at an elevation of 2,239 meters, has to pump some of its water supply over 1,000 meters up a mountain. The operating costs alone amount to $128.5 million annually. Pumping this water requires more energy than is consumed overall in the nearby city of Puebla, home to 8.3 million people. Amman, Jordan, faces a similar problem related to delivering water to higher elevations.

In most places water is not purchased or exchanged in a market. But formal water markets are developing in the western United States, Australia, and Chile. Where these water markets do exist, they provide examples of how high the scarcity value of the water—that is, the amount that other potential users would be willing to pay for it—can be. Water prices in Australia’s markets peaked at near 75¢ per cubic meter in December 2006, climbing 20-fold in a year in part due to prolonged drought. In the U.S. West, water prices typically range between 3¢ and 10¢ per cubic meter. This is just the cost of the water itself and does not include the expense of treating or transporting it. In some western U.S. cities, water is so scarce that cities are selling sewage effluent for as much as $1 a cubic meter to be used for irrigating gardens.

In India, water scarcity has prompted some farmers to profit by selling their water instead of farming. The water they formerly used to irrigate their crops is instead pumped from their wells and trucked to nearby cities. The farmers are harvesting water rather than food and at the same time promoting a rapid drop in underground water tables.

The final factor affecting how much people pay for water is the amount it is subsidized. Water subsidies can be very large. For instance, water revenues in the city of Delhi are less than 20 percent of what it spends each year to provide water. On average worldwide, nearly 40 percent of municipal suppliers do not charge enough for water to meet their basic operation and maintenance costs.

Subsidies often benefit only higher-income families. Frequently, urban slum residents in developing countries have no access to municipal water supplies and instead purchase water from private purveyors who bring it in by truck. In part because unscrupulous vendors often control this distribution, the prices are very high, typically exceeding $1 per cubic meter. In several Asian cities, for instance, households forced to purchase water from a private vendor pay more than 10 times as much as middle-income families who are connected to the municipality’s distribution system. The poorest households in Uganda spend 22 percent of their income on water, while those in El Salvador and Jamaica use more than 10 percent of their income to satisfy water needs.

Water subsidies are not limited to the developing world. Farmers in California’s Central Valley, for example, use roughly one fifth of the state’s water and pay on average slightly over 1¢ per cubic meter, just 2 percent of what Los Angeles pays for its drinking water and only 10 percent of its replacement value. One analysis of a new U.S. project in central Utah found that the water it will provide will cost close to 40 times more than irrigators pay for it.

Water is currently managed as if it were worthless instead of the life-sustaining, valuable, and increasingly scarce resource that it is. A key step in moving toward more rational water management is to place a price on water that reflects its value and scarcity. This can, of course, result in substantial price increases that particularly hurt low-income families. The best way to avoid this problem is to use a block rate pricing system where a low level of consumption—that required to satisfy basic needs—is very cheap, while prices increase at higher levels of consumption. In Osaka, Japan, for instance, users pay a set monthly fee that includes 10 cubic meters of water; beyond that prices increase in steps from 82¢ per cubic meter up to $3 or more for high-volume users. In addition, ensuring that the poorest households are connected to a secure water supply can protect them from price gouging by private vendors.

Although pricing water at a reasonable cost can generate political problems in the short run, it can lead to substantial efficiencies in the longer run and eliminate a perverse drain on government budgets. Higher prices will lead farmers and industries to use water more efficiently and encourage households to buy more water-efficient appliances and reduce the amount of water they waste. Many efficiency improvements are relatively inexpensive, and most pay for themselves. Any improvement that reduces hot water use, for instance, can pay for itself over time because it saves energy as well as water.

Indeed, there are many links between energy and water. Not only are substantial amounts of energy required to extract, transport, and treat water, but just as the oil price shocks of the 1970s stimulated energy conservation, so too could pricing water to better reflect its real cost stimulate similar conservation efforts by industries, farmers, and households.

Distillery Demand For Grain To Fuel Cars Vastly Understated

Distillery Demand For Grain To Fuel Cars Vastly Understated: World May Be Facing Highest Grain Prices in History
January 4, 2007 -- By Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute

ECO-ECONOMY UPDATE:
World May Be Facing Highest Grain Prices in History

Investment in fuel ethanol distilleries has soared since the late-2005 oil price hikes, but data collection in this fast-changing sector has fallen behind. Because of inadequate data collection on the number of new plants under construction, the quantity of grain that will be needed for fuel ethanol distilleries has been vastly understated. Farmers, feeders, food processors, ethanol investors, and grain-importing countries are basing decisions on incomplete data.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) projects that distilleries will require only 60 million tons of corn from the 2008 harvest. But here at the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), we estimate that distilleries will need 139 million tons—more than twice as much. If the EPI estimate is at all close to the mark, the emerging competition between cars and people for grain will likely drive world grain prices to levels never seen before. The key questions are: How high will grain prices rise? When will the crunch come? And what will be the worldwide effect of rising food prices?

One reason for the low USDA projection is that it was released in February 2006, well before the effect of surging oil prices on investment in fuel ethanol distilleries was fully apparent. Beyond this, USDA relies heavily on the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), a trade group, for data on ethanol distilleries under construction, but the RFA data have lagged behind movement in the industry.

We drew on four firms that collect and publish data on U.S. ethanol distilleries under construction. RFA is the one most frequently cited. The other three firms are Europe-based F.O. Licht, the publisher of World Ethanol and Biofuels Report; BBI International, which publishes Ethanol Producer Magazine; and the American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE), publisher of Ethanol Today.

Unfortunately, the lists of plants under construction maintained by RFA, BBI, and ACE are not complete. Each contains some plants that are not on the other lists. Drawing on these three lists and on biweekly reports from F.O. Licht, EPI has compiled a more complete master list. For example, while we show 79 plants under construction, RFA lists 62 plants. (We welcome any information that will improve this list, which can be viewed at www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2007/Update63_data.htm).

According to the EPI compilation, the 116 plants in production on December 31, 2006, were using 53 million tons of grain per year, while the 79 plants under construction—mostly larger facilities—will use 51 million tons of grain when they come online. Expansions of 11 existing plants will use another 8 million tons of grain (1 ton of corn = 39.4 bushels = 110 gallons of ethanol).

In addition, easily 200 ethanol plants were in the planning stage at the end of 2006. If these translate into construction starts between January 1 and June 30, 2007, at the same rate that plants did during the final six months of 2006, then an additional 3 billion gallons of capacity requiring 27 million more tons of grain will likely come online by September 1, 2008, the start of the 2008 harvest year. This raises the corn needed for distilleries to 139 million tons, half the 2008 harvest projected by USDA. This would yield nearly 15 billion gallons of ethanol, satisfying 6 percent of U.S. auto fuel needs. (And this estimate does not include any plants started after June 30, 2007, that would be finished in time to draw on the 2008 harvest).

This unprecedented diversion of the world’s leading grain crop to the production of fuel will affect food prices everywhere. As the world corn price rises, so too do those of wheat and rice, both because of consumer substitution among grains and because the crops compete for land. Both corn and wheat futures were already trading at 10-year highs in late 2006.

The U.S. corn crop, accounting for 40 percent of the global harvest and supplying 70 percent of the world’s corn exports, looms large in the world food economy. Annual U.S. corn exports of some 55 million tons account for nearly one fourth of world grain exports. The corn harvest of Iowa alone, which edges out Illinois as the leading producer, exceeds the entire grain harvest of Canada. Substantially reducing this export flow would send shock waves throughout the world economy.

Robert Wisner, Iowa State University economist, reports that Iowa’s demand for corn from processing plants that were on line, expanding, under construction, or being planned as of late 2006 totaled 2.7 billion bushels. Yet even in a good year the state harvests only 2.2 billion bushels. As distilleries compete with feeders for grain, Iowa could become a corn importer.

With corn supplies tightening fast, rising prices will affect not only products made directly from corn, such as breakfast cereals, but also those produced using corn, including milk, eggs, cheese, butter, poultry, pork, beef, yogurt, and ice cream. The risk is that soaring food prices could generate a consumer backlash against the fuel ethanol industry.

Fuel ethanol proponents point out, and rightly so, that the use of corn to produce ethanol is not a total loss to the food economy because 30 percent of the corn is recovered in distillers dried grains that can be fed to beef and dairy cattle, pigs, and chickens, though only in limited amounts. They also argue that the U.S. distillery demand for corn can be met by expanding land in corn, mostly at the expense of soybeans, and by raising yields. While it is true that the corn crop can be expanded, there is no precedent for growth on the scale needed. And this soaring demand for corn comes when world grain production has fallen below consumption in six of the last seven years, dropping grain stocks to their lowest level in 34 years.

From an agricultural vantage point, the automotive demand for fuel is insatiable. The grain it takes to fill a 25-gallon tank with ethanol just once will feed one person for a whole year. Converting the entire U.S. grain harvest to ethanol would satisfy only 16 percent of U.S. auto fuel needs.

The competition for grain between the world’s 800 million motorists who want to maintain their mobility and its 2 billion poorest people who are simply trying to survive is emerging as an epic issue. Soaring food prices could lead to urban food riots in scores of lower-income countries that rely on grain imports, such as Indonesia, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, and Mexico. The resulting political instability could in turn disrupt global economic progress, directly affecting all countries. It is not only food prices that are at stake, but trends in the Nikkei Index and the Dow Jones Industrials as well.

There are alternatives to creating a crop-based automotive fuel economy. The equivalent of the 2 percent of U.S. automotive fuel supplies now coming from ethanol could be achieved several times over, and at a fraction of the cost, by raising auto fuel efficiency standards by 20 percent.

If we shift to gas-electric hybrid plug-in cars over the next decade, we could be doing short-distance driving, such as the daily commute or grocery shopping, with electricity. If we then invested in thousands of wind farms to feed cheap electricity into the grid, U.S. cars could run primarily on wind energy—and at the gasoline equivalent of less than $1 a gallon. The stage is set for a crash program to help Detroit switch to gas-electric hybrid plug-in cars.

It is time for a moratorium on the licensing of new distilleries, a time-out, while we catch our breath and decide how much corn can be used for ethanol without dramatically raising food prices. The policy goal should be to use just enough fuel ethanol to support corn prices and farm incomes but not so much that it disrupts the world food economy. Meanwhile, a much greater effort is needed to produce ethanol from cellulosic sources such as switchgrass, a feedstock that is not used for food.

The world desperately needs a strategy to deal with the emerging food-fuel battle. As the leading grain producer, grain exporter, and ethanol producer, the United States is in the driver’s seat. We need to make sure that in trying to solve one problem—our dependence on imported oil—we do not create a far more serious one: chaos in the world food economy.