U.S. widlife preserves, bike lakes, cheap gasoline and fuel subsidies

Check out the following links:

1. Emerald Cities from the NY Times.

2. Bike Lanes Benefit Drivers.

3. Gas Is Cheaper, but We’re Still Driving Less.

4. Eliminate All Fossil Fuel Subsidies, Says Org.

Why banning light bulbs is bad policy

Check out Virginia Postrel's article on why banning light bulbs is bad policy. In December 2007, the U.S. federal government enacted the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which requires all general-purpose light bulbs that produce 310–2600 lumens of light to be 30% more energy efficient (similar to current halogen lamps) than then-current incandescent bulbs by 2012 to 2014. The efficiency standards will start with 100-watt bulbs in January 2012 and end with 40-watt bulbs in January 2014. More here.

Here are some of here points:

"Banning light bulbs is one of the least efficient ways imaginable to attack those problems. A lamp using power from a clean source is treated the same as a lamp using power from a dirty source. A ban gives electricity producers no incentive to reduce emissions".

"Nor does it allow households to make choices about how best to conserve electricity. A well-designed policy would allow different people to make different tradeoffs among different uses to produce the most happiness (“utility” in econ-speak) for a given amount of power. Maybe I want to burn a lot of incandescent bulbs but dry my clothes outdoors and keep the air conditioner off. Maybe I want to read by warm golden light instead of watching a giant plasma TV".

More here.

A Green Mortgage

Looking at buying a home? Even the banks can see the benefits of going green and are happy to reward you for it.

In March of 2011, the Bank of Montreal (BMO) began offering a mortgage plan that provides a relatively low lending rate to homeowners whose homes are 'green'. Provided your home meets the necessary criteria -- primarily having ENERGY STAR rated products and several other high efficiency units -- you can receive a lending rate several points lower than the typical mortgage. For example, the current rate on a low five year fixed mortgage from BMO is 4.14%, while the green mortgage comes in at 3.89%, which could save homeowners thousands of dollars over the five year period.

BMO isn't the only Canadian bank in on this. TD also has a similar discounted rate, while RBC and CIBC offer rebates from certain home inspections and energy upgrades.

It's nice to see the private sector starting to pick up some of the slack left behind by the federal government -- ahem, the Harper Government. After years as a success under Liberal and Conservative governments, the ecoEnergy home retrofit program (formerly EnerGuide) was discontinued in March, 2011. The programs had provided Canadian home and business owners with significant rebates for energy-related upgrades, upwards of $10,000 when paired with matching provincial rebates. Given the Conservative environmental platform, its vow to cut the deficit and its new majority government, it seems highly unlikely that any similar program will return anytime soon.

Home retrofits are some of the most economical changes people can make to decrease their environmental impact on the world. Things like weather stripping, insulation and new furnaces can often pay for themselves in energy savings in less than five years. Unfortunately, the high upfront cost can prohibit a lot of homeowners from making such investments, so every little bit helps.

Of course, given the current state of the Canadian economy and the hit the mortgage market took in the last few years, it has become increasingly difficult to get your hands on a mortgage. And given the strict criteria for the plan, this will likely benefit the affluent before the poor. But hey, you have to start somewhere.

Environmental Challenges and Opportunities in 2010

Happy New Year! Many thanks to our readers, followers and guest post authors who continue to support and read Enviro Boys. Many more posts to come in 2011!

A blog post from the NY Times' Green Blog highlights the many environmental challenges and opportunities of 2010. Most of the examples are from the United States but there is discussion of Russia's summer heat wave and the US senate's postponed decision on whether to approve a controversial 2,000-mile, $7 billion pipeline project to deliver crude oil from Canadian oil sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Here is a highlight that caught my interest and is more promising than it is depressing:

Tigers and Bears: With major reports on biodiversity all showing an accelerating loss of species on land and in the oceans, attention was focused most closely on polar bears, whose sea ice habitat is melting for longer periods almost every year. A team of climate scientists and biologists is promoting the idea of setting aside a “sea ice refuge” — a swath of the Arctic from northwest Greenland west through northern Canada where the ice remains thickest. Another study predicted that polar bears would breed with grizzlies, creating hybrids that are less resilient. Meanwhile, fears of the extinction of the wild tiger prompted a summit of sorts in Moscow, at which officials agreed to a goal of doubling the number of wild tigers — now about 3,200 — by 2022.

Read the blog post here.

Key message: We have a long way to go on the environmental front. While it is still pretty common to dismiss the ominous nature of climate change -- especially in a time when people are more concerned about finding a job -- the reality of our environmental challenges are significant and require meaningful action. Heat waves in Russia, water droughts in the US Southwest and renewable energy opportunities may seem distant from you but everything is interconnected and closer than you think. Always think about your impact on the environment and ask yourself how you can conserve and lower your ecological footprint.

The Future of Oil

Jeff Rubin, author of Why your world is about to get a whole lot smaller, and Canadian journalist, Andrew Nikiforuk discuss the economic, environmental and social implications of conventional oil. The video is courtesy of TVO and was filmed at the Rotman School of Management at U of T earlier this year.

Jeff thinks that we have not reached peak oil per se, but a series of forthcoming commodity price shocks will make the price of oil more volatile and push it over $100 a barrel and eventually to $200 a barrel. Conventional oil is becoming more scarce but the unconventional stuff found in the Alberta's oil sands or in Venezuela, is plentiful but will become really expensive in the near future. Off-shore drilling has provided cheap oil to this planet for many years, but disasters like the recent Gulf Oil spill point to the precarious nature of such a process and the enormous risks posed to ecology and human beings.

"The world isn’t about to run out of oil—it’s just running out of oil that we can afford to burn. And whether we move goods by air, ship, truck or rail, the global economy runs on oil".

"In order to insulate ourselves from even greater oil price shocks in the future, we must move from the hugely energy-intensive model of a global economy to the far more sustainable model of a local economy. And that means we must re-engineer our lives to adapt to the contours of a much smaller world."

Andrew Nikiforuk is an outspoken critique of the Alberta oil sands which he regards as a petro state. He draws our attention to the negative environmental ramifications of the project and how it is tainting our image internationally. He also suggests that there are smart petro states such as Norway who have sovereign funds that help stabilize the oil economy. In essence, they maintain good oil production while diversifying the economy. They invest oil revenue into many sectors of the economy and also put money aside for future generations. Canada has lost over 300,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector because of an appreciating petro dollar. Without diversifying the economy, petro states will inevitably push up their real exchange rate and contract Dutch Disease.

Anyway, check out the video.

Energy Intensity in China

Image Credit: South China Morning Post

Energy intensity is a macroeconomic measure of the energy required per unit of economic output. It is commonly expressed as units of energy per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). For China, it is the amount of energy needed to produce each yuan of economic output.

According to official figures from Beijing, last year China burnt the equivalent of almost 108 tonnes of coal to produce each million yuan of economic output.

From 2005 to 2009, energy intensity fell by 16 percent in China. Do not be totally deceived though. The output of the service industries - retail businesses, media, financial services and banking all use much less energy than manufacturing and industrial businesses. The service industries have started to rise of late and have formed a greater share of overall economic output. As a result, energy intensity tends to decrease as a natural consequence of economic growth.

Energy intensity remains relatively high because of China's large-scale infrastructure projects such as high speed rail construction and hydro-electric dams. When energy is priced at a lower amount, there is less of a need to conserve and use it more efficiently. The Germans have been efficient in almost every aspect of their economy.

In Germany, conservation of energy has not necessarily slowed down economic growth. Using energy efficiently has led to better allocation of it, which leads to better transmission and distribution of electricity across the nation. This keeps the economy going (it's amazing how much you can save with smart energy allocation) and does little harm to the environment.

Another example: Italy 's annual energy intensity of 122.8 tons of oil equivalent makes it the most energy efficient country in the G8 and one of the most energy efficient in the industrial world. This is mainly due to the traditionally high energy prices which have resulted in more efficient company and consumer behaviours. No one likes higher energy prices (whether you're an industry or household resident). But higher prices force you to innovate (and conserve) and design products that are less energy intensive. This drives competition and overtime, the entire economy benefits and people adjust accordingly.

China’s wasteful industrial and chemical plants are what keep energy intensity high. They help keep economic growth in check but have negative ramifications on the environment. Adopting environmental regulations would risk slowing down such growth. It seems that the Chinese Communist Party is content with how the economy is growing (now the world's second largest) but be critical and ask yourself if such growth is truly sustainable given the population size, political system, increasing numbers of university graduates and outstanding human rights cases.

Key message: Through innovation and smarter design, energy efficiency will get better in China, but it is going to be an extremely difficult task given the current economic growth.

Bottled Water from Fiji

I went to a coffee shop today in Hong Kong's Central Business District. While waiting in line, I saw some guy buy two bottles of Fiji Water priced at HK$19 a piece ($2.57 CAN per bottle). Yeah, that's right, I actually walked over to the bottled water section after I purchased my coffee to check out the outrageous prices of these products.

Of all the forms of bottled water, I think Fiji water is the worst in terms of its negative ramifications on the environment. Not only that, but the price is exorbitant (you pay a premium for this stuff, it cost more than Dasani and definitely more than Volvic). Also, it has a high energy intensity.

As Peter Gleick demonstrated in a paper, the energy intensity of bottled water is measured by manufacturing the plastic bottle, treatment, cooling and transportation. In the transportation category, Fiji is probably the worst. Indeed, North American cities like LA have high demand for Fiji water. The transportation energy cost of getting the water from Fiji to LA is 4 megajoules (MJ). To put that in perspective, producing tap water requires about 0.005 MJ for treatment and distribution. Transporting Fiji water from Fiji to Hong Kong has a smaller transportation energy cost, nonetheless, it is still an issue worth discussing.

Don't worry, I am not forgetting about the economic side of this argument. Fiji water is in high demand and thus profitable for those who make it. Instead of going on a huge rant about why bottled water from Fiji is problematic, I'll leave you to read David Zetland's blog post (which is hilarious and bang on) and touches more on the economics of the issue. I just thought I would point to a few facts.

Could green energy take a hit from Ontario's government probe?

The Ontario government is in trouble. Again.

The Ontario Provincial Police is conducting a criminal investigation in some dirty business dealings between public sector staff and private sector firms. The public sector staff in question belong to the Ontario Realty Corporation, a corporation that lies under the authority of the Ministry of Energy & Infrastructure.

Uh oh. For proponents of green energy in Ontario, this could be worrying. A friend of mine, SH, posits that if any of the alleged improper business dealings are focused on the province's renewable energy program, the whole green energy movement in Ontario could be sunk beyond repair.

There is a chance that renewable energy could be involved. The government has given plenty of exclusive renewable deals to major private firms, most notably Samsung. The rhetorical push for community energy has not been followed by approvals for such projects, while private sector firms are receiving everything they need. These events have pissed off a lot of people. But have they been illegal? Time will tell.

If so, it is likely that green energy in Ontario would take a massive hit. The streamlining of approvals, reduction of effective public participation and the provincial supersession of municipal authority under the Green Energy Act have triggered opposition exponentially. Try to find an area in rural Ontario where opposition to a wind farm is not strong. Politically, the Progressive Conservatives have called for a moratorium on wind turbine development.

As ambitious as the government's program is, it has done much to help their popularity. This is far from the government's only concern. People are already angry about the HST, the deficit, scandals at E-Health and OLG and a plethora of different issues. Even other green programs have taken a hit, most recently the new Eco Fee, resulting in the government and Stewardship Ontario pointing fingers at one another.

Let's hope that green energy isn't involved in another government scandal, especially a criminal one.

The wacky world of wind energy opposition...

 So what do you hate about wind turbines?

Are they too imposing? Too loud? Do they kill too many birds and bats? Maybe you're worried that the low-frequency vibrations will cause headaches, faint or even cancers? Or maybe you're pissed off that the Ontario government is happy to give wind developers extra revenue directly from your wallet?

I bet it's because a list of bird mortalities from Ontario's Wolfe Island reads strikingly similar to a list of the dead at Auschwitz.

Sadly, this is an actual -- and outrageously distasteful -- comparison I have come across this summer from the representative of a major anti-wind community group. The development of wind energy in Ontario has generated a lot of opposition to wind. Unfortunately, passionate opposition brings out the worst in people. Or, as the case may be, brings out the worst people.

Ridiculous claims are not uncommon in the growing world of wind opposition. I have personally come across a story from a woman who claimed that her friend, who lives next to an industrial wind turbine, had to shovel up hundreds of dead birds every few mornings from her yard. Sure. Others I have spoken to have come across people who compare the impact of new wind turbines with the rape and murder of community members. Some of the members of these groups even suspect that the OPP and RCMP have tapped their phones and track their emails. Something tells me that they're a little too busy with real life. Oh, and the G20.

Unfortunately, these quacks are giving wind opposition a bad name. If a project is proposed, the looney tunes will headline the opposition, stirring up all sorts of anger, but ultimately eroding credibility and limiting the role of healthy, rational conversation and debate. The right wing Tea Party Movement in the United States is comparable.

You see, not all wind development is good. There is a good way and a bad way. Right now, lots of developers are doing it the bad way. Half-hearted public meetings; total ignorance of the local community; scoffs at concerned local governments and a purely economic focus. They, however, can not be entirely blamed for this. The provincial government, through the Green Energy Act, has made it perfectly legal to hold marginal public meetings and ignore municipal governments. In fact, it's almost encouraged, in the name of streamlined approvals and preventing any more climate change.

The major pro-wind groups, like the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA), immediately associate every bit of opposition with the wild claims held by the quacks I talked about earlier. Moreover, both CanWEA and the government have created an atmosphere of extremes: either you support wind power with us or you're against it along with the Holocaust comparison folks.

This isn't fair. Just because wind energy represents all sorts of good like 'green energy', energy independence and renewability, does not mean we can simply throw opposing arguments to the ground. There needs to be a reasonable conversation and the burden for such a transition falls on both sides. The government needs to stop being so antagonistic or it's going to find itself deeper in what is already a deep hole of political turmoil, and the crazy anti-wind people need to shut up and stay out of it. Do you really think anyone is going to listen to you if you compare wind turbine development with the Holocaust?

A professor at Trent once told me -- in a rather accusational way, I might add -- that I am pro-wind. I corrected her and told her that I am actually only pro-wind if it is done right. That means effective public consultation and even participation, designing the projects appropriately and making sure the risks and benefits of the project are distributed equally with both developers and the surrounding community. I'm not a gung-ho, wind at all costs kind of guy and I don't believe she is a crazy anti-wind whacko.

There is a right way to do it and a wrong way. Let's try to figure out the right way.

Image Credit: Soul Online

Is Ontario quietly walking away from its renewable energy targets?

Ontario is driving the country's most ambitious renewable energy incentive program; its Feed-In Tariff that came as part of the landmark Green Energy Act. As with any ambitious government policy, equally ambitious targets accompany the program itself.

Several months ago I came across Ontario's new renewable energy targets under its FIT program and found them to be well beyond anything I had seen before. Ontario had committed to 15,000 MW of new renewable energy by 2025 and even hoped to exceed the targets. To put that in context, its current generating capacity is roughly 35,000 MW, primarily made up of nuclear, gas, coal and hydro.

Because solar projects are not usually very large and relatively few biogas projects are developed, most of the 15,000 MW would come from wind and hydro projects. Now, to be clear, 15,000 MW of hydro projects would produce a lot more electricity than 15,000 MW of wind projects because the wind doesn't blow all the time. But if even a third of that target is met by wind, it would mean a minimum of 2,500 new wind turbines scattered throughout the province. Regardless of whether or not you think that's a good thing, that is an immense number of turbines. It's actually more than you'd find all over Canada, Ontario currently included.

But I came across something very curious the other day. While looking to confirm those targets for my Honours Thesis, they were nowhere to be found. The government website I had used before was no longer available and a thorough review of the government's different department/agency websites (the Ministry of Energy, Ministry of Natural Resources, Ontario Power Authority) brought up nothing.

Instead, the only solid numbers I could find were estimates of job creation and what Ontario has already done since October. In thinking I was perhaps going a little crazy, I went in search of these targets elsewhere. Luckily, I was able to find a few sites (here, here and here) that made reference to the government announcement of the targets.

Why these targets aren't available is quite a mystery. It is, of course, possible that I am simply too daft to find them, but I find it unlikely. At this point I won't begin to speculate further, but I feel that it might be appropriate to follow up on it.

I'll try to keep people updated...

Coal-loaded ship runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef...

If the rapid development of coal-fired power plants in China wasn't enough to piss off the environmental community, the crashing of a Chinese coal-carrier on the Great Barrier Reef certainly won't help.

The ship ran aground late last night and is carrying 72,000 tons of coal, as well as 1000 tons of oil. Some of the oil has started to leak and local officials are very worried that the ship is on the verge of breaking apart. A break could spell significant environmental disaster on one of the world's most fragile ecosystems.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef is in serious danger from climate change, as rising ocean temperatures tend to cause significant coral bleaching, which, if occurring annually, could very well kill the Reef.

For more information on the story, go here.

This has not been a good week for China's coal industry. In addition to the Reef incident and the constant criticism of its coal plants by environmentalists, 153 miners have been trapped inside a coal mine in China for nearly a week.

Despite all the wonderful economic and energy benefits of coal, there sure are many downsides. Hopefully these downsides start to be taken more seriously before it's too late.

Photo: Guardian Newspaper

A cleaner, cheaper, more useful type of clean coal...

Imagine if all you needed to resurface your driveway was a little sea water and some carbon dioxide? And what if I told you that by resurfacing your driveway you would be taking advantage of carbon free energy and even creating some relatively clean water?

Bollocks, you'd probably say (and I would hope in an English accent). Well, there's a company in the United States that is hoping to prove you wrong. Based off the naturally occurring process corals use to make their bones, some very innovative entrepreneurs at Calera have developed a method to take carbon emissions from gas and coal-fired plants and mixing it with ocean water to create calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate -- the substance making up coral bones -- can be turned into cement or used as aggregate in construction projects.

There are plenty of small innovative firms out there with cool ideas like this, but Calera could very well make a significant impact. It has already attracted attention from Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat and columnist for the New York Times, and more importantly, significant investment from a major engineering firm confident enough to build several Calera plants.

There are hopes that this process will actually lead to a "clean coal" future, something that is heavily criticized by many because of the extraordinary expense and excruciatingly slow development of mainstream carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. By capturing the carbon emissions from coal and gas plants, it essentially makes them carbon emissions-free. Moreover, the carbon is stored in useful products like cement, as opposed to being pumped in large quantities underground.

A wonderful bonus that comes out of this process is relatively clean water. The salt water used loses about 80% of the properties that make it unsafe to drink, which happens to make it much easier to convert to fresh water using desalination as less energy is required to filter the water.

Considering how much coal is being used to power the world's electricity systems, this process, if actually scalable in an economic fashion, could change the whole playing field. The company is touting the potential of this technology in China and India, which are developing coal plants at a rate of nearly one a day. And since major construction projects and fresh water crises are bound to define much of each country's upcoming future, the technology is especially attractive.

But even if all the potential of this technology does come to fruition, it won't be perfect. Coal is a finite resource. Coal plants, even without carbon emissions, still have significant impacts on our lives. They emit dangerously high levels of toxic chemicals into the air -- even with scrubber technologies -- causing severe health complications. And coal mining is among the most environmentally devastating processes known to our history. I mean, how many other industries can say that they blow the tops off mountains to get what they want?

The trouble is, coal is going to be used excessively whether we like it or not.

No energy technology is perfect, but the Calera technology could at least make a significant dent as we try to lower carbon emissions. It's amazing what we can learn from nature. One hopes we don't kill too much of it off as we do.    

An electric win for Canadian hockey...

If you were like me and roughly half of Canada's population, you spent Sunday afternoon watching Canada's Men's Olympic hockey team claim victory over the United States. If you're living in Canada, it is likely that at some point you saw some part of the game. After all, some estimates have as many as 25 million people in Canada watching at least some of the game. And you probably watched the game on a TV.

I stumbled upon this interesting news release when perusing the Independent Electricity System Operators's website. Apparently the game had a significant impact on Ontario's electricity grid. Just prior to the game starting Sunday afternoon, the IESO measured an increase of 300 MW on the grid that lasted until just after Sid the Kid engraved his name in hockey history, at which point electricity demand returned to typical Sunday evening levels.

Moreover, during the intermissions, further electricity spikes were measured as people went to refill their drinks and turn on the oven or microwave to make some in-game snacks.

Who would've seen that coming?

300 MW is a lot, but can you even quantify the energy released among Canadians as soon as Crosby scored?

Well done, Canada. And congratulations to all of Canada's Olympic athletes.  

Oil sands in Venezuela...

Venezuela has always had an abundance of oil. In fact, at one point in the early 2000s, gasoline sold for as little as 5 cents a litre. Venezuela, like Alberta has some of the world’s biggest deposits of oil sands. It’s been expensive to extract the thick bituminous oil because it requires a lot of money, natural resources (water, natural gas) and sophisticated refining methods which have high labour and technology costs. Using more water for the process pushes up the price of the resource making it financially inaccessible for locals.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) recently reported that 513 billion barrels of oil are technically recoverable from the oil sand deposits. That’s ludicrous considering the oil capacity of Alberta, Saudi Arabia and Russia. All of this oil lies in the Orinoco oil belt which is estimated to be one of the world’s biggest oil reserves- substantially larger that Saudi Arabia’s 264 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The difference between Venezuela and Saudi Arabia is not necessarily the oil capacity but the oil itself. As mentioned, the oil sands are “unconventional” oil which require substantial foreign investment (because they are so lucrative) and more resources for production in general, whereas the Saudis and other Middle-Eastern states extract conventional oil which requires traditional production methods- much cheaper by comparison.

This recent discovery has many implications- driving up competition in the oil market, potentially bringing in foreign investment from the growing economies of China and India, and of course, producing even more greenhouse gas emissions from extraction and production methods, and subsequent consumption.

Key message: Hurray for geological innovation and discovery. We now have more oil to consume! Pollution and environmental degradation are the unfortunate result.

Goodbye US Climate Bill, Hello Carbon Tax?...

Barack Obama and the Democrats were sent a hefty blow the other day when, in a surprising turn of events, a Republican nominee was able to win the Massachusetts Senate seat left vacated by the late Edward Kennedy. Having a Democrat win the seat was initially seen as an inevitability, but it was not to be so.

The big talk these days is that this win for the Republicans could sink the huge health care bill currently being put together by congress because this Republican win puts 41 Republicans in the Senate, enough to filibuster any bill.

But the next big ticket item on Obama's agenda is a climate bill in the Senate, which's main component is a cap-and-trade system. Considering how long it has taken the health bills to get this far, most aren't expecting the climate bill -- one barely got through the House of Representatives -- to get too far in the next year. That year-long time frame is very important. In November, the Americans go to the polls for the Midterm elections, where several Senate and House seats are up for grabs. Considering how much popularity Obama (and by association, the Democrats) has lost over his first year, many are expecting the Republicans to gather up most of those seats.

The US climate bill is almost by definition guaranteed to be disliked by Republicans -- to be fair, some are very willing to do something about climate change -- but many Democrats (especially those from the coal-producing states) are opposed to the climate bill. Such contention makes passing the bill especially difficult, and even more so to pass something that will be in any way moderately effective. Indeed, the most optimistic of realists are expecting something very watered down, with multiple exemptions for certain emitters and low emissions reduction targets.

To many, the climate bill might as well be off the table, at least until after the midterm elections. Stephen Hill, a professor at Trent, thinks it could possibly return in a year or so without a cap-and-trade system, but rather a carbon tax. Americans are even less encouraged by new taxes than Canadians, and we all saw how the carbon tax went over here in the last federal election. But interestingly, some of the most environmentally-unfriendly companies in the US, like Exxon-Mobil, are in support of a carbon tax.

To the naked eye, this seems highly unlikely. But these companies see the writing on the wall and some kind of climate-related legislation is bound to come into play relatively soon -- if anything, the EPA will use its power to regulate greenhouse gases. Under a cap-and-trade system the price of carbon fluctuates and businesses can never be too sure how hard it will hit their balance sheets each year. For companies that are huge and have less than impressive carbon emission histories, such fluctuation could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. A carbon tax, however, is predictable, which is highly valuable to businesses. Moreover, the cost of the tax is borne both by industry and consumers, so businesses don't take as much of the hit. And for the more cynically-minded, it is much easier to influence the price of the tax when the government controls it (see coal, gas & oil lobby) than when the market has control.

But Obama likes the cap-and-trade, and so do the Democrats (for the most part). For now it looks like very little will come about, but who knows about the future? We can only hope the EPA starts to wield its axe or Congress puts something together. I'm not feeling too optimistic about the latter...      

Delivery Groceries: A greener approach to food shopping...

In his book Heat, George Monbiot talks about all the stuff we do as human beings that contribute to climate change and some of our craziest behaviour actually comes from our supermarkets.

Yes, these things are absolutely massive. But this is not unique to supermarkets; huge buildings can be found everywhere. But it is the inner workings of these things that are very astounding. When you first enter the building, you are normally smashed by a fan of either very cold or very hot air (depending on what the temperature is like outside). And when you get in, the lights are among the brightest available on the market. Why? All the food needs to look pretty and the best way is with pretty lights. And lots of them. Everywhere. That day-old fillet of tilapia not look so appetizing? Just toss some extra lights on top of it. Perhaps the most ridiculous thing you'll find at the supermarket are the open freezers & fridges (a friend of mine refers to them as bunkers). Do you ever leave your freezer open all day at home? It's probably the biggest waste of energy you'll find at a supermarket.

So Monbiot proposes something very different. Rather than driving to the supermarket, we could have it delivered to us. No more need for bright lights, high-powered entrance fans or open freezers. And no more need for such massive building footprints. Instead, there could simply be a warehouse with delivery vans. The energy savings would be enormous. According to a supermarket chain executive interviewed in Heat, the food storage section takes up only 5-10% of the entire building's energy usage. Wow.

Energy savings for the suppliers wouldn't be the only advantage of this type of system. People would no longer have to drive to the supermarket (gas & time), find a parking spot (imagine not needing those massive parking lots), spend valuable time in the grocery store (some spend hours) and stand in line. Rather, you could just have it delivered at a time that was convenient for you. Sure, there would be a fee, but it would certainly outweigh the hours spent driving, shopping and unloading. When both my sister and I were still living back home with our parents, my dad would go grocery shopping almost weekly and fill up the entire cart. He would be gone for several hours. Imagine if he were able to stay home, work more or just go out for the hours he would have spent shopping. And as a student with no car but a large appetite, I wouldn't have to go through the struggle of hauling all the food -- after buying far more than I can reasonably carry -- back by foot.

You would simply go online and shop like you would on Amazon.com and create your shopping list. You could submit your order and choose a time to have it delivered. A delivery truck would later come by with your delivery as it makes the rounds for other houses, too. The net energy benefit would be fantastic, as a fleet of delivery trucks would surely be more efficient than a ton of individuals driving their own cars. You could even develop a relationship with the delivery guy, like there used to be with the milk man.

So why don't we have these everywhere?

I'll first dismiss one argument I've heard. That is, the romantic notion that the supermarket is a place where the community gathers and you see folks from around town that you know. This is gone in most supermarkets in North America. I never see anyone I know when I go to the supermarket and I expect people might run into one or two people they know, but very rarely. And other than the proverbial cute girl you're supposed to meet in the supermarket, it certainly isn't the type of place that you make lifelong friends.

The bigger deal is that we, as a society, are bent on seeing our food before we purchase it. If it is delivered, how on earth will we know the quality of it. There is some legitimacy to this, but only some. Yes, with fruits, veggies and meat, I'd rather not have rotten or bruised food delivered to me. With some element of quality assurance, this could be easily be avoided. But the majority of other foods we buy are packaged and preserved in one way or another, so it doesn't really matter if we see it or not.

Whether it has to do with our understanding of freshness is another matter, as nothing in the supermarket is really as fresh as we might trick ourselves to think. All those glossy apples were picked by people or even machines somewhere relatively far away (depending on the season) and then shipped and stored somewhere else before finally being dumped in the apple bin. Meat is the same way. Personally, I'd have no problem if Safeway delivered me a few packages of ground beef without my seeing it beforehand. After all, it always looks fine in the actual store. Moreover, my good friend Kingsley frequently caters weddings and other large gatherings and has to buy food from industrial suppliers. Rarely, if ever does he get to see the food before it arrives.  

This is not a new idea and Monbiot (at least in this respect) is not a revolutionary. A group out of Toronto called Grocery Gateway has been doing delivery groceries for years, but it has taken a long time to catch on and it is still far from overtaking the major chains. They serve a rather niche market and serve only premium foods (thus allowing for quality control). And even greater niche markets exist for this. Throughout Peterborough, several groups exist that will deliver locally grown produce from nearby farms weekly to you. But again, these are niche and small operations.

Now I should also mention that not every store should do this. The small markets in the neighbourhood and the farmer's markets are wonderful. In these places, those romantic notions of community still exist. Going to the Farmer's market is one of my most pleasant experiences and such a view is shared by many I know. And you will frequently need to go to certain places to pick up only one or two items, which wouldn't be worth paying delivery for.

In an ideal world, we wouldn't have supermarkets and we would all grow our own food. But then we couldn't have mangoes in January and some people wouldn't like that. The reality is that we have and are going to continue to have large, centralized food sources with a great variety of choice. People are too used to it to revert back to only community gardens and farmer Ed's cows down the road. We can't simply make a massive transition in how we purchase and grow our food, but we can certainly make our current system work a hell of a lot better.

Thorium: A cleaner, greener nuclear?...

My cousin and I were chatting a week or so ago and he brought up a bizarre-sounding chemical called Thorium that he had read about in an issue of Wired Magazine. I scoffed at the title of the chemical and jokingly brushed it aside as some strange fantasy blood from Thor. But my scoffing soon turned to curiosity when said that thorium is an alternative fuel source to uranium and could be considerably more environmentally friendly.

So I looked up the article and I began researching thorium (chemical symbol Th). It is quite an astonishing chemical. I should warn you that I am not a chemist and I would not want to bore you with my struggles to understand the actual chemical details of Thorium (I'll leave that up to you to research, if you so please), but I know enough to say it is very similar in nature to uranium. In fact, the two are only two spaces away from each other on the Periodic Table (Th is 90, while uranium is 92).

Uranium is the fuel of choice used in our modern day nuclear reactors (and has been used for decades). It is first mined from underground, then processed several times before being combined with its buddy plutonium to create what we understand as nuclear energy. It is radioactive, and while being relatively advantageous from an energy perspective, can be very damaging to human beings and the natural environment.

Once the uranium is no longer up to snub -- that is, it becomes inefficient to use as a fuel source -- it is replaced by more uranium. The depleted uranium then has to be stored. This is what we know as radioactive chemical waste. The trouble is, at this point, neither Canada or the United States (both among the world's leaders of nuclear energy production) have any long term solution outside of temporary storage in big holding vats, which are filling up fast. Because it is so harmful, nobody wants it stored near them, where it could potentially destroy the natural environment or poison the water supply.

The actual mining of uranium is certainly no happy walk in the park either. Mining companies tend to leave tailings behind that poison water supplies and demolish the surrounding environments, as has been witnessed near Elliot Lake.

And nuclear power is not cheap. Ontario's nuclear reactors have frequently run into cost overuns in the billions of dollars. The monitoring and stabilizing technologies are expensive and the size of the actual plants is usually 200,000-300,000 square feet. Tack on insurance and some other bells and whistles and you're looking at something that is not cheap.

To top it all off, uranium can be enriched to create nuclear weapons. Nukes are never a good thing.

So as you can imagine, I was astonished when I read that thorium could cure almost all these problems (I'm not sure about the mining process as I didn't come across anything about it). First, thorium is considerably more energy efficient. The amount of energy obtained from thorium is several times greater than the equivalent amount of uranium. Second, when thorium is done doing its thing, it contains only a fraction of the waste left to deal with from uranium. Third, thorium can be cooled without water, needing only a special salt bath to dissolve the chemical and is self-regulating. As a result, it doesn't need the massive cooling towers of uranium plants nor the same level of monitoring and stabilizing technology. Power plants, in theory, could be only a few thousand square feet big. The Toronto Star's Tyler Hamilton has mentioned the advantages of small nuclear in his blog, Clean Break. Fourth, when mixed with plutonium -- which is generally needed for nuclear energy -- and used in a reactor, the amount of plutonium left over is negligible and therefore can't be used for nuclear weapons. Plus, it's abundant throughout the world and can be found in many more countries than just Canada and Australia (where you find most of the world's uranium).

So what's the catch? Why isn't this everywhere?

The article goes through it in greater detail, but what it boiled down to was the investment in uranium took over. With the advantages of nuclear proliferation, uranium hit two birds with one stone. And with billions of dollars invested in uranium powered plants, there is a huge push to keep it that way.

These small power plants that use a salt bath can be extremely corrosive and therefore require very advanced holding tanks made out of expensive alloys, making the initial capital investment very high.

But that is not stopping some countries from exploring it. China, Russia, India, France and even the United States are looking seriously into thorium. One of its biggest benefits is that it can be used in today's reactors without much added cost to make the shift. Some have likened it to using biofuels in regular cars.

What I'm surprised about is that very little seems to be known about it. Several friends of mine have never heard of it and even my instructor in my waste management course, a man who has spent nearly twenty years at the forefront of nuclear waste siting, had never heard of thorium. But perhaps we will soon hear more...    

Oh yeah, and happy birthday Graeme!

Domestic content requirements might be a pain, but Ontario needs them...

Ontario’s Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) program is one of the world’s most ambitious clean energy subsidy programs. Indeed, some of the rates it will pay for renewable electricity can hardly be found anywhere else in the world.

Of course, Ontario is not a pioneer in this regard. Unsurprisingly, the Europeans – who seem to do everything better than us in North America, at least when it comes to energy – have been expanding their renewable industries using FITs for a few decades. Wind and solar have seen significant expansion in Germany & Denmark using this economic tool, despite the relative lack of the necessary energy inputs (i.e. they are not the windiest or sunniest places on Earth).

Spain also toyed with a FIT to expand its solar photovoltaic industry in 2007. It offered 44 euro cents per kWh produced (~ CDN$0.66) and expected a growth of installed capacity around the 400 MW mark by 2010. The FIT was intended for projects of less than 100 kW, but developers quickly found a loophole and built several modules of 100 kW installations. Before the Spanish government knew what hit them, approximately 3 GW had been built and a lot more money needed to be doled out than had been allotted. The program fell apart shortly thereafter as the government lowered the FIT price significantly and ultimately made any new solar PV development uneconomical.

But it wasn’t economics alone that killed the program. Politically, it was a less than stellar subsidy. The FIT had no limits on where the solar PV panels had to come from and as a result the FIT unintentionally provided a boon to the German and Chinese manufacturers of solar panels, which lead the world in solar PV construction. While it also aided the domestic manufacturers in Spain, the Spanish government found itself footing the bill for a program that was helping its competing manufacturers in Germany & China, whose governments got to benefit free of charge.

That is the thing with subsidies. Since the taxpayers of a country ultimately pay for subsidies, they should be the ones who benefit. And politically, they are nice and easy. It is much easier to hand money out than take it away. So sometimes the policies guiding the subsidy are not completely thought out.

Ontario is aiming not to make this mistake. First, it is not guaranteeing FITs for every renewable producer. You first have to sign a contract with the government, thus allowing them to keep track of installed capacity. But what is more, it has placed stringent domestic content requirements on its subsidized solar PV projects. Currently, 50% of a project has to be from Ontario – this can include everything from the actual panels themselves, the installers, the feasibility analyses or even the bolts tying the panels down. According to some solar PV installers I’ve spoken with in Ontario, projects can barely meet the requirements, almost exclusively because there are no major PV panel manufacturers in Ontario. The idea with the requirement is to attract a manufacturer to set up shop in Ontario knowing the market will be there to sell. What will really provide the incentive is that in 2011, 60% of a project will need to be domestically sourced, which without a major domestic manufacturer will be impossible.

One company, Canadian Solar – which, despite its name and Canadian ownership does nothing in Canada -- has already answered the call and will be building a multimillion dollar plant capable of producing 200 MW of panels annually. But like Rome, these plants don’t get built in a day.

For now, it is a pain in the ass for solar PV developers in Ontario, but it is absolutely necessary if Ontario is to get the biggest bang for its buck and kick any free riders off its subsidy train.

Happy Holidays.

It's not always windy outside...

You may have noticed the spinning wind turbine on the front page of this blog. It displays the total amount of energy being produced by Ontario's wind power system every hour of every day.

The graphic -- which is courtesy of Ontario's Independent Electricity Systems Operator (IESO) -- provides a very good example of perhaps the greatest barrier of wind: capacity factor. You'll notice that sometimes several hundred Megawatts (MW) of electricity is produced during the hour and the turbine spins quite quickly, while at other times (like as I write this post) it is less than 100 MW.

Ontario has nearly 1,100 MW of installed capacity of wind power. That basically means it has the potential to produce 1,100 MWh of power each hour for the length of its existence. The trouble, of course, is that this is only theoretical. What the tag might say on the turbine is not what it will produce in reality.

The main reason, of course, is because it is not always windy outside. As a result, sometimes you get the turbines sitting motionless and, despite having nearly 1,100 MW in generating capacity, only producing 35 MW on a day like today. Indeed, I've seen the turbine as Exhibition Place in Toronto lie motionless more than I've seen it moving.

In reality, wind turbines are only about 20-30% efficient from what they are capable of producing. Add to that the inevitable loss of electricity from transmission and distribution and wind doesn't look super hot.

This is not a criticism of wind power, but rather a focus on the need to understand how it works. When its proponents speak about its wide potential, they sometimes exaggerate its true potential, which is often more limited. Indeed, we could toss thousands of turbines over Ontario that would replace the installed capacity of the current electricity generation system. But when it's not windy, the amount of electricity produced would be negligible.

Moreover, because of its variability, wind power alone will not fix our energy problem. And neither will solar because it isn't always sunny and we don't have terrific battery technology. But the combination of these technologies, along with several other renewables and a focus on conservation could fix our system.

Carbon credits & Ontario's FIT...

Ontario's uber-progressive Feed-in-Tariff program is wonderful for someone wanting to produce renewable energy. Solar PV producers can get as much as $0.802 per kWh produced, which is almost twenty times greater than the market rate for electricity in Ontario.

At the same time, much talk is happening provincially, nationally and globally about a possible cap-and-trade system: Ontario has mumbled about a potential interprovincial program with Quebec; Stephen Harper's government is bound to join up with any system that comes out of the American government (which I assure you, will be a cap-and-trade system); and the climate change summit in Copenhagen in just a few days will have a large cap-and-trade facet to it. For renewable energy project developers, this could mean cashing in on the carbon credits they'd receive for their "emissions-free" projects. They could sell their credits to the less-green folks out there.

Renewable energy developers should be licking their chops. Serious money could be made from two different angles.

But hold your horses. Ontario's independent energy manager, the Ontario Power Authority (OPA & delivery agent of the Feed-in-Tariff) has a nice little clause written into the FIT contract. Under section 2.10 of the contract it reads that "the supplier hereby transfers and assigns to...the OPA who thereafter shall...retain all rights, title, and interest in all Environmental Attributes associated with the Contract Facility during the Term of this Agreement."

In layman's terms, the OPA keeps everything that might contribute to potential carbon credits, which in its terms is an "Environmental Attribute".

You could easily criticize the OPA for doing this, especially for no direct cost in exchange. But the OPA claims that no price can be put on it at this time because their is such uncertainty in what the carbon credits could be worth.

But really, who can fault them? The government is providing huge swaths of money for these projects, so any chance of reclaiming some of that without really harming anyone isn't really out of the question. Furthermore, it could inevitably end up making the FIT program considerably cheaper, if, say in a few years, the government decides to sell its carbon credits on a carbon market to recoup some of its costs.  

This is not a new policy from the OPA. Some of its conservation-demand management programs -- like the Power Savings Blitz program where $1000 worth of lights are given to businesses for free -- have the same "Environmental Attribute" clause written into them.

For now it is not a problem, mostly because a significant carbon market does not exist and nobody really knows about the OPA contract clause. But give it a few years and you can be sure that some people might be a little up in arms when they decide to sell their carbon credits only to find out they don't own them.