Dr. James E. Hansen, of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, made a call to arms on Global Warming two decades ago. Yesterday he made, what he calls, a final call to arms against the most pressing of issues facing our planet; Global Warming. Dr. Hansen claims we are standing at the edge of the abyss, unaware of what we are peering into and prepared to soldier on, caring little if our next step finds solid ground or not. He claims that we are only seconds from a tipping point, where whatever we do may never reverse the damage we have done to our planet and set ourselves on the fast track to extinction. Our world is in peril and they look to America for leadership. Will the rest of the world find that leadership they expect from the country that brazenly calls itself "the last great super power"?
More after the break...
The United States of America finds itself at a crossroads. Once considered the shining example of what freedom can be for the rest of the world, America now finds herself being viewed with much skepticism by that same world. American ingenuity and commitment to a cause were values universally viewed with great admiration, and the world looked to America for leadership in this regard. The intellectual advantage that America had over almost every nation made this leadership possible. The United States was the economic engine of the world because America had the vision and the tenacity to make dreams reality.
Much has changed since George W. Bush took office in 2000. America’s occupation of Iraq has turned much of the world against the United States. Oil has more than tripled in cost. The world economy is stalling under the crippling pressure of record oil prices, and that is hitting home for Americans across the country. Families are unable to afford the necessities because of excessively high energy costs. The hydrocarbon-based economy that the government has spent so many years protecting is proving to be the anchor that sinks a lot of Americans. As Dr. Hansen points out, it is this hydrocarbon-based economy that is killing our planet, and this has to change immediately.
There is no one single bullet to solving America’s dependency on fossil fuels and foreign oil, but there is some light at the end of the tunnel. The obfuscation in the Global Warming debate that has been taking place for the past 20 years seems to have been muted, or at least refocused. The argument is no longer whether Global Warming is happening, and that human activities are responsible, the argument is to what level damage man is doing and how we can fix the damage. Expectations of what we can do, and how quickly we can find solutions, are high. Fortunately, many of the different technologies that can be used to repair our environment can also be used to bridge the gap to create the power that America needs.
Sadly, every other country in the world faces similar challenges that we in America face. Each nation is struggling to find solutions. The first country that can present a unified plan in dealing with these problems will be the new superpower of the 21st century. Information, intellectual property and the ability to bring solutions to the market will define who this new power is. America has the ability to meet this challenge head on, and make a quick transition to a system that takes advantage of our diminishing intellectual advantage, provides all the power we need and greatly reduce emissions that harm the environment, proving that America can still provide the leadership the world needs.
This diary will outline a strategy that addresses energy self-sufficiency, and while doing so speak to several key issues facing America, and how tackling these issues together can reinvigorate the economy, re-establish America as world leader in technology development, and provide the United States opportunity to restore the political moral high ground that has been lost under the George W. Bush administrations. Through a concerted effort to address the following issues, the economy can be kick-started, new jobs can be created, and a whole new industrial age can be borne from a recessionary period.
The Solution
Presently we consider our economy to be carbon-based. Everything we do is driven forward by hydrocarbons. All of our transportation systems are powered by hydrocarbons. Many of the products we rely upon are hydrocarbon based and made from petrochemicals. Our goal is to better manage our hydrocarbon resources and develop standards that will slowly minimize our reliance on these products as fuel sources. To achieve this goal we must modify our expectations and systems we use, developing a multi-tiered use structure that meets the needs of given base requirements. This would mean the introduction of new consumer power standard, one that would meet all the basic consumer needs, from transportation, to heating and cooling of homes, to powering of every device we own. This solution to our energy problem is one that already exists and is in wide scale use today. That solution is electricity.
By adopting electricity as our consumer energy standard we are able to channel those hydrocarbon fuels into electric power plants that are many times more efficient than many of the systems currently used. For example, using gasoline in combustion engine to move an automobile is extremely inefficient. Only 6% of the power released from burning gasoline in a vehicle’s combustion engine is used to move the vehicle. The rest is lost as heat through the engine block or bled out through the transfer of motion through gears and wheels to the road. Another major negative is the incredible concentration of polluting gases released into the atmosphere by each tail pipe on the road. By moving the majority of fossil fuel power generation to high efficiency turbines, we not only decrease our use of hydrocarbon fuels, we reduce the number of emission points and are able to capture the waste products more efficiently for disposal and reuse for more power generation.
The proposed strategy does take into consideration the industrial needs of America. Some segments of the energy consumption chain may take longer to convert to an electric standard. These segments will retain special license to use hydrocarbons at a reduced rate. The important facet of this plan is to remove 80% of the offending systems that do the majority of the damage and replaced with clean, efficient systems.
Kicking the Habit
There is a common misperception promoted by a certain powerful lobby that links "getting off of foreign oil" with the end of the American lifestyle. Using the proposed strategy, this is as far from the truth as we can get. We will still use fossil fuels and we will still maintain our transportation dependent lifestyle. Our carbon-based economy will not be negatively impacted by the implementation of this strategy. What we will do is change where and how hydrocarbon-based fuels are used, and better leverage the cheap power stored within those resources. We will not cripple our economy; we will take it in a new direction. America will become a world leader in developing, manufacturing and implementing the technologies the whole world requires to meet the ever increasing energy need. As America undertakes the initiatives to meet her own needs, the world will be watching and learning from our success.
Primary Issues Addressed
Global Warming / Climate Change
Thinking globally, there is probably no greater issue that we face as a species than Global Warming or Climate Change. Dr. Hansen stresses that the seriousness of this issue cannot be ignored. Our biosphere is a very delicate system, and significant changes in temperature, one way or another, can contribute greatly to issues such as coastal flooding, crop failures, spread of disease and increased strength of destructive storms. Our inability to formulate a concise strategy on the subject contributes to the impacts being felt around the globe. While we gaze into our navels, and decide which lobby has the most money to contribute to the management of the discourse, our climate continues to change and we put our way of life at risk.
Lost in the noise of America’s debate over whether this is happening is the mounting global evidence that it is happening and action is required. We Americans, as the largest consumer group on the planet, have a moral responsibility to shoulder our fair share of any solution required to meet the issue head on. Thinking pragmatically, it would be in the United States’ best interest to implement a solution of our own design that achieves the end goals, and then have the world come to our doorstep to buy or license the solution globally. By developing and bringing to market new technologies that can address the Global Warming and Climate Change crisis we not only show the world we are willing to assume responsibility for our actions, but we, as a nation, are capable of continuing to provide leadership on even the most complex of international matters.
Dependence on Foreign Oil / Energy Self-sufficiency
From a domestic perspective, America’s dependence on foreign oil is probably our greatest security threat. The fact that America must be reliant upon the resources of another nation certainly must provide enough incentive to take action at addressing this issue. Addressing this problem via Neoconservative doctrine, and through projection of military might and occupation of resource rich countries, is one way of trying to address this issue, but that does not satisfy the base core requirement of the nation; energy self-sufficiency. Development and implementation of a strategy to attain energy self-sufficiency should be the primary goal of the leadership within the country, and should be a challenge issued to the people as soon as possible.
The United States requires a domestic policy that insures our ability to sustain our energy needs through domestic means. To accomplish this goal we require not only strong leadership, but a paradigm shift in our approach to energy management. We must find a way to "kick the foreign oil habit" without impacting the general lifestyle of the average American, yet in a fashion which allows industry to continue profitable operations. Through the adoption of a series of new energy standards, we can achieve this lofty goal and spurn new economic activity.
Economic Revitalization
The past 20 years has seen an incredible shift in the American economy. The disparity between the haves and the have-nots has grown to a level not seen since before the Great Depression. Jobs that paid a decent wage, the ones the middle class was created on, have been sent to other nations, replaced with paper-hat positions suitable only for the after-school crowd. Whole sectors of the economy have either been crippled or completely destroyed by this off-shoring, which does nothing but reap massive profits for executives and those that can afford stock in these businesses. The top 2% continue to get their money, while the rest of the country gets the shaft. A dramatic shift is required, as soon as possible; one that revitalizes the economy, re-establishes the middle class, develops new industry and jobs that can pay people a wage they can live on.
Repairing and Rebuilding America’s Infrastructure
There are too many examples of infrastructure failures in the country to touch on them in this diary. Even more failures are on the horizon as the infrastructure built over the past century continues to be abused and not properly maintained. It is imperative that a massive reconstruction effort take place in this country, repairing our roads, maintaining and repairing our dams, expanding and improving our electrical grid, replacing aging nuclear plants near the end of their life cycle, and establishing a whole new series of systems that can meet the energy demands of a growing nation.
The commitment to the rebuilding and retooling of America’s infrastructure will lead to massive employment programs, huge increases in areas of research and development, and spurn on new manufacturing initiatives. The high technology commitment to this retooling will bring with it a new requirement for highly skilled engineers and technologist, and with it high paying jobs.
Re-establishing a Middle Class
The human resource requirements to rebuild or retool the country’s infrastructure will signal the re-emergence of the middle class. Well paying jobs in the construction sector will return as local projects employ the local people. Manufacturing jobs will return as the research and development initiatives develop products that need a skilled work force to bring them to market. All of these grown jobs will not be of the paper hat variety, so plentiful under the Bush administration. These jobs will provide workers with the wages and benefits that will allow for families to survive and prosper.
Education of America’s Children
With this new commitment to a revitalization of America’s infrastructure and an adoption of a new energy standard, the needs for specialists in many new industries will develop. This will increase the need for well-educated people to make these industries work. America’s children will be challenged to meet these needs. Education will become a key component to the success of this initiative, so a new commitment to improving the school systems across the nation will be made. A cooperative effort between government and industry will establish technical centers to meet the needs of the new economy. Science will no longer take a backseat in the education system as those skills will become increasingly important as new technologies and industries develop.
Solution Technologies
Consumer and Light Industrial Solutions
The primary goal of every building in the country should be to produce as much electricity as it can to support its own energy needs. Through the implementation of some basic systems, every structure in the country will attempt to meet the goal of drawing zero power from the grid and potentially generating enough power to sell it back to the grid for industrial applications. By creating government standards for all segments of the energy chain to meet, the United States could quickly become self-sufficient.
Establishing new energy and building standards
Tough new standards should be established for existing and future construction for residential and commercial structures. Design standards that observe energy conservation and take advantage of passive heating and cooling technologies should be a priority. Homes can easily become energy self-sufficient through practical design, proper construction practices and use of many new building products. Including solar and wind generators in the building standard sets each structure up as an individual power station capable of contributing to the power grid rather than being nothing more than a consumption point. Setting this expectation and enforcing these new standards is the first step to a commitment of becoming energy self-sufficient.
Solar arrays
Almost every home in the country has a roof and an exposure to the sky. Making solar arrays an expectation, rather than an exception, would greatly aid in reducing the energy requirements on the existing grid. Making solar arrays standard in every future home build aids in the short and long term solution. As well, solar energy can be used for dedicated residential solutions like heating, cooling, ventilation, water heating and water purification.
Wind
Technologies exist today that generate power from even minimal environmental air movement. By making small wind power generators standard on every new home, we augment the ability of each dwelling to achieve energy self-sufficiency. The combination of wind and solar arrays are simple yet effective ways of generating cheap clean power.
Electric Cars
The average American commutes less than 50 miles per day. Much of that commute time is spent in heavy traffic with the automobile engine at idle, bleeding energy and pollutive gases. This makes the combustion engine a poor choice for powering our vehicles. Electric engines are much more efficient in this regard, as the binary nature of stop-and-go traffic exploit the strength of the electric engine and its consumption of energy only when driving the vehicle. Moving consumers to an electric vehicle standard would reduce the emission points, leading to less pollution and greater energy efficiency. Giving consumers a product that they can "fuel-up" at home each evening, using the power they generate from their own home systems, would make this an extremely efficient, and attractive, scenario for those that wish to become energy self-sufficient and environmentally friendly.
Industrial and Utility Solutions
Even if all homes in America are "off the grid" the demands for electricity and power are still going to be strong. The energy demand of changing many of the ways we do things is going to be high. Coming up with industrial solutions that can meet those needs is crucial to America becoming energy self-sufficient and continuing down the road in the future.
Ethanol production
Ethanol is a great fuel supplement, but not a good solution to our energy needs. For ethanol to be a viable product it must be by-product of processing, or come from waste products all together. Using viable food stocks to produce ethanol is nothing more than shuffling deck chairs, taking the solution to one problem (hunger) and using it to meet the demands of another (energy). Unless both problems can be met using the same crop, then it makes no sense to continue down this path. Fortunately, both can be met using the same crop, just different parts of the harvest for each application.
Ethanol can be produced from the stalks of many food plants currently grown in America. This waste product can be collected and used to generate ethanol. Other agricultural products can be used in ethanol production as well. Prairie switch grasses are extremely high in the sugars needed to make ethanol. Instead of using the ethanol by-product in automobile engines, the liquid fuel can instead be used to power turbines in electric plants. This is a very efficient way of generating power from waste products.
Biomass
Hot on the heals of the proposed ethanol production concept comes biomass energy. Biomass is any organic waste product that will naturally decompose over a reasonably short period of time. The decomposition of organic wastes releases heat and methane gas. Capturing these two by-products from this naturally occurring process is akin to collecting free energy. By turning this into an industrial application, and applying technology to the process, biomass can become an excellent source of power. Many businesses have already jumped on the biomass bandwagon and are using enclosed industrial solutions to completely power their enterprises, or greatly reduce their energy consumption from the grid.
Potential sources of biomass fuel is any organic material. Ranging from waste products in food processing (skins, husks, stalks, leaves, etc.) to animal wastes to simple yard clippings, biomass is great way to reduce our landfill sites while generating energy cheaply and efficiently.
Wind
Large-scale wind farms are restricted to specific locations for them to be considered profitable. Because of the sheer size of the turbines they become a difficult to implement except for utilities. The development of smaller turbines, of varying design, have made it possible for use in all environments, including downtown cores of large urban centers, taking advantage of airflow and access to cheap power. While wind is not considered a consistent source of power, it is a great source of energy to augment the grid and limit consumption by industrial users.
Solar
Most industrial buildings and warehouses have huge flat roofs, suitable for installation of solar arrays. Like residential areas, making solar arrays an expectation, rather than an exception, would greatly aid in reducing the energy requirements on the existing grid. Making solar arrays standard in every future commercial build aids in the short and long term solution. Solar energy systems are already widely used around the world. We need to become more reliant on this technology, using every available roof top to our advantage. We also need to start looking at better management of our surface assets. A good example would be setting up concentrating solar collectors on reclaimed lands like strip mining locations and quarries.
Geothermal
Clean and efficient, America has yet to scratch the surface of this already existing technology used in over 70 countries world wide. MIT has published that the United States could produce over 100 gigawatts of power itself, at a cost of $1 billion. The United States is covered by active sites where geo-thermal energy could easily provide power to the grid, at a very reasonable cost and with little to no pollution causing emissions.
Hydro and Tidal
This is a new technology, but one that promises to provide a continuous source of cheap and clean power. Borrowing from wind power, this technology takes advantage of the tidal currents and river flows never cease their movement. We already take advantage of hydro-power through damming, but the technology is now available to place turbines directly into the water stream and generate power, on small and large scales. As Dr. Hanson likes to point out, we must act quickly as the natural motion of the oceans (the conveyor current) could be interrupted by the decline of the polar ice sheets.
Nuclear
I don’t think there is any need to explain nuclear power for the most part. It provides power across the globe in a clean manner. The only issue is the disposal of the spent fuel rods. On the horizon is nuclear fusion, using helium3 to generate clean power with no nuclear waste. This will require decades of research, but the fact that a clean alternative to our existing nuclear power industry is on the horizon should keep us driving forward and investing in this technology.
CO2 Collection and Sequestration
A technology already in use in helping extract oil from near exhausted fields, could be turning into a new fuel source by coupling it with algae bio-reaction can produce a third generation biofuel as well as producing ethanol and biomass as waste products. Essentially, you make power from waste. This is practice that we must adopt and promote around the world.
Landfill Methane Collection (Biogas)
Every single landfill site produces methane. Very few of them are tapped to capture this plentiful gas and use it to produce power. The technology exists and is in use, just not as widely as it could be utilized. All of the waste that we make, and we humans make a lot of it, can be reused in some mode or fashion to generate power or new goods. Our behaviors must change and this technology could benefit greatly from that cultural alteration.
Transportation
Electric Cars
Each vehicle on the road is an exit point for carbon emissions into the atmosphere. With the introduction of an electric economy, and the electric car as our primary mode of transportation, millions of pollution points are removed from the roads, immediately restricting the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. Already China is making headway in this regard and uses large fleets of electric vehicles. American companies are quickly trying to capitalize on this concept with Tesla trying to get their product to market (tied up in regulatory red tape) and GM trying to get the Volt to market as quickly as possible, ironically after killing off their EV1.
Diesel and Gas Electric Engines
This is a long used standard for transportation of goods across our country. Diesel fuel is used to generate electricity to power the wheels that move the vehicle. Interestingly enough, this is the same principle being adopted by General Motors for the new Volt, and a system being used in a proof of concept vehicle (SUV) that gets over 150 mpg.
Electric / Maglev Trains
As we watch airlines struggle to survive, we must look to other modes of mass transportation over short-haul distances (100-400 miles). Trains are a proven short-haul carrier in Europe and Asia, getting from the heart of one city to the heart of another in less time than it takes traveler to make the trip via airplane. The construction of a modern bullet train or maglev train system would provide an environmentally friendly solution to short-haul transportation and allow for quicker and simpler trips for travelers. This infrastructure project would provide thousands of new jobs for each leg constructed, and similar numbers in the new transportation segment of the electric economy.
Airframes
Regardless of the aircraft in question, engines need to be developed that can run on cleaner fuels. Virgin International is already powering some of their fleet using bio-diesel. Boeing is investigating the viability of fuel cells for powering their engines. The progress is positive, but more work needs to be done in short order.
There are hundreds more technologies that could be blended into a strategy such as this, but there is only so much space on a diary and only so much I know. Maybe others can pick up the ball and carry it further by writing more on the subject through the comments or other diary entries. As with any strategy, this is a living and breathing idea, one that can and will change as technology and policy changes around it.
It’s a Beginning
Dr. Hansen’s call to arms begs for a solution. As I have pointed out, there is no single solution. Fortunately, there are many small solutions that can be managed together to formulate a strategy to meet our collective problems head-on. I’m sure that Dr. Hansen, John McCain and Barack Obama have other ideas in mind, ones that appeal to their favored industries (and lobbies), but they are likely to be more of the same, and present no cohesive strategy for addressing all of our problems together. Maybe a macro-solution like this will be put on the table, and a consensus can be reached in how we address the needs of our people, the needs of our economy, the needs of environment, and the needs of our planet.