Great Lecture: The Hidden Costs of Energy, presented by Dr. Jared Cohon

I went to a really interesting lecture last night where Jared Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University, presented the findings of a study convened by the National Academy of Sciences on the externalized costs associated with energy extraction, production, and use. The event was put on by the Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP), a local grassroots organization which from what I could tell was made up of primarily elderly white people. The content was pretty technical and had a pretty hard-nosed economist approach that required assigning actual dollar values to air pollution, human sickness, and human mortality. The study was intended to look exclusively and energy produced and consumed in the United States, and looked at the life cycle of several major uses: Electricity Generation, Transportation, and Heat for Buildings. The costs or damages were broken down between climate and non-climate damages, the former of which referring to health effects from point sources like power plant and tailpipe emissions, and the latter in the form of impact to the GDP. It appears based on the NAS press release that the study has been done for some time, but perhaps the report was not fully organized and completed until just this week. I found a couple very interesting takeaways from the lecture:

· One of the charts Dr. Cohon showed looked at full life cycle climate impacts of various types of vehicles and fuel types. As it turns out, the production of the vehicle accounts for a substantial amount of the life cycle carbon emissions, somewhere in the range of 25-30%. That’s huge, and depending on the fuel economy of fuel type, is much greater than the actual emissions from the fuel being consumed.

· Similarly, electric vehicles powered by coal-fired power plants are worse climate polluters than nearly any other type of vehicle and fuel mix. In this case, the emissions from the generation of the electricity make up the majority of the life cycle carbon emissions. It’s no wonder, given the atrocious efficiency of current coal plants (25-30%). I hope that this will dampen some of the enthusiasm around “zero-emission vehicles”, as we’re really just concentrating the pollution, and making it worse as this report states.

· In that same vein, corn-based ethanol is a big loser as well, given the intense amount of energy needed to plant, harvest and manufacture the fuel. Let’s hope this is the last nail for ethanol, but probably not.

· In terms of carbon emissions, natural gas-fired power plants had about half the carbon emissions of coal-fired power plants. That is much higher than I had realized. However, the non-climate impact of natural gas versus coal is fractional.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t provide any of the really informative charts as I did not download the report, it costs about $40. You can look at a low-res version here, though the charts don’t show up at all.Newsflash! Got the charts via email from GASP. Here they are!!!

I was really pleased to be in attendance at this lecture, but I thought the convening group GASP may not have been the right organization to put this on. It seemed to me that the technical content was a little over the heads of most of this group, but I could be wrong. I think that were it hosted by another organization like Sustainable Pittsburgh or PennFuture, it would have had a much more substantial turnout. It may have also limited the opportunity for members of the audience to pontificate or stand on their soapboxes under the guise of asking a question. I really hate that.

It’s finally here! My new water meter!!!

I finally settled on a water meter to install after the main PWSA meter here in the house. Why, you ask? First off, the PWSA meter doesn’t have a physical readout, unlike the gas and electric meters. Second, the smallest increment that PWSA will bill for is 1000 gallons, and thus the bill shows up with either 0, 1, 2, or 3 thousands of gallons. Yes, I have actually gotten bills for zero thousands of gallons. We all know that’s not true, but due to the rounding to the nearest thousand gallons, I had a couple months where the difference from the previous cycle must have been less than 500 gallons. The meter I just purchased from jerman.com has an increment of 1/10 of a gallon, which is a little less than two cups. It also has what claims to be a trickle detector to alert me of very slow drips. We’ll see how that functionality works out.

That said, I look forward to the opportunity to more closely track the water consumption of specific uses and activities. For example, I certainly don’t know the volume of water used in Low, Medium and High settings on the washing machine, and how efficient (or inefficient) it actually is.

Janeen and I are already serious water savers, the details of which I won’t get into here (feel free to email me if you’d really like to know more). But, hey, let’s at least see how good we are at it, as the PWSA bill doesn’t really help with that. After all, Information is power.

Look for an upcoming post specifically about washing dishes by hand versus the dishwasher. The conventional stance is that dishwashers are more water-efficient, but that is generally compared to people who run the water the entire time they are washing dishes. Stay tuned…

Energy Usage Data: Make it Public, I Mean Really Public

About a month ago, the blog ecopolitology.org published a post that emphasized the need to democratize energy usage. I think their use of “democratize” is pretty interesting, as I wonder how they would characterize the current state energy information. Fascist? Oligarchic? Meritocratic? Nevertheless, I think the ideas are solid, and the need for smart meters in American homes and businesses is clear.

One point that I haven’t seen touched on anywhere on the Internet or in the press is the potential to make every building’s energy consumption public. Every building that has an electricity meter, gas meter, or even water meter, should have its consumption data be made available on the Internet. Imagine being able to find out what the energy usage was in a house you are considering buying, or an apartment you might move into. Or energy auditors being able to go door-to-door to show people real data on how much energy they can save. Europe has moved in this direction with a slightly different application than what I am proposing, where buildings must be issued energy performance certificates similar to the Energy Star scale of energy consumption. See the Wikipedia article about it. The certificates must be issued when a building is constructed, sold or rented. Just think of the market impact such a standard would have in the US.

How is this idea different from Google Power Meter?
The Google Power Meter (GPM) is an easy and cost-effective solution to for monitoring the building’s main electric meter and showing occupant exactly how much energy is being used, as it is being used. The difference from what I propose is that this information remains private, except perhaps for Google’s ubiquitous eyes. The GPM relies on either the utility companies footing the bill to install the necessary metering equipment, or the occupant purchasing it him/herself, which for the US-compatible The Energy Detective is about $200 for an entry-level system without installation. Furthermore, this is only for electricity (for now), and it captures data that the electricity company already collects and has tucked away in their own databases. Finally, for the GPM to be successful and impactful, it relies on a couple of key factors: a) electricity being expensive enough or peak demand charges to be steep enough to make it worth people modifying their behavior; b) people performing load isolation studies or to determine exactly how much each appliance, lamp, etc. makes up the house’s total load (imagine turning off other devices and then plugging in your stereo as you watch the meter); and, c) people actually changing their habits (turning lights off, unplugging vampire loads). Some of these are more likely than others, but in general you will probably only capture a small portion of the population that actually cares about how much electricity they use. While Google is probably right that this equipment could shave 15-20% off of the nation’s energy consumption if deployed in every home, there is still a lot more conserving that needs to be done. Appliances and lights are just part of issue. Even though an air conditioner may be monitored by the GPM, the meter won’t be able to tell you that, for example, your condenser unit is 15 years old and an energy hog. It will only tell you how much it consumes when it’s on, and encourage people to tweak their thermostats to reduce the relative energy consumption. We also need to encourage more efficient heating and cooling equipment and envelope improvements (insulation, caulking, weatherstripping). WE NEED ENERGY AUDITORS in addition to the GPM, and making energy data public is a great way to actually get energy auditors into American homes.

Benefits of Public Energy Information
1) With a full, public set of energy consumption data, we can quickly identify which buildings are the worst performers. This can kick the energy auditing business into high gear, and perhaps create a new type of energy service company that is targeted towards homes and small buildings.
2) Energy auditors would be able to identify likely prospects by determining energy intensity and comparing it to local and national averages. This would allow energy auditors to do targeted outside sales of those homes and buildings that need it most, instead of waiting for customers to call them or to market with the shotgun approach. Many homeowners probably think that they don’t need an energy audit, or that it’s not worth the money. Having the data in the hand of an expert can build the case for it.
3) Prospective buyers and renters can peruse data for specific properties to anticipate what utility costs would be. This provides a direct incentive for sellers and landlords to make sure their properties are as efficient as can be.
4) This will overcome the inertia in even the most proactive of us, in the same way the Power Meter does, by turning passive information into active information. This allows the information/issue/problem to come to us, whether it’s a device on the wall or an energy efficiency solicitation on the phone or at our door.

Privacy
Libertarians will surely have a field day with this one, as will many centrist individuals as well. But I beg to ask to the question: why is it so important that this information be kept private? What tenet of consumer privacy does making public the amount of gas and electricity used in a particular month violate? For many people, it might just be at odds with their fundamental beliefs in privacy, or perhaps they fear the potential to be singled out for shame or ridicule. As it were, we do something similar with voting records. The lists of those who voted in previous elections (but not who they voted for) are publicly available, and as far as I’ve seen it has not resulted in non-voters being ridiculed. Why should this be any different?
To assuage these concerns, maybe there can be an “opt out” option for homeowners. This would be more effective than a program that people have to opt into. I believe that non-owner-occupied residences and apartment buildings should not be allowed to opt out, nor should commercial buildings.

Outlook
I can venture to say that the utility companies, in Pennsylvania at least, have a vested interest in suppressing any programs that aims to reduce energy consumption on any large scale. However, I think the green economy and job creation opportunities from this idea are very real, so maybe there is sliver of a chance of this happening. It certainly would be a heck of a lot cheaper than installing 120 million Google Power Meters, and might have more impact.

I plan on attending a Leadership Pittsburgh event about Green Economy featuring the Executive Chairman of EQT Corporation so I can put him on this spot about this issue.

Breaking the Bag Reflex: Reflections on the DC Bag Tax

A recent trip to Washington, DC to visit my family also held a pleasant surprise for me, a person who is scornful of and infuriated by needless packaging. About 9 months ago, DC passed a bag tax that assessed a five-cent tax on both paper and plastic bags given out at retail establishments, the proceeds of which go towards cleaning up the heavily polluted Anacostia River. The bag tax gained momentum when a close study of the river showed that nearly all of the floatables in the river were discarded plastic bags. After much handwringing and finger-pointing at the time the legislation was passed, it seems that the city has settled into its new ways very nicely. Most importantly, in my opinion, is the fact that this tax breaks the instinct of shopkeepers and clerks to stick even the smallest of items in one, two or sometimes three bags. This is what I refer to as the “bag reflex”, where clerks and customers are so accustomed to having every item in a bag, that they think nothing of it. All of a sudden, though, it has moved to the front of our lobe as a decision to be made: pay the five cents, or attempt to carry out groceries in our arms, as many customers seem to forget reusable bags. The victory for me while in DC was when I didn’t to struggle or argue with a cashier about how I didn’t want a bag, because they were right there with me.

The results are staggering: plastic bag usage in the District has dropped by nearly 85%. We often forget that plastic bags aren’t really free, we just don’t pay for them by the unit. Plastic bags on average cost retailers about three cents apiece, and paper bags about five cents each. These costs are rolled into retailer’s overhead, along with the air conditioning, lights, labor, etc. If we collectively stop using bags altogether retailers will see a windfall, which by the laws of free market economy will trickle down to the consumer. So this tax can actually encourage us to save money by chastising our bad habits and reinforcing the behavior we hope to encourage.

The prevailing sentiment in advance of such watershed moments is that “the people” can’t afford this type of change, and that the legislated changes would cause strife and economic hardship, or that it is un-American or draconian to coerce any specific type of behavior. The lesson here is that we as grown humans in a civil society can change our ways, too; we just need the right incentive. Citizens might be furious the first couple of times the forget their own bags and have to pony up, but you can bet that they will be more likely to remember the next time. And once we start, it’s very easy to continue and extend the idea of non-consumption to other areas.

Back here in Pennsylvania where bags are still “free” (nothing’s really ever free), I’m both amused and bemused about the bag reflex of the enlightened. I often see individuals in Trader Joe’s or Giant Eagle who bring their reusable bags, but continue to use individual bags for each type of produce they buy: limes, oranges, carrots, onions, and my favorite, bananas. I have to restrain myself from offering to them that whatever they think they are protecting their produce (that already has a skin on it!) is probably no worse than the pesticides that are on the produce already. Especially bananas!