Carbon Nation

It is fortunate that Project Drawdown left CO2 capture and storage (CCS) out of their solution set, because the IPCC left us with a mixed bag by including it as a key element among their recommended approaches*. Environmentally-minded organizations such as the Post-Carbon Institute (PCI) are all too happy to explain that CCS doesn't pencil out when you consider such fixed costs as a network of pipelines in the U.S. equal to that of the entire oil industry. As implied by their name, however, the Post-Carbon Institute discounts the value of all of the extra tight oil that might be recovered and burned by enhanced oil recovery using all the captured CO2. Considering how polluting coal and other industrial combustion processes can be, it makes sense if you can exchange the CO2 output for a more clean-burning petroleum product, but the extra pipelines and other CCS components required really does cause it to look like CCS would be a net economic loss (until oil prices rise). The fact that the energy industry is begging for more subsidies to jumpstart CCS does not help their case.

Stanford Prof. Mark Jacobson, whose transition to renewables plan is embraced as the mainstay of the Green (Party) New Deal, also excludes CCS. Richard Heinberg of PCI nonetheless criticizes Jacobson's reliance on underground heat storage technologies unproven at scales needed for his plan. Both Jacobson's and CCS's scaling problems are constrained by access to storage deep underground and, in the case of CCS, sometimes hundreds of miles from the source.

Photo by Eden, Janine and Jim

It is typical of our disconnection from nature that a less brutal means of sequestering captured carbon wouldn't attract more interest. Biochar can be a coproduct of electricity production when using biomass as an input. Rather than pipe it deep into the ground, burying biochar a few inches below the surface of farmland would be all that is needed to sequester the carbon. Unlike CCS, biochar is scalable up or down, befitting the feedstock availability and soil characteristics in a locale. While not a stand-alone replacement for current fossil fuel electricity, biochar-producing power plants should be pursued before the riskier CCS plants that have already wasted billions of dollars in pilot programs and never captured any carbon. Further investments or subsidies in CCS power plants would quite likely fall short, leading to expansion of more carbon spewing fossil-fueled electricity, with the carbon capture piece set aside as too expensive or difficult to complete.

*According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, the overall cost of a global climate mitigation strategy without CCS is higher than a strategy with CCS in every scenario, and many models cannot limit likely warming to below 2 °C without CCS. (U.S. DOE Report, Jan. 2017, pg. 7)

Save up to $100K through this Eco-lifestyle Adjustment

Slums constitute the living arrangement for one-fourth of today's world population. In the least developed countries, those living in slums exceed three-fourths of the population. Any urban area can descend quickly into slumdom when water and sewerage stop functioning. This can happen in any urban environment where the electric supply is lost for a week or where general mayhem prevails. Take Yemen, for instance. Facing a crisis of war, famine, and social collapse, 14 million people there lack access to safe drinking water or sanitation. The conditions are ripe for outbreaks of disease, which is currently appearing in the form of the most massive cholera epidemic this century. 

Cholera is spread by ingestion of Vibrio cholerae, which lives in the water where infected people have released sewage. If not quickly and properly treated, it can cause death in 50 to 60% of those infected. Currently, the number of cases in Yemen is 200,000 carriers of the bacteria. In the 2008 - 2009 Zimbabwe epidemic, the average infected individual transmitted the disease to 1.1 - 2.7 others. Those statistics are the reproduction rate (R₀) of the disease. Predictions of 300,000 new cases in Yemen by August must use the lower of these rates.

It is conceivable that conditions in the U.S. could deteriorate to bring about local outbreaks of cholera or one of the other many diseases associated with lack of clean water and sanitation. Sewer systems are susceptible, but a heavy septic system load in a concentrated area could also become a major source. My own neighborhood is reputed to have 70% of its septic systems in a failed condition (my own included) with a 2000% overload to the watershed due to the concentration of homes. 

If you are one of the approximately one-third of homeowners in the U.S. with a septic system, it would behoove you financially to limit your inputs. The typical septic system fails after 15 to 30 years of service. Replacing it might cost up to $20,000 (not to mention the effect of heavy machinery on areas of your property you never planned for). Extending the life of a septic system by using biodegradable soaps and having the tank pumped every three to five years helps, but an unconventional measure that could allow your system to last a lifetime is to not use it for sewage, period. This simple lifestyle adjustment could save you $100,000 over a lifetime.

Loveable Loo - well worth the $400. Detailed instructions included. (An $18 economy unit also works fine.)

Instead of using your drinking water to flush away sewage, take up meticulous composting with your bodily byproducts. Joseph Jenkins tells you all about it in The Humanure Handbook. In the process, do everything necessary to avoid spreading of pathogens to your environment. Don't let your septic system get to the point that mine is, where it is a major health hazard. Humanure composting, even done half well, is better than this. 

Fortunately, when I found out that my septic system had failed, I was already well along with my humanure collection and composting program. With a little luck, I can restore my drain lines to the point that they will drain "greywater" for several more years and all of our sewage will go into the humanure toilets for composting with the biochar, coffee grounds, and small wood chips that I generously smother it with. If you think that sounds slummy, just wait until your community's water or electricity stops flowing.

Stepping on the Gas toward a Clean Energy Future

In a more regionalized economy, the distributed nature of renewable electrical power sources will be helpful to maintaining grid stability. That will be especially important if the country's current three grid system is broken up along regional lines. Base load generation, from thermal, hydro, and nuclear plants will be reduced within the smaller grids because of reductions in fossil fuel usage. The net effect will be less stable electrical grids, but owners of facility/building power sources will enjoy more reliable power than those who are grid-dependent.

Photo by Chuck Coker

The reason fossil fuel usage may decrease is that industry and society are waking up to the imperative of reducing carbon emissions. In a sign that the economics now favor a shift to renewable power, even influential Republicans are lobbying for measures to push for a clean energy economy. Meeting with the head of President Donald T Rump's National Economic Council Gary Cohn, former Secretary of State James Baker represented the Climate Leadership Council (CLC) in their call for a carbon tax, which even T.,Rex supported when he was at Exxon. Maybe Dr. James Hansen and the Citizen's Climate Lobby (CCL) have been clever enough to make the august team of Republicans on the CLC believe that this proposal is their own idea, but it is good to know that there is some bilateral support for it.

The proposal is coming early enough in the ramp-up of the Rump administration that it could be put into play by Cohn, formerly President of Goldman-Sachs which recently made a case to investors that a low-carbon economy is likely (driven largely by disruptive technologies in the electrical and transportation sectors). If it gets no play there, Congress has been hearing a lot about the idea from CCL and will probably be hearing from CLC now, too. The carbon tax could become a Republican-sponsored bill that Congress would be willing to force on the administration. Donald T Rump, in turn, could use an agreement to sign the bill as a bargaining chip to eliminate the Clean Power Plan and other EPA regulations, thereby saving face. Additionally, he would be able take credit for sticking to our Paris Treaty obligations, thus saving him the trouble and international censure from backing out.

For you and I, this carbon tax would mean more income (rebates) but, also equally more expensive energy. Burning fuel, either directly or indirectly, will be like maintaining a smoking habit. The taxes forcing tobacco prices to be so high are quite enough to deter people who know the value of a buck. If the government could also stop subsidizing fossil fuels, they would really be convincing, but that's probably too much to ask.

Chasing Windmills

We know President-elect Trump finds wind power disturbing, especially when viewed from his golf resort in Scotland. He also fails to see the urgency of getting off fossil fuels, and seeks to exploit all manner of polluting and clean technologies to grow the U.S. economy. His pick for Secretary of the Interior, +Congressman Ryan Zinke (MT), seems to be less hostile toward climate-conscious measures, which is some relief since he will head the department which oversees offshore wind infrastructure.

The first U.S. installation of an offshore wind facility started regular operation last week with five big wind turbines supplying Block Island, RI. With its slow start, offshore wind must be added more quickly than land-based and other renewable technologies in order to become 19% of total electric capacity for coastal states by 2030 as proposed in the Green New Deal. The GND goes into some detail about the need for help from the government to overcome market impediments in order to allow scaling up offshore wind.

Trump and his appointees are going to make it harder to leave fossil fuels in the ground, but there is some hope that state governments will demonstrate enough wisdom to pass on continuing to burn them. Now that solar has become more economical than even land-based wind power in some countries, the need for regulatory and financial assistance for offshore wind is even more imperative to bring this component of renewable power up to speed. Assuming we do power down coal and gas generating plants, installing only solar and land-based wind facilities would make electrical power less abundant and reliable. Having a diverse set of power sources, including offshore wind, is necessary to address the intermittency problem of renewable energy.

The solar power industry is in a virtuous cycle of cost-effectiveness that could rationalize the move away from fossil fuels in many locales. Wind power (which temporally complements solar) is on par, but losing ground, making me wonder: Since we are literally losing ground in the littorals (with the dire likelihood of seeing leagues of ocean where there is currently solid ground), wouldn't it be most economical to just build a lot of seaworthy wind power on the shore and wait for the ocean to sweep over it?

Photo: CGP Grey

Sunshine Insurance

Composting biochar and digging it into the soil before planting is a best practice that needn't be followed in all situations. When mulch is needed, especially for warmth-loving plants, biochar could be a better choice than straw or other common dressings. As I pointed out in my previous post, this mimicking of a natural fire's residue gives the biochar an opportunity to become somewhat charged and inoculated while holding moisture in the ground.

My pepper plants basking in the heat from a top-dressing of biochar and black plastic

Plants need three things to exist: Nutrients, Water, and a suitable atmosphere that contains Light. Charging biochar with nutrients and getting it wet make it an excellent buffer for the first two needs. For the sake of completeness, I've been trying to imagine how biochar could also buffer a plant's need for light, allowing it to make sugar without total reliance on photosynthesis. If it does this, it would be by use of an alternative energy source, e.g. electric current.

The discharge of electrical currents around plants is touted by some to aid plants in many ways, including improvement of their capacity for photosynthesis. Or perhaps, rather than using light in conjunction with chlorophyll, plants can use electricity through their roots to power the transformation of CO2 and water into sugar.

Biochar has a quasi-graphene micro-crystalline structure that could make it able to generate photoelectrons by sunlight impingement, which it might then store capacitively until its conductivity is raised by filling with rainwater, allowing the electrons to discharge into the ground. Alternatively, rain could deposit cations on the graphene-like micro-crystals to trigger current. In these ways, biochar top-dressings might act as a photosynthesis buffer on rainy days when sunlight is lacking.

These conjectures enable me to maintain the notion that biochar can provide assurance of plants' three essential inputs. If biochar provides sufficient assurance, then maybe the government will see fit someday to subsidize farmers with biochar instead of crop insurance.

Now, (speaking of assurance) I doubt that exposure to the elements is going to fully prepare biochar for incorporation into the soil over a single season. Using a 50-50 mix of compost and biochar as a top-dressing, however, might be just the ticket.

It's NOT Alright Now - In fact it's a Gas

Pointing out that liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipped overseas causes more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than domestically burning an equally energetic amount of coal omits the fact that, in Maryland's case, we are the second largest exporter of coal in the country. A case could be made that exporting LNG will be less carbon polluting than exporting coal if the coal shipments were set to decrease as LNG shipments increased. Since Arch Coal just filed for bankruptcy and President Obama has made the executive decision to ban coal extraction on federal lands, it's becoming more likely that the trend of decreasing coal exports will continue, lending support to this rationalization for LNG exports.

No more coal allowed out of 30% of U.S. ground

Obversely, while Maryland's endogenous electricity generation from natural gas amounts to only 5 to 15% of its total generating capacity, 44% of Maryland's electricity comes from outside the state. The U.S., as a whole, relies on natural gas for at least 27% of it's electricity generation.  As coal declines and natural gas prices slump, the amount of U.S. capacity for generating electricity from the former is likely to decline, raising the reliance on natural gas and exposing large sections of the country (including Maryland) to dramatic price swings in electricity. The reputation of natural gas (fracked gas, especially) is sullied each week by infrastructure failures that cause egregious violations of public health and safety. We should do our best to divest ourselves of gas power, while taking additional measures to prevent leaks like the catastrophe in California.

Home and Hearth

In a state that is one of the top three in home mortgage foreclosures and in a neighborhood that has greater than 10% vacancy, it's hard to justify investments in one's dwelling unless you are destined to remain in place regardless of the market. It becomes a speculative decision which includes factors of the local economy, energy prices, and climate-driven demographic shifts.

In our case, I believe these factors favor energy upgrades to our home only as a long-term investment or if the energy savings payoff begins within three years. I see our local economy continuing to be buoyed up by the national security apparatus, of which our portion is Naval Air Systems (NAVAIR). I see grid electricity becoming more scarce as the fracking bubble bursts and coal gets left in the ground. Finally, the climate-driven migration of westerners to the east will probably take a decade or so to begin.

The net result looks to me like the value of homes in Southern Maryland will not fall too heavily before they start to recover sometime around 2025. Our own lower tier neighborhood, the Chesapeake Ranch Estates (CRE), will fall harder and recover slower than most. Becoming a municipality would ameliorate CRE's decline, but that looks politically dubious. However, if the Board of County Commissioners realizes how badly they ignored our concerns over the Cove Point gas plant LNG expansion, they will approve our municipality petition as consolation.

There are a host of things you can do to save energy in your home. We have a dishwasher that costs us an estimated $35/year in excessive energy usage over the newer Energy Star models. It recently leaked slowly into our kitchen floor and through the basement ceiling, causing over $10,000 in damage. After twisting the stingy arms of HMS, our home warranty company, I expect this old dishwasher to be repaired, after which I plan to sell it and get a newer model (and fire HMS - they should have replaced it outright).

While solar power looks slightly uneconomical for us at this point, I would consider installing a solar water heater. Water heating consumes about 18% of a typical home's energy. Over three years, cutting my electric bill by 18% would total to about $1,000.  Perhaps a DIY installation of a solar water heater would make sense.

Before that, the project that looks most lucrative is to augment our electric heat pump with a wood-burning stove that could potentially shave a whopping 45% off our electric bill! So now we are looking at about $3,000 saved over three years. Rather than rely on pellet fuel, I will have to look into rocket stoves.  I produce lots of kindling in the process of making biochar. If it can make my home heating costs disappear, making more sticks would be no problem. I can picture us being warm all evening in the basement watching the glow of a real fire, then retiring upstairs with the risen heat to comfort us throughout the night. It's a picture that, in the end, makes mechanized heat less desireable than the more labor-intensive way.

Getting into the Sun

The Paris Climate agreement will push everyone more in the direction of renewable energy, and Maryland blogger John Michael Greer thinks 2016 will be a breakout year for the solar industry in spite of the weak economic case for the technology.

I just finished looking into the feasibility of solar power for our church's overpriced electricity and, to my dismay, found out that the financial case wasn't there despite all the hype that has been given to going solar.  I went on to look at the possibility that solar had become affordable enough to put on my own roof and, even with all the government incentives, it wasn't going to pay off.  

I would still encourage anyone interested in living in their home for a decade or more to look into the possibility.  A good time to install panels is right after you roof.  A sunny location is a must (my limitation is shade from trees, though that could change as I replace forest with forest gardens). In Maryland's ever more humid climate, you may be able to save the most by using Cadmium-Tellurium panels made by First Solar. 

Rather than immediately consult with a solar installer, you can see for yourself using a tool similar to what they might use to find out whether your situation favors the investment. SMECO also provides many useful tips to help you in the decision and the process.

You aren't going to save the planet by going solar, but your life could be much more bearable in the fossil fuel limited future when power rationing could be the order of the day.

Electro-technology Dreams

Offshore wind turbines may or may not appear off the coast of Maryland.  The US Wind lease of over 125 square miles of ocean to build a 750 MW wind power array by 2020 would be a first for the U.S. In spite of the apparent progress (ocean surveys, turbine purchase actions), financial headwinds face Italy where US Wind's parent company, Renexia, resides. Just recovering from the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Italy will face the coming worldwide recession too early.  Renexia's lack of financial transparency is not at all reassuring.

Aside from solar and wind, generating electricity on a residential scale from biomass, fuel cells, or closed-conduit hydropower include the opportunity to net-meter (that is, sell power on the grid) in Maryland.  Micro-combined heat and power (CHP) installations also qualify. Micro CHP (not to be confused with microchip) is exactly the kind of power that can be generated from a heat source such as those used to make biochar.  A start-up company called NanoConversion Technologies is coming out with a thermoelectric generator that they say beats Stirling engines, cost-wise.  The problem of capturing and using the waste heat from biochar could thereby be made a lot more feasible, since the operating temperature is near that for these devices. The components, which hold sodium, alumina, hot and cold fluids, and electro-magnetic fields, seem like they would cost considerably, so economics may prove to be the difficulty with this technology, as well.  However, they show humanitarian relief as a possible application of the device, so I may be pleasantly surprised at the price-tag.

Coal's Downturn

In some states, coal is being run out of business, but the "war on coal" hasn't reached that far yet in Maryland. We still make about half of our electricity from coal. Two coal-fired plants (1,200 MW in Montgomery and Prince Georges Counties) are expected to be retired by 2017 due to environmental regulations. In recent developments:

• Coal mining faces the prospect of tighter regulation to restore streams in order to reduce aquifer pollution. 
• Arch Coal, the most diversified coal mining company in the U.S. is about to be delisted by the NYSE. 
• Coal's dirty nature and regulations at the federal level are having major effects across the industry.
• Maryland claims to have the toughest clean air regulations on the east coast, and they just added some additional restrictions on NOx emissions, 

but there are still seven coal powered electric plants in the state.  Having the toughest air pollution restrictions on the east coast is admirable, but Baltimore still suffers from unhealthy air (a plight common to 85% of the world's population).

Yet, the nominally cleaner natural gas has its own set of problems. In the way of pollution, its greenhouse gas effect is 30 times worse, pound for pound, than CO2. It sometimes (more than we realize) gets loose on its own, like the 1 cubic mile of 1,500 psi gas being released from cracks that recently developed in a storage facility pipe under Los Angeles. As I pointed out in my last post, the prospect of less fracking (who wants to live in Oklahoma now, earthquake center of the U.S?) and the need to follow-through with plans to reduce global emissions makes investment in more gas-powered generation look pretty short-sighted. Solar and off-shore wind are looking better and better.

Fuel Switching

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's prognosis for 2016 sees commodities, rather than banks, as the locus of the next Lehman moment.  Countries and corporations whose continuance depends on stability of certain commodities are at most risk.  The U.S. economy is probably diverse enough to ride out the effects of commodity price swings, but some states will suffer more than others.  Maryland's diverse economy is among the strongest, so we don't need to be concerned that coal will continue to fall in production from its peak of 5 million below the current 2 million tons/year across 60 mines, all located in the two westernmost counties.  (John Michael Greer's Cumberland is at risk, though.)

The commodity that puts Calvert County's economy at risk is natural gas, though little is produced in Maryland. When Dominion Resources sought their approval for constructing the LNG export facility at Cove Point, our county commissioners acceded to deferring tax revenue from Dominion until the plant began to ship product.  That probably won't happen until 2018, if at all.

Initially, my doubts about the prospects of exporting natural gas were based on the high rates of depletion from fracking wells, leading to a precipitous drop in productivity.  While that alone may preclude exports a couple years from now, there are even more reasons to doubt now and they stem from economic causes.

Commodities volatility seems to favor exports from Cove Point, since fewer export facilities will likely be built in such an environment than the 18 originally envisioned.  Yet, the same volatility is causing mayhem among natural gas drillers.  As pointed out in my previous post, Chesapeake Energy, the second largest producer in the U.S., is headed for the junk pile.  Many others, whose business models were based on low-interest leverage and speculative land leases, will suffer the same fate.  With so many companies going under, the growth of fracked gas that has occurred over the past 5 years will level off and decline.  With coal being black-balled as a fuel due to its effect on the world's climate, it, too, will quickly decline in use.  This puts the onus on natural gas to fill some of the domestic demand.  Since 2000, the share of electricity produced by natural gas has risen 10%, replacing coal as the fuel.  The momentum of this fuel switching will be maintained, though farsighted power companies will opt for renewable sources instead, given the limits of natural gas reserves.

Just one-third of natural gas is used for electricity production.  The other uses are mainly for industrial and residential heating processes.  Something's got to give.  We don't have enough natural gas (especially if fracking is deemed environmentally untenable) to follow the current growth trend. Conservation will smooth our descent, but remember we also have lots of wood. It has an energy density about 1/3 of oil, but any able-bodied man with a sharp ax can get all he needs.

Crash and Burn

Going into the COP-21 Paris climate talks, the U.S. position is reportedly to emulate Maryland's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act, bringing carbon emissions for the whole country down 27% by 2025.  I imagine this won't be very hard, since peak oil and financial disaster will force us down that path eventually, anyway.

Meanwhile, Maryland can't seem to see the forest for the trees of gas lines crisscrossing the state. Though informed in 2010 that Maryland's abundant biomass could provide a portion of the state's energy, clean power investment has favored natural gas, solar, and wind power.

It would be comforting if Maryland would ban fracking like New York did this year. Otherwise, investments in cleaner power plants, such as the PSEG Keys Energy Center being built up in Brandywine, may end up as incentives to further damage the environment.  While it may beat coal and gas export in terms of carbon emissions, natural gas is non-renewable and only sets us up for a big gap when we deplete it without adequate alternatives.  Solar and wind won't come close to providing the level of energy that we get from fossil fuels.  Wood biomass could help some, but we have to begin putting the infrastructure in place.  In addition to building new types of facility-scale power plants, we need to reshape the workforce to concentrate it on sustainable forestry.  It is time to turn the corner, even if we have to slow down in doing so.