6. Energy In Society

Updated GSS Energy Use diagram for chapter 6 may be found in the Annual Energy Review by the Energy Information Administration. It has historical annual energy statistics back to 1949.

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 6

2009 September 29. Alternative Energy Projects Stumble on a Need for Water. By Todd Woody, The NY Times. Excerpt: AMARGOSA VALLEY, Nev. — In a rural corner of Nevada reeling from the recession, a bit of salvation seemed to arrive last year. A German developer, Solar Millennium, announced plans to build two large solar farms here that would harness the sun to generate electricity, creating hundreds of jobs.
But then things got messy. The company revealed that its preferred method of cooling the power plants would consume 1.3 billion gallons of water a year, about 20 percent of this desert valley’s available water.
...Here is an inconvenient truth about renewable energy: It can sometimes demand a huge amount of water. Many of the proposed solutions to the nation’s energy problems, from certain types of solar farms to biofuel refineries to cleaner coal plants, could consume billions of gallons of water every year.
“When push comes to shove, water could become the real throttle on renewable energy,” said Michael E. Webber, an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin who studies the relationship between energy and water....

2009 April 20. Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet. By John Tierney, The NY Times. Excerpt: When the first Earth Day took place in 1970, American environmentalists had good reason to feel guilty. The nation’s affluence and advanced technology seemed so obviously bad for the planet that they were featured in a famous equation developed by the ecologist Paul Ehrlich and the physicist John P. Holdren, who is now President Obama’s science adviser.
Their equation was I=PAT, which means that environmental impact is equal to population multiplied by affluence multiplied by technology. Protecting the planet seemed to require fewer people, less wealth and simpler technology...
But among researchers who analyze environmental data, a lot has changed since the 1970s. With the benefit of their hindsight and improved equations, I’ll make a couple of predictions:
1. There will be no green revolution in energy or anything else. No leader or law or treaty will radically change the energy sources for people and industries in the United States or other countries. No recession or depression will make a lasting change in consumers’ passions to use energy, make money and buy new technology — and that, believe it or not, is good news, because...
2. The richer everyone gets, the greener the planet will be in the long run.
I realize this second prediction seems hard to believe when you consider the carbon being dumped into the atmosphere today by Americans, and the projections for increasing emissions from India and China as they get richer.
But while pollution can increase when a country starts industrializing, as people get wealthier they can afford cleaner water and air. They start using sources of energy that are less carbon-intensive...
...By the 1990s, researchers realized that graphs of environmental impact didn’t produce a simple upward-sloping line as countries got richer. The line more often rose, flattened out and then reversed so that it sloped downward, forming the shape of a dome or an inverted U — what’s called a Kuznets curve....

2009 April 6. Empire State Building Plans Environmental Retrofit. By Mireya Navarro, The NY Times. Excerpt: ...Owners of the New York City landmark announced on Monday that they will be beginning a renovation this summer expected to reduce the skyscraper’s energy use by 38 percent a year by 2013, at an annual savings of $4.4 million....
...People involved with the retrofit said the Empire State Building can offer an example of how older buildings can retrofit to the highest energy standards and effectively cut down their greenhouse gas emissions, a contributor to global warming. The largest share of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions, 78 percent, comes from the city’s buildings, with commercial buildings contributing 25 percent, mostly from the use of electricity and natural gas.
By reducing energy use, the retrofit plan envisions cutting down the pollution the Empire State Building produces by 105,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year....
... The largest energy guzzlers at the Empire State Building are lighting, cooling and heating, said Paul Rode, a project executive with Johnson Controls, the retrofit designer....
The designers said that about half the reduction in energy use will be achieved in the first two years of the project as they retrofit the double hung operable windows, insulate behind radiators and rebuild chillers in the cooling plant in the basement.
...The plan also calls for tenants’ involvement in monitoring their own energy use in their offices through a Web-based dashboard accessible from their computers, which keeps track of how much energy is being used and where....

2009 February 26. Preparing for a Flood of Energy Efficiency Spending. By Kate Galbraith, The NY Times. Excerpt: KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — ...Wrapping up an elaborate energy audit, Knoxville is about to find out which of 99 city buildings are wasting the most energy. It hopes to begin repairs this summer, just in time to catch a tsunami of federal stimulus money earmarked for such unglamorous tasks as replacing light bulbs and fixing leaky insulation.
Knoxville’s timing is excellent. The city began the arduous work of cataloging deficiencies before the stimulus bill passed, and it is well along in planning its next steps. But experts worry that other beneficiaries, especially cities, are not ready to oversee the huge sums of energy-efficiency money about to come their way.
The money in the bill is enough to pay for a tremendous expansion of efficiency efforts across the country. But as with other parts of the stimulus package, the efficiency plan is creating tension between spending the money quickly, to get rapid economic stimulus, and spending it well, to do the most good over the long run.
“There’s enormous opportunity here for expansion of energy efficiency in this country,” said Lowell Ungar, the policy director for the Alliance to Save Energy, an advocacy group. “But there is certainly the potential for waste.”...

2009 Jan 20. The limits of energy storage technology. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Kurt Zenz House. Excerpt: For the past several years--until the credit crisis--investors have flocked toward renewable energy. Their hope is that solar radiation can be harnessed directly and through intermediaries such as the wind and biosphere to power the global economy into perpetuity. This hope is understandable since renewable energy has benefits that range from the environment to geopolitics. Nevertheless, care and scientific rigor should be used to quantify the challenge of converting society to renewable energy.
"The maximum theoretical potential of advanced lithium-ion batteries that haven't yet been demonstrated to work is still only about 6 percent of crude oil."
...fossil carbon--the world's predominant source of primary energy for the past 150 years...1 kilogram of crude oil contains nearly 50 mega-joules of chemical potential energy, which is enough to lift 1 metric ton to a height of around 5,000 meters. ...The energy densities of natural gas and coal, around 55 mega-joules per kilogram and 20-35 mega-joules per kilogram respectively, are similar to those of crude oil. ...Biofuels such as ethanol and biosynthetic diesel can have volume and mass energy densities equal to that of fossil carbon, but since they're regularly harvested, their areal energy densities are substantially lower.
Renewable energy--unlike fossil carbon--is harnessed dynamically from the environment. Therefore, it won't be as useful as fossil carbon until it can be stored and transported with similar ease.
...Today's lead acid batteries can store about 0.1 mega-joules per kilogram, or about 500 times less than crude oil. Those batteries, of course, could be improved, but any battery based on the standard lead-oxide/sulfuric acid chemistry is limited by foundational thermodynamics to less than 0.7 mega-joules per kilogram.
... lithium-ion batteries... have already improved upon the energy density of lead-acid batteries by a factor of about 6 to around 0.5 mega-joules per kilogram--a great improvement. ...the maximum theoretical potential of advanced lithium-ion batteries that haven't been demonstrated to work yet is still only about 6 percent of crude oil! ...some ultra-advanced lithium battery ... theoretical limit would be around 5 mega-joules per kilogram.
...This means hydrocarbons--including both fossil carbon and biofuels--are still a factor of 10 better than the physical upper bound, and they're likely to be 25 times better than lithium batteries will ever be.
...That brings us to the option of storing chemical potential energy as fuel that can be oxidized by atmospheric oxygen. ...To get really ambitious, we imagine storing energy as elemental aluminum or elemental lithium. Those two highly electro-positive elements yield a theoretical energy density--when oxidized in air--of 32 and 43 mega-joules per kilogram. At least now the theoretical limit is between 60 percent and 80 percent to that of hydrocarbons....
A more promising approach is to use fuel cells with liquid and gaseous fuels. The two obvious choices for such fuels are hydrogen and hydrocarbons; in terms of energy per unit mass, hydrogen beats crude oil and natural gas by a factor of almost 3. Alas, hydrogen is a gas at surface conditions, so its volume density is horrible unless it's compressed to several hundred atmospheres of pressure....

2008 June 22. A Green Coal Baron? By CLIVE THOMPSON; NY Times. Excerpt: ... Jim Rogers ... A charming and natty 60-year-old, ...is the chief executive of the electric company Duke Energy. ...He spends more than half his time on the road, a perennial fixture at wonky gatherings like the Davos World Economic Forum and the Clinton Global Initiative, corralling "clean energy" thinkers and listening eagerly to their ideas. ...he was brimming with enthusiasm for a new approach to solar power. Solar is currently too expensive to make economic sense, according to Rogers, because the cost to put panels on a roof is greater than what a household would save on electricity. But what if Duke bought panels en masse, driving the price down, and installed them itself - free?
..."So we have 500,000 solar units on the roofs of our customers," he said. "We install them, we maintain them and we dispatch them, just like it was a power plant!" ..he could get maybe 1,000 megawatts out of that system, enough to permanently shutter one of the company's older power plants.
...Rogers has long advocated stiff regulation of greenhouses gases. For the last few years, he has relentlessly lobbied Washington to create a "carbon cap" law that strictly limits the amount of carbon dioxide produced in the United States, one that would impose enormous costs on any company that releases more carbon than its assigned limit.
...Though the details are devilish, the basic cap-and-trade concept is simple. The government makes it expensive for companies to emit carbon dioxide, and then market forces work their magic: those companies aggressively seek ways to avoid producing the stuff, to try to get a competitive edge on one another.
This is precisely how the government dealt with acid rain, back in the late '80s. ...dangerous byproducts from burning coal: the chemicals sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, or "sox and nox," ...a company that invests money to clean up its emissions can more than recoup its outlay by selling unused allowances to its dirtier, laggard competitors. ...following the Clean Air Act amendments in 1990, innovations emerged quickly, ranging from new coal blends to chemical "scrubbers" that removed sox and nox from the smokestacks. Government and industry officials predicted that solving the problem of acid rain could cost $4 billion in new investment - but the marketplace was so efficient that only an estimated $1 billion was needed.

2008 February 5. Car-Free, Solar City in Gulf Could Set a New Standard for Green Design. By ANDREW C. REVKIN. NY Times. Excerpt: In an ever more crowded world facing environmental limits, the push is on to create entire communities with reduced needs for energy, water, land and other resources. The latest effort comes not in some green hub like Portland, Ore., but in the Persian Gulf, fueled as much by oil wealth - and the need to find postpetroleum business models - as environmental zeal. Groundbreaking is scheduled for Saturday for Masdar City, a nearly self-contained mini-municipality designed for up to 50,000 people rising from the desert next to Abu Dhabi's international airport and intended as a hub for academic and corporate research on nonpolluting energy technologies. The 2.3-square-mile community, set behind walls to divert hot desert winds and airport noise, will be car free, according to the design by Foster + Partners, the London firm that has become a leading practitioner of energy-saving architecture. The community, slightly smaller than the historic district of Venice, will have similar narrow pedestrian streets, but shaded by canopies made of photovoltaic panels. It will produce all of its own energy from sunlight. Water will flow from a solar-powered seawater-desalinization plant. Produce will come from nearby greenhouses, and all waste will be composted or otherwise recycled, said Khaled Awad, property manager for the project....

11 December 2007. Always On. By C. CLAIBORNE RAY, NY Times. Many devices that are "always on" while seemingly "off" draw power so that they can spring into action on demand. How much electricity does a television, for example, use when plugged in but not turned on? Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has done extensive studies of standby power since 1996 for the Department of Energy. In particularly inefficient appliances, standby power use can be as high as 20 watts.
"For a single appliance, this may not seem like much," the laboratory's Web site says, "but when we add up the power use of the billions of appliances in the U.S., the power consumption of appliances that are not being used is substantial." An exact reading of the standby power drawn by an individual appliance can be obtained only by using a fairly expensive energy meter or by turning off all the rest of a home's appliances and checking the utility meter. For making an estimate, a laboratory Web site provides tables of the minimum, average and maximum power used by appliances that cannot be switched off completely without being unplugged. For television sets, the laboratory estimates a minimum power use of zero watts, an average of 5 watts and a maximum of 21.6 watts.

12 January 2007. Clean Energy Act of 2007. H. R. 6 - To reduce our Nation's dependency on foreign oil by investing in clean, renewable, and alternative energy resources, promoting new emerging energy technologies, developing greater efficiency, and creating a Stra- tegic Energy Efficiency and Renewables Reserve to invest in alternative energy, and for other purposes....

29 November 2006. New York Times. Energy Use Can Be Cut by Efficiency, Survey Says. By Steve Lohr. Excerpt: The growth rate of worldwide energy consumption could be cut by more than half over the next 15 years through more aggressive energy-efficiency efforts by households and industry, according to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute, which is scheduled to be released today. The energy savings, the report said, can be achieved with current technology and would save money for consumers and companies. The McKinsey report offers a long list of suggested steps, including the adoption of compact fluorescent light bulbs, improved insulation on new buildings, reduced standby power requirements, an accelerated push for appliance-efficiency standards and the use of solar water heaters. Those moves, among others, could reduce the yearly growth rate in worldwide energy demand through 2020 to six-tenths of a percent, from a forecast annual rate of 2.2 percent, the report concluded. Such shifts might well go more quickly if electric utilities were encouraged to promote efficiency. Under state rate regulation, utilities are compensated for producing energy, but rarely for conserving it. A few states, notably California, allow electric companies to pass through the costs of energy-saving programs, but they are the exceptions. By easing demand, efficiency programs can help restrain energy prices and help curb global warming.

21 February 2006. Rewarding Recyclers, and Finding Gold in the Garbage. By BONNIE DeSIMONE. NY Times. Excerpt: PHILADELPHIA - Patrick Fitzgerald found himself distracted as he studied for the bar exam at Fordham University five years ago. New York City was debating the merits of continuing its recycling program and Mr. FitzGerald wondered why that was a question at all. "I wasn't an overt tree-hugger, but I thought it was odd," he said. ...He began poking around Web sites and news articles about the economics of recycling, and concluded that one of the industry's biggest problems was motivating its suppliers - the people who generate garbage. Moral obligation - or even compassion for trees - was not enough to induce good recycling habits, Mr. FitzGerald decided. Instead of spending money on campaigns to persuade people to recycle, he thought: What if you paid them directly? What would happen? In ... RecycleBank (http://recyclebank.com) ... Households get credit for the weight of materials they recycle, which is scanned and recorded through a computer chip embedded in the garbage bins when they are picked up by the sanitation crew. They exchange that credit for coupons at various businesses. Municipal officials save disposal fees. Recycling companies make more money from processing. Retailers gain the feel-good association with a socially beneficial activity. RecycleBank charges municipalities (or private haulers, depending on the arrangement) $24 a household, and guarantees clients that they will save at least that much in disposal fees as waste is diverted from landfills and incinerators. The company also receives revenue from recycling plants, depending on how much it increases the amount of materials that are processed....

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 6

Energy Efficiency

• Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Network (EREN) http://www.eren.doe.gov from DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. EREN is a WWW site that serves as a single point of access to qualitative information on energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. EREN is searchable by subject, an alphabetical listing of sites, type of service, and type of organization.
• Energy Star Buildings http://www.energystar.gov/
• Lightsite.net -- http://lightsite.net/ -- Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance
• Pacific Gas & Electric -- http://www.pge.com/
• Power Scorecard -- Rating the Environmental Impact of Electricity Products -- http://powerscorecard.org/
• Power$mart by Alliance to Save Energy, a coalition of prominent business, government, environmental, and consumer leaders who promote the efficient and clean use of energy worldwide to benefit consumers, the environment, economy, and national security
• Residential Energy Services Network's (RESNET) -- http://natresnet.org/
• US Dept of Energy (DOE) -- http://energy.gov/

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