Still
won't be blogging regularly for awhile because of computer problems,
but I did promise the rest of this review so here it is. Hi to all the
friends old & new I met at KMWorld in San Jose this week.
This is the second part of a two-part review of George Monbiot's book Heat.
In the first part I explained Monbiot's argument that a carbon
rationing system was needed - that voluntary, technological and
free-market solutions were not viable. Absolute caps in total carbon
emissions, 90% less than current emission levels, need to be accepted
in every sector of the economy. To the extent new technology reduces
emissions they are welcome, but one way or another, by 2030, we must be
releasing no more than a tenth of the carbon into the atmosphere that
we are releasing now.
Monbiot explains three paradoxes that profoundly affect conservation behaviours:
- The
Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate: As energy efficiency improves, people can
afford more energy-intensive solutions, so improvements in energy
efficiency can actually lead to more
consumption, not less. So if many people buy hybrids, by lowering
demand for gasoline they could make it cheaper and encourage more SUV
purchases and use as well.
- The Rebound Effect: As energy
efficiency improves, personal energy costs go down, allowing personal
volume of use to go up with no net increase in cost. So if home heating
fuel costs drop, people will turn up their house temperature, and if
many people buy hybrids, they can afford to drive them more often and
further than they might have.
- Regulation Actually Enhances
Personal Freedoms: Strict home building and refurbishing codes, while
increasing the cost of housing, frees the subsequent owners of the
homes of the need to expend money wastefully on fuel and on short-term
repairs.
The first specific area that Monbiot applies his
rationing scheme to is home construction. He says the following
regulatory changes are needed to achieve 90% reduction in home energy
consumption:
- Much stricter construction quality and insulation standards, and much better enforcement of standards
- Mandated use of heat exchangers
- Better window design (appropriate size, south facing) and glazing standards
- Mandatory appliance efficiency standards
- Better hot water tank design
- Prohibition of 'standby' modes on appliances
- Mandated use of LED lighting
- Mandatory use of vacuum insulation in fridges and freezers
- Mandated
use of 'smart meters' (that tell you how much energy you are using and
shut down non-essential energy use during peak use periods
One
of the challenges we face is the huge variability in demand for
electricity by season, time of day and other factors, and the need to
have production capacity 'reserves' to accommodate spikes in demand
quickly. His solutions to this problem:
- Stop using coal
(heavy carbon dioxide creator) burning to provide this variable
capacity reserve, and use natural gas instead (including substantially
increasing our available gas reserves)
- Use of carbon scrubbing and re-storage of scrubbed carbon in underground aquifers
- Much
tougher nuclear power plant waste storage and disposal, plant
decommissioning, and security standards (and, because of the security
and waste disposal problems, zero net increase in nuclear usage - which
puts Monbiot at odds with a large new group of pro-nuke
environmentalists such as James Lovelock)
- Development of high
voltage direct current cables and transmission systems -- Although
initial loss of electricity of DC cables is higher than for AC, there
is no incremental loss of electricity as the length of the cable
increases, making it possible to build offshore wind farms in very
windy areas and transmit the energy over vast distances to areas with
poor wind regimes, and to combine wind generators from different areas
to reduce the impact of low-wind days and the need to use backup
hydrocarbons on those days
- Use of new 'solar thermal electricity' technology (focuses solar energy to produce steam)
Theoretically,
he says, we could produce all the electricity we need, with 90% less
carbon emissions, with a combination of scrubbed natural gas burning
generators and wind energy from high-wind regime areas transported
through high voltage direct current lines. The problem, though, is that
most of us heat our homes with furnaces that burn hydrocarbons, not
electrically. The solution to this, he argues, is to install the new
generator technology (similar to that now used to power submarines)
that produces heat and electricity at the same time. Greenpeace has
developed a proposal to use these generators in winter, and switch to
solar heating in summer (when home heating is not needed and the sun is
stronger). But to reduce the carbon from the furnaces, we would need to
convert to hydrogen-burning furnaces or hydrogen fuel cells in our home
heating and electrical systems. So the complicated solution, he says,
is:
A micro-generation system
using solar panels and either hydrogen furnaces or hydrogen fuel cells
would supply home heat and electricity. Either they could make their
own hydrogen from electricity supplied by the grid, or obtain it from a
pipeline network...Everything comes on and goes off at the flick of a
switch, and works as smoothly as our heat and electricity systems do
today. Around half of our grid-based electricity could be supplied by
means of a few very large power systems burning methane, either in the
form of natural gas or the effluvium from underground coal gasification
[the only way to employ coal cleanly, he argues], and burying the
carbon dioxide they produce. The other half, if my meta-guess is
correct, could be provided by offshore wind and wave machines [carried
by high voltage DC power lines].
In the process of coming
up with this solution, he reluctantly rejects as impractical or naive
three technologies that many environmentalists embrace:
- Home-based micro turbines
- Off-grid community-based energy 'internets'
- Biofuel-based energy generation
He
then turns his attention to the transportation system, another great
carbon producer. He points out the irony that the faster cars travel on
an expressway, the fewer cars the expressway can simultaneously
accommodate (because of the need to provide greater stopping distance
between the cars). So the 118-mile long, 6-8 lane UK M25 expressway can
accommodate 53,000 car passengers (with an average occupancy of
1.6/car) traveling at 30 mph, but only 19,000 passengers traveling at
60 mph. If all cars were replaced with buses, it could accommodate 260,000
passengers at once. His answer, then, is to convert existing expressway
lanes to bus-only lanes, operate high-amenity buses (spacious,
comfortable seating, work-stations, food, beverage and media services)
and run them, not in the cities, but in the suburbs and country, from the peripheral subway and LRT stations of the cities outward.
Combined with carbon capping and rationing, and capping and rationing
of road space, he argues that this could reduce auto emissions by 90%
with no significant drop in convenience, comfort or transportation
speed.
What could make the system even better, he argues, would
be the use of imagination and innovation in transportation system
design and options - new technologies like cellphones, GPS, vehicle
tracking and smart tagging could offer exciting and efficient new ways
of getting from A to B without major new investment.
While
hydrogen is feasible in home power generation, it is not feasible, at
least not in the 2030 time horizon, for powering automobiles and other
hydrocarbon-based transportation, he argues. This argument, like those
he makes against micro wind turbines, off-grid energy internets and
biofuels, is complicated - too much so to meaningfully appreciate
without reading how Monbiot made the long journey from enthusiast to
skeptic on these technologies, in his own words. He's also dubious
about the limits of telecommuting and home-based enterprise - while he
certainly encourages these developments as energy conserving, he makes
a compelling case that less than 20% of work trips could practically be
eliminated by them.
He offers no solutions to reducing air
travel emissions by 90% short of grounding 90% of flights - he reviews
and dismisses each of the popular ideas for making air travel more
efficient or less polluting. A single London-to-NY round trip flight
would exhaust a person's entire 1.2 tonne annual budget for
transportation emissions under Monbiot's rationing scheme.
His
solution to reduce the extravagant amount of carbon that comes from
retail operations is simple - all stores whose customers reach them
principally by private vehicles would be forced (by the limits of the
rationing scheme or by direct regulation) to convert to online
warehouse-based delivery-to-home operations. Savings would accrue not
only from reduced electricity and square footage but from saved
customer fuel and reduced need for packaging. Of all his solutions, I
think this is the most problematic. George doesn't appreciate that
going to the mall is a social experience now embedded in western
culture, not just a method for buying stuff. His suggestion for
replacing the highly-polluting Portland cement and concrete production
process with geopolymeric cements, which is also squeezed into the
penultimate chapter, is far more compelling.
The book's final
chapter deconstructs the arguments that new fuel technologies or new
carbon scrubbing technologies will save the day by 2030. "To succumb to
hope of this nature", he says, "is as dangerous as to succumb to
despair." Monbiot loves technologies and has studied dozens in the
search for the easiest way to meet his 90% target, and in the process
learned much about the discovery and commercialization curve, even when
it is accelerated by urgency. Likewise, he dismisses the argument that
the economic and fuel-consumption crash that Peak Oil will precipitate
will solve the problem for us. It will actually make it worse, he says,
as governments yield to the temptation to reintroduce dirty coal and
other environmentally devastating fuels to stave off massive shortages
and spiralling prices. He also dismisses those who would rely on "the
market" to automatically self-correct our insatiable hunger for energy.
"Buying and selling carbon offsets is like pushing the food around on
your plate to create the impression you have eaten it", he says. What
is needed is absolute, immediate, equitable and universal reductions in
emissions, and this cannot be done without regulation and rationing.
The
problem, of course, is that regulations require governments with the
courage to enact and enforce them. It took a horrific and unprecedented
depression to push even the enlightened administration of FDR to switch
from a laissez-faire to a highly regulated modus operandi. By the time
the impacts of global warming hit home (and they will punish the
disenfranchised and powerless poor of the world first) it will be too
late. Monbiot concludes his book by trying to convince us to get off
our collective butts, stop reading and chatting about the unfolding
crisis, and do something. But his prescription is mostly actions for
government, and we know too well how little our collective
citizen/consumer voice counts in the minds of governments wined and
dined and bribed to do the exact opposite by the most wealthy, powerful
and organized corporatist lobby in history.
The ultimate irony
of Heat is that his prescription is probably the only one that can save
this planet from the scourge of global warming, but that, as simple,
direct and painless as it is, this prescription has about the same
likelihood of actually coming about as a snowball's chance in hell. Or,
perhaps I should say, a snowball's chance on Earth after Monbiot's
brave, well-researched, and ingenious ideas have been forgotten. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
