World is Green

Nytimes writes about a new book called “Nudge” which uses behavioural science in understanding many decisions made by humans. Some experiments show that price feedbacks work. This takes it further.

“Getting the prices right will not create the right behavior if people do not associate their behavior with the relevant costs,” says Dr. Thaler, a professor of behavioral science and economics. “When I turn the thermostat down on my A-C, I only vaguely know how much that costs me. If the thermostat were programmed to tell you immediately how much you are spending, the effect would be much more powerful.”

It would be still more powerful, he and Mr. Sunstein suggest, if you knew how your energy consumption compared with the social norm. A study in California showed that when the monthly electric bill listed the average consumption in the neighborhood, the people in above-average households significantly decreased their consumption.

The BBC reports on a new report from Greenpeace on the challenge faced by India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

It estimates that 75 million people from Bangladesh will lose their homes.It predicts that about 45 million people in India will also become “climate migrants”.

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“Most of these people will be forced to leave their homes because of the sea-level rise and drought associated with shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability. The bulk of them will come from Bangladesh as most of the parts of that country will be inundated,” Dr Sudhir Chella Rajan, a climate expert and author of the study, told the BBC.

[...]

Several large cities within the low elevation coastal zone like Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras will go under the sea if the present growth rate of greenhouse emissions continue.

Greenpeace could well be right in the estimate. The solution for this is however, what Schelling proposes. He says, “The sooner Malaysia can become like Singapore, the sooner it can worry less about the impact of climate change on health, comfort, and productivity.”

In this sense, the sooner Bangladesh can grow economically, build better infrastructure and create new cities inland to support this migration the lower the impact will be. This is the same for India and Pakistan too.

A fascinating story is developing in South Australia’s energy demands.

This is where BHP steps in. The world’s biggest miner owns Olympic dam in South Australia. This mine is one of the largest mines in the world filled with copper, gold and uranium.The mine is supposed to drive the state’s economy in the coming decades. With estimates of $1 trillion, the mine can drive the growth of SA’s economy, jobs and population. In fact, Roxby Downs, a town near Olympic Dam was created to support this and has seen one of the biggest property boom in recent times.

One of the biggest needs is the demand for energy for the mine to operate. But the recent news is that there is a much greater need for this energy, upto 690 MW per year within 10 years to expand the mine. This incidentally is half of the energy requirement of the entire city of Adelaide!

This brings to question the source of power. The Greens in SA believe that the state can become a “greenhouse pariah” due to Olympic dam.

As we have seen before, Geothermal energy has an interesting future. We know that the hot rocks can generate energy with the promise of no fuel, no emissions, no waste.

I recently attended the Clean Tech session of the 12 part Climate Change 2030 seminars at Adelaide University. One of the discussions was on the Geothermal projects in South Australia. It was claimed that Adelaide is the center of the world in terms of Geothermal projects and technologies.

The speaker, Prof. Richard Hillis, who is a director at Petratherm talked about the entire issue as an optimization problem. The parameters for success for different companies were hot rocks, nearer to the grid, depth of drilling, or near to a major consumer. Each company is working on a different paradigm.

But, there is a great new opportunity for Geothermal producers to supply the “no emission” energy to this large consumer. The race is on.