Due to the logarithmic nature of fuel efficiency there is more to be gained to green trucks than work on small cars.
For 50 years, long haul tractor-trailer designs have remained fundamentally unchanged. Basically a giant box hurtling down the highway at 55 miles per hour, most trucks average only six miles to the gallon.
[...]
But the time is ripe for change. According to recent analysis by Rocky Mountain Institute the technology already exists to double the energy efficiency of long-haul trucks in the nation’s fleet. Their size, speed and poor aerodynamics mean they are laden with “low-hanging fruit” in terms of cost-effective efficiency and retrofitting opportunities.
This very interesting article in Science, “The MPG Illusion” by Richard P. Larrick and Jack B. Soll at the Fuqua School of Business in Duke University (Vol 320, June 20, 2008, p. 1593), points out the mathematically obvious truth that gas used per mile is inversely proportional to miles per gallon, which means that you have a steeper slope at lower MPG ratings, and diminishing returns at higher MPG ratings.
There are some important policy implications of this. Relatively small MPG improvements in the most gas-hungry vehicles pay off greater than larger improvements in already efficient cars (hence, it does make sense to offer tax breaks for modest improvements in SUVs versus tax breaks for hybrids, which typically replacing already gas-efficient sedans). Also, personal driving habits, especially for gas-hungry cars, can often times add or subtract a few MPG to a car’s efficiency on average. For example, a car that may get 25 MPG “average highway” will degrade to under 15 MPG if you gun it out of stoplights in city traffic. That’s a huge increase in gas consumed per distance driven, especially for the less efficient cars, whereas for more efficient cars it doesn’t hurt as much to goose the engine a bit.
Apparently the thinking that gas savings is linear with MPG is not uncommon. A survey of college students revealed that a majority of them shares this misconception.
While working in the Greening job I learned a lot in terms of systems and inspiration from Leith’s work at Harvard. She has done some amazing stuff at a bureaucracy like Harvard.
She was the first paid environmental officer on the Kensington campus when still a student and after graduation was hired to “green” the university, which she did for five years.She pushed for sustainable solid waste disposal, worked with the state transit authority to cut commuting times to the campus, and ran a greenhouse gas challenge, an environmental living program so people could learn how to live sustainably, and a “green office” program.
By the time she took up a Churchill Fellowship in 1999 there were eight staff, funded by grants from not-for-profit groups, and government and university funding.When she set off to study international trends, she discovered “we were the ones leading, and instead of me learning from everyone else’s programs I used to get invited to present the UNSW case study.
It was exciting to be asked but on the other hand I was devastated to realise that no one had the answers in the higher education sector.”She spoke at Harvard and was recruited to create and run a program aimed at the enormous task of greening the campus.Her initiatives at Harvard are estimated to be saving $US7millon annually and have set the pace in the US higher education sector. Sharp has plenty of practical advice on inculcating the cultural change that must support technical measures such as equipment upgrades, lighting and insulation improvements, and making it self-funding.
Simon said he would put the Tesla through its paces in the six-stage journey, covering distances from 300km to 700km per day. “We’re simulating the recharging infrastructure by putting a generator on the back of a truck and sending that out ahead of the car to be at the recharge point we want,” he said.
“The idea is to demonstrate that if you have the appropriate recharging infrastructure on the highway system, you can drive at normal highway speeds and treat it just like any other car. We’re asking that if the recharging infrastructure is available, can the car cut it? Can you drive one from Darwin to Adelaide and make it? My aim is to prove that point – and this is the perfect event for it. This event is about proving whether you can do that with alternative energy cars.”
Simon Hackett, as he sets off to break the world distance record for a production electric vehicle
And he has put in an innovative way to track the real time progress of the car.
I think this is the best graphic on energy I have ever seen. It compares the CO2 displaced by using a particular technology based on per dollar spent on delivering the electricity.
Basically, the higher the bar the better it is and end use efficiency has the most gains of all.
I have been writing on nuclear energy on this blog and have quoted Stewart Brand. I ran past this idea with Atanu Dey on why Amory Lovins from the Rocky Mountain Institute is against nuclear energy.
Atanu’s response was that as long as the full life cycle costs are taken into consideration and nuclear energy is cheaper than other forms of energy then we should go ahead with it. He provided me with a NPR newsstory of Lovins and Brand debating on this.
Lovins wrote an article on Grist.org claiming that nuclear is not cost-competitive compared to energy efficiency and micro power. Lovins does not even talk about the safety issues because since it is not competitive to other forms of energy than there is no need to go to the next step.
The world in 2008 invested more in renewable power than in fossil-fueled power. Why? Because renewables are cheaper, faster, vaster, equally or more carbon-free, and more attractive to investors. Worldwide, distributed renewables in 2008 added 40 billion watts and got $100 billion of private investment; nuclear added and got zero, despite its far larger subsidies and generally stronger government support. From August 2005 to August 2008, with new subsidies equivalent to 100+% of construction cost and with the most robust nuclear politics and capital markets in history, the 33 proposed U.S. nuclear projects got not a cent of private equity investment.
Nonetheless, Stewart rejects all non-nuclear options, for four fallacious reasons:
Baseload: Wind and photovoltaics can’t keep the lights on because they can’t run 24/7.
Footprint: Photovoltaics need about 150-175 times, and wind farms from 600+ to nearly 900 times, more land than nuclear power to produce the same electricity.
Portfolio: We need every tool for combating climate change, including nuclear power.
Government role: The climate imperative trumps economics, so governments everywhere must and will do what France did—ensure that nuclear power gets built, regardless of economics or dissent.
The university of Berkeley has launched a Berkeley blog where more than 150 Berkeley professors will be discussing topics of great interest to me and importance too.
From the Press release:
Berkeley — The University of California, Berkeley’s best and brightest are often asked to share their insights at the White House, on Wall Street and with the media worldwide. Now, they are furthering that conversation in a new format – The Berkeley Blog.
Launched on Oct. 12 by UC Berkeley’s online NewsCenter, the blog (http://blogs.berkeley.edu/) features campus faculty members fielding a wide spectrum of questions about the hottest current events. The blog appears to be the first such enterprise based at a major university in the United States.
So far, about 150 UC Berkeley professors have signed on to share their knowledge, experience and ideas with the academic community and the general public. They are responding to topical questions posed two or three times a week by the staff of UC Berkeley’s Office of Public Affairs, which hosts and moderates the blog. (An alphabetical list of faculty participants is online at: http://blogs.berkeley.edu/all-authors.)
Economics
How does Nobel economist Oliver Williamson’s work apply to 21st century capitalism, both here and in developing countries?
Energy & Environment
What is at stake if world leaders fail to act when they meet in Copenhagen in December for the World Climate Conference?
Science & Technology
The blockbuster discovery of a 4.4 million-year-old hominid, Ardi, adds another chapter to the history of human origins. What does this discovery tell us, and what more is there to learn about the story of human evolution?
An external cost, also known as an externality, arises when the social or economic activities of one group of persons have an impact on another group and when that impact is not fully accounted, or compensated for, by the first group.
External Costs, ExternE, 2003 [1]
The ExternE project considered seven types of damage in its valuation of external costs:
Impact on human health – mortality;
Impact on human health – morbidity;
Impact on building material;
Impact on crops;
Impact on global warming;
Amenity losses;
Impact on ecosystems;
The impacts range from human mortality effects – cancers, accidents, reduced life expectancy – to amenity losses from noise exposure.
The external costs were calculated using an “impact pathway assessment”:
Impact pathway assessment is a bottom-up-approach in which environmental benefits and costs are estimated by following the pathway from source emissions via quality changes of air, soil and water to physical impacts, before being expressed in monetary benefits and costs.
External Costs, ExternE, 2003 [1]
ExternE certainly doesn’t claim to be the last word on external costs of energy, but it is among the most detailed and comprehensive analyses to date.
The results for electricity generation are summarised in the ExternE brochure “External Costs” [1], and more detail is available in the “National Implementation” document [2].
Fifteen countries and nine electricity generating technologies were studied. Table 1 has the summarised results for the external costs by country and by electricity technology. The external costs are expressed in euro cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated.
Table 1. External costs of electricity generation
Country
Coal &
lignite
Peat
Oil
Gas
Nuclear
Biomass
Hydro
PV
Wind
€ cent per kWhe(a)
Austria
-
-
-
1–3
-
2–3
0.1
-
-
Belgium
4–15
-
-
1–2
0.5
-
-
-
-
Denmark
4–7
-
-
2–3
-
1
-
-
0.1
Finland
2–4
2–5
-
-
-
1
-
-
-
France
7–10
-
8–11
2–4
0.3
1
1
-
-
Germany
3–6
-
5–8
1–2
0.2
3
-
0.6
0.05
Greece
5–8
-
3–5
1
-
0–0.8
1
-
0.25
Ireland
6–8
3–4
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Italy
-
-
3–6
2–3
-
-
0.3
-
-
Netherlands
3–4
-
-
1–2
0.7
0.5
-
-
-
Norway
-
-
-
1–2
-
0.2
0.2
-
0–0.25
Portugal
4–7
-
-
1–2
-
1–2
0.03
-
-
Spain
5–8
-
-
1–2
-
3–5 (b)
-
-
0.2
Sweden
2–4
-
-
-
-
0.3
0–0.7
-
-
U.K.
4–7
-
3–5
1–2
0.25
1
-
-
0.15
Data are from ref. [1].
The countries listed are the EU15 except Luxembourg, with Norway also included.
Units of external costs are € cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity.
External costs that exceed the UK domestic electricity price in 2003 are highlighted .
Notes:
(a) Sub-total of quantifiable externalities (such as global warming, public health, occupational health, material damage).
(b) Biomass co-fired with lignites.
What do the numbers show? There’s a significant spread in the country-to-country figures, but overall coal and oil have the highest external costs, and wind has the lowest external costs. Nuclear and solar PV have roughly similar external costs, with nuclear slightly lower, and both are lower than biomass and gas. The hydro figures have a thirty-fold spread between the highest and lowest values, reflecting the very site-specific nature of the impacts from hydropower.
To my mind, the Green path forward begins with environmentalists realizing that nuclear power will grow no matter what we do. Our customary opposition would make it grow badly – slowly, expensively, unsystemically, and with dangerously poor overall coordination. But if we encourage it in the right way, nuclear energy growing well would mean that it minimizes humanity’s carbon-loading of the atmosphere; that it collaborates well with other carbon-free or superefficient energy forms; that it helps generate other Green services such as desalination or hydrogen . . . that it helps eliminate nuclear weapons; that it securely energizes cities and thereby helps to reduce world poverty . . .
In his lecture at the Longnow Foundation (from Fora.tv) he explains how slum dwellers in Dharavi, Mumbai, India are the greenest people on earth who live on very less energy and resources and recycle everything. However, this is possible because they are some of the poorest people on earth. And, they do not want to be like that.
From one of his TED talks
Here is the biggest paradigm that the developed world does not want to understand.
You cannot be rich without abundant and cheap energy.
How do you become rich and have low per-capita emissions? – Nuclear Energy, Geothermal and Hydro.
LightBucket has some fantastic analysis in this regard.
Table 1 shows the energy mix and carbon emissions data for the so-called “developed regions” as defined by the UN Statistics Division [1]. I’ve highlighted some of the stand-out numbers, both highest and lowest, and I’ll discuss these below.
Table 1. Energy mix, energy use and CO2 emissions by GDP and by population
Country
Energy Mix
Power/
Capita
CO2/GDP
CO2/Capita
fossil
nuclear
renew-
ables
other
kW/capita
tonnes CO2/
US$10000
tonnes CO2/
capita
Luxembourg
92%
0%
2%
6%
13.9
3.4
26.5
United States [6]
86%
8%
6%
0%
10.5
5.2
20.4
Australia [7]
97%
0%
3%
0%
7.9
5.1
19.0
Canada [8]
67%
7%
25%
0%
11.2
6.4
18.5
Estonia
87%
0%
10%
3%
5.0
16.3
14.3
Finland
59%
16%
23%
2%
8.9
3.5
13.2
Czech Republic
79%
15%
3%
3%
5.9
10.8
12.5
Belgium
75%
22%
2%
1%
7.2
2.8
12.2
Ireland
97%
0%
2%
1%
4.9
2.3
11.1
Netherlands
94%
1%
3%
2%
6.7
2.4
11.1
Germany
84%
12%
4%
0%
5.5
2.9
10.7
Denmark
85%
0%
14%
1%
4.8
2.2
10.2
Japan [9]
83%
12%
5%
0%
5.5
2.7
10.1
Greece
94%
0%
5%
1%
3.7
3.7
10.0
Norway [10]
37%
0%
60%
0%
9.2
3.4
9.6
Austria
77%
0%
21%
2%
5.5
2.4
9.4
United Kingdom
89%
9%
2%
0%
5.2
2.7
9.4
Italy
90%
0%
7%
3%
4.2
2.6
8.5
New Zealand [11]
71%
0%
29%
0%
5.5
3.2
8.4
Poland
95%
0%
5%
0%
3.2
12.2
8.3
Spain
82%
12%
6%
0%
4.4
3.2
8.3
Slovenia
69%
19%
11%
1%
4.9
5.0
8.2
Slovakia
72%
23%
4%
1%
4.6
8.6
7.9
Iceland [12]
28%
0%
73%
0%
16.3
1.7
7.8
France
52%
40%
6%
2%
5.8
1.9
6.9
Bulgaria
71%
22%
5%
2%
3.4
17.5
6.8
Portugal
83%
0%
15%
2%
3.4
3.3
6.3
Sweden
37%
37%
26%
0%
7.7
1.5
6.2
Switzerland [13]
63%
24%
13%
0%
4.8
1.1
6.1
Hungary
81%
12%
4%
3%
3.7
5.6
5.9
Romania
84%
4%
12%
0%
2.3
12.0
5.4
Lithuania
50%
37%
7%
6%
3.3
5.9
3.9
Latvia
60%
0%
36%
4%
2.7
5.2
3.2
World Mean [14]
87%
6%
6%
1%
2.4
5.6
4.0
Data are sorted by descending order of CO2 emissions per capita;
Units of CO2/GDP are metric tons of CO2 per US$10,000 of GDP;
Units of CO2/Capita are metric tons of CO2 per capita per annum;
Units of Power/Capita are kilowatts per capita. Power refers to Total Primary Energy Supply;
There are small rounding errors in some of the percentages;
Data are for 2004 except where noted;
Data are for “developed regions” as defined by the UN Statistics Division;
CO2/capita data are from ref [1];
CO2/GDP data are calculated from refs [2] and [3];
Power/Capita data are from ref [4];
Energy mix data for EU nations are from ref [5];
Remaining energy mix data are from refs [6] to [14], and are noted in the table.
What do these numbers show?
Four developed countries have emissions intensities below 2 tonnes-CO2 per US$10,000 of GDP. They are France, Iceland, Sweden and Switzerland. These are working models of low-emissions, high-income industrialised economies. How do they do it?
Iceland has the highest per capita energy consumption of any country (it’s the cold winters), so one might expect it to have high carbon emissions, yet it is among the very lowest carbon emitters – how? It’s thanks to its very large geothermal and hydroelectric resources, sufficient for its small population. Iceland’s energy mix has the highest fraction of renewables of any country (geothermal 56.0%, hydroelectric 16.6%) [12], giving it the lowest emissions intensity of any “developed region” nation that doesn’t use nuclear power.
France has the highest nuclear fraction at 40% – about 80% of its electricity is nuclear-fuelled – and Sweden is close behind with 37% nuclear energy. Sweden’s mix of hydroelectric and nuclear power, and France’s heavy use of nuclear power, give both of them very low emissions by population and by GDP.
The best performer of all by emissions intensity is Switzerland.
Switzerland has by far the lowest CO2 emissions per unit GDP of any developed nation, and the third lowest emissions/GDP ratio of any nation at all (only Chad and Cambodia have lower emissions intensities). This isn’t just down to its very high GDP; Switzerland also has the lowest per capita CO2 emissions of the western economies (four eastern European nations have lower per capita emissions).
How does Switzerland do it? It is a very wealthy nation, which certainly explains one side of the emissions-to-GDP ratio, but that doesn’t explain the emissions per capita ratio, which is also among the very lowest. Its electricity generation is almost entirely hydroelectric and nuclear. These are the two low-carbon energy sources available in quantity. Coal use is confined to two specific industries, foundries and cement factories [15]. These are the factors that combine to deliver Switzerland’s very low emissions figures.
At the other extreme, the U.S. stands out as a poor performer in every respect. It’s not just that its per capita emissions are the second highest of all (after Luxembourg), it also performs poorly on the economic measure of emissions intensity. Also noteworthy are Australia and Ireland, two economies almost entirely reliant on fossil fuels. Ireland has high per capita emissions despite low energy use, while Australia combines a high-carbon energy mix with high energy use to end up with the third highest per capita emissions of all. Given its low population density and natural advantages, it’s an extraordinary position to be in.
While much of the rest of the world embraces nuclear technology as part of a mix of measures to reduce carbon emissions, Australia stands virtually alone among the majors in turning its back on the nuclear options while at the same time supplying most of the other nations with uranium.
But I don’t think Penny Wong will need to be reminded by the Chinese of Australia’s odd position because, as I will explain below, there is a dramatic community change taking place.
I am indebted to The Australians contributing editor Peter Van Onselen for explaining what actually happened at the Bali carbon conference and reminding me that 19 of the G20 countries have nuclear power in their energy mix or are planning the construction of reactors. There is only one G20 country that turns its back on the nuclear option – Australia.
I have been saying this for more than 18 months now that if Australia is serious about carbon than nuclear is the way to go. With Australian’s only ready to pay about $10 a month more on energy and no other base load solution comes near nuclear right now this is the way to go.
I think the Australian public will change their mind in the next couple of years.
