Energy Choices: Reduce, Reduce, Reduce

"Americans are consuming 25% of the world's energy with only 5% of the population. We have the greatest adjustments to make." - John Howe

The United States and its government are finally beginning to get it: our huge consumption of energy from fossil fuels cannot be sustained, both because the supply of fossil fuel is running out and because the burning of fossil fuel is seriously heating the whole planet. On February 2, 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report on the physical basis of climate change. It has effectively ended debate about whether global warming is caused by human activities. The answer is YES.

Both the rising cost of fossil fuel and the rising atmospheric content of carbon dioxide (CO₂) make a lot of news lately. Discussion about our energy future engenders rapid change in our energy actions. Consequently this chapter has become impossible to keep up-to-date and comprehensive.

Many books and web sites discuss the fact that half of Earth's oil is gone, that peak of production, the Hubbert Peak, has just been reached, and that oil costs are beginning to rise rapidly. A great debate is beginning about what we will use for energy in place of oil. There is no easy and no completely acceptable answer. Here are just two years worth of books on this subject, none of which I have read:

• Richard Heinberg (2004). "Powerdown"
• Thom Hartmann (2004). "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight"
• Julian Darley (2004). "High Noon for Natural Gas"
• Kenneth Deffeyes (2005). "Beyond Oil"
• Richard Heinberg (rev. 2005). "The Party's Over"
• Lindsay Grant (2005). "The Collapsing Bubble"

Energy Consumption and CO₂ Production

Because ECOSHIFT is primarily about individual choices, I am not going to say much more about global and national statistics and goals for energy production and greenhouse gas emission. For more statistics visit the Energy Information Administration web site. For links to lots of information sources see An-Inconvenient-Truth.com. It is more appropriate to start this chapter by discussing individual or family CO₂ production. Calculators for this are on web sites like Climatecare.

Here is a calculator simplified from YES magazine [Winter 1999/2000], with my household numbers inserted:

That's 12 tons of CO₂ per year. My home is heated by electricity and LP gas; I have no air conditioning. My air travel is limited; I've reduced it considerably in recent years. Note that one 3000 mile airplane trip for a couple (12000 round trip passenger miles) creates 10000 lbs CO₂, about equivalent to a whole year of auto travel or electricity. (Airplanes get about 30 passenger miles per gallon.) To obtain your own household values, replace my numbers in column three with yours, multiply by column two to get your pound values in column four. (One cubic foot of natural gas is 0.01 therms.)

No matter what calculator you use, I'm sure it will become clear that travel, home heating, and electricity all contribute significantly to your total. However, these calculations include only your easily calculated or personal emissions. The CO₂ produced by all your indirect energy consumption is not included. That's all the energy used in making and transporting all the things you buy, from food and housing to automobile, equipment, cosmetics, drugs and medical care, computers and other electronics, including towers and satellites that make them work, etc, etc. Arguably all the energy used in the U.S. is used only for the benefit, in one way or another, of the individuals living there (even the cost of the Iraq war) and so can be allocated on a per capita basis. Dividing total U.S. carbon emissions by population yields an annual average of 48,000 pounds of CO₂ per person. National energy consumption can be allocated as follows: residential 22%, transport 28%, commercial 18%, industrial 32%. Only the residential component and perhaps two-thirds of the transportation component are included in the table above, so the household total needs to be multiplied by 2.5 to account for the household's indirect CO₂ production. For my household 2.5 x 24192 = 60,000 pounds, so my two-person household is on the low side of the average, but not by a whole lot in spite of our efforts to reduce energy use.

In "Radical Simplicity" Jim Merkel provides an alternative and more detailed method to calculate your energy consumption in the context of ecological footprint analysis (see the Sustainability chapter).

Unsustainable Energy

Fossil oil is about half gone. At the current rate of consumption there is only enough for another 30-40 years, and worldwide demand is increasing. Fossil natural gas is running out almost as fast as oil. With rising oil and gas prices comes increasing demand to drill, drill, drill, so it appears humanity will race to use all the remaining oil, without thinking about saving any for future generations. It also appears that the rich will get more and more of the remaining more and more expensive fossil fuel and the poor will get less and less.

There apparently is enough coal remaining for another 400 years or so at present consumption, but using it will greatly increase atmospheric CO₂ causing more rapid global warming. The question of whether to use coal to replace oil will be greatly debated. Some countries, like China, have already made the decision. Coal use also entails problems of destructive mining and air pollution. Optimists hope that new technology such as carbon sequestration will control the climate effect. But in the long run, coal is still a non-renewable resource and will become more expensive as it gets scarcer.

Technological optimists hope, or even expect, that modern technology will come to the rescue of the global warming issue. "Active sequestration" captures CO₂ from power plants and stores it under ground. The Bush administration has both pushed this and has cancelled pilot projects. The process requires that fossil fuel (oil, gas, or coal) be transported to locations near depleted oil or gas fields or deep saltwater reservoirs. The CO2 produced there in (new) electric power plants is captured and piped underground under pressure. From 10 to 40% of the energy produced by the plant is required for the storage process and more is required to transport the fuel to the power plant. For more on this see the U.S. DOE Fossil Fuel web site. Obviously this technique cannot be applied to distributed fossil fuel burning such as automobiles and airplanes.

Another great debate is beginning about reincarnating nuclear power. Even some sustainable energy advocates, like Amory Lovins, believe that nuclear power will be necessary during the coming transition to truly sustainable energy. But there are several big drawbacks. It will require some huge uranium mines and new extraction facilities, both of which require fossil fuel to operate. There is still no definite solution for what to do with radioactive waste. Nuclear bombs and terrorists are an associated risk. The cost of nuclear energy would be huge without us taxpayers subsidizing all the industry's accident liability. As with coal, cost of uranium extraction will increase as the most available ore gets consumed.

Fuel cells and hydrogen power have been hyped as a solution to our energy problems. But the hype fails to recognize that HYDROGEN IS ONLY AN ENERGY STORAGE MEDIUM, like a battery. Fuel cells require more energy input to separate hydrogen and oxygen from water than they can produce when the two elements are recombined. Hydrogen gas is not laying around on Earth like coal and oil; hydrogen is always combined with other elements at Earth temperatures. It takes energy to produce hydrogen gas just as it takes energy to produce electricity. Calling a bus that runs on hydrogen fuel a "zero emissions vehicle" is like calling a house that is heated by electricity a zero emissions house. The emissions occur where the energy is produced, not where it is consumed. Even if hydrogen issues such as safety, weight of storage tanks, and fuel cell technology are overcome, where will the energy come from to make the molecular hydrogen?

Fusion power remains a dream for the future. In spite of considerable research, little progress has been made on the immense technical difficulties. Various other proposed energy sources such as solar collectors in space and "energy from ocean water" are similar wishful thinking. Proposed techno-fixes for the CO₂ emission problem include several kinds of geoengineering. Fertilizing oceans with iron and/or nitrogen may increase oceanic sequestration of CO₂by effectively eutrophying the system. Adding particulates to the atmosphere might cool the surface by reducing solar radiation reaching the ground, much as volcanic dust does. I am pessimistic about such solutions because the responses of natural systems have proven to be much more complicated and difficult to predict than we might wish.

The truly renewable energy sources -- solar, wind, biomass, hydro and geothermal -- are each discussed in their own sections below. For more on these see the web site of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. For quantitative evaluations of both renewable and non-renewable energy sources I recommend "The End of Fossil Energy" by John Howe. He is a realist who, though he emphasizes the future of solar energy, does not see it as a total solution. He effectively concludes that true sustainability for humanity requires both a large reduction of energy demand per person and a large reduction of population.

Energy Conservation

The energy-climate problem can not be ignored or avoided by blaming others. Nearly everyone who reads ECOSHIFT is affluent enough to be part of the problem. The solution requires billions of individual choices to reduce personal energy demand. Information about how to do this abounds, but there is a risk that taking one or two simple actions, like changing light bulbs, assuages the concern. Really significant conservation will require permanent changes in living habits. Here is my list of actions that contribute to making a difference, in rough order from most to least important:

• Reduce or eliminate air travel
• Reduce or eliminate long automobile trips
• Live close to the places (work, stores, restaurants, bank, etc.) you visit the most
• Buy less stuff, saving the energy for its manufacture and transport
• Use public transportation
• Drive a car that gets at least 35 mpg
• Live in the smallest housing you can
• Buy locally-grown food and locally-made products
• Reduce home heat loss in winter and heat gain in summer
• Have an efficient refrigerator/freezer (one-quarter of household electricity)
• Turn off lights (including away from home!!)
• Take fewer, shorter showers
• Hang laundry out to dry
• Bicycle or walk for local trips
• Use fluorescent bulbs

As prices of energy rise to reflect its real cost to Earth systems, humanity will use more and more of an ancient and efficient energy source: human power. For personal transportation, a bicycle provides high efficiency. The energy consumption of a bicycle is about 130 kJ/passenger mile (from your food) compared with 1000-3000 for auto or mass transit. A bicycle also provides good exercise and better health. During the year I lived in Sweden I used a bicycle and never had a car. Plowed and sanded bicycle paths network the cities and towns to provide safe year-round commuting. For those more fearful of skidding, studded bicycle tires are available too. Some companies market bicycles with electric power assistance for older people or hilly environments. It is not even necessary to own a personal bicycle. Several cities around the world have established bicycle-sharing plans of various types. Numerous cities in less affluent countries support pedal taxicabs.

Solar Energy

Lack of a convenient energy storage mechanism constitutes a major drawback of both photovoltaic and wind power systems. Sunlight and wind are intermittent power sources that do not temporally match power demand. Distributing power into a large national or continental power grid mitigates some of this problem, but entails considerable energy losses. In some geographic areas, excess electricity can be stored as potential energy by pumping water uphill into a reservoir when demand is low and then draining it through generators when demand is high. Future plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will provide a distributed storage system in their batteries for solar and wind power; these vehicle batteries can also provide backup electric power for a home.

Photovoltaic panels are not the only way to use solar energy. Solar energy drives Earth's biological systems via plant photosynthesis ( see the Biomass Energy section below). Solar energy has heated buildings and dried clothes since they were invented. Much new construction incorporates "passive" solar power for heating, for cooling via heat pumps, and for hot water.

Solar power is a great way for those with enough money and appropriate location to demonstrate commitment to changing our energy habits. Some people are already using solar power for their energy needs, choosing to live "off the grid". Outfits like the Blue Link Solar Network or, closer to my home, Sunweaver and SolarWorks offer residential solar panels and systems.

Wind Energy

Another objection to wind turbines is that they kill birds. As a bird-lover myself I am sensitive to that problem. Statistics on mortality of migrating birds from all kinds of communication towers and power lines, as well as by motor vehicles and tall buildings, are hard to come by and inconsistent. Certainly, so far, wind farm mortality of birds is a tiny fraction of mortality from cats and automobiles. Undoubtedly more research is needed, but funding for such research is difficult to find.

Biomass Fuel

Biomass energy is solar energy that has been converted by photosynthesis into chemical energy as carbohydrates and other forms of organic matter. The maximum efficiency of photosynthetic conversion in plants is about 5%, compared with 15% for photovoltaic panels, but this efficiency requires megafarming methods including irrigation, fertilization, and pest control. Forests and other natural plant covers convert solar energy to biomass at 1-2%. At 1% conversion efficiency, at least 5% of Earth's land surface would be required to meet all our current energy demand with biofuel.

Ethanol from biomass is currently in vogue as a gasoline substitute, with the connivance of big agriculture and taxpayer subsidies of 51¢/gallon (money that could better be spent on energy conservation and wind and solar power). When ethanol or biodiesel fuel is extracted from sugar cane (South America), corn (North America), or rapeseed (Europe), the land produces 300-700 gallons/acre/year. This production of biomass fuel from crops is inefficient. The ratio of energy produced to energy required for fertilizer, irrigation, and extraction ranges from a reasonable 8:1 for sugar cane in Brazil to only 1.5:1 for American corn. It takes energy to get energy, and U.S.-produced ethanol requires virtually as much fossil energy to produce as it contains! Furthermore it takes a lot of land to produce biomass energy. Replacing all of our fossil fuel supply with biomass oil would require about 14% of the world's land surface, and a much larger percentage of the world's arable land.

Demand for land to produce biofuel raises considerable concern about converting food-producing land into fuel-producing land. Humans already consume about 30% of global photosynthesis for food, fuel, and fiber. Using more of this for energy means less for food; biomass energy already competes with food production for land in many parts of the world. In the U.S., one-sixth of the wheat and corn harvest now goes to biofuel; consequently the price of wheat with which we feed the rest of the world has risen 50% in 2 years. In poor tropical countries food prices are rising and food is becoming scarcer because biofuel is more profitable for local farmers. What are the ethics of converting land that is producing food for relatively local consumption into land that is producing fuel for distant, wealthier, oil-demanding countries like the United States and China? And keep in mind that some of China's energy use creates products that are bought in the United States.

From an ecosystem viewpoint, conversion of forest land to biomass oil production has more adverse impact than conversion of land already in agriculture. Yet clearing of tropical forests to produce biomass oil is proceeding apace. Obviously this destroys the forest ecosystem and its inhabitants, adding to the widespread impact of similar clearing for grazing land to produce meat for North Americans. As described in the Planting Trees section, conversion of forest to agriculture contributes considerable CO₂ to the atmosphere as organic matter decomposes, thus offsetting some supposedly sustainable benefit from the biomass fuel.

Burning of wood for heat is as old as human use of fire. Because humanity has not learned to control its numbers or its demands for energy, depletion of wood has caused the impoverishment of nations and the collapse of civilizations. In my own bioregion, the southern Gulf of Maine (see the Bioregionalism chapter), the original forest was almost completely cleared by 1850 to meet demand for fuel, housing, and growing food for animals. Development of midwestern prairies for agriculture relieved the pressure and the forest has since recovered. Now demand for wood energy from that forest rises rapidly, both for home wood stoves and for wood burning electric power plants. During the first oil crises in the 1970s, wood stoves created a significant problem of particulate air pollution. Has the burning efficiency of stoves and power plants improved to the point of preventing this in the future? Regional energy companies tout the supposed sustainability of burning forest biomass in power plants. However we know that repeated intense harvest of forests leads to nutrient depletion of the soil and presumably declining productivity (see for instance my own work in Federer, C. A. et al. 1989. Long-term depletion of calcium and other nutrients in eastern U.S. forests. Environmental Management 13:593-602). Natural ecosystems are designed by evolution to sustain themselves by internal recycling of everything. If "product" is removed from the site, sustainability probably cannot be maintained without external inputs of fertilizer. There is also increasing danger to forests from exotic pests (see the Conservation Biology chapter) and climate change. The impact of these on forest productivity remains unpredictable.

Hydro and Geothermal Power

Tidal power provides electricity in a few locations around the world and several potential locations have been identified. Drawbacks include high initial cost and fish mortality. Wave power remains another possibility for technological development.

Because the temperature of Earth increases with depth below the surface, Earth's heat provides an exceedingly abundant and theoretically sustainable source of energy. This geothermal energy can be obtained in three ways. Where hot volcanic rock is close to the surface, steam can be extracted to make electricity and hot water can be extracted for direct heating of buildings. Iceland, New Zealand, and the United States lead in this kind of geothermal development of geyser and hot spring fields. Deep drilling, to depths of 5 miles or more, has potential for extracting Earth's heat almost anywhere, but remains very expensive.

On a local scale, geothermal heat pumps extract heat energy from very shallow depths. Almost everywhere, the diurnal and annual fluctuations of air temperature are damped to constancy at a depth of about ten feet. Below this depth soil and rock temperature remains close to the mean annual surface temperature all year. A geothermal heat pump consists of pipes buried in the shallow ground near a building, a heat exchanger, and ductwork into the building. In winter, heat from the relatively warmer ground goes through the heat exchanger into the building. In summer, hot air from the house is pulled through the heat exchanger into the relatively cooler ground. Heat removed during the summer can be used to heat water. A variety of systems are available and cost is relatively low, so heat pumps are being incorporated into many new buildings, even though most demand considerable land area.

Carbon Offsets

A wide variety of organizations support offsets from voluntary "taxation". The Carbon Fund allows you to designate whether you want to support renewable energy projects such as wind and solar, to support reforestation projects, or to purchase and retire emission offsets on the Chicago Climate Exchange. The Bonneville Environmental Foundation also provides several designations, as well as an informative site. Wind Watts from Maine Interfaith Power and Light support the Mars Hill wind farm and other projects in Maine. Other offset sites are TerraPass, Greenseat for airline travel, and Climatecare. The suggested amount and value of these offsets varies considerably among providers, and there is no guarantee that payment actually creates additional non-fossil energy. The "Consumers’ Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers" from Clean Air-Cool Planet thoroughly covers the whole offset issue, though its list of providers is somewhat out-of-date at two years old. The Tufts University Office of Sustainability has another thorough discussion and guide titled "Voluntary Offsets for Air Travel Carbon Emissions" in its "Archive".

What should the cost of producing a ton of CO₂ really be? A true answer to this question would require the cost of ALL the adverse consequences of global warming now and in the future. The incalculability of this effectively makes any assigned number meaningless. The frequently used value of $5 a ton should be a minimum. A more effective personal value would be high enough to give serious incentive to continually reduce personal fossil fuel consumption.

Voluntary purchase of carbon emission offsets is a great idea as long as it doesn't allow you to think you have thereby done enough. As the Carbonfund states "Reduce what you can, offset what you can't." Reduction comes first. Al Gore is proud that he buys offsets for all the carbon he emits by flying all over the place talking about the problem. But buying carbon offsets does not reduce CO₂ emissions by anything at all, and buying carbon offsets for an ecotourism trip is even hypocritical!

A big deal is currently being made of the capability of trees and forests to absorb and store carbon from the atmosphere, so-called "passive sequestration". So tree planting constitutes a major component of some carbon offset schemes. But this is not as useful as it seems.

Planting Trees

Tree planting has a beneficial effect only in areas where it increases the rate of regrowth above what would happen naturally. If rapid natural regrowth of forest or native grassland occurs, such as in my bioregion, then planting makes no contribution. Furthermore and most importantly, revegetation, whether naturally or by planting, can only recapture an amount of carbon that was originally present in the system. Trees will not grow in places they have never grown before. Consequently, REVEGETATION DOES NOT REDUCE ATMOSPHERIC CO₂ FROM FOSSIL FUELS but only re-stores atmospheric carbon that was produced by devegetation.

Cap and Trade

The European Union has set up a cap and trade system for carbon emissions. Carbon credits are distributed annually among 4500 companies, mostly ones that generate electricity. The system covers 45% of the EU's total carbon emissions. Of course there is great debate over how rapid the emission reduction should be and the amount is not set very far ahead. Voluntary trade in greenhouse gas emission credits in the U.S. occurs on the Chicago Climate Exchange. In late 2008, ten northeastern states auctioned off carbon emission credits to power companies and other bidders. At least some of the $100 million raised will go toward energy efficiency and renewables, but critics state that the process is too limited and the cap is not low enough.

The emission trading system does not work well if polluting companies simply pass the cost of credits on to consumers rather than working to decrease emissions. Critics of the emission system propose alternatives, such as distributing credits to individuals (taxpayers or voters) who could then sell them to fossil fuel companies at post offices and banks, or auctioning credits for extracting coal, gas, and oil and using the income for renewable energy. Surely many more possibilities will be proposed and discussed and perhaps put into practice before the carbon emission problem is resolved.

The attempt of the Kyoto protocol to reduce carbon emissions globally has foundered on disagreement over who should "go first". The affluent countries want the poor countries to reduce just as much as "we" do, but the poor countries ask why they should not be allowed to achieve what the affluent already have. China, which is developing rapidly, does not want to slow its development by not using coal. The United States pronounces that the rest of the world cannot tell us what to do. (This apparently does not keep us from telling the rest of the world what to do!) Humanity needs to stop debating what temperature rise is acceptable or what percent emission reduction is needed by when. We need to all get on with the job of reducing emissions of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases as fast as possible by all means possible. Wouldn't it be great if the United States began to lead by demonstrating to the world how it can and should be done? Wouldn't it be great if the United States government launched a national effort to reduce its energy consumption on the same scale as the race to space or the interstate highway system? Shouldn't we expect strong leadership on this from our next President?

Major changes in our way of life are required NOW in order to minimize the amount of global warming. Because these are pretty unlikely, we need to prepare for the climate changes to come. Discussion about this is becoming widespread, but I'm afraid that most people are still unwilling to admit or accept the wrenching changes that will occur. Much of ECOSHIFT is about these changes and whether we will make them voluntarily or involuntarily. ECOSHIFT readers are likely to be in the vanguard of change and are the leaders the rest of civilization will look to as examples of how to live in the future.