Re/Action on Climate Protection

12 states appeal EPA refusal to act on climate change

This is potentially a huge lever to force the federal government to deal with climate change:
12 states appeal emissions decision
Challenge to EPA refusal to regulate greenhouse gases

Sonoma County Business Activity in Climate Protection

There are three projects going on in Sonoma County now that involve businesses taking action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from their activities in the community. The businesses, a winery, a home builder and an organic waste processor, represent major economic activities in Sonoma County.

Why S-Clusters? How does this help Climate Protection?

How does the s-cluster (sustainability cluster) help with climate protection? The s-cluster is a pattern that is extracted from real world examples of sustainability. One of the characteristics of the s-cluster is that it is zero carbon. An s-cluster provides a product or service, essential to life, without increasing the atmospheric CO2 concentration. The s-cluster allows us to identify levers or changes to existing systems that lower total GHG emissions.

The GHG emissions implications of mobile vs stationary energy use

In greenhouse gas measurement terminology, the sources of emissions can be classified either as stationary or mobile. Stationary sources would be power plants, cement plants, refineries. Mobile sources would be trains, airplanes, ships, automobiles and trucks. All of these use fossil fuels, but the nature of the energy source and the modalities of resultant emissions are profoundly different. These profound differences require different emissions reduction strategies for mobile or stationary sources.

For example, consider carbon dioxide emissions from a fossil fuel-fired electrical generating plant. The fossil fuel is burned, and the resulting gas, called "flue gas" is emitted into the atmosphere via a smokestack. Due to air quality regulations, the operators of these plants are required to "scrub" or remove, various pollutants from the flue gas. Carbon dioxide is not required to be scrubbed from the flue gas, because it has not been considered as a "pollutant" by the US government. However, technologies called "carbon capture and sequestration" (CC/S) have been proposed to remove carbon dioxide from stationary sources.

What about mobile sources of carbon dioxide?

US behavior at Montreal-More bad news

Despite the Bush administration's adamant resistance, nearly every industrialized nation agreed early Saturday to engage in talks aimed at producing a new set of binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions that would take effect beginning in 2012.

And so ends the Montreal talks. The officials of the American government have, once again, offered a gesture of arrogance and contempt to the rest of the world on the most significant environmental problem of our time.

And here we have Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, chairperson of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee,

"James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) was even more skeptical of Saturday's pact, saying it would lead only to "a dead end economically."

"Two weeks of costly deliberation only resulted in an agreement to deliberate some more, so Montreal was essentially a meeting about the next meeting," Inhofe said in a statement. "The Kyoto Protocol . . . is a complete failure."

(Remember, ol' Jim invited Michael Crichton, a writer of fiction, to testify as an expert, before Congress, on climate science.)

A complete failure also of American democracy to deal with the most pressing issue of our time.

Replace Natural Gas with Biogas

Natural gas use represents a little over 20% of the total GHG emissions in Sonoma County. (pgs 12 and 17 of inventory). Large GHG emissions reductions would result from displacing some of this natural gas with biogas generated from organic waste. Biogas could potentially compete with natural gas.

Reducing GHGs from the existing vehicle fleet

As Joel Woodhull described in our Transportation White Paper, the two root paths to remove carbon from the transportation system are

*Reduce the use of fossil carbon-based fuels (ultimately don't use them at all)
*Get more passenger miles per mile of motorized vehicle movement

In order to reduce the use of fossil carbon fuels, new cars can be built to more easily use biofuels, the so-called "flex fuel" cars. To the extent that diesel engines and particularly diesel hybrids become more common, biodiesel can be used. The remedy of increasing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard to require auto makers to build more efficient cars is available, but is fraught with political difficulty. Raising the fuel price through a gasoline tax is another effective way to reduce fuel use, but also fraught with political difficulty.

There is still the problem of what to do with the existing fleet of cars and light trucks, which account about 85% of the GHG emissions from the transportation sector. An automotive efficiency specialist, Ernie Rogers has contributed a set of guaranteed, proven methods for improving the mileage of an existing, standard gasoline powered car or truck.

Trip to IEUA in SoCal

On Monday, 11/21, I visited two installations of the Inland Empire Utility Agency (IEUA). The IEUA is an "integrated utility" that is a water supplier as well as a

"regional wastewater treatment agency with domestic and industrial disposal systems and energy recovery/production facilities.

In addition, the Agency has become a recycled water purveyor, biosolids/fertilizer treatment provider and continues as a leader in water supply salt management, for the purpose of protecting the regions vital groundwater supplies. "

The agency operates an anaerobic digester facility that supplies biogas to generators at the desalination plant.

Zero Carbon New Development for the Gulf

Recently I had the opportunity to participate in a brainstorming session with a group of local experts on sustainable architecture, green building, green business. Craig Williams, founder of the group Architects Without Borders, had recently visited Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. He felt that there was an opportunity there to present a rebuilding strategy that was innovative, sustainable and low carbon. As the representative of the Climate Protection community, I was invited to write a high-level, executive summary treatment of what zero carbon redevelopment in the Gulf States would involve, and what it might look like. Here is the paper. I'd be very interested in your thoughts on it. Download vision_for_rebuilding_the_gulf.doc

What is driving the growth in GHG emissions?

What is the root cause of growth in GHG emissions in the United States? GHG emissions grew by about 1.3% per year in the US, according to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. In the 1990's the primary growth components were electricity generation and transportation.

However, the growth rate of the GDP during this period was 2.9% per year. Energy use per dollar of GDP fell by 1.7% per year, while CO2 per unit of energy use stayed about the same.

According to the Pew study,