Where are all the big greenhouse gas emitters?

© 2009 Joshua Stark

In California, we now know. Last week, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) published the list of the biggest GHG (greenhouse gas) emitters in the state. This article from the San Jose' Mercury News does a good job talking to its importance. Unfortunately, it ends with a not-completely-true quotation:
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"The low-hanging fruit is to increase your efficiencies," he said. "Any time you can get more use out of natural gas, that will result in reduced greenhouse gas."

The "he" from that quotation is Tupper Hull, spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association. Although I understand what he is trying to say, it does not capture the whole truth, and I thought it important to remind folks that more use out of natural gas will result in reduced GHG emissions only if it replaces higher-emitting fuels.

Now, if you were to ask Mr. Hull if he was suggesting cutting our use of petroleum in order to make his statement true, I suspect (though I don't know) that he'd have a difficult time agreeing, seeing as he is the spokesman for a petroleum association.

It's also important to note (as the Mercury News does) that the fifth largest GHG emitter in the state is a natural gas power plant at Monterey Bay.

Beware suggestions for increasing our consumption as a way to save the planet.

My little suggestion for next year's state-level work

© 2009 Joshua Stark

Yesterday, I was able to attend the California League of Conservation Voters' Green California Summit. It was well-organized, as usual, with relevant topics and great discussions.
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Of course, the looming concern for this group of folks is next year's legislative and regulatory climates in the face of a nearly $21 billion projected budget deficit. One strategy (and one that comes up annually) is to consider alliances with other communities (labor, business, etc.) when our goals align. In this light, and considering the "Jobs!Jobs!Jobs!" mantra that EVERY interest group touts for their projects, I have proposed one idea: Be brutally, brutally honest about the jobs.

Environmental groups have wrapped the "jobs" tag around quite a few projects, and I've been guilty of this, myself, where I think it's true in places. But, now is the time to open up about how and where those jobs will hit, and what the true opportunity costs will be if we enact projects that will build "green" jobs, vs. the status quo.

First, define your terms. The community needs a good, solid definition of "green" jobs. My suggestion: Any job that produces net carbon negative without too many impacts on other ecosystem values, and provides wages above the poverty threshold (or even prevailing wages?) should be "green". Remember, we are looking to build sustainable communities that make enough money to afford to leave some land/resources aside, in addition to lessening our environmental impacts. If we don't define this term in some way, however, it will so completely lose its value as to be potentially damaging.

Along with defining "green", define the opposite (hint: Don't call them "brown" or "black", please - maybe something like "bad", or "crappy", as I'm guessing "dirty jobs" is copyrighted).

Then, do an A+B+C=D equation, where A = Green Jobs, B = Crappy Jobs, C = unemployed people, and D = total workforce in the community (I kinda "stole" this from the folks at Env-Econ). I suggest doing this by region, and starting in the Central Valley, not because it's taking water from my community, but because it's economic conditions are as bad as Appalachia.

In this comparison, be honest: More green jobs will mean fewer other jobs. But, define those other jobs, which in the context of the Central Valley, looks good for green, local communities, and labor. Yes, massive solar installations on denuded and fallowed lands will lose farm labor jobs, but they will gain full-time, year-round solar industry employment. In addition, consider how these jobs will cut into unemployment. Mendota claims to be freaked out because its official unemployment rate is over 30%, which is sad and awful, but not much worse than it was during good economic times. Mendotans should be screaming mad at their infrastructure and local government for never trying to get good, steady work developed in its region, but now, with the potential for farming solar, they should be demanding space for these full-time jobs with better wages and benefits.

So, show the math. In the best of times you may lose, say, 2000 ag. jobs to a particular project, but gain 500 green jobs. However, the 500 jobs we'd support would be at, say $15-20/hr., + benefits + full-time work, vs. the current $8-10/hr. seasonal work without benefits. In addition, your ag. jobs aren't there right now, anyway, due to drought and a bad economy, so note that turning fallowed lands benefits locals without driving away current agriculture.

If you add an honest conversation about the created jobs to the benefits of carbon-negative projects and lower impacts on ecosystems, you speak not only to the current budget crisis and economic climate, but also to future quality of life issues for local communities.

Last, attack opponents by pointing out that the status quo vis a vis bad jobs and unsustainable environmental practices is what got us into our current economic crisis. For example, if first-time homebuyers in the Central Valley had full-time work with good wages, they would have been much less susceptible to predatory lending practices. They also would have been more able and willing to help with diesel truck retro-fits to improve air quality. Had they been given access to sustainable and alternative energy sources for transportation, or even mass transit, we would have been able to weather the oil market instability which helped drive down the consumer economy just before the financial crisis hit. We have been good at telling people what will happen, but maybe its time to explain what just happened in light of bad environmental and jobs practices, and then offer the alternative in the form of sustainable jobs with good wages and benefits.

It's just a couple of small suggestions.

Carbon sequestration & European reforestation

© 2009 Joshua Stark

Don't let the title scare you off, I'll bring it down a notch, and talk about that issue in a bit.

Last week, I was able to attend a lecture by a researcher from Spain, Dr. Alejandro Caparrós of the Institute of Public Goods & Policies at the Spanish National Research Council. The good doctor gave a fine presentation, even while interrupted mid-lecture by rude Americans with questions. He was well-versed in the actual effects of carbon regulation, because the EU has been actually implementing them for a few years now.
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So, a definition, to get everybody up to speed: Carbon sequestration is the physical act of pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it. Many folks are working on an engineered sequestration, but we have an elegantly designed method in plant life, esp. in trees and other slower-growing plants. Now that you know this (if you hadn't before), you can see the obvious interest in reforestation or avoided degradation of existing forest lands. You can also see the dollar signs appearing in many folks' eyeballs as they look out no longer at pristine forests, but at miles and miles of giant carbon stands and the money they might hold.

I won't go into the weeds too deep over actual reforestation vs. avoided degradation, or the comparisons between a largely free market (Spain) and a controlled market (Tunisia). I want to point out a surprising finding he mentioned as an aside, and two conclusions that I reached from this lecture.

First, the little gem that Dr. Caparrós pointed out: Paying farmers to reforest or avoid degradation is seen as a way to wean the EU off a large portion of its farm subsidies, and it looks like it may work. He said that the EU is attempting to eliminate its farm subsidies over the next 20 years, and is offering a way to pay for carbon sequestration as an alternative for farmers. For this reason, they are looking at the best way to ease farmers into agreeing to these subsidies. Surprisingly, with carbon market prices, it may be possible to reforest about 10% of Europe through pricing in the value of carbon.

As for my conclusions, they are a tad disturbing, but hopefully more enlightening in the long run.
As Dr. Caparrós talked about different ways to "internalize" the price of carbon, he narrowed the subsidy/payment down to two methods, which he named the Carbon Flow Method (CFM), and the Ton Year Allocation Method (TYAM). CFM is easiest: You get a check for the amount of carbon you sequester in a year, and you pay that amount when you lose that carbon. Ideally, this means that a farmer grows oaks for twenty years, and receives a check for his additional carbon every year. When he harvests his oaks, he pays for the carbon that leaves his property. Realistically, a certain percentage of farmers will lose their trees to catastrophic wildfire every year, but will probably be quite unwilling to pay for their carbon loss immediately after losing everything.

TYAM tries to alleviate the fire problem by allocating a smaller amount to the farmer for sequestering carbon each year, but not requiring payment if the farmer loses carbon to a fire or harvest. It seems like an insurance plan to me, but it also has the effect of incentives for farmers to keep trees longer, thus rehabilitating native Spanish cork oaks and their habitats.

These are all well and good, point to an economics concept really pushed lately, which is to try to internalize (make a price for) market externalities. So when I had a chance, I asked a question about this idea, because I saw a looming hole growing in the carbon pricing mechanism, and one that worries me as a conservationist/environmentalist.

I asked him if he anticipates any pressures to encourage reforestation in habitats which provide strong carbon sequestration, and degradation of habitats where not so much carbon is sequestered, but where we have other ecosystem values. His answer was illuminating: He said yes, he anticipates that market distortion, and that we would all love to be able to internalize every externality to alleviate that problem.

Which brings me to an "if you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" conclusion. Economists, in order to prove the ultimate efficiency of market systems, are looking to internalize every externality. But, you can't do it to everything, so we are going to see some serious distortions, until economics as a study again accepts the necessity of direct public involvement to alleviate these problems.

New blog on the Environmental Ethics list

© 2009 Joshua Stark

The circles that the internet spins can really be fascinating, but I'm sure they relate to the little, nerdy worlds we build for ourselves. At the very least, it provides us nerds the ability to find each other, though we live thousands of miles away, or move parallel to each other in the same communities.

While at Environmental Economics, I found them linking to a gentleman at Davis (now at Berkeley), one David Zetland. His blog, Aguanomics, is a great blog on economics and water issues, and he also seems to have a great experiment going with his students (?), letting them blog economics issues. The students' works offer great real-world economics perspectives on various human enterprises - my current favorite, of course, is the entry on hunting.

Another bonus the students' writings provide for non-economics types are examples of the style of analysis economics brings to various issues. I've been trying to organize, in my head, a way to defend economics as an analysis such that folks reading economics analyses can understand the conclusions without automatically shutting down or yelling at the paper. It's hard to do, but these students are doing it.

Take that hunting blurb. The author, Ms. Riggs, does not take a side about the ethics of hunting. She explains the sides in the context of the usefulness (joy, food, etc.) of hunting to the individual, and then uses that explanation to draw some economic conclusions. However, I believe that people who both love and hate hunting will read through it, and argue with Ms. Riggs at times, because she either doesn't completely get the argument, or she missed something, etc. But, that isn't the point of this analysis. Although the ethics of the concept are important (and a major reason why economics shouldn't be the only way to look at issues), she focuses on the utility, or usefulness, of the activity to the individual.

So, if you get a chance, read the various economic analyses from the students, and comment on them. Hopefully, these real-world examples will help illuminate some basic concepts of economics.

As for Mr. Zetland's work, I think it's great. His perspectives on water are sorely needed in California's State Capitol as well as in D.C. Read his stuff, too.

Connections

© 2009 Joshua Stark

My brain often looks for connections. The training for my first major vocation, as a high school teacher, required that I try to make as many connections between the students and the subjects as I possibly could fabricate. I'm being a tad silly, but it was true, and a large part of my work involved honestly looking at my kids' lives and their futures, and finding that information which most moved them to learn more.
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This has stayed with me through my other professions, and now, looking at environmental and conservation issues, I often find myself taking the perspective of all sides, and then looking for connections. In this, I come across some interesting facts pertaining to connectedness. To whit:

The Endangered Species Act and our military.

Did you know that the peregrine falcon has provided a wealth of technological advancements to our fighter and reconnaissance aircraft? From air intake cones to variable-wing technologies, engineers have studied and applied many aspects of the fastest animal on Earth.

Now, what would have happened if it had gone extinct?

Now, what will we learn tomorrow from another example in nature, to help improve our lives? Lately, the ESA has taken some hits on both sides, because it focuses on individual species. But, maybe Aldo Leopold was right, and the first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the pieces.

Anticipating shifting energy patterns

© 2009 Joshua Stark

Dr. Kahn at UCLA has a quick post up about plug-in Prius hybrids coming in 2012. Of course, GM says its Volt will arrive late next year (call me a doubting Thomas, that thing has been just about to come out for four years now), and Nissan and possibly Ford have electric vehicles coming out next year or 2011. Tesla Motors has ripped them all up, as they've had an all-electric roadster (0-60 in 3.9 seconds) out for two years now, and offer a sedan next year that I would love to get for my next birthday.
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This is all good news, but Dr. Kahn's question was one of capacity in the state. Can California provide enough power through our grid in such a way as to make this transition possible?

In my humble opinion, yes. There are two major transformations that can (and probably will) quickly take place to help this transition:

1) Water conservation! About one-fifth of California's energy consumption goes to water transport and purification in the state. Currently, there is a strong movement to get a 20% reduction in residential water use by 2020, and this will translate into energy savings. If the State were to grow a spine and include agriculture, we could experience dramatic energy savings;

2) Distributed generation! That's the fancy term for you producing electricity, either by wind or, more often, solar power. Barring any unforseen bad events, within three years I predict changes that will make it much more cost-effective (and even lucrative) for folks to install solar panels and windmills at home. If you could sell excess energy back into the grid for fair market value, while at the same time utilities are required to procure larger percentages of their electricity from renewable resources, I'd be willing to bet that break-even points for solar panels would drop from the current 8 years or so to 4 or 5 years, especially if tax rebates continue. At the same time, individuals would be insulating themselves from higher electricity rates by producing their own.

Of course, obstacles exist, the primary one being the centralized ability of big utilities (and ag.) to lobby hard to get what they want. One prime example is an attempt by PG & E to require 2/3rd's voter approval if a community tries to create its own, public utility. At the state level, this usually means that companies go along with 'green' ideas so long as they maintain their current, government supported lock on production/distribution. In this light, expect big pushes for those huge solar developments in the Southern California wilderness. My own two cents is to compromise, and let them develop huge solar projects in the Central Valley at the same time you require them to pay fair market value for electricity from individuals. If it is true that only about four or five percent of homes are cost-effective for good solar generation, then why are the utilities reticent to push for as much of it as we can make?

We all know that the transition will have costs and consequences. Every change does. However, like Professor Kahn, I believe our electricity generation can and will make a fairly smooth transition to providing more energy for transportation.

For my blogger friends out there making money

Or at least, showing ads. on their blogs:

Please note that the FTC now has regulations on advertising that includes blogging, especially where the blogger is posting reviews from merchandise given by the manufacturer:

http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf

I just thought you might want to know.