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Efficiency Works Forever
Michael G. Richard, Treehugger
This is a small editorial about something that might seem obvious to some, but that is too often left out from public debate. To go straight to the point: Efficiency and conservation should be at the top of the list of solutions to our energy problems. Why? Because before we build new production capacity, we should use what we already have.
It’s common sense. There is so much wasted energy that we already pay to produce that it would be foolish to pay again to produce more before addressing that problem. That energy is already there, just waiting to be used for something.
Here are the arguments I can think up in favor of efficiency and conservation (feel free to add anything I forgot in the comments section):
- After the initial investment, there are no additional costs for fuel or maintenance…
- it creates tons of jobs in the renovation, green architecture, green urbanism and innovation/technology sectors,
- it educates the public on what should be done and what are the current problems (unlike building a power plant out of sight that nobody thinks about),
- it saves people money to have a more efficient home, business, neighborhood, car, etc
- something more efficient is inherently more nature-friendly and produces less waste and pollution,
- it works forever! Even when we really need to build new wind farms or hydro plants, the previous investments in efficiency and conservation are still there doing their parts to keep demand under check…
(29 August 2005)
Recommended by Big Gav on Peak Energy.
Railways, Hindustan Petroleum order jatropha fuel
Staff, Indo Asian News Service
Raipur – Indian Railways and Hindustan Petroleum have placed orders for jatropha-based bio-diesel from Chhattisgarh, even offering to make payment in advance.
With Chhattisgarh ready to make its first ever 3,000-litre per day jatropha-based bio-diesel plant operational within 15 days on the outskirts of the state capital Raipur, private and public sector companies have started rushing in with order proposals.
‘Indian Railways and Hindustan Petroleum, besides several other private business houses, have been keen to make advance payments to book orders for bio-diesel purchase for production in state will begin from early next month,’ the government’s latest issue of monthly magazine Jan Man reported. …
It said the state would be cultivating 80 million jatropha saplings this year on 32,000 hectares of land in all the 16 districts. Chhattisgarh has announced it will become bio-fuel self-reliant by 2015 and has been working on an action plan to produce 1.5 million tonnes of jatropha seeds by 2007 for achieving an annual 500,000 tonne bio-diesel production target.
(27 August 2005)
Green China Overview
Staff, WorldCCganging.com
To a very great degree, whether or not we as a planet manage to win the Great Wager depends upon China. The combination of its size, course of economic growth, and existing reliance on pollution- (and carbon-) intensive industries and energy sources lead us to a world in which China’s choices mean the difference between success and failure. We’ve maintained a focus on China’s massively ambitious and deeply uncertain plans to turn itself into a green superpower for awhile now, and a review of where we stand is in order. …
(29 August 2005)
An excellent link-packed synthesis of recent news from China on their efforts towards sustainable energy and environmental policy. -LJ
Interview with Alex Steffen, part one
Dave Roberts, Gristmill
In April, I sat down for a long, wide-ranging conversation with Alex Steffen, executive editor of the (now newly incorporated and redesigned) Worldchanging.com. Gristmill readers likely need no introduction to Worldchanging, an online salon of activists and thinkers dedicated to the proposition that “another world is here” — that the tools and techniques we need to reverse the global malaise already exist and await only our imagination and willpower. If it isn’t on your daily reading list, it should be.
(30 August 2005)
UPDATE: Part 2 of the interview has been posted.
UPDATE: Here is Part 3
How to make the NW a smart grid leader
Pacific Northwest stands poised to lead a revolution in energy efficiency
Patrick Mazza, Tidepool
Two years ago this August the worst blackout in North American history left 50 million people from Broadway to Detroit without power and inflicted $6 billion in economic damages. In its wake came calls to rebuild an aging U.S. power network with advanced digital technologies to catch it up with economic sectors ranging from retailing to manufacturing already revolutionized by computerization.
This smart, digital grid indeed has great promise. Digital information and management systems will bring significant new capabilities to the grid, among them:
- To anticipate and thwart power disturbances and to automatically re-route power and “self-heal” when troubles occur — One study shows $49 billion in annual economic benefits.
- To shift and shave peak power demands, thus reducing need to construct tens of billions in peaking power plants and wires over the next 20 years alone, with huge implications for power rate control.
- To manage and control a multitude of cleaner, distributed energy resources including solar panels and wind farms with their varying and often unpredictable output.
There has been some movement toward the smart grid. An improved network of sensors is now providing better information to Northeast power grid operators, offering potential to catch problems before they rapidly cascade across entire regions as occurred Aug. 14, 2003.
But overall, most observers agree, progress toward developing a 21st century smart grid rich in digital intelligence and distributed energy supplies is encountering obstacles. This translates into continuing power reliability threats. Columbia University power grid researcher Roger Anderson, citing an increasing frequency of blackouts since 1998, comments, “If present trends continue, a blackout enveloping half the continent is not out of the question.”
(23 August 2005)
Tidepool is a news portal for environmental issues for the Pacific Northwest (N. Calif., Oregon, Washington and BC). They post occasional essays as well.-BA
Couple offer lessons in life after doomsday
Paul Brown, The Guardian
While world leaders squabble about whether climate change is real and what action to take, one couple has retreated to rural Wales to help humanity plan for what they believe will be a dark future.
Bob Smith and his partner Jules Wagstaff are convinced that time is short after reading the science and the signs of increasing temperatures and severe weather.
They have set up a school to teach age-old skills of coppicing, green woodworking to make furniture and tools, shelter construction, and alternative business models such as cooperatives.
Their tools are not computers but rope, lathes and hand axes.
Wales, which is used to local people practising alternative lifestyles, has not been entirely welcoming. Both the Welsh assembly and the local authority, Ceredigion council, regarded this vision of the future as eccentric and until the past few weeks had no place in their apprenticeship schemes or training programmes for it.
But Mr Smith and his family, and local people acting as trustees for his Deassartation School, are patient people. Understanding almost lost craft skills and adapting the design of Mongolian yurt shelters to suit the British climate took time.
“The fact that we spent five years living in a yurt meant at first people did not take us seriously, but you have to do that to get the design right,” Mr Smith said. “At present we live in a cottage while the Cilgerran school uses the yurt as an outside classroom, so we are temporarily respectable, but I am going to build more yurts soon so we can teach other people how to do it.”
(30 August 2005)
