theClimateers

On the last weekend of February, a friend of mine tipped me off to a video competition put on by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, YouTube, and Sony. The task was to create a three-minute video about one day in the life of someone who gives back to his/her community. In about 48 hours, I got in touch with Daniel Boese, a friend, climate activist and journalist in Berlin, talked to him about a community solar project he’s currently working on, filmed him working on that project, and cut this video together to submit it by February 28.

The video is now up for the Project Report Community Award. Please take a look at it below and click the Project Report Thumbs Up that pops up over the bottom of the video to vote for the video.

The community solar project that Daniel is currently starting demonstrates the “Get to Work” attitude that 350.org has been promoting as the movement’s motto for 2010. We need to work on all fronts to curb global climate change, and we mustn’t overlook what we can do in our own neighborhoods.

As Daniel says:

“What I like about the project also is that it makes sense in both a local and a global context. You’re doing something that’s interesting for your community, my community here, and it directly relates to THE global problem of the 21st Century of climate change. Because in the end, this is about fighting climate change.

2009 was kind of the year where the climate change movement around the globe came together and tried to put a lot of pressure on politicians, with very mixed results. And I think with things like the solar project we’re trying to do here, there’s a possibility of the movement around the world to just start being the change and start doing the change, what is necessary.

The size of the challenge is much bigger than just putting up a couple solar panels. But this not something you can just do overnight. There’s no one who has a master plan. So you definitely, you need a conversation, you need people to try out things, you just need to get going. That’s what I think. You need to get the conversation going, you need to try. This is one experiment of seeing how the community reacts to this. And hopefully, it’s a starting point to go further. That’s my big hope.”

For more ideas on how you can take action at home, check out this recent post on the the 350.org blog!

The following post was written by a very bright friend of mine, Adelaide Calbry-Muzyka. Adelaide is currently working towards an MS in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on energy at Stanford University. I’m thankful to have the variation in perspective and welcome others to join our growing team of contributing and guest writers – just let me know if you’re interested!

As we all prepared for the International Day of Climate Action events this past weekend, I was learning about the source of the fuel that is a considerable part of the reason we need a Day of Climate Action in the first place. As part of an “Energy Resources” class I’m taking this quarter, I went on a field trip to the San Ardo oil field in Salinas Valley, CA.

Regardless of what we would like the future of energy to look like, the fact is that over a third of global energy use today still comes from oil. Oil on its own has a significant impact on the environment, of course – the carbon dioxide released when burning oil certainly contributes to global warming, and localized accidents such as oil spills can be detrimental to neighboring ecosystems. Ideally, this would all mostly go away in the future as we switch to greener energy sources. But in the meantime, what can be done to mitigate the environmental impact of its extraction process? What are oil fields like San Ardo already doing, and what could they do better?

First discovered in 1947, the San Ardo oil field is the 13th largest in California, and produces 11.4 thousands of barrels of oil per day. Two oil companies pump oil there: Chevron and Aera (a California-based joint venture of Shell and ExxonMobil, for those not familiar with Californian oil companies).

As far as I could tell, there are two main drivers for increasing environmental friendliness at an oil drilling site: money, and government regulation. The potential third one would be a call for greener action from shareholders, but that hasn’t seemed to be a significant factor in shaping oil companies’ policies yet (I’m holding out hope, though!).

Money

Many environmentally-friendly practices can also be wallet-friendly for the companies involved. Energy efficiency, for example, makes sense from all standpoints. San Ardo insulates its steam pipes to lose as little heat as possible, and it optimizes pressure gradients inside the oil reservoir to maximize ease of recovery.

More importantly, it runs a co-generation plant that produces 6.5 MW of electricity. This is a pretty simple system: basically, San Ardo needs hot steam to inject into the ground to loosen the oil and be able to pump it up. But producing steam just for oil recovery isn’t very efficient; there is a lot of heat lost through the earth when the steam is at the bottom of the oil well. So, part of the steam is used to turn the turbine of a generator before being injected into the reservoir. This increases the efficiency by 80%, and it allows San Ardo to produce two-thirds of its own electricity needs on-site, and even sell the excess back to the nearby town.

That said, some fairly obvious energy efficiency considerations could still be put in place. San Ardo currently holds two separate co-generation plants – two separate systems to drive turbines with hot steam – a process that would only get more efficient with the greater steam flow if the systems were merged into a single one. The problem here is that the field is owned by two separate companies, Aera and Chevron, and business competition has kept them from cooperating on this issue, despite the significant financial and energy advantages of consolidating work. Resolving this particular issue could only benefit all parties involved.

And although this would require greater study, the potential for installing solar panels amidst the oil rigs seems significant, given the weather conditions and oodles of open space above ground. San Ardo’s owners could sell solar-generated electricity along with the co-generated one; the connection to the grid is already there, they would make money from it, and there would be a little more sustainably-produced electricity in California.

Government Regulations

Even when some environmental practices are not justifiable from a purely business viewpoint, they are still required by state and federal standards. I’m an engineering student, so I don’t have as much of a grasp on policy as some others would, but I do have a general understanding that the government doesn’t let you release just anything into the ground or atmosphere.

The treatment of water retrieved mixed with the oil from the reservoir, for example, is a large portion of the work done at San Ardo. Every day, 60 thousand barrels of water are cleansed of petroleum-based impurities before being released back into the ground (compare that to the 11.4 thousand barrels of oils produced over the same time period). Hot gases are scrubbed of their sulfur content before being released into the atmosphere, reducing the risk of acid rain from hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and sulfur dioxide (SO2). These procedures, I would imagine, are largely a result of government policy restricting environmentally harmful waste, and are regulated by the EPA and, in California, by the CARB (California Air Resources Board).

What about us?

So what does this mean for us? Going back to my point about how oil consumption isn’t going to disappear overnight, we do want to minimize the impact of oil recovery while it’s still going on. This means letting oil companies know what they can do better – and there are two main ways of doing that. The first, of course, is through the government. If we keep letting our elected officials know what matters to us, they will push the government to set stricter standards, and that will shape the way oil companies are allowed to conduct business.

The second is through public opinion. I said earlier that environmentally-concerned shareholders haven’t been a big part of the reason for greener policies in oil companies, but I was only partly kidding when I hinted that this could change. People are increasingly taking a personal interest in the environment and climate change – just look at the magnitude of the worldwide 350 events last weekend.

We had significant interactions with only one engineer at San Ardo (an Aera employee), so I can’t generalize from his attitude or from the single field at San Ardo. But it was refreshing to see the level of genuine interest he took in our comments and questions – most of us were master’s students in environmental engineering, and were ready to (politely) call him out on a whole variety of issues. He was clearly extremely well-informed in his own field of petroleum engineering, but he commented several times that he would have liked to learn more about sustainable energy and the environment. The conversations we had were, I felt, educational for both sides. Even if a company is going to be drilling for oil, it might as well try to do so in as environmentally-friendly a way as possible – and that doesn’t seem like an unrealistic goal at all.

Today, apart from going to a planning meeting for 350 October 24th Day of Action event in Berlin and preparing this post for Blog Action Day 2009, I also bought my ticket to Copenhagen. This has been a long time coming, as I’ve been considering the dual implications of my travel to COP-15 on climate change and on my pocketbook.

Image credit: http://www.magic-mural-factory.com/

Knowing that flying accounts for 2-3% of global CO2 emissions, I’ve been rather anti-flying in recent years.  To get to Germany, of course, I had no other choice (smuggling myself onto a freight boat or getting up to Alaska and then taking the trans-Siberian train across two continents weren’t really feasible… and molecular transport does not yet exist). Once I got here and had a bit of vacation time, though, I reverted to my anti-flying ways and I decided not to fly to visit a friend in Bosnia, but to carpool to Poland for a short trip instead.  Carpooling with a guy who was going to drive from Berlin to Krakow no matter what was fine:  I was just cutting out a share of his emissions.

Last week, in planning my trip up to Copenhagen for COP-15, I wanted to undertake some more serious analysis of my travel options since there seemed to be no easy answer regarding the best way to get to COP.

Here’s the dilemma:

• I wanted to spend as little money as possible;
• I wanted to minimize my CO2 footprint, as always, with a little added fervor since I’m going to Copenhagen for just that reason; it would be rather self-contradictory to not consider the greenhouse gas emissions of my travel.

This of course mirrors pretty much all problems we have with transitioning away from our dirty energy economy: $$$ vs. Environment/Ethics.  I wish I could always go with the option that made me feel the best, but alas, I too live in a world limited by the money I possess. (Side note: hopefully someday in my lifetime, solar flying is real and affordable.)

From Berlin, Copenhagen is just about 300 miles away or so, depending on the route you take. My options for getting from Berlin to Copenhagen (and back) with initial time & cost estimates were

1. Carpooling, 6-8 hours, $60-100 (In Germany, you can search for “carpool opportunities” online and then pay the driver a fee to ride with him/her to your final or intermediate destination.)
2. Flying, 3 hours (incl. transport to airport & check-in time etc.), $80-100 (incl. checked bag fee)
3. Training – 7 hours, $200-350
4. Busing – 7.5 hours, $60-95
5. Hitchhiking – 8-10+ hours, $0
6. Biking – unfortunately I’m not that fit and couldn’t miss any more days of class before the 4th of December

To be honest, when I was preparing this post last week by beginning to calculate CO2 costs, I was hoping that the math would help me justify a cheap, fast plane trip, or at least fortify my commitment to not flying with some hard numbers.

Luckily, today I found a great deal on a train ticket, just $128.44 at today’s exchange rate. This saved me from dealing with the “fuzzy math” of trying to adding up the global warming potential of radiative forcing from NOx and vapor trails from flying or the full CO2e emissions of charter buses compared to personal cars. I’m quite pleased with this outcome; train travel is widely heralded as the best form of rapid transit when it comes to environmental and climate friendliness. I don’t have to feel bad about my rather unnecessary carbon emissions from flying 300 miles and I don’t have to feel bad about not having any money for food in the world’s third most expensive city. A win for cost-consciousness and environmental-consciousness! Not to mention train travel is far more comfortable than any other form of travel that I’m familiar with.

P.S. In my search for comparative GHG emissions data for the various forms of transport, I found this great website, www.ecopassenger.org.  (Unfortunately it is only really handy for trips within Europe at this time.) Here is the info they gave me regarding energy resource consumption and CO2, particulate matter, NOx, and non-methane hydrocarbon emissions.

The graphs above assume European average number of fill seats on European train and plane trips and two passengers in the car; if I up the number of passengers to three, the CO2 and Energy Consumption figures of car travel begin to be more comparable with train travel and become smaller than train travel at four or more passengers. 30 miles of ferry travel is not included in the car mileage, helping make this car trip a bit more competitive with train travel than on other routes.

Really big side note on additionality

The question here is, if I select one of these options, will the CO2 emissions from the other choices disappear? Or would my travel with those options not really be “additional” – that is, if I chose not to travel with any of the above choices, will those same CO2 emissions still exist?

Whether I fly, hitchhike, train, or bus, these people are going to be sending their vehicles off to Copenhagen no matter what and the CO2 of all options will almost certainly exist whether I’m there or not (carpool being the only possible exception). At first glance, I should not be too concerned with my CO2 impact. Sadly, it’s not so simple. I also have to consider if my choice to take (or not to take) one form of transport will increase or decrease future emissions. It’s all conjecture, but I think my decision probably has a larger impact on commercial firms (airlines, trains) than on someone who picks up a hitchhiker spontaneously. Actually, those who are driving regular carpools as a profit-seeking endeavor are likely the most affected by my decision. Since they are smaller operations, one rider makes a bigger difference; they might not make a trip at all if they don’t get a carpooler (me).

Still, you might not think that my one decision can really make a difference in cutting carbon emissions. If I don’t fly, the plane will still go to Copenhagen and still pollute approximately the same amount (very slightly less without the weight of my body and bags). When I excitedly told people yesterday about having purchased my train ticket at a price almost comparable with flying, several people asked my why I didn’t just fly, since it was still cheaper. Their reaction was based on a belief that my impact, the purchase of one seat on a train instead of one seat on a plane, wouldn’t really make a difference in the grand scheme of climate change. So why not fly and reduce the pro capita emissions? Well, I’d be giving my money (as little as it is, grr!) to the commercial airline, helping them continue to profit off of highly polluting practices. If we all say, “screw it, the plane is flying, so am I,” we find ourselves faced with a tragedy of the commons.

From the opposite perspective – the the bright side, collective action implies that if enough of us take our environmental ethics to heart and steer clear of short flights, we could perhaps reduce the demand enough to economically stimulate the airline to cut down from two Berlin-Copenhagen flights a day to just one. Such a 50% reduction in supply might raise the price of a flight to something more fitting with the amount of pollution it produces. This would likely further cut the demand as consumers look more towards other means of transport, this time out of cost-consciousness rather than environmental-consciousness. And that, dear friends, is why I chose not to fly to Copenhagen.

Last month at the UN Climate Summit in New York, President of China Hu Jintao announced a promise to reduce the rate of carbon intensity, marking the first time that China has directly addressed carbon emissions policy. Keep in mind that this still means total CO2 will continue to increase, but still, a bigger commitment than we’ve seen from China so far.

There’s always a lot of debate about how much China (and other developing countries) should be putting into carbon mitigation efforts.  The traditional arguments, briefly:

• Developed countries have contributed to the majority of cumulative CO2 in the atmosphere from decades of industrialization. China is still developing, can’t afford to take a hardline stance on climate change, and deserves the chance to raise the standard of living so that its people can enjoy the same quality of life as we do in North America and Europe. Plus, as the Central Party likes to emphasize, China’s per capita emissions are significantly lower than America’s.

• As of 2006, China surpassed the U.S. in total yearly CO2 emissions, and now stands as the number one emitter of CO2. Climate change requires global cooperation and China has a responsibility to be a part of those efforts. Without China’s participation, the rest of the world will probably not be able to stabilize the concentration of CO2 at a safe level (which is now generally agreed to be 350 ppm; see James Hansen.)

Both of those are valid points, but I am always hesitant to take too much of a comparative attitude when it comes to climate policy. That often leads to finger-pointing and inaction until someone else does something, which is the kind of atmosphere we have right now. I think it’s more important – and productive – to look at what each country can do given its own set of parameters.

So let’s just look at China for a second:

It’s in China’s best interest to act on climate change now.

Aside from general world doom if we let global warming go on unabated, there are a lot of economic and security issues at stake. Domestically, desertification is rapidly reducing the availability of quality land for agriculture and development.  Disputes over loss of livelihood, land use, and land distribution already comprise a sizable percentage of Chinese incidents of social unrest, and are only predicted to increase in the future because of global warming’s effect on the land. Effectively dealing with social unrest is a major weakness of local governments and a sore spot for high-level officials.   The potential threat that such social conflicts pose to domestic security would be an unwanted burden.

Internationally, water rights issues between China and its neighbors pose potential national security problems. Pretty much all of China and Southeast Asia’s freshwater sources originate in the Himalayas. China places high importance on maintaining absolute autonomy over its internal affairs.  Because climate change issues are transnational, however, surrounding countries may place increasing demands on the country’s domestic resource management, which may lead to regional tensions.

It’s true, China has several great things going for it now: solar heaters are pretty widespread and wind is taking off in the northwest. The city of Beijing has a program to replace coal stoves with electric heaters in old hutong houses in Beijing. The CCP announced new electric car subsidies earlier this year. I don’t need to itemize everything.

But there is ample room for China to tackle climate issues beyond the more direct and obvious steps, such as making coal plants more efficient and mandating more energy from renewables. Like China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, which initiated several economic reforms, climate security might serve as a catalyst for restructuring China’s energy sector or for expanding policy  implementation and enforcement at the local and provincial level. Structurally, China’s government and tax systems reward regions based on the revenue they generate. Enforcement mechanisms are weak; local officials turn the other cheek if industry isn’t following the rules, so long as it boosts GDP. Establishing a firm rule of law and mainstreaming environmental protection and other qualitative requirements into evaluation criteria of government officials is one way to take the emphasis off of profit alone.

Let’s hope that climate change can be a platform to ease ever-growing tensions between China and the U.S. I hope that China will embrace these climate talks positively, using them as a forum to engage in more international cooperation to do more to be green at home.