Month: May 2015

One More Blog Post About Global Warming

I admit to be being concerned about global warming, its many impacts, present and future, on human welfare, and the insidious fact that those least responsible for global warming and the resultant climate change are likely to suffer the most serious impacts. I also admit to anger at my fellow humans, both scientific and political, who continue to deny the scientific basis for concern about global warming when the consensus among scientists is overwhelming, an unusual situation in science. It is a failure for which the deniers and minimizers should be held accountable.

In retrospect it is easy to reflect on human history and find examples where numbers of people, some highly educated and well respected, were wrong about important events and changes in society. Certainly many were sincere in their ultimately incorrect beliefs, based on limited available information and their life experiences and inevitable mental filters for processing that information. Others were undoubtedly self-serving opportunists who perhaps knew better but compromised their integrity. In this latter category I include those scientists and other well-informed people who denied the link between smoking and serious health effects, and more recently those who deny global warming or minimize its impacts. In my mind they are people who have sold their souls for filthy lucre.

What is so hard to understand about global warming? It is the same physical process that occurs in a car on a hot day that we all experience. The visible light rays from the sun, distributed in a spectrum determined by the sun’s surface temperature (about 5,500C) easily penetrate the car’s glass windows and are absorbed by the car’s interior which gets warm and often hot to the touch. These warm or hot surfaces then reradiate in a spectrum different from the sun’s radiative spectrum because of their vastly different surface temperatures. The basic physics is the same – Planck’s Law, first proposed in 1900, determines the spectral distribution and intensities of the radiation emitted by a black body at temperature T. In a car the reradiated heat from the interior surfaces is mostly in the infrared region which the glass is not as transparent to as it is to the visible radiation from the sun. This trapping of the reradiated heat causes the car’s interior temperature to rise until enough reradiated infrared radiation gets through the glass due to the interior’s now higher temperature to provide a balance between the energy of the incoming and outgoing radiation streams. This is exactly what happens in the earth’s atmosphere, with gases in the atmosphere playing the role of the glass windshield and determining the atmosphere’s transmission characteristics. Important global warming gases are CO2, largely from combustion of fossil fuels, and natural gas (methane), and a few others. The earth’s current temperatures, hospitable to life, reflect such an energy balance between the sun and the earth. Venus is an example of where the equilibrium temperature reached by the planet to achieve an energy balance with the sun is much higher.

This is a long introduction to my real purpose in this blog post, to share with you a recent statement on global warming that was forwarded to me by a colleague. I found it clearly written, insightful and powerful. Its author is Dr. David Vernon who has advanced degrees in mathematics and life sciences. He has had a long career in technical areas, and currently serves as a principal at Carbontech Global LLC. Carbontech’s mission is to turn “..organic waste streams into renewable energy streams..”

The statement follows:
“On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 2:57 PM, David Vernon wrote:
Global warming is not a theory. It is a measurement, known to the climate science community since 1900. Climate change as a result of global warming is a physical phenomenon. Certain air masses become weaker, others stronger, the circulation changes, the sea currents change, etc. It is just physics. The CO2 hypothesis was first presented in the 1920s by a Nobel-winning chemist, who proved that it was possible for increased atmospheric CO2, another actual physical measurement, to account for the increase in the average earth surface temperature. The amount of carbon required to double tropospheric CO2 from .04% to .08% is huge – there is no place for it to have come from except the burning of coal for 250 years. Until the advent of supercomputers in the 1980s, it was impossible to calculate the appropriate correlation statistics within a human lifetime, but by 1990 the math was done – the case is, as we say, proven. it is coal burning for energy that has warmed the globe, counteracting the ice-age cooling that is produced by orbital, rotational, and solar cycles, threatening our coastal settlements, our water supplies, and our agricultural production while increasing the severity and intensity of all storms. Scientists are now debating how bad this will get for us, how soon, and how this will ultimately affect the oncoming ice age.

This is not rocket science. The reason it took supercomputers was the volume of point data to be included in the calculations. The earth is about 8,000 miles thick, giving a surface are of more than 200 million square miles. Even one data point per square mile is unmanageably large. Furthermore, air movement is driven by pressure and temperature differences, which are in turn changed by air movement, so there are second order, third order, and higher order effects which must also be included in any mathematical analysis.

The issue is the inconvenience of the truth. The United States derives about 40% of its electricity from coal combustion. Several States, many companies, and thousands of Americans depend on this coal business for their livelihoods. This is not a problem in “right and wrong”. it is a problem in complex and conflicting human interests. It is wishful thinking to cope with an inconvenient truth by denying it. It is also human nature. However, we cannot command physics, or chemistry, or even biology, and we can barely control our own human behavior. Perhaps it is time to return to the meaning of republican government – we choose the smartest and least corruptible people to represent us, make these decisions for us, and counteract the pressure from short term interests for short term gains. Without life, money is just trash.”

I hope you find this statement as powerful as I did.

Note: this week marks the 2-year anniversary of this blog – my first blog post was published on May 29, 2013. I intend to keep blogging on this site, but perhaps less frequently than to date (93 posts in 104 weeks) as some of my energies are being diverted to writing a book on the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables as seen by me since 1969. I hope to finish the book within the calendar year, but as I’ve learned from several book-writing friends it is not easy to gauge how long it will take. It will be a personal, not a technical, book – my views on the technical aspects of energy issues are well documented in this blog.

Financing the Growth of Renewable Energy in Scotland

This is a follow-up to my previous blog post ‘The Exciting Changes Taking Place in Scotland’s Energy System’ that discusses how Scotland’s already impressive and steadily increasing deployment of renewable energy systems is being financed.  While technology costs  will always be an important part of the total cost of deploying renewable energy systems, as these costs come down with technological advances, large scale manufacturing, and increased deployment experience, financing costs imposed by lending institutions, whether private or public, take on increasing  importance.  Financing of emerging technology options has always been recognized as a critical barrier, and demonstrating the ‘bankability’ of proposed projects requires careful attention in the planning phases. Finance issues are a major focus of the annual meeting of Scottish Renewables, the representative body of the Scottish renewable energy industry since 1996. It has over 300 members and member organisations, ranging across all technologies and supply chains.

As reported in the previous blog post, Scotland now generates enough wind energy to meet its entire residential electricity demand, and renewables are Scotland’s largest source of electrical power, with much more to come. How this came about is a case study in the importance of national policy in support of renewable generation, a policy still needing implementation in the United States.

Scotland, a separate country with its own parliament even though formally a part of the United Kingdom, has set two important energy goals: to achieve 100% renewable electricity generation by 2020 and achieve zero carbon emissions from all power generation by 2030. In support of these goals the Scottish Government has set up several financing programs that offer assistance to renewable energy projects in both the planning and deployment phases. These include the Scottish Government Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES), Scottish Investment Bank’s Renewable Energy Investment Fund (REIF), and Home Energy Scotland. Community Energy Scotland is a registered charity that provides practical help for communities on green energy development and energy conservation. It is supported separately by local communities. Each program is described briefly below.

CARES is a loan fund established in 2011 “..to provide loans toward the high risk, pre-planning consent stage of renewable energy projects which have significant community engagement and benefit.” It is managed by localenergyscotland.org on behalf of the Scottish Government. A part of CARES, the Local Energy Challenge Fund, was established more recently “..to demonstrate the value and benefit of local low-carbon energy economies.”

CARES financing is designed to to support high-risk early planning stages widely recognized as principal barriers for resource-limited small businesses and community groups. Its key features include:
– financing of initial planning of any renewable energy project up to 5MW in size in a competitive process
– unsecured loans of up to £150,000 (£1 = $1.55) for up to 90% of project costs
– a fixed interest rate of 10%

Phase 1 of the Local Energy Challenge Fund attracted 114 applications and 17 were funded. Phase 2 is currently underway. Phase 1 projects include a community district heating scheme, community use of hydrogen, ground source heat pump projects, and development of community microgrids.

The Renewable Energy Investment Fund, established in 2012, supports projects at the demonstration and commercialization stage that
“- Deliver energy from a renewable source, reduce the cost of renewable energy or provide key solutions for renewable energy generation
– Provide benefit to the economy of Scotland
– Have a demonstrable funding gap for REIF to consider
– Be at a sufficient stage of development to require REIF funding before March 2016”

Some of the project types that REIF can support include marine energy, community owned renewables, and renewable district heating. The REIF team also provides technical advice and assistance in finding other funding sources. Its £103 million fund is available to provide commercially priced loans, equity investments, and loan guarantees. Initial projects include
– a £735,000 loan to the Islay Energy Community Benefit Society to install a community owned, 330KW wind turbine on the island,
– a £615,000 loan to a village in Stirlingshire in support of their efforts to become a zero-carbon, zero-waste community,
– a £700,000 loan to support the first phase of the 0.5MW Shetland Tidal Array, and
– a £250,000 loan to support development of the AWS-III wave energy device.

Home Energy Scotland provides up to 75% of the total cost of installing a renewable energy system up to £10,000, and up to 100% of the total cost of connecting to a district heating scheme up to £5,000. Loans are available to owner occupiers in Scotland for existing and new residential buildings. Loan amounts and repayment schedules vary by technology – e.g., the maximum loan amount for installation of a PV system is £2,500 and a maximum loan repayment period of 5 years, while the maximums for installation of a ground source to water heat pump are £10,000 and 12 years. In all cases a Green Deal Assessment of the proposed project is required and installers must be certified.

Community Energy Scotland supports community-owned projects by providing funding for feasibility studies, planning, community consultation, and help in finding funding sources. Supported projects include energy audits, energy efficiency improvements, micro-renewables installations, and installation of wind turbines.

All of the above paints a clear and exciting picture of a country committed to a clean energy future that is willing to back up its words with substantial and ongoing budgets. Scotland may thus prove to be an example to the rest of the world as we leave the fossil fuel era and move into the new era of renewable energy.