In his blog about decarbonizing the Colorado economy , Roger Pielke, Jr. said “the math here is not complicated.” Last spring semester the undergraduate business students in my quantitative analysis class at Western State College and I tried it and found the math was indeed not very complicated. After practicing with a few nations we moved on to states, where the math remained easy but data was not quite so readily available. Then we moved to the front lines of climate policy, the local level, where millions of citizens are expected, or at least hoped, to dramatically change the way they live and work. On the front lines, we found sometimes inconsistent and missing data, emissions planning to be heavily influenced by a self-selected group of highly motivated environmentalists, and local politicians who face a dilemma between their desire to address climate change and their desire to do the right thing for their community. But the math remained uncomplicated. Readers can down load the report I prepared for the local community here.
The Gunnison, Colorado community consists of three small towns, Gunnison, Crested Butte and Mount Crested Butte and a county government overseeing an area more than twice the size of Rhode Island but with a total population of only 14,000 and a density of less than 5 people per square mile. The Gunnison community is geographically isolated and surrounded by mountains on all sides, making it easier to segregate energy consumption and CO2 emissions from those of other communities. The population tends to be sensitive to environmental issues and our towns were among the relatively few to sign on to the US Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, to adopt 2020 CO2 emissions targets 20% below 2005 emissions, and to develop 2005 baseline greenhouse gas inventories and energy consumption estimates. The latter provided critical data for my students and me to project a top-down estimate of future emissions based on the Kaya Identity, as used in Pielke’s analysis of Australian emissions targets. Our results from three scenario projections were similar to those Pielke found; rates of decline for energy intensity and carbon intensity will have to double or triple during the 15 year period to meet a 20% by 2020 CO2 emissions target. While Pielke’s bottom-up analysis for Australia used the number of new nuclear power plants to provide policy makers a metric for understanding the scope of change required, we focused on the things that happen on the front lines; energy conservation in buildings, improved transportation efficiency, a moderate transition to lower carbon fuels, and a host of every day, small decisions about energy use.
We developed a simple model of Gunnison’s energy consumption and CO2 emissions with three bottom-up scenarios matching the population and economic growth parameters of the three top-down scenarios. The most likely scenario, with a 1.5% annual increase in population and a 1.5% annual increase in real economic growth, illustrates the somewhat shocking changes required on the front lines to achieve Gunnison’s emissions target. By 2020, 58% of all buildings will have to undergo conservation improvements that improve efficiency by 40%. By 2020 new buildings will have to use 57% less energy that the average building in 2005. The overall building efficiency will have improved by 42%, some of which will come from a 1% per year efficiency improvement in every building as we switch to fluorescent lights, caulk and seal, etc. Colorado requires that 30% of electrical generation come from carbon free sources by 2020, so this scenario keeps hydroelectric power at 15%, the 2005 portion of total electricity, while increasing electricity by wind power from 1% in 2005 to 16% of total electric power in 2020.
Transportation is a major energy consumer in this community (61% of Btus and 48% of CO2) because the economy is heavily dependent on tourism. The transportation component of this scenario shows an increase in average vehicle fuel efficiency from 18 mpg in 2005 to 29 mpg in 2020 as current CAFE standards for new vehicles take effect. While the number of vehicles increases by 41%, total vehicle miles increases by only 25% and the average annual miles per vehicle drops by 1% per year. Under this scenario, energy intensity declines at -4.1% per year while carbon intensity declines by only -0.31% per year to achieve the 2020 emissions target.
My students and I came to rely on a swimming metaphor to describe the degree of change required to achieve emissions targets. Without population and economic growth, the challenge is like swimming across a mill pond but with growth the challenge is like swimming up stream against a river’s current. So, for example, under another scenario with a 2% population growth and 2.25% economic growth, the number of buildings requiring a 40% efficiency improvement grows from 58% of all buildings to 81% of all buildings (once CAFE and carbon free electrical generation requirements are met, improvements in building efficiency and a reduction in miles driven are the major remaining options for this community). Finally, the report compares actual electricity consumption from 2005 to 2009 with projected consumption under the most likely scenario and shows the Gunnison community to be well off track to meet its CO2 emissions goal. No one who has seen the poor housing stock in the Gunnison community, who has observed the reliance on pickups and SUVs for travel in this isolated and dispersed community, who earns the low average salary that makes a substantial investment in energy efficiency difficult, or who expects population and economic growth should have any illusions about achieving a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions from 2005 to 2020.
23 comments:
Prof. Hudson, the following question came in by email:
"His statement in his guest weblog on your site
Under this scenario, energy intensity declines at -4.1% per year while carbon intensity declines by only -0.31% per year to achieve the 2020 emissions target.
is unclear.
Should it be
Under this scenario, energy intensity MUST declineX at -4.1% per year while carbon intensity MUST declineX by XXX -0.31% per year to achieve the 2020 emissions target.
In any case, it is unclear."
Sorry for the confusion. The model works by aggregating energy consumption and CO2 emissions from all the buildings, vehicles, etc. I create a scenario by changing the input parameters, such as the annual growth rate in new building construction for example, until the target CO2 emissions is obtained. The rate of decline in energy and carbon intensity is then calculated, so I think of decline rates in energy and carbon intensity as model outputs.
But you are right, these are decline rates that must be achieved to reach the target CO2 emissions.
Thanks.
Hudson
Professor Hudson,
I note that in your report you refer to GHG emissions of "large elk herds." I know of many people who might want to help with this problem. Have you analyzed whether hunters use more GHGs to get elk than the elk would have produced if they had gone on living? What about eating elk instead of, say, hamburger?
Efficiency improvements in buildings have fast payback (months or years). Most buildings, including homes undergo substantial renovation over the course of one or two decades. The same is true of many industries. Amazingly, substantial improvements can be made simply by changing out electric motors for more efficient ones. The key to getting energy improvements is availability of capital. Did your class consider any of that?
There is lots of information at DOE websites and the folks at Golden (NREL) would be glad to help.
I'm not that familiar with Colorado, but was wondering if Gunnison is near any of the mountain pine beetle killed forest areas. If it is and it burns what does that do to the CO2 emissions? Small isolated mountain communities used to rely on fuelwood for heating. This would be locally produced biomass from a renewable resource. Utilizing forests for sequestering carbon in forest type (lodgepole pine) that burns every 100 to 200 years is really temporary storage.
Sharon,
We tend to have a surplus of people who want to help thin the elk herds but we also seem to have plenty of elk.
Cattle production has dropped about 50% over the past 20 years but we still have over 15,000 and they emit a CO2 equivalent of about 20,000 tons, so cattle aren't a trivial problem.
I haven't been able to lay my hands on the elk data but I think they are roughly equivalent to the cattle issue and I seem to recall that F&G considers us to have about 5000 head in "excess." If you would like, I can put you in contact with the student who served as our elk expert -- she is also considered an expert elk hunter.
Elk are a double emissions hit for us because many of the hunters come from the midwest and many use ATVs, based on what I see on main street. On the other hand, elk hunting is important to our tourism industry, particularly because hunting comes at an otherwise pretty slow time of the year.
I was very happy not to include cattle and elk and we had a good excuse because the Kaya identity uses only CO2. Perhaps even more important, at the local level talk about emissions reduction tends to get emotional and I was afraid that if my friends and neighbors became too angry they might stop giving me elk steaks.
Like that other guy, I go by Roger -- although I'm signing as Hudson here to avoid confusion.
Let me know if you'd like to get in touch with our elk expert -- either for info or as a guide.
Hudson
"The key to getting energy improvements is availability of capital."
Exactly right. Lots of governments at various levels are trying to address this, rest assured.
As someone who spends far more time than I'd like working with the kinds of models that Hudson describes, let me offer a few observations.
1) Models are just that. Models. More often than not, they (and here I'm referring to energy/economy models) are most useful as tools that help us to examine the assumptions that we bring to the table, rather than as diagnostic tools. The one thing that we (practitioners) all agree on is that they're wrong.
2) Thinking about the problem in quantitative terms is helpful, but this is only one of many 'lenses' in the toolbox that is needed to formulate an intelligent path forward.
3) The transportation nut is indeed the hardest one of them all to crack because it is the most 'locked-in' of all the emission sources. Ironically, it's also the area where real progress is being made independent of mega-climate bills at the federal level (i.e. new CAFE standards). So there is hope. But a major reboot on the other drivers of the transportation 'triangle' is still needed (i.e. urban form, transit)....
EliRabett
Good point.
We worked on this project last semester in part because I wanted a change of pace from financial analysis. Your're right about high NPVs for many conservation investments although the pattern around here doesn't seem to support the notion of renovation on decadal time frames. This is a relatively poor community with plenty of "miner" houses (think shotgun houses if you come from the south) even more old trailers, and minus 30-40 F temps are all too common. My concern is that incomes are so low that not enough people will be able to take advantage of good energy investments. The other problem is that the home improvement industry has plenty of scams, so even people with sufficient capital my be hesitant to act. The community just received a grant to jump start renovations through loans and I suspect I'll have some good local data about a variety of renovations as a result. I hope we will be able to help homeowners select better / higher NPV renovation projects as a result.
As for industry, what's that?
Hudson
Michael D
We don't have pine beetle kill yet, thank goodness, but our turn will probably come and we have plenty of dead trees already. My college had planted to install a biomass boiler in the upcoming renovation of a large 100 year old building but backed out two weeks ago. Costs were higher than estimated but the real reason is the EPA and permitting. Our air is so clean that when the monitoring equipment broke down a few years back they decided it wasn't necessary to replace it.
According to our facilities people even the best biomass boiler will have a tough time getting past the EPA. The other problem is infrastructure. Several large energy consumers were looking a a joint effort to launch a facility to harvest and prepare the wood chips so that they could switch to biomass. Now that the college has backed out, it doesn't look too good for biomass and that's too bad.
As you can imagine, there was plenty of debate on campus about biomass and how one ought to account for its carbon. My guess is that the next big thing around here will be geothermal power and whether we will be willing to build transmission lines across sage grouse (perhaps soon to be an endangered species)habitat. We seem to be very good a saying no to any project that might help our economy, so I don't have my hopes up.
Hudson
Roger Hudson,
I have no idea how utility operators work south of the 49th parallel, but generally speaking conservation is cheaper than building new capacity. is the problem in your neck of the woods that there are not enough 'honest brokers' :) to provide consumers in the area with the relevant information and/or mutually beneficial incentive programs?
re: # 4.
"Most buildings, including homes undergo substantial renovation over the course of one or two decades." Maintenance, yes, 'substantial renovation', no. Especially to those aspects that would improve energy efficiency.
"The same is true of many industries." Nope
"Amazingly, substantial improvements can be made simply by changing out electric motors for more efficient ones." Nope, electric motors already run at about 90+% efficiency.
Got any arithmetic to back up you statements?
Marlowe Johnson said...
" I have no idea how utility operators work south of the 49th parallel, but generally speaking conservation is cheaper than building new capacity."
Whether or not conservation is cheaper is situation dependent.
Conservation is cheaper if it changes whether or not new a capital investment in new generating capacity will be required.
I.E. A billion dollars for conservation is cheaper if it forestalls building 5 billion dollars worth of generating capacity that will have 20% utilization rate.
Places with generally flat population growth and slow GDP growth are normally better off spending on conservation then new generating capacity.
Even then, if 80% of the localities generating capacity if scheduled for retirement, then conservation doesn't change whether or not a capital investment in new generating capacity needs to be made.
A place such as the US Southeast, which is experiencing substantial inward migration and a relatively high GDP growth don't benefit as no level of conservation is going to change whether or not new generating capacity will need to be built.
Roger Hudson,
Thanks much for the response on the elk. And thank you also for giving this blog some insights into rural America- a part of the US seldom spoken of in climate discourse (other than “greedy corporate agriculture interests”). Part of the beauty of the blog format is 1) to hear from voices that do not traditionally have a place at the policy table, and 2) to hear how policies may or may not be implemented in the real world.
I was especially very interested in your comments about your proposed biomass facility as I am involved in woody biomass (but not committed, as per joke re chicken and pig).
At the risk of lending support to members of this blog community who think the US Government is run by incompetent boobs, it does seem incongruous that the Secretary of Agriculture here
and Department of Energy are busily providing grants and promoting exploration of these technologies, if, in fact, EPA was thinking that woody biomass facilities are a no go. So I would question, is this really true or some kind of misunderstanding? And if so, should the agencies be talking? And also to the Governor who provided these grants? or elected officials (granted this is in New Mexico).
You said " As you can imagine, there was plenty of debate on campus about biomass and how one ought to account for its carbon. " How deeply was this investigated? Were there papers written on each side?
I thought the recent Manomet study was good at describing many of the considerations that could be taken into account. Here's a blog post on the study at the NCFP blog.
I apologize in advance if the links I tried to put in above did not come through.. could not tell from preview.
Sharon F.
The plentiful debate I witnessed was mostly in my classes although my students reported discussions were fairly common in other classes as well. As far as I know no one produced any papers or reports. BTW, my knowledge of biomass had been limited to fireplaces and domestic wood stoves, so I was surprised to learn that bark, branches, and so on could not be used. For some, debate was only about CO2 but others took a broader perspective; production of local energy versus shipping in gas and exporting dollars, jobs, etc. Given the already ample supply of woody biomass here, not to mention future supplies if pine beetles are able to survive our winters (which is what people here tell me has spared us to date), perhaps this opportunity won't go away for good.
Marlowe Johnson
A local organization, the office of Resource Efficiency, is supported financially by local governments, utilities and others. The director is a pretty sharp guy and has either read Roger Pielke's book or is by nature an honest broker. ORE seems to be doing a very good job of helping implement needed changes, although the fact that their web host appears to be an Acorn affiliate got some knees jerking initially. Anyone around here who is interested has ready access to accurate information and the educational effort has impressed me. On the other hand, people working for the local electric coop tell me they have been disappointed that more people aren't taking advantage of the good opportunties that are available.
Hudson
Roger H.
Just wanted to share this piece on a successful facility in Chadron Nebraska. This appears to be approved by EPA and uses branches. It's not clear from this that bark is used, but I would assume so because it takes a great deal of energy to strip bark.
Here's a link to a list of benefits.
And an article that describes a variety of woody biomass using facilities in Nebraska.
Perhaps the difficulty in reaching the goal is that the goal is inappropriately measured?
Your comment about the air being so clean that the EPA saw no point in fixing a monitoring station may hold an answer to the question.
It is interesting as to how complicated a solution is required to solve problems that do not exist.
As to asserting renovations paying back in energy savings in months or years- that seems dubious at best.
Colorado has uranium deposits, why are these kept out of consideration at all? My impression that it's not about Co2 reduction per se but about implementation of Greenpeace's agenda.
Hence: ecological politics, not climate.
Small is expensive, that's the reason why Wallmart thrives and your local grocery perishes.
I have a question for a smart group of blog readers...Who is driving the climate response debate in your communities? How well is it working?
In my community, 9 of 12 volunteers were selected for a Carbon Taskforce by the county commissioners to recommend changes to county ordinances, building codes, etc. At the first meeting one of those selected described the Carbon Taskforce members as 'the usual suspects" and questioned whether the group will be perceived as legitimate and representative of the community when they make their final recommendations. A volunteer from a mining company that hopes to open a mine was denied membership on the Taskforce because his answer to "What are GHGs and what do they do?" wasn't considered correct.
In addition to the question of legitimacy and representation, I wonder if the Taskforce includes the right set of skills. In the guiding principles section of the interim report the Carbon Taskforce assets their recommendations will be economically neutral or positive. One of the recommendations is a county carbon tax. Another is that all new roads should have a physically seperate bike lane. Lots of people bike here and drivers seem to be quite considerate of bikers, perhaps because most of us are bikers at times. Traffic is light most of the time. We distinguish rush hour from normal traffic because there are four cars waiting at a traffic light rather than two -- and we have only 6 traffic lights in the county. None of the recommnendations include any discussion about costs and who will bear them, nor benefits and who will enjoy them. The Taskforce clearly needed an economist but one didn't volunteer. I didn't volunteer either so I hesitate to complain about membership but I have to wonder if there won't be trouble down the road. Is this the way climate policy is made elsewhere?
Hudson
I would like to add to my comment 11 above.
I can provide data; New England textiles and before that almost all other heavy and major manufacturing in the region; Buffalo NY, Rochester NY, Schenectady NY, almost all small-to-medium scale manufacturing in NY, especially textiles; Pittsburgh PA, Cleveland OH, Cincinnati OH, Detroit MI, Peoria IL. In general all the Rust Belt in USA. All the closed mills in the Southeast where Northeast textiles moved to. Labor intensive manufacturing goes where labor is less costly. Always has, always will.
Electric motor efficiency. I was off a bit. I threw the number out from deep recesses of cobwebs. A better number is around 80%. Given that getting to 100% is impossible, that even small increases will require higher-tech and thus costly, and that the fraction of the fossil-fuel generated electricity consumed by electric motors around the world is exceedingly small compared to the big-picture problem, there's not much to be gained here.
Increases in efficiency of processes using electric motors is a different issue.
Here's a recent example of 'major renovation' of housing: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/a-snakesin-where-insulation-should-be/ The owner has finally made modest improvements after being in the house for over 14 years. Other changes have been rejected because of cost and pay-back considerations. The owner is relatively well-off financially, well above average I'll say. Do audio amps. and personal computers, fall under the necessary or un-necessary consumption category?
Roger Hudson,
You raise an interesting point. A good example of selecting boards to get desired results is the board appointed by the President to review offshore drilling.
Not one industry person is on the board. Not one engineer with offshore oil experience is on the board. Not one person with large scale complex technical operations.
and the one group that reviewed current offshore safety, filled with scientists and engineers, found their advice based on technical realities- no moratorium- was ignored and a destructive and wasteful and pointless moratorium is now crippling an entire region of the US.
Colorado has the potential for 6.5 GW of hydropower, of which currently only 1.2 GW is developed
http://hydropower.inel.gov/resourceassessment/pdfs/03-11111.pdf (figure 22 on page 44)
Why is hydropower kept out of the equation (keeping hydropower at 15%)?
Is it yet another political ecological reason and not CO2 reduction per se?
Are you aware that with 16% of planned wind power you are seriously risking net instabilities and blackouts, let alone the problem of finding electricity consumers when demand is low at night?
From Hans Erren, eaten by Blogger:
"Colorado has the potential for 6.5 GW of hydropower, of which currently only 1.2 GW is developed
http://hydropower.inel.gov/resourceassessment/pdfs/03-11111.pdf (figure 22 on page 44)
Why is hydropower kept out of the equation (keeping hydropower at 15%)?
Is it yet another political ecological reason and not CO2 reduction per se?
Are you aware that with 16% of planned wind power you are seriously risking net instabilities and blackouts, let alone the problem of finding electricity consumers when demand is low at night? "
Hans Erren 21
Good questions. While Colorado has significant hydro potential I did not increase local electricity from hydro because not much is likely to come on line by 2020. Taylor Reservoir has a penstock in place but no generator and many people around here are expecting a small addition to our hydro component in the next few years. Our county electric coop reports that a 3 phase generator would up the output over 2 phase but would also require transmission lines either across rugged mountains or down the Taylor River canyon. The coop believes building the power line and installing a 3 phase generator is too big an investment (not to mention political battle) for them to undertake, so the talk is 2 phase power only. The reservoir has a good head but flow would be seasonal. I kept Taylor hydro as an easy parameter change to any of the scenarios so that we could see the impact clearly. It helps, but it isn't a magic bullet. It was also valuable as a learning tool because we could see the clear, but modest, affect on carbon intensity measures.
I am aware of network problems from intermittent electric sources but I'm not an engineer and frankly, I don't know what to believe about the costs and reliability concerns from wind power as part of a network. Lots of writers with vastly different conclusions claim to be the final authority on this -- I just don't know what to believe.
But in this case, the decision wasn't really mine, but the legislature's. Colorado now has a renewable energy standard of 30% by 2020 for public owned utilities. It is possible that some of that 16% wind generated power in 2020 will really be solar. By treating it all as wind I was able to keep the model simpler and it doesn't have any direct affect on CO2 accounting for us -- although it may have significant CO2 affects if one were to count cradle to grave CO2 emissions or the nature / type of backup required for solar versus wind. I tried to keep the model consistent with local energy accounting rather than reality -- the reality, after all, is that most of our electron come from Blue Mesa Reservoir's generators. Like any good business prof, I yield to the accountants regardless of how silly their rules are.
Hudson
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