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Read on -  Part 2
A Tax? 
Free Market
Cap and Trade
Economic Costs 
Overshoot 
High Tech Fixes 
Biomass 
Carbon Offsets 
Energy Payback 
Electrical Transmission                                                      Energy Waste                                                                    Energy in 2040 
2040 Energy Sources
Beyond 2040                                                                               Getting Personal                                                                          Recycling                                                                            Subsidizing the Wealthy              

A Tax?                                                                                     
Many may say this assessment is just another name for a tax. A tax by definition is a fee levied to finance government. A rebated assessment leaves no money in the U.S. treasury to spend.

The free market can often be cruel to the disadvantaged and misfortunate. This free market energy assessment returned to all filers insures that the more fortunate will not receive a subsidy for air pollution.

If an assessment was done, taxes could be reduced, since it would eliminate the need for grants, subsidies and tax breaks. Mandates, which are non-funded government costs to the economy, could also be eliminated.

Free Market                                                                                                                                                                           We know free markets are very effective; all we have to do is look at the greatest experiment of our time, the disaster of all the centrally controlled economies of communist countries versus western free economies of the west.  

 Many will say a free market is exactly what we have and it isn’t working with respect to global warming. The problem is, we treat the atmosphere like a sewer and the effects of pollution are not local and affect everyone on earth. Also, the effect of this pollution is like our national debt, the present generation benefits, but the bill is largely going to future generations. The assessment factors an estimate of this damage into fossil energy extraction. Also like Social Security, it would not cost much if we start the fix now, but if we wait, it could get very expensive.                              

Another reason the free market isn’t working well is the supply of oil is regulated by a cartel. The necessary investment in renewable energies will not be made unless there is a guarantee the price of oil will not become too low. Therefore, congress needs to put a tax on all oil, whenever it gets too low, maybe around $70 or $80 per barrel. Since coal is so abundant and in not imported it would need no tax, nor would natural gas, since it is not traded to any large degree and is relatively carbon clean compared to coal or oil.

Cap and Trade                                                                             
An effective tool for harnessing the ‘power of the open market” was found in a ‘cap and trade’ system. Under the Acid Rain Program, the "cap" was set and reduced emissions to levels that were roughly half of those in 1980. It worked well in that it involved relatively few coal powered electrical generating plants. Rather than cap each plant, it allowed for those plants that could most cheaply remove S02 and N0x from their emissions. It is viewed by many as a model for other environmental programs.                                               

It should be noted that flurohydrocarbons, which were destroying the ozone layer, was a global pollution problem and was easily remedied by government mandate. The production of these chemicals involved only a few companies in a few countries and there was a quick and relatively cheap substitute.                                                                            

This assessment combines some of the advantages of a ‘cap and trade’ with a tax solution. A ‘cap and trade’ rewards less polluting companies (the carrot) by allowing them to sell credits to polluting companies (the stick). The assessment on fossil fuel extraction (the stick) returns it equally to all tax files (the carrot), but is totally transparent and involves everyone instead of a few members or industries. As the assessments on fossil fuel extraction (stick) are reduced, so is the payback (carrot) to the tax filer.                                  

The CCX, Chicago Climate exchange, began in 2003 with members agreeing to reduce greenhouse emissions 6% by 2010. Members include Ford Motor Company, DuPont, IBM and other multinational companies; the states of New Mexico and Illinois; and major universities, traders and environmental professionals. According to the World Bank’s 2007report on trading systems, a total of $30 billion in allowances was traded in 2006. Of that total, nearly $25 billion was traded on the EU market, and $38 million was on the Chicago Climate Exchange. $25 or 30 billion is just nibbling at the edge. $38 million is absolutely meaningless, nothing more than ‘feel good’ or cheap advertising.

Economic Costs                                                                        

It is believed by many that all proposals to reduce carbon emissions would result in an economic slowdown. An assessment rather than a tax will have a positive effect in that it will become popular to conserve. Conservation of energy will take place first, eliminating the need for additional fossil power, until renewable energy sources and efficiencies take place. Since the assessment does not result in mandatory CO2 reduction, conservation would not be viewed as a lowering of the standard of living.                                                        

After renewable energies and efficiencies begin to come online, one might expect a slight lowering of the living standard. This may not happen, as renewable energies are not imported, as is oil, and will create good jobs. Also, energy efficiency is a very low cost help plus the cost of renewable energies has come down considerably over the past few years.                                                                                 

Thirty percent of electrical generation at present is non-fossil and would not be subject to an assessment. If the remaining 70 percent was replaced with renewable energy, costing, say 50% more, figuring the cost of transmission and distribution remaining the same, the energy bills would probably increase by less than 25%. Conservation and efficiency would reduce this even further.                                                       

Transportation is the second largest carbon emitter. Comfortable cars can be built that would get twice the mileage of today’s cars. With ‘plug ins’ and cheap ‘variable rate’ power, we could even do better. All that is needed is a little incentive and a guarantee that cheap oil could not disrupt the program.                                                     

Thermal solar plants are already being planned in California without government subsidies. While this thermal power is relatively expensive, 10 - 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, production coincides with usage, thereby not requiring backup power or the production of cheap night energy.

Overshoot                                                                                 To overshoot the environment means beyond the capacity of that environment to sustain a population. This happens frequently with animals. The population expands rapidity beyond their food supply to sustain them.

In the case of humans, some believe we have overshot our environment to the extent that energy, food,water, etcetera can sustain us. Some have figured the sustainability of the earth population at about 1 billion humans. They say if all humans on earth used resources at the same rate as people in the U.S., we would need 6 earths to sustain the present population. At the other extreme, there are some who think the earth could sustain 18 billion people. Presumably, these folks have solved the energy problem and have commandeered all available land for vegetable food production. 

Of all the areas where humans have overshot their environment, energy is by far the most important, since cheap abundant renewable energy could solve or fix most, if not all, of the other problems. There are those who feel we have already overshot our environment to the extent that it may already be too late to fix. That is, that the earth, due to carbon emissions has already gone into a global warming phase in which it is too late to reverse.                                 

At the other extreme are those who do not believe in global warming. A larger group thinks either the fix would be worse than the warming or that they would be benefit from the warming.

High Tech Fixes                                                                    
A few have been proposed, such as orbiting light reflecting materials or fertilizing the oceans with iron which will spur algae growth that drops to the ocean bottom and is sequestered there. All of these fixes are expensive; side effects are unknown and often irreversible.       

Biomass                                                                            Obviously most farmers’ benefit from ethanol. Corn prices have almost doubled and corn acreage has increased reducing acres available to other crops, often increasing their value. When corn was less than $2, and imported oil was over $70, investors paid for some of these ethanol plants in one year.

Ethanol is used to oxygenated gasoline and replaces MTBE MTBE was added to increase octane, but was found to contaminate water supplies. While a 10% ethanol blend has value beyond the BTUs as an oxygenate, the ethanol in E85 or flex fuel vehicles must be evaluated by the energy alone. The ethanol energy gain is very small and the cost in subsidies and food is great.

Corn is about 0.1% efficient converting solar energy to ethanol. Sugar cane is less than 1.0%. People do not realize the huge amounts of energy we use. The fact is, that all the yearly biomass produced in the U.S. would not come close to satisfying the energy needs of this country.

Likewise, it is a good idea to utilize waste cellulose, but producing cellulose for ethanol production is a bad idea. Energy in, energy out, will be worse than grain ethanol as it is more energy intensive to harvest, transport and process. It is estimated transportation costs would mean the less dense cellulose for ethanol could be hauled no more than 30 miles. In addition, like corn, it requires good land, uses scarce resources, pollutes, is not sustainable and competes for food and industrial uses. Proponents of growing switch grass and other biomass plants claim they can be grown without fertilizer on marginal soils. This is simply not true. Switch grass and non-legumes require nitrogen and would not be productive on marginal soils.                                            

Algae have been proposed to produce biodiesel. Even though it may be 10 times more efficient than flowering plants, it is still inefficient and has problems unlikely to be overcome. Present estimated costs would have to decline by 10 to 100 fold to become economically viable.                                 

Corn ethanol, once popular among many politicians, who favored agriculture and ethanol producers and may have thought it might lead to energy independence, are now seeing serious problems.

Carbon Offsets                                                                        
A recent proposal to heat agricultural cellulose with limited oxygen (pyrolysis) will produce gas, tar and a kind of charcoal, referred to as agrichar or biochar. The gas would probably be used on site to drive the process. The tars could be refined into gas or diesel. The charcoal would be a carbon offset and has additional value as a soil amendment and fertilizer.This agrichar may even serve to tie up or keep in the soil water-soluble pollutants, such as nitrates, phosphates and other compounds. It is very resistant to decay and will tie up carbon for centuries. There appear to be no upper limit as to the amount that can be added to soils. Some very fertile biochar soils were developed in the Amazon by prehistoric Indian cultures. It is difficult for me to understand why more effort isn’t going into this area. There is some effort at Cornell, Iowa, Georgia and I think Oregon.                             

A very simple way to understand pyrolysis is to look at a lighted match. The heated wood gives off gas that that burns with a flame. You can observe that it is the gas that is burning or oxidizing. Or consider charcoal. The gas has been driven off leaving charcoal, which is carbon and burns very hot, without flame, since no gas is left. Charcoal is very resistant to decay. This subject is very intriguing. My gut feeling is that this process should be much cheaper to build and operate on a small scale than cellulose ethanol. It not only would offset carbon making, it a good way to transition to unknown future energies, but also will double in that it apparently enriches soils for centuries. Once sequestered into soil, it seems almost certain not to have any unintended consequences. The exact value as a soil amendment needs further study.

Since the bulk of agricultural and forestry products end up in urban areas, this must amount to a huge collected waste biomass. The efficiency of extracting energy from burning refuse is low as well as polluting (heavy metals, Nox, etcetera). When possible, it would be better to bury this material as carbon offset. These landfills do not need a hole in the ground; in fact, should be built where leachsates and methane can be collected. They need not take up large amounts of ground as they can be built hundreds of feet thick. When completed, parks, ski slopes and even airports have been built on top of this material. Study of urban waste show plastic makes up less than 1% of the waste and acts as a stabilizer. Some of these plastic products, sometimes so damaging if carelessly discarded, would probably best be disposed of in a landfill.

Waste Management thinks they should have carbon credits for sequestering waste, however this has always been a means of waste disposal. Some of the carbon offsets could be reimburse from the carbon assessment. For example, some waste burial sites could receive monetary carbon offsets, if proper disposal methods and methane capture were used. There could even be carbon “cap and trade” between governments. For example, some of the developing countries with little carbon emission could sell carbon offsets and at the same time enrich their soils.

Xcel energy gives the following emission from various sources (pounds per thousand kwh)                                                          Carbon Emissions    Nitrogen Oxides    Mercury Coal                            2368            4.7                    0.0000588 Natural gas                 1192             1.2                   0.0000001 Refuse-derived fuel   5870             9.6                   0.0000692

If the refuse was buried, about 2.5 times as much energy from coal or 5 times as much from natural gas generation could be had for the same CO2 emissions (for example, 5870/2368 for coal). Waste incineration, power generation from waste, and adding building and other cellulose waste to the sequestering waste stream could use government study. 

Energy Payback                                                                  
This includes all energy used in the mining, manufacture, and etcetera of material used and construction of a facility built to produce electricity. Only after the energy payback will the facility be producing a net positive amount of energy. Of the renewable energies the payback for wind at good locations appears to be in a 4 to 8 month period. The poorest energy payback as might be expected is for photovoltaic, which appears to be in 7 to 15 years. This is why PV requires large subsidies or is needed at locations where the cost from grid transmission is great.  The pessimists of renewable energy feel that the renewable payback energy will be too great and actually increase global warming. They argue that the construction of the factories to build the materials will have to increase greatly and take a considerable length of time, which will increase carbon emissions in the short term.     

The following includes all CO2 emission activities. Nuclear generation produces no CO2 directly, but CO2 is produced in the mining and processing is included.                

Grams of CO2/kWh                                                                    Coal     970-1245grams                                                                Gas      450-660 grams                                                       Solar    100-280 grams                                                     Wind       6-29 grams                                                          Nuclear   9-21 grams                                                       Hydro     3-11 grams                                                                   - Ron Cameron, Chief of Operations, ANSTO" 

Energy Transmission                                                            
Electrical energy can best be moved around efficiently by high voltage direct current (HVDC). Liquid and gas is economically moved by pipeline. For at least the near future, say the next 40 or 50 years we will need to utilize and build on present infrastructure. We apparently can add some hydrogen to natural gas and use existing pipelines. Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDClosses are about 3% per 1000 km. Because HVDC allows power transmission between unsynchronized AC distribution systems, it can help increase system stability, by preventing cascading failures. Energy in the U.S. is synchronized on regional bases.                           

Energy Waste                                                                       
An energy flow chart at http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_conservation shows out of 97 quads of energy used in the U,.S., that 52.2 quads are lost, with only 35.2 quads remaining as useful energy. Transportation is the most wasteful with 26.5 quads total, but only 5.2 quads useful. Fossil fuels convert to electricity at about 35% efficiency. To have any energy use, biomass must be converted into electricity or a liquid. This points out the problem with biomass. Crops are only 0.1 to 1.0 efficient in converting sunlight energy into ethanol and then only about a fifth (5.2/26.5) of that is converted into useful transportation energy. Solar thermal energy can be converted into electricity at 25% efficiency and can utilize desert or other less useful land. The choice seems to be something like one acre of desert solar thermal or between 100 to 1000 acres in fertile land for biofuel crops. Wind energy takes even less land. The future will likely include photovoltaic energy built into roofs.              

Energy in 2040                                                               
It may be useful to look at a possible energy scenario in 2040. By 2040, through increases in energy efficiencies, comparable 2007 electrical energy consumption might be reduced by 25%. However electrical consumption in the U.S. doubles, due to population increase, hydrogen production, plug in cars and an increasing use of electrical home and commercial space heating.                                                                       

Stationary fossil power will be replaced with electric motors and hydrogen extends or replaces fossil compounds. While hydrogen cannot use present pipelines (hydrogen reacts with the metal), it can be added to natural gas (called hythane) up to 15%.                                                                             

Hydrogen can be used to manufacture nitrogen fertilizer instead of using natural gas or to refine heavy hydrocarbons into lighter ones. Liquid fossil fuel consumption, most of which now has carbon offsets, has been reduced to 40% of 2007 levels. Since 60% of 2007 liquid fuels are used in auto and light trucks; plug ins for short trips is the quickest way to reduce the liquid fossil energy.                                         

Home heating and hot water are also large uses of liquid fossil energy. Most hot water could come from flat solar water heaters with electrical assist. Heat pumps would become popular with resistant electrical heating also used when production and transmission capabilities allow.                     

In the electrolysis of water, which could be done with wind or solar energy, the oxygen could be collected, as well as the hydrogen, and used in coal gasification and to oxidize or burn fossil carbon. The only emissions would be water and carbon dioxide that could then be easily sequestered underground. A second advantage would be more efficient energy extraction. Combusting with oxygen proceeds at higher temperatures. The greater the difference between the hot and cold sinks, the more efficiently energy that can be extracted.      

Present turbines are limited as to the temperatures they can withstand. Research is on ceramics blades that can withstand higher temperatures. 

2040 Energy Sources                                                          
Wind energy, abundant in North America, provides 30% of electrical generating capacity. (Denmark achieved 18 % in 2007) Wind energy is now mature with most good sites utilized. Future wind power needs will come from offshore and replacement of older smaller onshore installation of larger turbines.                                                              

Thermal solar reaches 25 % and is growing rapidly. Thermal solar power co-insides with high-energy use air conditioning. Photovoltaic contributes 5%, and while still expensive is growing rapidly, appearing in parking lots and along roads and is now being built into most new manufactured roofing.                                                        

High construction costs, nimby and waste disposal problems, all restrain new nuclear power. Still, nuclear power doubles and accounts for the same 20% as 2007 electrical generation.

This is one of the more questionable scenarios. After looking at problem with other renewable energies, some of those formerly opposed to nuclear now think we should take a second look at it. Although nuclear does not contribute to global warming it uses another scarce resource; water. A 1000 MW nuclear plant would provide the power used in 1 million U.S. households. A nuclear or coal powered plant is roughly somewhat less than 40% efficient. This means 1.5 times the amount of electricity leaving the plant, (100/40) remains as heat that in most cases must be cooled by cooling towers. This 1000MW plant will consume about 5.5 billion gallons of water. Each household in the U.S per year uses 40,000 gallons of water. 5.5 billion gallons of water would supply 138,000 households. Outside of sweat or household evaporative losses, this water, unlike that used by power plants is returned to rivers or is recycled for crop production or urban plants (grass, flowers or trees).                                               

If coal and oil should bear global warming costs, the rare possibility of escaped radiation should be born by the industry and never be a (it will never happen, so they say) government cost. Could a terrorist fly a plane with high explosive or even a small nuclear devise dive into a nuclear plant? Or is there some other possibility? A free market solution would have industry purchase insurance against any possible damage, as opposed to government responsibility.                                   

A combination of hydrogen and fossil gas supply peaking plants; which can supply up to 30% of electrical needs, will account for less than 10% total use. The gas could include synthetic gas from coal. The CO2 from this process could be sequestered and used in oil-bearing formations to obtain additional oil.

Geothermal in the west has grown considerable and accounts for 5% of electrical energy nationwide. We could expect the western U.S. to have an abundance of electrical power as it has good geothermal (20% of California power is already geothermal) and thermal solar.

 Hydropower mature in 2007 at 7%, now provides 4%. Tidal, wave and other account for the remaining energy production.                      

Just as the hybrid auto will be a transition technology, biomass becomes a transition offset to fossil fuels used in mobile engines. Waste biomass, which has to be collected anyway, is most efficiently buried for fossil carbon offset. Since most agricultural and forestry products end up in urban areas, this is a very significant offset.

Another offset is the pyrolysis of agricultural wastes. This appears to be a relatively simple and inexpensive way to turn agricultural waste into carbon offset and at the same time improves agricultural soils. Agriculture, forestry and some urban wastes would be hauled short distances to where these wastes can be heated with limited oxygen to produce gas, tar and agrichar. The carbon would serve not only to enrich soils, but also as efficient carbon offset.                                          

Removing ½ of corn residue through pyrolysis may offset about 25 billion gallons of the 110 billion of gas and diesel used by 2040. Forestry wastes, other agricultural and urban wastes could offset another 25 billion gallons. Burial of urban wastes could offset 40 billion gallons. (Remember we used 300 billion gallon of oil in 2007)

The above scenario is just one possible outcome.                  

A free market accounting for carbon pollution will lead to the most economic mix of the various energy sources.