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Lily Allen backs U.K. solar incentive campaign

Brit popster Lily Allen has sung about “riding through the city on [her] bike all day” at the Premises solar-powered recording studio. Now, she’s added her backing to a campaign to reward homes that generate their own green energy. The amendment to an energy bill in Parliament this week introduces a “feed-in tariff,” which would […]

Snippets from the news

• Legislators forced to give up gas-guzzlers. • Nuclear power will get dirtier, says report. • Can new high-voltage cables help renewables beat back NIMBY? • Large facility will open to turn landfill methane into fuel. • Humane Society protests after sea lion dies.

Existing technology is faster and far more practical than hypothetical new inventions

This post will explain why some sort of massive government Apollo program or Manhattan project to develop new breakthrough technologies is not a priority component of the effort to stabilize at 450 ppm.

Put more quantitatively, the question is, what are the chances that multiple (4 to 8+) carbon-free technologies that do not exist today can each deliver the equivalent of 350 gigawatts baseload power (about 2.8 billion megawatt-hours a year) and/or 160 billion gallons of gasoline cost-effectively by 2050? (Note: that is about half of a stabilization wedge.) For the record, the U.S. consumed about 3.7 billion mwh in 2005 and about 140 billion gallons of motor gasoline.

Put that way, the answer to the question is painfully obvious: "two chances -- slim and none." Indeed, I have repeatedly challenged readers and listeners over the years to name even a single technology breakthrough with such an impact in the past three decades, after the huge surge in energy funding that followed the energy shocks of the 1970s. Nobody has ever named one that has even come close.

Yet somehow the government is not just going to invent one TILT (Terrific Imaginary Low-carbon Technology) in the next few years, we are going to invent several TILTs. Seriously. Hot fusion? No. Cold fusion? As if. Space solar power? Come on, how could that ever compete with CSP? Hydrogen? It ain't even an energy source, and after billions of dollars of public and private research in the past 15 years -- including several years running of being the single biggest focus of the DOE office on climate solutions I once ran -- it still has actually no chance whatsoever of delivering a major cost-effective climate solution by mid century (see "This just in: Hydrogen fuel cell cars are still dead").

I don't know why the breakthrough crowd can't see the obvious, so I will elaborate here. I will also discuss a major study that explains why deployment programs are so much more important than R&D at this point. Let's keep this simple:

Nitrogen fertilizer is in short supply

Yet another phenomenon tightly tied to soaring food prices: the price and availability of fertilizer. Global consumption of cheap chemical fertilizer has leapt an estimated 31 percent from 1996 to 2008, boosting modern agriculture around the world. But now, fertilizer is pricey and in short supply, leaving farmers scrambling to sufficiently feed their crops. “Putting […]

On God and gas

“God is the only one we can turn to at this point. Our leaders don’t seem to be able to do anything about it.” — Rocky Twyman, who is organizing “pray-ins” at San Francisco gas stations, asking God to lower gas prices (via Streetsblog)

Jake Gyllenhaal to open organic restaurant

Jake Gyllenhaal is planning to open an organic restaurant with a childhood friend. The 27-year-old reportedly wants to launch a high-class eatery in LA with chef Chris Fischer … The actor is said to be planning a cycling holiday in Tuscany with girlfriend Reese Witherspoon to help develop ideas for the menu. Oh, Jakey … […]

Unlike McCain and Clinton, Obama would have us capitulate to Gas Price Terror

Gas prices are high, which is the worst thing that’s ever happened in the history of America, dating back to the time of the dinosaurs. It’s a violation of the spirit of the Constitution of Independence as written by Jefferson Davis. We must declare preemptive war on gas prices before they destroy our freedoms, which […]

Output-based carbon regulations ignore critical types of efficiency

"Output-based standards" are getting credit around here as a politically impractical but sensible proposal. David described them as "relentlessly efficient."

I'm sure relentless efficiency was the intent, but in fact it is very much a way of picking winners, of rewarding one particular type of efficiency at expense of others. The idea is that within industries, a standard will be set for maximum emissions per useful BTU delivered. So if you are heating tomatoes as part of making tomato paste, the standard would apply to your emissions per BTU used to raise the temperature of a tomato. The problem is that while this rewards delivering those BTUs more efficiently, it does not reward heating the tomatoes less, perhaps by substituting a filtering process for some of the heating.

When I brought this up in comments, Sean argued that the second method still rewards by lowering fuel bills. But then, so does the first. If delivering BTUs more efficiently needs an incentive over and above fuel saving, then so does finding a way to use fewer BTUs in the first place.

Wild Asian vultures going the way of the dodo

Wild Asian vultures are likely going to the way of the dodo, a new study says. The white-backed vulture population has plunged by nearly 99.9 percent in India since 1992, and two other vulture species have seen a drop of 97 percent, say researchers publishing in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. Researchers […]

Note to Bush, media: Opening ANWR cuts gas prices one cent in 2025

Bush blames Congress' failure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for high gasoline prices. The administration's own Energy Information Administration found otherwise in a 2004 Congressional-requested "Analysis of Oil and Gas Production in ANWR" (PDF):

It is expected that the price impact of ANWR coastal plain production might reduce world oil prices by as much as 30 to 50 cents per barrel [in 2025].

Don't spend it all in one place, American public! (Note to Bush: There are 42 gallons in a barrel.) EIA continues:

Assuming that world oil markets continue to work as they do today, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries could countermand any potential price impact of ANWR coastal plain production by reducing its exports by an equal amount.

Curses, foiled again!