Climate Climate & Energy

San Francisco plans hour of darkness for October

If you’ll be in San Francisco between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 20, be sure to have a candle handy. Green group Lights Out San Francisco is encouraging residents to turn off all unnecessary lights during that hour to raise awareness of energy use. Nate Tyler, a former Google spokesperson who is […]

Discover Brilliant: Renewables + smart grid

Today at the conference, everyone’s broken out into small groups and are having more free-form discussions. Consequently, it’s somewhat more difficult to summarize. I’m hanging out for the day in the “State of the Union in Renewables + Smart Grid” room. I’ll try to pass along insights as they drift by. For now, there’s some […]

Rising blowback against wind power

Stumbled across an interesting site the other day -- an anti-wind power site.

On buying solar electricity, not panels

One of the biggest hurdles to going solar is the large up-front costs. That's why solar power purchase agreements (PPAs in wonk-speak) have been so popular. With this model, a third party designs, installs, and owns a system on your roof. You simply sign a long-term contract to buy the output on a kWh basis. You avoid the need for financing, and shift performance risk to the service provider -- you only buy what the system produces. Check out this article for more.

To date, solar PPAs have been offered exclusively for commercial-sized systems. That's because the developer has to take a 15-yr maintenance/service/billing interest in the property, and the economics are better for big systems.

Until now. Sun Run Generation is, as far as I can tell, the first company to legitimately offer a form of residential solar PPA*. They make a fairly convincing case that they can offer a PPA with net customer economics better than an outright purchase. The reason? As a business, they are not restricted by the $2K residential Fed investment tax credit cap, but can take the full 30 percent.

I predict that the next few significant developments in the solar field are going to be in the field of financial rather than technical innovation. Solar Power 2007, the largest solar conference in the U.S., is next week in Long Beach. If I see anything that contradicts my prediction, I'll let you know. (You should also consider going yourself. All the kids will be there, and there's a no-fee public night on Tuesday).

*Note: there have been other companies that claim to offer this service. The most notorious don't currently have ... what's the technical term ... any actual product. As with everything, buyer beware.

What does the future hold for renewables?

Again, I babbled away too long in an interview (a great one) and missed the beginning of “Baseload Challenge and the Realities of Renewables.” PIER, California Energy Commission, Gerry Braun, Renewables Team Lead SAIC, Chris McCall, Program Manager Sterling Planet, Mel Jones, CEO I really wanted to see all of this one. But let’s jump […]

Bush administration push for drilling in Colorado angers GOP constituency

Republicans in western Colorado, long a GOP stronghold, are losing patience with the Bush administration’s relentless push for resource extraction in the state. According to a new report from the Wilderness Society, western Colorado currently has 4,500 oil and gas wells on federal public lands, and 22,000 more are in the proverbial pipeline. A total […]

Can planting trees offset your carbon footprint?

When my wife and I bought our house, the yard was typical for our neighborhood: a mostly barren plain of lawn so sunbaked that you could bounce a tennis ball off it. So being eco-groovy types, we've tried to improve the place: we put in a rain barrel, built a natural drainage system, and added topsoil planting berms. But I'm most proud of the trees we've planted: a pair of akebono cherries in the parking strip and a white-star magnolia in the front yard; and in the backyard, a shore pine, a Chinese dogwood, a couple of vine maples, a Japanese maple, and a limelight cypress.

I recently began wondering how much carbon our new trees are soaking up. Since tree planting is the sine qua non of carbon offset programs, how much of my emissions are offset by my yard? Enough, perhaps, to justify moving from a dense, highly walkable neighborhood to a still-urban but less foot-friendly place? (My Walkscore dropped from 92 to 80.)

The answer, I'm afraid, is "no."

I estimate that in an average year my nine trees will soak up right around 100 pounds of carbon-dioxide combined. (Brief methodology note at the end of this post.) That's the emissions equivalent of burning five gallons of gasoline -- or actually just four gallons, if you consider the "lifecycle" emissions of gas. In other words, my tree planting allows me to burn about one-third of a tank of gas guilt-free each year.

That's certainly better than nothing. But then again, the average American is responsible for about 45,000 pounds of yearly CO2 emissions from energy use alone. Nine trees like mine offset about 0.2 percent of those emissions -- and much less when nonenergy sources are considered.

Even giving myself a big benefit of the doubt -- my electricity is carbon-free hydropower and I take other steps to reduce my climate footprint -- it's highly unlikely that my trees are offsetting more than half a percent of my annual emissions. Plus, half of those tree offsets belong to my wife. So that means at the very, very most I'm offsetting about one-quarter of one percent of my own emissions.

I could do more for the climate by simply avoiding a couple of trips in my car.

More on climate skepticism

I often get weird but enjoyable e-mails forwarded to me. This week, it's an exchange between well-known climate skeptic Fred Singer and a group at MIT setting up a climate change seminar. It seems that some members opposed the idea of inviting Fred, which Fred found offensive:

It has come to my attention that Mr. XXXX has addressed a long letter to members of the committee organizing the MIT Seminar series "The Great Climate Change Debate." Apparently, he considers any debate superfluous and strongly objects to my participation.

Mr. XXXX appeals to 'authority' and 'consensus'; I prefer to examine the actual evidence. I believe that's how science works -- or is supposed to work.

A panel discussion on how much plug-ins rule

Today at lunch: “Squeezing the Balloon — The Opportunities and Challenges in Plug-In Hybrids,” by conference moderator P.S. Reilly. Also: Andy somebody from UC Davis, John Baker from Austin Energy Andy: Oil prices are rising, peak oil’s on the way, automakers are worried they won’t be able to sell their cars. Plug-ins offer redundancy — […]

Native Americans likely to be hit especially hard by climate change, says report

Climate change is likely to hit disadvantaged groups the hardest, and that includes Native Americans, according to a new report. Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder predict that rising seas will flood tribal lands in Florida and droughts will involve tribes in water wars in the Southwest; coastal towns in Alaska are already […]