As much as I’d like to hate Mr. Gates for foisting that other operating system on the world, I have to respect what he’s chosen to do with all his cash.  Pouring money into disease prevention and treatment (as well as his earlier attempts to ‘save’ our educational system) seems like the type of thing people should do when they have more wealth than many countries.

It seems he’s finally started to think about the effects of climate change, and seems to have come to the conclusion that climate change poses a more serious threat to the world.  He gave a talk at TED in which he outlined his analysis of the problem:

CO2 = P x S x E x C

Meaning this: the climate emissions of human civilization are the result of four driving forces:

* Population: the total number of people on the planet (which is still increasing because we are not yet at peak population).

* Services: the things that provide prosperity (and because billions of people are still rising out of poverty and because no global system will work unless it’s fair, we can expect a massively increased demand for the services that provide prosperity).

* Energy: the amount of energy it takes to produce and provide the goods and services that our peaking population uses as it grows more prosperous (what some might call the energy intensity of goods and services). Gates believes it’s likely cutting two-thirds of our energy waste is about as good as we can do.

* Carbon: the amount of climate emissions generated in order to produce the energy it takes to fuel prosperity.

Those four, he says, essentially define our emissions (more on that later). In order to reach zero emissions, then, at least one of these values has to fall to zero. But which one? He reckons that because population is going to continue to grow for at least four decades, because billions of poor people want more equitable prosperity, and because (as he sees it) improvements in energy efficiency are limited, we have to focus on the last element of the equation, the carbon intensity of energy. Simply, we need climate-neutral energy. We need to use nothing but climate-neutral energy.

To do that, we need an “energy miracle.” We need energy solutions that don’t yet exist, released through a global push for clean energy innovation. That, in turn, demands that a generation of entrepreneurs push forward new ideas for renewable energy, unleashing “1,000 promising ideas.” He described one of his own investments, but went on to note that we need hundreds of other ambitious companies as well, and he plans to put his own efforts into this arena.

This is a very accessible way to approach the problem; it comes with a handy acronym, presents the problem as a simple equation that needs solving, and makes intuitive sense.  Framed in this way I have to agree with him; developing net-zero energy sources seems like the best way to zero out the problem.

So after reading this I felt all warm and fuzzy; Bill Gates is on the case, and he has tonnes of cash to throw at it!  Surely we’ll have this engineering problem solved in the next decade or so right?

Then I read this response written by Joe Romm (former Acting Assistant Secretary at DOE and current senior fellow at the Center for American Progress), which basically shreds both Gate’s premise and his solution.  Here’s the basic problem; quantifying ‘Services’ distorts reality beyond utility, developing ‘energy miracles’ will take too long to work, and even if it didn’t we already have all the technology we need to fix the problem.

So I have thought a lot about whether Gates is right that we need multiple “energy miracles” developed through a $10 billion-a-year government R&D effort to stabilize at 350 to 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 (~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 MW-hrs 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 a single one that has even come close.

…

I don’t know why the energy miracle 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:

• To stabilize below 450 ppm, we need to deploy by 2050 some 12 to 14 stabilization wedges (each delivering 1 billion tons of avoided carbon) covering both efficient energy use and carbon-free supply (see here). The technologies we have today, plus a few that are in the verge of being commercialized, can provide the needed low-carbon energy [see "How the world can stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution (updated)"].
• Myriad energy-efficient solutions are already cost-effective today. Breaking down the barriers to their deployment now is much, much more important than developing new “breakthrough” efficient TILTs, since those would simply fail in the marketplace because of the same barriers. Cogeneration is perhaps the clearest example of this.
• On the supply side, deployment programs (coupled with a price for carbon) will always be much, much more important than R&D programs because new technologies take an incredibly long time to achieve mass-market commercial success. New supply TILTs would not simply emerge at a low cost. They need volume, volume, volume — steady and large increases in demand over time to bring the cost down, as I discuss at length below.
• No existing or breakthrough technology is going to beat the price of power from a coal plant that has already been built — the only way to deal with those plants is a high price for carbon or a mandate to shut them down. Indeed, that’s why we must act immediately not to build those plants in the first place.

For better or worse, we are stuck through 2050 with the technologies that are commercial today (like solar thermal electric) or that are very nearly commercial (like plug-in hybrids).

I have discussed most of this at length in previous posts (listed below), so I won’t repeat all the arguments here. Let me just focus on a few key points. A critical historical fact was explained by Royal Dutch/Shell, in their 2001 scenarios for how energy use is likely to evolve over the next five decades (even with a carbon constraint):

“Typically it has taken 25 years after commercial introduction for a primary energy form to obtain a 1 percent share of the global market.”

Note that this tiny toe-hold comes 25 years after commercial introduction. The first transition from scientific breakthrough to commercial introduction may itself take decades. We still haven’t seen commercial introduction of a hydrogen fuel cell car and have barely seen any commercial fuel cells — over 160 years after they were first invented.

The article goes on to discuss how technologies move from lab discoveries to commercial energy sources – the gist is; it takes a really long time and we should be spending the next 40 years trying to push existing technologies into wider use rather than trying to develop brand new ones.

Here’s an interesting tidbit:

But Mr Linklater is literally ploughing ahead, injecting his tractor’s fossil fuel exhaust fumes directly into the ground, where they enhance the biochemical interaction between plants and soil microbes. And it seems his home-grown version of carbon sequestration, introduced in 2007, is getting results, with this year’s crop, aided by better rainfall, his best since 2001.

“It might not seem that emissions from one tractor could do a lot, but per hectare it emits 1100 kilos of carbon,” Mr Linklater says.

Adapting methods developed by Canadian farmer Gary Lewis, of BioAgtive Technologies, Mr Linklater spent $20,000 customising equipment that cools the tractor’s fumes to 30 degrees then expels them into the soil as gas fertiliser when he sows his crop.

His trials, which are being replicated in Canada, Britain and South Africa, are gaining global attention and are now the focus of scientific research. ”When I heard about it, I listened and the science of it seemed to make sense, but with fertiliser costs at about $1200 to $1500 a tonne, the economics of it got me into gear,” Mr Linklater says.

At today’s prices it would have cost him $500,000 in phosphorous and nitrogen fertilisers to prepare 3900 hectares for planting. But in the two years since he and his sons began trialling the new technique, no fertiliser has been applied. The saving is enough to wipe a healthy chunk off the debt that he, like many drought-stricken farmers, has racked up through years of meagre rain and below-break-even wheat prices.

This just drives home the extent to which most of our food is made out of oil.  At least this guys is using the direct route.

A natural pond is usually larger than a normal pool to accommodate the plants, rocks, and natural vegetationthat comprise the filter zone (separate from the designated swimming area). Once water filters through the plant zone, it is then pumped through a UV filter to ensure maximum cleanliness and aeration. Typically, natural ponds have a waterfall to pump water back into the swimming area.

The idea is to use the plants in place of chlorine and whatever other chemicals pools need.  It would be nice if the UV filter could be eliminated and the whole system could be ‘natural’

I just read a post from Worldchanging which does the best job of explaining my hesitancy to worry about ‘living sustainably’ of anything I’ve ever read.  It’s also an incredible read, so I’m duplicating it in its entirety – it’s worth the time to read through.

We’re nearing an inflection point in our discussions about sustainability and building a bright green future.

Mainly, this is because we’re realizing that our task is larger and more pressing than we thought even a few years ago. It’s not enough to be less destructive, to be more sustainable. We need to actually start being non-destructive, being as close to sustainable as we understand how to get. And we need to do it quickly. As Dana Meadows said, in an era where we seem to be running hard up against the limits of so many natural systems, the ultimate limit turns out to be time. If we don’t make truly massive shifts in the next decade or so, we’re committing ourselves to huge troubles; if we here in the developed world don’t transform ourselves in the next two decades, we’re committing ourselves and our descendants to catastrophe.

Given how far we need to go, how quickly (I think we need — for reasons I’ll explain in another piece — about a 95% reduction in our impacts in the next two decades), we can’t waste time on what doesn’t work. We’re being forced, I think, to look at our solutions with a colder eye and clearer judgment. What works? What scales? What has the best political chances of happening? What can make money or creative infectious behavioral change or in some other way self-replicate? What solutions, in short, could work?

Everything else — all the solutions that don’t make that cut — are at best distractions, and in our current situation, where we’re fighting in the public debate for mindshare for real change (and change-stalling propaganda surrounds us), even distractions are not incidental. The idea that every small step is a good thing is simply wrong.

There’s an interesting post on archizoo about the concept of ‘Cathedral Thinking’:

For Rogers, the concept was about the care and commitment of people who contributed to building the cathedral, a decades-long task, yet would never see its completion. Its implications on vision and strategy development seemed to be about their outcome, a recognition that the successful implementation of the strategy may not be measured until long after it authors have moved on.

I think  starts to hint at the basic reason I’m so ambivalent about the project I posted earlier where a cathedral was converted into a bookstore. There’s something serene and foreign in the concept of thousands of people devoting their lives to a project they know they will never see finished; the sacrilege of that conversion in my mind has less to do with replacing religion with commerce and more to do with respecting the aspirations of all those craftsmen.  Especially in the US, there are very few objects which have remained important for more than a couple generations. We’re not going to be able to embrace long-term sustainability as a culture without retaining some reverence for the past; they’re two perspectives on the same process.

DFW Green Architecture just posted a great summary of the presentation Thomas Bercy recently gave in Dallas.

Thomas Bercy of Bercy Chen Studio traveled from Austin to share his firm’s sustainable design strategies with a few Dallasites. The presentation was broken into segments water efficiency, energy conservation, materials & resources, and density.

Worldchanging has a review of Lawrence Powell’s book “Dead Pool” in which he discusses the predictions that the water supply for much of the Southwest are rapidly declining.

How rapidly? Powell cites recent studies that with current water demand and even very minor climate change (which is not what we should expect now) there’s a 50 percent chance that both Lake Powell and Lake Mead (the two largest reservoirs in the U.S.) will “reach dead pool” by 2021. That means so little water will be left in them that the water level falls below their dam’s lowest outlets (and so no more water flows from them). As Powell notes, “A probability of 50 percent means that there is an equal chance that the reservoirs could fall to dead pool later — or sooner.” [his emphasis] The take away is that, unless profound changes are made, the desert Southwest will run out of water in the next couple decades.

“For the Colorado River basin and the Southwest,” Powell says, “the threat from global warming lies not in the comfortably distant future — the threat is here today. West of the 100th meridian, the danger derives not from the slow rise of the sea but from the more rapid fall of the reservoirs… business as usual cannot continue.”

The changes needed are virtually unimaginable now. Powell shows that right now, farms in the region use 80 percent of the water, and cities use the rest — about half of that for landscaping (which is why there are fountains in Phoenix and lawns in Las Vegas). Even cutting back agricultural use and slashing landscaping use and combining them with the most aggressive conservation efforts imaginable would still only at best buy time for a new way of life suited to a much drier, much hotter climate to emerge.

Could the be the beginning of the re-emergence of American regionalism?  Will different geographic portions of the nation (and world for that matter) be forced to so radically change their lifestyles in response to climate change that regional ways of life and cultural practices will begin to emerge again?  There was a story on NPR yesterday about a radio ad campaign in Brazil encouraging everyone to save a toilet flush per day by urinating in the shower; I wonder what other cultural practices will be questioned as we try to grapple with a radically different relationship between culture and commodities.

This just turned up in a post about the gas crisis of ’73.  It’s described as “the outcome of the architect asking himself the question “How to make a house that resembles a park?”, and has an interesting resemblance to our approach to the Red Bluff residence.

I couldn’t find any good images of the interior, but the basic design seems interesting.  It’s a shame that integrated systems thinking seems to have died out in the 80′s after the energy crisis abated.

So this seems to be in the news lately; the government is providing subsidies for people to trade in their old cars for newer ones with better fuel efficiency.  Slate just published a helpful article which runs the numbers on both the environmental efficiency of replacing a car and the cost effectiveness of the program:

The environmental rationale behind the Car Allowance Rebate System is pretty straightforward: The government offers a few thousand bucks to any consumer who’s willing to scrap a low-mileage gas guzzler and buy a more fuel-efficient replacement. That’s supposed to help reduce our dependence on nonrenewable petroleum and limit the carbon dioxide emissions associated with driving. At first glance, the numbers look pretty good: Burning a gallon of gasoline produces about 19.4 pounds of CO₂, so if you if you swapped a clunker that got 18 miles per gallon for a new car that got 27.5 mpg (the current average fuel economy standard for passenger cars) and drove it for 12,000 miles (the average distance an American car travels annually), you would personally save a little more than two tons of CO₂ from being emitted in one year. Multiply that by the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve already participated in the program, and the savings look even more impressive.

It’s not quite as simple as that, however. As you point out in your question, it takes a lot of energy—and makes a lot of CO₂—to manufacture a brand-new car. (The same logic applies to replacing your household appliances or switching from a Corolla to a Prius.) According to William Chameides, dean of Duke University’s Nicholas School for the Environment, making a new car produces 3.5 to 12.4 tons of carbon dioxide, with an average of 6.7 tons per vehicle. The average new car would therefore need to save about 700 gallons of gas to offset the carbon costs of its manufacturing.

…

According to an early analysis from the Web site Cash for Clunkers Information—which estimated an average fuel-economy increase of 69 percent and total sales of 250,000 cars—the program would cut overall fuel consumption by about 76 million gallons a year and carbon dioxide emissions by about 737,200 tons annually. Using Chameides’ figures, it would produce about 1.7 million tons of CO₂ to manufacture those 250,000 cars, so we won’t really see those savings until a little more than two years from now.

Was spending $1 billion a particularly cost-effective way to achieve those CO₂ reductions? Probably not. Assuming the above calculations are correct and that each consumer keeps his or her car for 10 years, then the total savings should be a little less than 5.7 million tons of carbon dioxide. That means each ton of carbon dioxide would be worth about $175.53 to the U.S. government. As the Washington Policy Center pointed out on its blog in June, a ton of CO₂ currently goes for about $17.50 on the European Climate Exchange.

It’s always nice to have actual numbers to talk about – if this type of analysis interests you I’d highly recommend downloading Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air, a great book that’s available free online and is full of fascinating statistics about energy use and climate change.

World Architecture News just posted an editorial about the Beverly Skyline residence:

It’s not a shabby location, situated in lush hills overlooking a valley below, but the Beverly Skyline house in Texas has more to shout about than the view. This small private project has recently been awarded the Green Good Design Award for “The World’s Leading Sustainable Green Design” by The European Center for Architecture and The Chicago Athaneum, a prestigious international award indeed. But what can a luxury apartment in the hills have to offer in terms of sustainability?..

Lots, it would seem. The project is not a new build. In the spirit of the concept, an old 70s building is recycled along with new additions created from further recycled materials including glass bricks from an old hospital! The project began as a modest remodel, say the architects at Bercy Chen Studio, but turned into a full master-planning for the site.

With the previous building not fulfilling its full potential to take advantage of the spectacular views, the main aim was to reconnect the building with its surroundings and utilise the steep topography. A native garden and creek at the bottom of the property were to be integrated into the design. The glass bricks were used to create the front facade of the house and the originally monolithic nature of the house was further dematerialized through the use of slats installed as rain screens. Pools and reservoirs integrated into the design collect and store rain water and use it as a living water feature which acts to further connect the house with its surroundings and create a spiritual environment. Planting is predominantly native to the central Texas region limiting the necessity for watering.

Delivered within a modest budget, the house acts as an example of responsible redesign without the utilitarian aesthetics.