The Liberal Party of candidate, the official opposition in Canadian Parliment are set to announce a carbon tax plan.  The plan is said to begin with a $10 per ton tax on everything but gasoline.  The Liberal Leadership argues that the current 10 cent per leader tax on gasoline, is a sufficient deterent to use and as a result will not be hit with a new carbon tax.

 The Liberal proposal calls from the tax to increase from $10 to $40 per ton over a period of 4 years.  The money collected from the carbon tax will be used to decrease income taxes on individuals and corporations.  The plan also mentions tax credits and other energy assistance to those in poverty or living in Northern Canada and have a greater need to use fossil fuels for survival. 

Congrats to the Liberals for the first proposed Carbon Tax in North America and for setting the price at $40, which is the current price of offsets in the European market.  With experts predicting the “real” price of carbon is likely between $60 and $120 per ton, at least the Liberals are starting with a realistic number.

You may remember my “When Green Energy Isn’t” article from June, when i pointed out a few flaws in the whole biofuels scenario.  When you burn ethanol, you produce CO2, when you make fertilizer to grow the corn, use tractors to plow the fields, ferment corn to make the ethanol, you are generating CO2.  The only real question here, is how much CO2 that you are generating compared to gasoline and traditional diesel?

Well whatever that answer is, a new study out of Princeton, published in Science, demonstrates that when clearing of land used for biofuels is counted in the equation, they generate twice the CO2 as would gasoline.  Joseph Fargione, lead author of another paper, also published in Science says ”The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land”.  The short story is that growing crops for biofuels replaces vegetation that actually removed carbon from the air.  This means all the carbon stored before biofuel farming is now in the air as CO2 and the carbon that is being taken from the air by the crops is being used to burn as biofuel putting that CO2 right back into the atmosphere.

I’ve said it before, i’ll say it again: We can’t just shift to a fuel that has a smaller carbon component, we need a solution that has little or no carbon dioxide emissions.  Moving CO2 around so that an industrial process, such as making biofuels, wastes more energy and emits more CO2, while it’s end products, biodiesel and ethanol bost a lower CO2 ouput than crude oil derived fuels. It’s not just bad policy and a threat to world food supplies, Bio Fuels are the Big Lie of this new century.  Sure they keep the US from needing Middle East Oil, but that’s a fight for commerce or against terrorism, not a fight against CO2.  Don’t fall for the “Biofuels” wolf, wearing sheep’s clothing.

Don’t gimme that look!  I’m not saying that we need to ban the hot shower or even to shower less, though we probably need to.  I’m just saying that nothing wastes heat, like taking a nice, hot shower and the longer your shower the bigger the waste.  The same is true for baths, laundry and even the hot pasta water your draining into the sink.  Nearly all the energy and heat we put into that water is wasted down the drain.  While conserving water and using less hot water is a great idea, it leaves the problem unresolved. The solution involves recovering the heat from the water as it leaves the home for the sewer lines.

The solution is a heat exchanger that will pull some of the heat from the drain lines, before the warm water leaves the home.  Great idea?  Well it’s not just an idea, it is now available and it’s called GFX Drain Water Heat Exchanger.  This heat exchanger claims to recapture upto 80% of the heat coming thru the drain.  There are different sized exchangers and installation methods that effect the efficiency, but it’s hard to argue with efficiency of over 50%.  The real question is whether it’s cost effective.  The company that is selling them claims they have 30-50 year lifetime, but warrant them for 10 years.  The company Inventroment Energy Solutions has a website at www.gfxstar.ca with lots of information on their product.  It’s certainly worth a visit, just think of all the energy that has been wasted down the drain since indoor plumbing and instant hot water became widespread.

I was amazed the other evening as i watched the news and they focused on the many uses of bamboo.  If you are thinking bamboo fishing rods and huts from Gilligan’s Island, then you know what bamboo looks like.  If you don’t, you cane read more about it here: Wikipedia article on bamboo .  It’s quite remarkable that a “wood” bearing plant can grow over 3 feet in a single day, without needing humans to care for it.  Many of us have seen bamboo used for flooring in recent years.  Bamboo was easily accecpted because it was considerably less costly than wooden flooring, yet provided many of the same visual and tactile experiences of wooden flooring.  Overall bamboo is an excellent substitute for wood, requires fewer resources to grow, creating less environmental impact than current lumbering practices.  And, like wood, it stores carbon.If only a similar solution could be found for the environmental impact of the cotton, used in so many pieces of our clothing.  No, i’m not suggesting synthetics.  

If we could eliminate the chemical and water use dedicated to growing cotton, it would be a good thing environmentally.  Though it would be considerably less good for the people who grow cotton.  There does appear to be a substitute for the ”cotton problem”.  The solution is found in the form of a plant, known as bamboo.  Yes, bamboo! I am not attempting to bamboozle you, this is the truth.  Bamboo can be made into fibers, threads and ultimately fabric that can replace cotton and synthetic fibers in our clothing.  It produces fibers softer than cotton.  Check out one manafacturer’s site: Bamboo Clothes.

Around the world we are seeing bamboo join other fabrics in our closet. So, have we saved the world, with the miraculous bamboo plant?  No! There is no 1 step to that saves the world, it’s a series of steps, by billions of people that will make the difference.  So if we save slower growing trees from industry by supplying fast growing bamboo to the paper, building and garment industry, we reduce environmental impact, not thru sacrifice, but through substitution.

I don’t want this to sound like i’m starting a war against wind power, but i wanted to point out that i think there are potentially environmental issues with harnessing the wind, vs that of harnessing the sun. Don’t get me wrong, wind is number 2 after solar as my preferred source of electricity. I choose nuclear, the glass coated “pebble bed”, “safe reactor” 3rd for reducing CO2. 

If you cringe when you read “nuclear”, let me tell you what has started to make me cringe in the world of renewable energy.  It’s harnessing the winds and oceans currents, because of the potential damage that it may cause.  All my feelings on the topic changed when i heard about how the energy of the ocean gulf streams, the global conveyor, could be harnessed to provide clean power.  A number was mentioned, that by capturing just 1/4 of the energy, these streams could provide all the electrical power needed for the planet.  Great, but what happens to europe, to the people in the North Atlantic, etc. if the climate is damaged by “harvesting” clean energy?

I’m sure that their are similar issues with harness wind, to excess. If we believe that man’s CO2 output can destroy the earth’s environment, then we should also be wary of harvesting nature’s “bounty” to solve the problem. It was nature’s bounty, petroleum, coal, etc. that got us here.  Sure wind power is way better than hydrocarbon derived power, but i think that at this point, solar appears to have the fewest issues.  This of course assumes the solar manufacturing process is environmentally neutral, which i suspect is not the case. I guess I’ll be trying to research the manufacturing story to get some facts. keep checking in.

With all due respect to a lot of folks who see hydrogen as the future fuel for cars, trucks and home fuel cell solutions, I don’t see the value.  Today, we are using hybrids and batteries to decrease CO2 output from cars, trucks and even trains. I believe that rechargeable batteries will provide sufficient energy for most local transportation, before a hydrogen infrastructure necessary for the mass of vehicles can be deployed.

Does that mean hydrogen is waste and leading us down a dead end, like Ethanol is? No, it’s not that bad.  When discussing hydrogen, it’s important to keep several things in the mind: 1) the Hindenburg, the stuff is highly explosive 2) it’s the lightest thing on earth, it’s much harder to contain and transport, than methane (natural gas) which is about 6 times heavier. 3) creating hydrogen from anything besides water, will still release CO2 into the atmosphere.  So any benefit of hydrogen, for example, it’s pollution free combustion (when you burn hydrogen you get water) and it’s availability as part of every atom of water. 

So?  What next?

The 3 top problems with solar energy replace all human engery needs are 1) econmic cost of the infrastructure. 2) The cost (the loss of power) of transporting electricity far from it’s generating source. 3) Limited sunlight, at most, the sun is available about 1/2 of the time, depending on geographic location, season and weather.  These 3 issues are major stumbling blocks to solar becoming a widespread solution to human power needs.

Hydrogen solves 2 of the 3 inherent problems facing solar adoption. First, by using solar electrcity to create hydrogen gas to send to “traditional” power plants via pipelines solves the issue of energy loss during transmission.  Granted we’ve already talked about the cost of transporting hydrogen, but by limiting it’s use to thousands of power plants, rather than 10’s of millions of autos it’s a smaller, more rational approach.  The second problem, that of where we get eletricity when the sun is not available can also be solved by creating hydrogen from solar electricity.  Granted we would need at least twice the capacity of solar collection, to generate enough fuel for use by gas fired powered plants at night, but the ability (in theory) to eliminate CO2 from the generation energy production is the most any global warming opponent could/should hope for.

When is green energy not green energy?  To me the answer starts with the source of energy not giving office any toxins into the environment.  The answer ends with sources of energy that give off no CO2 or significantly reduce CO2 emissions from current levels.  So it seems pretty strange that suddenly ethanol and biodiesel are being paraded thru the media and called “green energy”, it is not.

Diesel fuel with less pollution is greener than the fuel with high sulfur another other components that end up in the atmosphere.  Green energy isn’t ethanol and it’s not bio-diesel from animal fats.  These are usually “greener” but serve to reduce US independence on oil, foreign oil especially, which is good, but not inherently green.

Green energy is emissions free.

Green energy is solar, wind, thermal and nuclear (with a solution for waste), sources of energy that power our society without delivering pollution or CO2 (which it turns out is a form of pollution).

On May 24th, GE, the former General Electric Corp and originally Thomas Edison’s company, went all out with their Ecomagination roll out. This huge marketing excercise had serveral purposes, formost among them to show/claim/build GE’s green credentials, their new “Green Products” and their recognition that Green is no longer a niche, but a cultural wave that is exploding across the world right now.

Now those who know about GE’s battles with the EPA and NY state over pollution remediation in the Hudson river, GE’s leadership position in CO2 producing generators, locomotives and jet engines, you might question their green credentials.  Well, i questoin their past, but welcome their moves to improve their processes and create green products.  I’ll discuss a few of the items below.

Of all the “Green” products, the least impressive was the hybrid powered locomotive. It’s a fossil fuel burning locomotive that uses hybrid technologies to generate power from diesel fuel and recover energy from braking.  While this will reduce fuel use, it seems like a minor upgrade to what i remember calling “diesel electric” trains.  In fact GE predicts it will reduce emmissions by about 10%. GE also introduced products to reduce NO and particultates, which is good, but not quite “green energy”

What GE makes that is green is wind generators, solar panels and reverse osmosis water desalination equipment and filters. These products generate energy with NO carbon emissions.  Their water desalination plants use 25% less energy (according to GE) than those typically deployed around the world. 

GE is the largest manufacturer of wind generators that have been deployed in the US.  Three turbine models, a 1.5 MW, 2.5 MW and 3.6 MW are offered by GE, with over 5000 1.5 MW units deployed world wide.  While GE manufacturers solar roof panels, there isn’t much new with that product.  These products can be the salvation of the planet, a way to truly combat global warming. This is a way of eliminating CO2 from the process of generating electricity.

GE did announce announce their reason for this “new” focus. Don’t assume that it’s just for PR.  GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt  explained that GE had enter these business and is out promoting these green products as a way to make money.  Profit is GE’s motive and Immelt is convince that “Green” isn’t a niche anymore, but a society wide realization of the need for fighting global warming, pollution and waste. This new “Green Mainstream” is forcing change quite rapidly since 2000.