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July 2008
Scream Crash Boom 2 - the Great Disruption
Paul Gilding has written a paper called "Scream Crash Boom 2 - the Great Disruption"
It makes for interesting reading, and I agree with most of both the premises and conclusions.
Paul describes a system which is both Complex and Chaotic. Complex in that the density of connections between the components is high - everything depends on lots of other things - and Chaotic in that a small change in one place can have a big change in the final outcome. Paul alludes to this when he describes the drought -> food supply drop -> price rise -> political instability pathway on page 3.
However, what I think Paul misses, and what gives me a glimmer of hope is the essence of a Complex and Chaotic system, i.e. the difficulty of predicting the outcome. In nature you see two kinds of systems - systems which when perturbed move around and then settle down to an essentially similar state, and those which collapse, i.e. move to a significantly different state.
Paul describes the pessimists view of this, i.e. that the systems will collapse - this was essentially the view put out strongly at Y2K when supposedly a small problem in one place would cause an endless flow-on, with ultimate collapse of the whole systems. As we all know, we woke up on 1st Jan 2000 with the lights still on.
The optimistic view suggests that our complex systems adjust to failures, some entities fail. but others exploit the niches left by failures, and so on. We've seen that over the last decade in the changes brought on by the internet in every aspect of business and life.
I don't believe its an either/or choice. Whether you view things pessimistically or optimistically depends I believe on which bits of the status-quo you care about. From a self-interest perspect, I think this makes it a good time to look at both the resilience of your self (family, business, etc) and what niches to take advantage of as the system changes. While I'm far from a believer in the market solving everything I think many of those choices - will benefit the overall system, i.e. make the system as a whole more resilient, and better adapted to a low-CO2, low-Oil world.
The big question when I look at what benefits, and what loses is asking how much each element in the system is tied to that stability, and whether the risk-analysis takes into account the outlying possibilities - for example in interest rates, oil prices, government stability, inflation.
I don't necessarily think that a move to a more chaotic world (and I agree with Paul that a chaotic world is likely) would be a bad thing - our current world stability serves some of us, but it doesn't seem to serve the poor, nor the environment. Maybe a more chaotic world would settle down into a better paradigm, or maybe a worse one.
So for me the challenges are:
1: How do we convince governments and other powerful entities of the need to take action of a speed and scale commensurate with the problem.
2: How do we ensure that out of the state of chaos as many actors as possible are looking for outcomes that benefit the planet as well as the actor.
3: How do we create incentives to the actions we want - rather than the actions we don't - as Amory Lovins puts it - Tax Bads, not Goods.
For example .... if we look at recent government choices - funding Clean Coal tries to perpetuate and keep the system stable, but is ultimately futile - Carbon Capture and Sequestration is unlikely to work at a cost that makes it a sensible choice, and will never capture enough of the emissions - while funding renewables moves us towards a lower-emission solution.
If you haven't already seen it, read Gore's call for the US to get off all carbon-based fuels in 10 years. I blogged about it on http://www.mitra.biz/blog while its been criticised from both sides, I think as a bold goal it sets a target for how much, and how fast we need to do things, and that the disruptions from doing so are going to be much lower, and with a better final outcome, than the disruptions from insufficient action.
Posted by at 11:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Al Gore's call - too ambitions?
Al Gore made a key speech recently, summarised in the quote:
Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years
Neal Dikeman has a thoughtful critique of the speech on CleanTechBlog which concludes.
I will leave you with one final note, and please remember, I am actually a proponent of the ideals in Al Gore’s speech, I just prefer to get there in one piece. One theory on the effect of the history of the man on the moon driven space race that Mr. Gore challenges us to copy basically says that we pushed for a single high profile goal so fast and furious that we effectively skipped ahead and outran our infrastructure and capabilities to get a nonscalable shot at the moon in the target time frame. The theory goes on to suggest that’s why after reaching the moon so fast we haven’t progressed at the same rate in space since, and had we taken it slower, we would have gotten there a few years behind, but might be on Mars by know. Akin in a military campaign to outrunning your supply chain, and then getting your army surrounded and destroyed – or perhaps invading a country half way around the world, winning the war in weeks and forgetting to prepare for the peace. And just to show that I can deliver as many platitudes in one article as Mr. Gore, that’s why you never get involved in a land war in Asia. Energy and environment are the two pillars of everything in our lives. Mr. Gore and I want the same thing, but he thinks we can’t afford not to swing for the fences – I think we can’t afford to mess it up.
Gristmill also has a good summary of other responses to the speech.
When I look at the speech carefully, I see a few important points.
Firstly - its not talking about Carbon Neutral, i.e. its not calling for the US (and by implication Australia) to buy its way out of its mess by reducing other people's carbon intensity (e.g. by planting trees in the Amazon).
Secondly - its talking about zero carbon, i.e. its skipping all the inadequate (Gas) or unlikely (so called "Clean Coal").
Sure, its setting an ambitious target, but that is what we need - in Australia as well as the US.
Neal has some good points as well - for example he talks about 7 year lead-times on transmission lines, but I think that is entirely the point. If we are to crack the climate problem before it cracks us, we need to remove the barriers to moving at the speed necessary to make up for the decade of inaction by among others, Bush, Howard and Blair. We need to look at what stops us growing the solutions quickly. Why does it take 7 years to put a transmission line in place, maybe the very policies we have in place to stop inappropriate actions are going to stop us taking necessary actions.
I'm glad that Gore has thrown down the challenge - even if we miss it by a bit then the step of thinking about it might throw up some huge ways forward. And we certainly won't get there with the tiny goals of the Australian government. (20% by 2020)
Posted by at 10:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Amory Lovins on nukes
Here's one of the smartest engineers on the planet - Amory Lovins being interviewed b Amy Goodwin and explaining why nuclear doesn't make any sense.
Posted by at 11:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Beyond Building - installations started
We've not been seeking a lot of publicity at Beyond Building, our Solar Neighbourhoods scheme has been so popular that we haven't needed it.
But we couldn't keep it quiet as in the last couple of weeks, after months of dealing with compliance issues, we've started installing the first of the 600 or so houses in our shire that have signed up to put photovoltaics on the roof (that's about 5% of the houses).
Our local paper, the Echo covered it on the front page, and the regional daily also gave ran a story.
We had a good turnout to our celebration, and launched our newest version of the scheme - the Byron Solar Shire - where smaller groups who missed out the first time can come onboard as well.
Posted by at 11:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Jockying on Australia's emission trading.
With both the Garnault report and the government's outline of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) now out, the jockying has begun.
Continue reading "Jockying on Australia's emission trading."
Posted by at 11:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Garnaut on Feed In Tariffs
Garnaut's report includes a section on Feed-In-Tariffs. Garnaut correctly points out that it should be Gross. Despite the headline on the section it doesn't recommend a value, which is a pity.
Key Point: There is a case for special feed-in tariffs for household electricity generation and co-generation. The case can be quantified by reference to timing and transmission considerations.
17.2.2 What should the value of a feed-in tariff be? There are two main ways by which feed-in tariffs can be paid—gross metering and net metering. Gross metering pays the embedded generator for all electricity it generates, while net metering pays for just the energy exported to the grid (gross generation minus local energy consumed).8 Feed-in tariffs in Spain and Germany, for example, are calculated on a gross-metering basis. In Australia, most feed-in tariff commitments have been based on the net quantity of energy exported to the grid.
For small embedded generation systems installed by households or firms that are consuming electricity throughout the day, it is likely that no exports to the grid will be possible. However, the benefits of embedded generation (lower transmission losses, deferred costs for network augmentation, and displacement of high-cost generation during peak periods) are present for every unit of electricity produced, not just the amount exported. A feed-in tariff based on gross metering is thus a more accurate means of pricing these benefits.9
note 9: Some argue that a gross-metered feed-in tariff is undesirable because, from a sustainability perspective, it does not encourage embedded generators to consume less electricity, whereas under a net-metered scheme profits can only be made by exporting more to the grid. This reasoning is erroneous because the incentives to consume should come through the retail tariff paid for electricity, not through the feed-in tariff system
Posted by at 4:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Garnaut report out
The long awaited Garnaut report is now out. For a long time its imminence has been an excuse for the federal government not to act, now it may well be called "one of the inputs" as its recommendations are unlikely to match the preferred action of the government.
Like the Stern report Garnaut makes it clear that the costs of inaction outweigh the costs of taking action. Its main focus is the details of how an Emission Trading Scheme should be setup for Australia.
Early economic modelling results of readily measurable unmitigated climate change for middle of the road outcomes on temperatures and decline in rainfall – indicate that climate change would wipe off around 4.8 per cent of Australia’s projected GDP, around 5.4 per cent of projected household consumption, and 7.8 per cent from real wages by 2100.
A key features from my perspective from the report.
* Include all sources of emissions - including Petrol
* Auction permits for emissions
* Spend 50% of the proceeds on compensating low-income consumers
* Spend 30% on "structural adjustments" in particular on high-energy exporting industries (a poor exception in my opinion).
* Spend the remaining 20% on development and commercialization of Low Energy technologies.
I think these are essentially a good recommendation - we need to see the price of energy intensive products go up, as that is the only thing that will shift consumption to low-energy products. The impact on those least able to handle it can be handled through tax/social-security, which will still incentivise those within lower-income brackets who also take action to reduce their use of energy intensive products.
The one area I would differ is that there is a need to support Renewables that need short-medium term subsidies to get through the cost curve and have promise of low-cost - this particularly applies to Solar, but others also qualify.
Unfortunately most of the 20% is likely to be spent on so-called "Clean Coal" which is not clean, and is unlikely to be cost-effective compared to the cost that renewables will achieve even without the billions that will get thrown at the coal industry.
Garnaut recommends a two-year transition into the scheme, which of course industry will say is too short, while the environment will complain that we've already mucked around for 12 years of climate-deniers at the healm, and now need urgent action.
Posted by at 4:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Feed in Tariffs, MRETs.
Solar Feed-in-Tariffs (FiT's) are what has driven the solar expansion in Europe - especially Germany (and I believe in California). Here in Australia we are way behind the times.
South Australia led the way in creating a FiT that would have no noticable impact, because it was designed so that almost nobody who installed solar would get any benefit from it. They are still trying to get positive media spin on the scheme which officially started this week.
Of course from the politicians perspective its great - something which makes it look like you are taking action, while costing nothing because according to Queensland Conservation Council almost noone will be able to claim on it. So it should be a surprise that both Queensland and Victoria have copied the scheme.
The ACT has now broken with the pack and passed a scheme that looks like it will make sense - paying 4x the price of power. Presuming all the details have been worked out so that its reliable enough to base funding on, I predict this will see a lot of renewable energy deployment happening in Canberra rather than elsewhere. (Hmmm - I wonder if a hot-air generator on top of parliament would qualify?)
In other positive news, Rudd has passed an MRET target of 20% by 2020, hopefully that will push up the price of Renewable Energy Credits to make up for the damage done by the same government to the Solar Rebate scheme.
With the Garnaut review due on the fourth its a week to focus on how the changes in rules will change the landscape for renewables in Australia.
Posted by at 4:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
AirCar - close to production.
It looks like the Compressed Air car has finally got close to production. The idea popped up a few years ago, but the performance figures really didn't make it look like a viable alternative that would appeal as broadly as needed to have an impact on the massive emissions from petrol-cars worldwide.
Tata (India) has recently announced its close to production on the car, designed by MDI (France).
Businessweek and Gizmag both have (almost identical) articles on it, and Gizmag has some good pictures.
Its performance figures - 110km/h (68mph); 200-300km range and either 3-4 hours on the built in compressor, or a couple of minutes at an adapted petrol station put it in the range where we don't require significant sacrifices to "go green".
This is a welcome change from Tata's other announcement in 2006 of the Nano-Car - cheap enough to encourage indian masses to move to LESS sustainable transport.
Of course the biggest problem with getting is launched is likely to be the testing regime it will have to go through (designed for 1 tonne steel monsters) in order to be sold in "developed" countries, so I predict we'll see it mainly in developing countries for a while.
(Other resources on Future Cars)
Posted by at 3:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)