Re: [Phys-l] Efficiency problem

[Hugh Haskell <haskellh@verizon.net>]

At 15:52 -0400 05/29/2010, Michael Edmiston wrote:
> Be careful.  Acting locally often makes things worse.  A lot of people
> around here are designing buildings with geothermal heating and are
> therefore abandoning natural gas.  They think they are being green.  Far
> from it.  Their electricity comes from American Electric Power which is 90%
> coal fired,  This is out of our hands.  Until AEP abandons coal in favor of
> nuclear or other non-carbon sources, geothermal has a considerably higher
> carbon footprint than natural gas.
>
> Yes, we can replace all our T12 lights with T8 (which we have done) and we
> can replace tungsten with CFL and/or LED which we are doing.  We are also
> converting sodium and mercury exterior lighting with LED.  It's very
> expensive and not yet clear whether the payback period will exceed the life
> of the LED fixtures at today's LED prices.
>
> The bulk of our electrical use during the school year is lighting and
> computer and other office equipment.  Food service uses electricity for
> refrigeration, but natural gas for most cooking.  During the summer our
> electricity usage increases because of air conditioning.
>
> We have a fairly good recycling program on campus, but it is not as complete
> as we would like because many things we would like to recycle don't have
> anybody to take them.  For example we cannot recycle all the cardboard pizza
> boxes delivered to dormitories because food/grease contaminated cardboard is
> not recyclable (at least not anywhere in NW Ohio).  The recycling we are
> doing costs the university $25,000 more per year than just sending it all to
> a landfill.  It's similar in our village.  As a resident I have to pay extra
> to have a recycling program.
>
> You quickly find out that when you try to act locally that you generally
> have to pay considerably more, and often can't even do it at any price.
> Things you can do hardly make a dent in the overall state or national
> picture.  Thinking globally and acting locally generally does little good.
> Much of what you would like to do is totally out of your control.
Sounds like you did it all pretty much as well as could be. 
Sometimes, it just doesn't work to do it "right." As to government 
incentives, I was thinking of grants rather than tax breaks. I 
haven't spent a lot of time looking at grant programs, since what I 
have been involved with is home remodeling, where the  support is 
through tax breaks (which for home-owners in Maryland are, in 
addition to federal and state, also county. But I thought that there 
were some grant programs for non-profits and institutions like 
universities. Whatever there were, though I suspect that they have 
gone away by now or soon will. If they aren't around now, grant 
programs for non-taxpaying organizations can be a great help in 
moving the program forward. In fact, they can be the leaders in these 
areas that we really need, but especially in the current economic 
climate, they need lots of help from on high to do it (and oversight 
to make sure they do it right).

The one area where you might be able to lower the campus carbon 
footprint is with electrifying the motor fleet. Studies have shown 
that even when the electricity is 100% coal-sourced, the efficiency 
of electric motors is so much more than ICEs the carbon footprint of 
an electric vehicle is less than that of a similar ICE-powered 
vehicle. Although electric vehicles suffer from substantially reduced 
range, they make sense for a campus maintenance fleet that will 
seldom be driven more than a few miles on any trip. As an aside, I 
note that Tesla has just entered into a deal with Toyota to produce 
an all-electric sedan with a 300 mile range that is supposed to sell 
in the $40K price range. That should have a stronger market than 
their $110K roadster which has no more than 200 mile range (and that 
only if you don't take advantage of their huge acceleration).
Obviously, this transition is most effectively undertaken on a 
replacement-when-necessary basis. Converting all at once doesn't make 
any sense, unless gasoline were to jump to $10 a gallon or more.

I've also seen claims that solar PV can be surprisingly effective 
even in high cloud-cover areas--Seattle, for instance. I recently 
heard a presentation from the Mayor of Seattle who said that their 
solar PV systems are being successful in reducing the city's carbon 
footprint. I think they had some grant help in their project, but I 
don't remember the details now. The talk was several months ago.

Clearly "local" is an ill-defined term. But it traps you in a circle 
that's very hard to break out of if you can't make any headway 
locally. Without being able to show a state legislature that policies 
that encourage or even mandate "green" actions, it's hard to get them 
to move, and if they don't move, other localities won't be as likely 
to take the actions that, when added up can make a big difference. 
And its true that the deck is stacked against small localities. 
Cities can do more, and states can do even more, but it takes 
inspired leadership, and when was the last time you saw inspired 
leadership at the state level. It sometimes happens at the municipal 
level, but it's rare above that. Consortiums are sometimes a way to 
enhance the power of localities, but even they are hard to maintain 
sometimes. I've seen local government associations fall apart over 
some pretty trivial issues.

It's too bad that doing the right thing is so often so difficult.

Hugh

--
Hugh Haskell
mailto:hugh@ieer.org
mailto:haskellh@verizon.net

So-called "global warming" is just a secret ploy by wacko 
tree-huggers to make America energy independent, clean our air and 
water, improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, kick-start 
21st-century industries, and make our cities safer. Don't let them 
get away with it!!

					Chip Giller, Founder, Grist.org