What do I think, What can I do?

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Will carbon storage be an effective climate change strategy?

carbon capture and storage

One of the fields of active research related with climate change is CO2 storage. Some new findings are promising as read here. These technologies have the advantage that they can work on-site in the CO2 heavy production works and do not introduce the carbon in low mines.

Theoretically we could even close the carbon cycle, burn a fossil fuel, capture carbon, make another fuel, burnt It again,… The only problem is that it doesn’t seem possible to get so much efficiency, and even in that hypothetical case a good filtering of particles needed for public health combined with carbon capture could lead to a cost increment that could make solar energy really cheap in comparison. Because the great thing of fossil fuels is that they store a lot of energy in the chemical bindings among carbons, it doesn’t seem easy to bind them again without expending even a higher energy again.

Anyway, I have not reliable data about those hypotheses. It would be really great although really unlikely to enjoy the advantages of fossil fuels without altering our climate. We do not have to close any door because the problem is complex and there is no magic solution.

Nevertheless, sooner or later we will have think in some alternative to fossil fuels because as they are not renewable they will end someday. So maybe climate change is not only a great risk, it can be also the opportunity to begin this way.

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Climateinsight author passed away

I try to read several blogs about climate change, climate hawks and skeptics. And the more I read the more interest I have and the more I learn, I hope. Of course, I am a total amateur with limited time, so I read only a small part of the post from the blogs I am subscribed.

However, today I read a post that moved me. The author of climateinsight passed away. I did not know him but I read in this small biography that he was physicist and mathematician and worked in many fields leading him to be interested in the climate change impact on public safety, after that, nowadays retired, he was very active in his blog until recently. I did not read thoroughly most of his posts either (they where prior to my discovery of his blog) but checking them now I think they are a very interesting information source that deserve a good reading.

I hope WordPress maintain them for a long time as a wonderful memorial open to the world. It is interesting to think how the Internet allows a person to continue saying a lot of things for years.

Thanks Allan, for writing.

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Feed-in-Tarif Stopped in Spain

Image from Wikipedia

Spanish new conservative government has decided to stop feed-in-tarif for new renewable installations. The installed ones will continue to receive their feed-in-tarif. Although media coverage has not been too extensive the people around renewable energy are very disappointed.

The responsible minister, Soria, said that it is not definitive but this is impossible to say now. It is very important to contextualize this decision and to understand the possible causes:

  • Spanish economy is in a very bad time, and the government is desperately looking for any cost reduction. However the have not touch for the moment carbon subsidies
  • Spanish energy production will be higher than demand in a shrinking economy (it was last years with a better situation). So new installations would be redundant economically if others are not shut down, for example the ancient nuclear in Garoña, very similar to Fukushima.
  • There is a very-difficult-to-understand thing in the Spanish electric market called tarif-deficit. In two words, recognized costs to the companies are lower than allowed energy sale prices. And this creates a debt that want to stop (this issue deserves many post itself).
  • The powerful power companies were asking for something like this.
  • Feed-in-tarif has been very successful, with a lot of wind and solar power installed the last years.

But, at the same time the story of feed-in-tarif in Spain and its relationship with politics is neither simple nor free of contradictions. In a very simplistic and undeserved explanation: The former conservative government was the one to put it in practice and many local conservative governments applied it very effusively. During the last 8 years of progressive government the feed-in-tarif suffered some noticeable cuts and a lot of uncertainty, sometimes criticised heavily by conservative local governments. And the fathers have finally kill the baby.

Certainly, feed-in-tarif has helped to save a lot of tons of CO2, develop many new economy companies and jobs (now at severe risk) and for sure help to reduce production costs for windmills, solar panels,… So, it has been a story of success, but at the same time there are many lessons to learn as how to link it with the rest of traditional energy system cost, howto explain it, howto include the big energy players to get their compromise, howto invest in R&D enough of the income, howto plan the amounts of tarif, of installed power and tarif evolution and how to discuss the conditions with the renewable energy sector and howto offer enough stability not depending on the government in charge.

And the future? Uncertain, with some hopes in international markets for some companies, with hope in the not so far grid parity for some others whereas unemployment or great activity reduction will be inevitable for many others. And still with too much CO2 in the air and a changing climate menace in the way.

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Smoking and KWhs

Heating lamp in the outside of a bar in winter time

Some weeks ago I took this photo in a cold winter day close to Bilbao. This heaters have become popular since smoking is not allowed in bars and restaurants. It was an unexpected and unnoticed consequence of smoking ban in closed places. I had seen those heater before in central Europe but not close to my home, perhaps they are following the smoking rules throughout the world. Actually, the ban is helpful for those vendors, for gas resellers and maybe for short-term economy (the bars do not agree with this but this is another question), but nobody has complained about the new KWh needed for that, the loose of energy efficiency and the increment of some more CO2 tons. I know it is not a key issue, but had it be another the problem surely it would have been present in some newspapers and discussions, at least to criticize the government forbidding smoking. Surely, we are not too conscious of climate change, energy efficiency and shavings in every day actions nor politics, in the best case the commitment  is too theoretical

And the most funny contradiction is that I was quite happy personally for the smoking ban because being a non-smoker I prefer a smoke free places, but this is not a post about smoking, is more about KWs and CO2.

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Hiriko, will I see this electric can in the streets?

 

Image from http://www.hiriko.com image gallery

Hiriko is a car prototype; it has been presented to EU commission yesterday. It is small, fully electric, very electronic, absolutely urban and designed and developed by basque companies with MIT collaboration, following their city-car concept. In the web it is claimed that apart from the car itself the production and business model is also innovative.

I do not know if I will be able to see those cars running around my home or in other cities in Europe or the world but I like the concept and I like the ambition to innovate in transportation. Transportation is one of our great challenges to reduce CO2 emissions, responsible of more or less 25% of the emissions and without clear alternatives for the moment because most people don’t think of driving anything powered without oil.

So, new ideas, projects and realities are not only welcomed but necessary. They have to be innovative, brave and attractive for the potential customers who have been using internal combustion engines for a century and they will need help from institutions and citizens.
Many projects will fail but this is part of research and if only one of them gets the accurate combination technology, a good product, business concept and intuition; it will make a very important contribution to change our carbon footprint.
Sometimes getting the right concept is only evident later as happened with the iphone. Many where looking for something like it but without getting it right.

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Small Great things, Uncategorized

Methane Hydrates, energy solution, bombshell or just a beautiful fire?

Figure

Image from Wikipedia

Recently I read in a sceptic blog a post about methane hydrates. They are a huge potential source of methane or natural gas in the bottom of the sea. Their extraction and use as fuel it is not straightforward nor cheap, but some researchers claim they have found a way to do it economically. This wonderful “burning fire” promises a new oil era, a longer one to continue with fossil fuel energy.

It is interesting for me to see the fascination that some feel for fossil fuels or anything that burns. Because in order to find some new energy source they could explain the new possibilities of nanotechnologies in this field or advances in biofuels. All those researches could become real or not , the same as methane hydrates. Yet they have a big difference, they do not emit CO2 and would help us reduce climate change.

And all this if due to climate change some of those methane hydrates do not start to melt just by the higher temperature, something quite dangerous as methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and it would ignite a strong positive feedback. It seems unlikely, fortunately. but it they want to get it all for sure they will have to be fast.

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The Skeptics: Why I believe in Climate Change (V)

Image taken from http://www.desmogblog.com

Credibility is very important in any discussion. Sometimes, the different arguments may be convincing but the opinion about the discusser turns the balance. And credibility is not something static as politicians, journalists and many other people know so well. It can be gained slowly, or lost very fast. In my case, I have a lot of doubts about climate skeptics because of important contradictions or even cherry-picking cases I find in their webs. Just one example (maybe later I will show more):

In this post in climaterealists they mention one paper to reinforce their position about the sun’s driving force in climate opposed to CO2. The paper studies the relationship between sun and climate but as read in the abstract of the paper:

In this work the surface temperature anomaly (dTG) and sunspot number (Rz) time series in the period 1880–2000 are studied with wavelet multi-resolution analysis. We found a very low correlation of 0.11 between dTG and Rz in the 11-yr-solar cycle band. A higher correlation of 0.66 is found in the ∼22-yr-band with zero lag correlation coefficient between dTG and Rz. Furthermore, the long-term trend is markedly different between dTG and Rz. This might occurs because of the long-term warming on the last century, which is attributed mainly to anthropogenic effects.

The authors do not consider this relationship meaningful in last century due to anthropogenic effects, i.e., CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

The explanation given in the post and  the paper are clearly contradictory, this is quite embarrassing for that webs credibility. And it is not the only case.

Nevertheless, I believe in climate change mainly for other reasons explained here, here, here and here this is just a confirmation.

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Transantartika, going to the south pole in low carbon way

Image from the official web

Transantartika is a sportive even, a tough adventure of three excellent climbers to conquer the south pole in a low carbon way. They celebrate the 100 anniversary of the Amundsen and Scott race for the south pole going with skies and kites. They are going really fast in some days driven by the wind. It would have been wonderful for Scott to have such a resource. It is not the only renewable energy they are using, they also power their electronics with solar panels.

It is interesting to see how related is the power of wind or other renewables with sport evens (also for sailings for example, or bicycles) and how far is from more common and everyday transport options. I know it is not the same, but it has to be quite reliable if they are risking their lives in Antantica. It is curious but Scott, who died in his expedition was a pioneer in using motorized sleights and nowadays with all the possible technology the wind has been chosen. Of course the technology has evolved a lot for the motors, for the materials and for the kites too, fortunately.

One final thought, will it be so interesting to do this in some decades? The temperatures may have risen noticeably although it could be even more unpredictable due to climate extreme events.

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2011 evaluation

Once again the change of year number gives a wonderful oportunity to make a stop and evaluate the previous 12 months.

Let’s start by the important thing: climate change itself. In my opinion the news are not god because we have reached a new record in CO2 emissions and a dangerous 390 ppm level in atmosphere. We are seriously approaching the damgerous 450 ppm figure without enough reaction. After a promising year due to the crisis the CO2 emissions recovered the uphill trend in spite of the still poor economy; the reach 36,7 billion tons of CO2. So, if we fully recover the economy growth rate, where would we reach?

In spite of skeptic efforts to show that no warming is going on now last year was the tenth warmest in record as explained by world metheorogical organization and the warmest with la niña cooling effect. The artic sea ice surface was not below the 2007 record but close and 35% less than the 1975-2000 average. Extreme events were very frequent too.

But there are very good news too. Renewable energies deployed a record new amout of KWh, showing several good and impotant things at the same time:

1.- Renewables are thriving in many contexts, not only a small number of european countries.

2.- They are getting cheaper even forgeting the externalities in the cost calculation.

3.- They are growing more than any other energy source.

This has also been the year of obtaining the figure of 7 billion humans, and the year of Durban and the COP17, a conference with mixed interpretations, maybe a subtle step forward but clearly not a firm change of direction.

And for this blog? It is not thriving in visits or post even. But I am quite happy, I have publish almost twice post compared with 2010 (23 to 12) and it still gives me the oppportunity to read, think and order some ideas to write them down. Maybe the biggest challenge for next year will be to define better this blogs “voice”, what do I want to talk about? with which objective? I will think about it. I have some ideas but not ripe enough. The blog is not important, the important thing is if I am able to help in this big problem we are facing: Climate Change.

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Is my home like Durban?

A building in maintenance work

Last week we held a long meeting in my building home community to decide about some important and expensive maintenance works we should do and I remembered Durban COP17. Why? Lets find the common points:

1.- The decision is common,  we all have the share of the responsibility because the common parts of the building belongs to everyone, and we will all suffer the consequences of our decision. But not all to the same point.

2.- We are not in the same economic situation, although this is sometimes less clear than it seems.

3.- The works to be done are expensive in short term. But not doing them will be more expensive.

4.- We have serious difficulties to get agreements and sometimes we need several useless meetings for that.

5.- Some blame each other for not taking care of their part of the building.

But there are some notable differences too:

1.- In Durban it is accepted that Climate Change is occurring and that it is important. This seems basic but it is the beginning because at home some have some doubts about the need to make the maintenance works.

2.- At home we more or less know each share in the cost, even the ones that do not like it. In Durban this is a discussion.

3.- At home most accept that the problem is the age of the building in spite of some mutual criticism. In the world we know (most of us) that the problem has been created by us.

Will we reach an agreement? At home we are reaching some kind of it, maybe in the world too but it will be at time?

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