Fighting Climate Change With Simple Ideas

[Dave]

I don't think Solar cells on the roofs in temperate climates are the answer. I looked into getting them, not to produce electricity, but to partially heat the hot water system (saving quite a lot of electricity.) Even so, they would still take something like 50 years to pay for themselves unless their cost came down. Of course, if everyone had them, the cost would become economical very quickly.

There are other things that could be done with roofs though. If they were grassed over that would insulate the house and reflect heat. I think that only works with those modern odd-looking eco-friendly houses. They seem a bit dark and cave-like for me.

A very simple thing would be to just paint all roofs white. Slate black roofs absorb the most heat of all.

 

[Drachir]

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Wind farms are a total waste unless they operate 24/7 (few ever operate 8/7 and then half the year at best). If you add up all the energy to make, install them and infrastructure required then usually over their useful life they just about break even an energy in energy out basis. They only become attractive 'investments' when government subsidies kick in. The generators and machinery have a life span. There's nothing super about these, they are expensive and last on average seven years. During that time they need to be maintained and all these problems have a footprint.
Most windmills are built with a lifespan of less than 25 years.

You are right about those little halogen bulbs. I got rid of all of them in my house and replaced them with fluorescents.

I do have a question concerning subsidies. How do the subsidies for alternative energy sources compare to the tax breaks and subsidies handed out to the oil and coal industries and the nuclear power industries?

I live in an energy producing province (Alberta) that supplies the USA with about 14% of its oil and I am very well aware of the huge tax breaks and incentives handed out to the producers of carboniferous fuels here.

I also wonder when comparisons are made about the cost of solar and wind compared to conventional energy sources whether the damage to the environment and the problems caused by pollution are factored into the cost. So far as I know solar and wind are fairly low on these side effects.

 

[Window Bar]

Dave writes: "Solar cells ... to partially heat the hot water system (saving quite a lot of electricity.) Even so, they would still take something like 50 years to pay for themselves unless their cost came down. Of course, if everyone had them, the cost would become economical very quickly."

I agree that the cost would have to come way down. We talk a lot about "Payback period" with alternative energy. As posted by Dave, a 50-year payback period is the same as drawing 2% on your investment for that time. It may be even worse, given the need for maintenance and replacements.

That's the problem. Big money is not interested in 2% returns.

Insulation, however, can often pencil out at 10% returns or better, and it generally requires no upkeep or replacement.

-- WB

 

[Wiglaf]

But seriously folks, If you can afford it, buy a Hybrid (They have Hybrid 4 wheel drive SUV's now.) Cars are the biggest factor that the average citizen can change to have an effect on global warming. (Coal burning power plants are the biggest - see below) You can use the newer fluorescent light bulbs which use less energy to create the same amount of light as the old style bulbs, but they are hazardous waste (go figure). They are calling them "CFLs" Compact Fluorescent Lights. "Compared to general service incandescent lamps giving the same amount of visible light, CFLs use less power, have a longer rated life, but have a higher purchase price. In the United States, a CFL can save over 30 US$ in electricity costs over the lamp's life time compared to an incandescent lamp, and save 2,000 times its own weight in greenhouse gases. Like all fluorescent lamps, CFLs contain mercury, which complicates their disposal." - Wiki.


It took a little digging, but I did find this: "Coal-burning power plants are the largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide pollution -- they produce 2.5 billion tons every year. Automobiles, the second largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually."

source: NRDC: Global Warming Basics

So write to your leaders about alternative energy to produce electricity.

Do not buy large hybrids! Hybrids save 2mpg freeway and 0 mpg city even though they cost more. Buy a car one size smaller. They cost less money and have better mpg figures for both city and freeway driving than hybrid ripoffs. Just make sure you don't compensate by driving more.
As for CFLs, you can not install incandescent lighting without motion sensors and dimmers; you have to use fluorescent. However, in the US only California has a recycling program and California's system isn't used. Over 90% of that mercury is dumped into the ground water supply. LED replacement lights cost insane money ($60 for the equivalent of a 60w bulb).
So my recommendations:
1. Drive less. For example, when shopping at 2 stores in a strip mall, walk from one end to the other instead of driving and reparking.
2. Turn off lights and electronics that you are not using.
3. Use fluorescents but please recycle the old lamps.
4. Next time you buy a car, buy the smallest, cheapest, most fuel efficient one that you can tolerate.
5. Caulk around windows (remodels and new construction require double glazed but until then I wouldn't bother).
6. Weather strip around exterior doors (the bottom usually has the biggest gap).

 

[Wiglaf]

You are right about those little halogen bulbs. I got rid of all of them in my house and replaced them with fluorescents.

I do have a question concerning subsidies. How do the subsidies for alternative energy sources compare to the tax breaks and subsidies handed out to the oil and coal industries and the nuclear power industries?

I live in an energy producing province (Alberta) that supplies the USA with about 14% of its oil and I am very well aware of the huge tax breaks and incentives handed out to the producers of carboniferous fuels here.

I also wonder when comparisons are made about the cost of solar and wind compared to conventional energy sources whether the damage to the environment and the problems caused by pollution are factored into the cost. So far as I know solar and wind are fairly low on these side effects.

From a cost stand point without subsidies, coal and nuclear are tied for the second cheapest after conventional hydro which is maxed out. Nuclear however wins hands down vs coal when environmental costs are included.* However, due to large capital costs for nuclear, the nuclear has to be kept at full output making it suitable only for base load (this is also true of hydro). That is why increased nuclear capacity is so important; it buys us time to develop other technology to replace coal for production of the additional demand at peak or to make coal vastly cleaner.
* The per unit cost is still lower than solar and wind on average. Low chance of meltdown (probability of meltdown x cost of damage is small number), low(nuke)/moderate(coal) cost of global warming per kWh (cost of damage is divided by a large amount of kWh resulting in a smaller number/kWh)

Oh, better gas pipelines in some locations may make gas a viable alternative to coal in some markets. That said, there is not enough supply to cover total generation particularly if you go to CNG powered or plug-in electric/hybrid vehicles. Oh, which is worse, gas vehicles or vehicles powered by coal generated electricity?

 

[jojajihisc]

Hydroelectric is actually far from maxed out. The USGS estimates about 2/3 of total capacity remains undeveloped worldwide. Particularly China, Russia and Brazil have enormous capacities that are undeveloped and to a lesser extent, but at still very high capacities, so does India, Colombia and Peru.

Hyrdoelectric and nuclear development should all be considered if we are talking about what governments can do (and govs. are mentioned in the thread starter). If we are talking about what individual citizens can do then I think making your home as efficient as it can be by insulating, sealing, cleaning heating and cooling systems regularly, using fluorescent lighting wherever you can, use mass transit if you can and consume less plastic. Nothing really new or interesting there I realize. Replacing all or even part of your ornamental lawn with something like corn could be useful as well especially as subsidies to that crop continue to drive up food prices.

 

[skeptical]

Just for interest and as fuel for the debate, I have some figures for cost of electricity generation. These are current for 2005, and may not be exactly accurate today, but should be close. They are averages, in United States cents per kilowatt hour, taken over many operating plants.

Hydro-electricity 5.8
Coal burning 6
Nuclear 7.5
Wind 10
Solar cells 25

Most of the cost of nuclear power generation comes from the cost of commissioning a plant and decommissioning it at the end of its service life. Cost of nuclear fuel is only 5 to 10% of the total.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Companies that claim to be carbon neutral to attract extra business need careful consideration if that would be the reason you would deal with them.

It goes like this.

You want your company to to appear environmentally friendly to boost your customer base and open new opportunities, such as government contracts and ethical investment houses.

You get your operation surveyed for is total carbon use by some recognised organisation.

The survey might report that you use 100,000 Lbs of carbon dioxide per year and gives recommendations on how this can be improved.

The usual methods are to install more efficient boilers and insulate the walls, window and floor, install a windmill for some power and maybe switch over from gas to off peak electrical storage, change all your bulbs to low energy types. Have auto switching lighting circuits, Update all those old PC's and buy some new production machinery - whatever.

These improvements you are told will reduce your carbon footprint to say 20,000Lb /per year.

Oh dear not carbon neutral and there's nothing you can do to improve your operation any further.

The actual footprints of these changes are written off as a one of cost. The windmill might cost 50,000lbs to make and the new boiler 10,000. The bulbs etc. etc.

But you still have that shortfall.

Fear not for help is at hand. You don't have to worry because it's not the carbon you actually use that matters. It's the fact your company does something to be carbon neutral.

Every low energy bulb claims to save the user, lets say for the sake of the example 100lbs/year. So all the company has to do is buy enough bulbs to offset it's excessive carbon use. So it buys 200 low energy bulbs. Now this is where it gets nasty. It doesn't matter who uses these bulbs. the company can distribute the bulbs to whoever it likes, Employees for personal use, anybody because if the bulb is used anywhere it's saving carbon somewhere. In fact as far as anybody is concerned it doesn't even matter if the bulbs are ever switched on. The company has a receipt showing a it saved energy/carbon. It could even send them straight to the tip/landfill.

This puts a new light on the new bulb regulations.

It's worse than that. These bulbs are probably being produced/purchased to over capacity just to provide offsets because of course they have to buy the 200 bulbs every year despite the fact the bulbs last longer than that (supposedly)

To show this actually happens, how many of us have come home to find a present of four low energy bulbs on your doorstep - free - gratis and wondered what the hell was going on.

Planting trees is just another 'branch' of this con. It doesn't matter if those trees are cut down and burnt next year. Last year they made the company neutral.

 

[Drachir]

It seems to me that we are drifting away from my original post. Nuclear power and complex mechanisms for calculating greenhouse emissions are not what I had in mind. Improved solar collectors would be, as would anything that can be done to lower greenhouse emissions at the personal level.

Here is an interesting article on using recycled soft drink cans to build a solar heater.
Solar air heater manufacturers

During the 1970s and 1980s there seemed to be a huge number of ideas associated with more energy efficient building techniques. I remember the story of one American who built an entire house out of war surplus ammunition boxes. He filled them with concrete and used them as large bricks.

More recently there are builders who are constructing relatively low-cost housing out of used shipping containers.

These are simple ideas, and do not require billions of dollars or nuclear physicists to implement them.

As for nuclear, it may be a technological dead end, not because it does not work, but because the construction of recent nuclear power plants has not gone according to plan and the future construction of nuclear plants may not be possible on the scale imagined. To avoid cluttering up this thread with a nuclear power debate I have started another dealing with that topic.

 

[Dave]

During the 1970s and 1980s there seemed to be a huge number of ideas associated with more energy efficient building techniques. I remember the story of one American who built an entire house out of war surplus ammunition boxes. He filled them with concrete and used them as large bricks.

Are you aware that the manufacture of cement (and therefore concrete) produces 5% of global man-made CO2 emissions, of which 50% is from the chemical process itself, and 40% from burning fossil fuels? Estimated total carbon emissions from cement production in 1994 were 307 million metric tons of carbon.
CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS FROM THE GLOBAL CEMENT INDUSTRY1 - Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 26(1):303 - Abstract

 

[skeptical]

Dave

That argument about cement is often made, but it is actually not that bad. Cement includes a lot of calcium hydroxide, which reacts with CO2 to make calcium carbonate. So any cement structure exposed to the air is slowly absorbing CO2 and sequestering it. It takes decades, but a big fraction of the CO2 originally released in making cement is reabsorbed.

 

[Werewoman]

*whips out her jack-hammer and keeps it at the ready just in case*

 

[Wiglaf]

Hydroelectric is actually far from maxed out. The USGS estimates about 2/3 of total capacity remains undeveloped worldwide.

Conventional hydro is maxed out in the US. In fact, it is pretty well maxed out in the majority of highly developed nations. In the rest there are two issues: 1. High capital costs and 2. It is therefore suited only for supplying the base load.

 

[Nik]

Harking back to LEDs and CFLs...

I'm working at the top of a flight of stairs under a light fitting with two CFLs and one LED. The CFLs flicker and are dim when they start up, which is just when they're needed the most. The LED comes on 'instantly'-- Except it died a few months after I bought it. At £ 10 UKP, it was expensive enough for me to demand a replacement. But, I could not *prove* I'd made fair use of it, so it just hangs there, forlorn and dark...

Now, I have an always-on CFL clipped to the end of the desk's frame. That provides navigation while the main pair 'boot up'.

FWIW, we've learned to cycle CFLs as little as possible. A low-wattage bulb will run for several years non-stop. If you cycle it on demand, it dies a lot sooner.

I'm told some new CFLs are dimmable from standard knob, and incorporate a 'soft-start' feature. I like the sound of them. I've had to get 'Halogen in bulb' lamps for our one dimmable fitting. Unfortunately, they're still not as bright as the old 'tungstens' the room and fitting should have...

Now comes the tricky part: LED lamps are toxic, require special disposal. Not so toxic as the mercury in CFLs and strip-lights, but still toxic...

Another problem. Long ago, we took the decision to replace the big kitchen's and big bathroom's multiple short-lived, inefficient incandescent lights with 3-foot, 4-foot and 5-foot strip fluorescents. We saved a lot of electricity, a lot of waste heat. However, at present, there are no economic replacements for those trusty tube-lights. I've seen 'plug compatible' LED arrays, but they cost £ 25 UKP each, need modifications to the holder / starter and are subject to the same doubt as my forlorn, dark lamp. They must have a long and guaranteed life to be worthwhile...

FWIW, we have a dehumidifier, whose waste heat warms room, too. We also have a heat-exchanger extract fan in bath-room which recovers 70~~80 % of the balanced flue's flow...

We do have a clear, South-facing wall which would be ideal for solar panels. Sadly, we could not get planning permission. Perhaps that's fortunate, as similar installations found their pay-back time would be close to the estimated life of the units...

One 'gotcha': If low-voltage LED lighting is combined with low-voltage storage, a lot of the safety issues with PV generation go away.

A sad gotcha: When our hot water system was 'indirectly' heated by a CH loop through the hot tank, we could have used any 'waste' solar power to drive a low-voltage immersion heater. Now, the system is the more efficient 'direct fired' condensing type, which has no hot-tank and cannot use an immersion heater...

Two steps forwards, one aside, one back...

 

[Boneman]

And as everyone is saying, it's the cost that is driving the ideas, either backwards or forwards.

Here's a simple idea: the Government actually uses all the green taxes it is screwing out of the populace to subsidise environmental products...

 

[Vladd67]

Here's a simple idea: the Government actually uses all the green taxes it is screwing out of the populace to subsidise environmental products...

Now that really comes under the heading of fantasy

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

And as everyone is saying, it's the cost that is driving the ideas, either backwards or forwards.

Here's a simple idea: the Government actually uses all the green taxes it is screwing out of the populace to subsidise environmental products...

Are you Mad.

What kind of democracy would that be.

Good grief, you'll be expecting them to tell us the truth next.

 

[Boneman]

By TEIN
Good grief, you'll be expecting them to tell us the truth next.

You mean they don't??? Next you'll be telling me there's no Father Christmas




ps; sorry for hijacking the thread, bigger boys did it first...

 

[jojajihisc]

Conventional hydro is maxed out in the US. In fact, it is pretty well maxed out in the majority of highly developed nations. In the rest there are two issues: 1. High capital costs and 2. It is therefore suited only for supplying the base load.

You're right it is maxed out in the U.S. as well as "the majority of highly developed nations" (although an extremely narrow double qualification especially when those nations are not major sources of hydroelectric capacity) but since when has finding energy sources been limited to political boundaries or highly developed nations? If China and India had a hydrooelectric infrastructure commensurate with the United State's it would lessen the amount of coal to burn for the "base load" as you put it. The point is that is there is still a large capacity for hydroelectric to expand worldwide.

 

[Boneman]

And in England, if this sort of weather keeps up, it would make sense to have Hydroelectric generators (dams) in the rivers. a) generate electricity b) control the water, so no flooding. Or will environmentalists say it's bad for the environment?