Fairhaven, The River

Birds and planes in train

I thought until recently that it was established that big birds flew in V formation to save energy.  It is true.  But it wasn't until last year that they had instrumented birds to prove it.  In fact, the birds even time their wing beats for energy savings.

The US military did a series of related experiments last year.  They showed fuel savings of 5-30% for the trailing airplane if it remains in formation in the correct part of the wing tip vortex.  Staying in position is hard work, so making this operational will call for some flight controls automation.  But the military might do it.  There are a variety of missions where two or more airplanes will fly the same route as a pair or triple.

This got me to wondering whether they will add this to the convoy experiments for trans-Atlantic crossings.  This year's experiment is aimed at reducing air traffic control loads and increasing route capacity by having several aircraft use ADS-B to form up as a moderately close convoy that ATC can route like a single aircraft across the Atlantic.  For the first experiment they will all be from the same airline. They will be schedule coordinated so that flights from several airports arrive for Atlantic crossing at the same time, cross as a single convoy, then split to several different destination airports.  That kind of schedule coordination is much harder for flights from different airlines.

Maybe in the next experiment they will fly V formations to reduce fuel consumption.

Water and Desalination

A recent conference on water at MIT brought some interesting concepts around water in the middle east into better focus. 

1. The cost of transportation cannot be ignored.  For example, the nominal cost of desalinated water on the Israeli coast is $0.60/ton.  The cost of transporting water from the central hills to Gaza is $0.40.  So there is no point in Gaza paying more than $0.20 for a ton of water from the hills.  The speaker argues that this reality makes water wars more hype than reality.  People may use water as an excuse, but most of the situations don't involve enough money to justify a war.  The available capacity in the hills is 100 million tons/yr.  So after all the emotional rhetoric is done, arguments about that water are arguments over $20 million.  That's all it's worth.
2. Another speaker pointed out that the nominal number was from 2010.  The actual cost for desalinated water is presently $0.50, and it's falling.  So the arguments are over even smaller amounts of money.
3. Transportation limits are also important.  Amman gets its water from the Jordan river.  Alongside the river, water is about $0.15/ton.  In Amman it's as much as $2.00/ton during dry periods.  It climbs very rapidly in cost as demand increases.  This is because the pipelines between the Jordan river valley and Amman are usually running at near full capacity.  The alternatives are limited, so during scarcity the price climbs dramatically.  That high price mostly serves to eliminate forms of water use.

Equally interesting, after about 25 years of discussion, Israel, Jordan, and Palestine have finally reached an agreement on the Red Sea - Dead Sea project.  It's only agreement to proceed past the preliminary stage, but there is significant economic pressure to keep moving.  The concept is simple.  Sea water will be taken from the Red Sea, and used to generate hydro power (using the 400m drop down to the Dead Sea) which is used to desalinate the water.  The resulting waste brine is dumped into the Dead Sea.  They've agreed to examine two plans, both sharing the same locations for hydro-power, desalination, canals, and pipelines.  One plan takes full capacity sea water from the start, dumping the excess into the Dead Sea.  The other plan increases the water flow as desalination plants come on line.  It dumps only concentrated brine into the Dead Sea.

The project includes a pipeline to Amman, which deals with their skyrocketing water costs during high demand.  It's less clear how it would affect the water extraction in the Jordan river valley.

Update: I did the arithmetic on energy requirements.  The potential energy of one ton with a 400m drop is about 1.2 Kwh.  The chemical energy of salt mixed in 1 ton of sea water is just under 1 Kwh.  Hydro energy conversion is not 100% efficient, and desalination is not 100% energy efficient, so there isn't enough potential energy to do full desalination without outside energy sources.  Further, much of the fresh water will be left at a high elevation so that it can be sent into Jordan.  So this scheme probably needs further outside power sources.  The brine goes all the way down allowing full energy recovery.  The lower percentage fresh water per ton of sea water reduces the chemical energy needed.  That's probably not enough for the system to be fully self-powering.

IEA Carbon Emissions Report

The IEA has announced current numbers for carbon emissions and energy efficiency.  These emphasize the importance of energy efficiency.  This is from this report.  The reports indicate the improvements comparing 2011 with 2010.  The US is down 200 million tons (3.8%), Europe is down 50 million tons (1.4%), but total world is up 1.4% to a total 31.6 billion tons.  A further analysis shows that energy efficiency efforts are much more cost effective than alternative energy projects.

The report includes the annual spending on energy efficiency:

• About $200 billion world wide.
• about $20 billion in the US.

I always evaluate the sources and accuracy for statistics.  Lots of published statistics are based on very poor data and flimsy analysis.

The carbon emissions for US and Europe are fairly accurate.  They are based upon fuel production, sale, and use data.  This will miss some sources.  There will be some inaccuracies.  But these are unlikely to change dramatically year to year, so the 3.8 and 1.4 figures are accurate.  The worldwide number is much less likely to be accurate, even year to year, due to data gathering issues.

The efficiency numbers are highly dubious.  The underlying data gathering is highly subjective and difficult to measure.  When someone buys a CFL, how much of that spending is towards energy efficiency?  When someone buys a more efficient refrigerator how much is towards energy efficiency?  When an office building is renovated, how much is towards energy efficiency?

The numbers themselves look wrong.  Johnson Controls' building efficiency division reports annual revenues of 14 billion worldwide.  It's not credible that one building HVAC vendor is 8% of world spending all on its own.

It appears that the efficiency numbers are based primarily on reports by government programs about spending that is related to that government program.  This is consistent with public statements by the Kyoto statistics team that they do not include any efficiency spending that is motivated by profit or cost saving.  Kyoto reports are purely for government and regulation driven activities.

The 3.4% annual reduction in US carbon emissions is primarily the result of cost saving efforts.  The largest single one is the switch from coal and oil to natural gas.  This changes much more than the C:H ratio in the fuels.  The mid-west power companies closed their old least efficient coal fired generators and replaced them with new very high efficiency combined cycle turbines.  The heat to electricity efficiency improved from about 30% to about 60%. 

There are many other sources of improvement. The switch to efficient light bulbs is nearing completion.  Over 80% of lighting power consumption is now from flourescent or LED lights.  The ongoing improvements are primarily from better lighting design and controls, like occupancy sensors and task oriented lighting levels.  Freight traffic continues to shift from truck to rail at 1-2% annually.  Warehousing, shipping, and logistics strategies take time but provide a significant improvement.

Compare this with renewables, where the US spent $52 billion in 2011 to increase the percentage of non-hydro renewable electricity by 0.3%.  That contributes about 0.2% of the 3.8% decrease in carbon.  The lifespan of efficiency improvements is similar to the lifespan of wind power and solar cells.  So in terms of cost effectiveness, US efficiency projects provide 1.7% reduction per $10 billion, and US alternative energy projects provide 0.04% reduction per $10 billion.

If the efficiency investment numbers were believable, this would be evidence that alternative energy efforts are profoundly wasteful to a degree that is harmful to the world climate.  But, the numbers lack credibility.

The claims by the various energy efficiency vendors and sponsors is that energy efficiency investments have a typical ROI of 25-100%.  The alternative energy investments have typical ROI of 3-5%.  (This ROI uses actual costs, not cost minus subsidy.)  If you assume that energy efficiency provides ten times more carbon reduction per dollar, the reduction in carbon utilization implies an investment of $100 billion during 2011.  That's a lot more believable than the IEA estimate of $20 billion.

Still, this does indicate that the push for alternative energy sources is a diversion.  There is a lot that can be done to improve energy efficiency, and those improvements will have a substantially greater benefit to both the economy and the climate.

Aviation News

Today's Aviation Week had three relevant articles.

1. Another article on upgrading aircraft to use digital telemetry, GPS, etc.  This time it was discussion of the steps that Delta is taking with some of their aircraft.  Nothing new or radical is reported.  It's just another article how to upgrade at reduced cost.  Long term (assuming the FAA mis-managers don't completely ruin things) the digital upgrades should reduce fuel use, air pollution, noise pollution, and flight times.  Switching from voice to text messaging makes sense for all the routine flight control.  There are two pilots and messaging doesn't interfere with flying the way it does with driving.  It's faster and avoids the confusion over exact numbers that sometimes affects the voice controls.  It also carries a lot more messages per second over the limited radio channels.
2. A report on prototype effort by British Airways, as part of joint effort with Solena Fuels and GreenSky London, to build a $500 million plant to convert waste biomass into fuels.  It's to be built in Tilbury and go operational in 2016.  The plant will take 565,000 metric tons of sorted municipal waste and generate 50,000 tons jet fuel, 50,000 tons diesel, 20,000 tons naptha, and 50 megawatts excess electrical power.

   The feedstock is dry sorted municipal waste. That means metals, glass, and other recyclables have been removed.  (Technically it's called refuse derived fuel - RDF).  Part of the deal is the attraction of using something that somebody else collects and pays you to take, as are airline commitments to reduce carbon impact.  These fuels count as bio-fuels with no carbon impact.

   It's a plasma torch gasification, so plastic, tires, etc. can be processed.  It uses the usual syngas F-T processes, with the latest chemical reactor and catalyst designs.

3. An article about the complaints about latest idiocy on carbon tax for aviation.  The European Parliament has clearly said that they will collect tax on aviation travel outside Europe, has created a bureaucratic monster, and all the non-EU countries (US, Russia, China, etc.) have reacted with immense hostility. This choice abrogates promises to use ICAO international processes for aviation CO2 controls. One of the absurdities is that a charter airline that flies one 747 per week is considered de minimus carbon contributor and avoids most of the paperwork.  A business jet operator that flies one business trip per month is not considered de minimus and must follow the full bureaucratic procedures.

   The annual paperwork cost (filings, people, etc.) is estimated at $100K/yr.  For an airline this is just another piece of the regulatory burden.  For business jet operators this is a big extra cost.  There is a series of "free" allowances.  Again, even for small airlines the cost of filing and qualifying is justified by the value of the allowances.  For business jet operators, the filing cost exceeds the value of the allowances.

   The laws justification was CO2 emissions, but clearly the regulations are designed to eliminate private aviation and business jet operations in favor of commercial airlines.  Extending the reach outside Europe is a simple power and money grab by the EU Parliament.

History repeats with sulfur pollution

The patterns from the 1950's  through 1970's sulfur controls are repeating in the ocean shipping world, where sulfur and NOx limits are being tightened.  There is a mix of scrubbers and fuel shifts to LNG taking place.  Of course the amounts of sulfur and human impact are much smaller.  In the 1950's dozens of people died from the toxic sulfur levels in some of London's fogs.  Now, the worry is long term subtle damage to the environment.  It's still interesting to see steady progress while the patterns repeat.

Eat oysters, fight global warming

Recent travel inspired me to do a little research.  Oysters are a form of carbon sequestration.  They accomplish the same kind of permanent carbon storage as technology costing millions.  The oyster shell is calcium carbonate (mostly) and lasts for many millenia.

I found that your typical oyster has 10gms of carbon, (or 30 gms of CO2).  At current prices of 10-20 Euro/ton for tradable CO2 it's not much per oyster.  The fisheries commision did investigate getting Kyoto credits.

Turns out you don't get credit for revenue generating activities (like growing and selling oysters).  If you grew the oysters and threw them away you might get credit.  But activities that generate revenue don't count as CO2 reduction, even if they do reduce the CO2 levels.  Welcome to Kyoto bureaucracy rules.

So you just get to feel good about helping the environment when you eat an oyster.  It's helped the water quality and helped the climate.

Tidbits from a so-so lecture

I extracted two useful items from an otherwise poor lecture by a Toyota regulatory affairs staffer.  He was explaining their opposition to the flexible fuels mandate.

The two useful items were:

• Take your proposal and remove all mention of global warming or fuel supply security issues.  Examine what is left.  If it's not attractive, you have a problem.  Car buyers (and most of the public) don't consider policy issues when making a purchase like a car.  Too many proposals look like this when those two policy issues are removed: "We want to make cars more expensive, lower quality, less convenient, and less reliable."
• Every administration from Carter on to the present has picked a silver bullet automotive policy, spent tens of billions to subsidize it, then had it fail.  The Obama silver bullet is electric cars.  He listed them back for all the other administrations.  All failed.  The total waste is in the hundreds of billions.  That money could have been better used to make regular modest improvements that would add up to big improvements by now.

You can tell he is from the Toyota production system experience.  They concentrate their design and engineering on regular steady improvement, based on measurement and experience.  Toyota does not like big radical changes.

The rest of his talk needed a lot of work on clarity and presentation. 

The core of Toyota's opposition to the flexible fuels mandate is that the cost will be much more than the politicians estimate, and the other savings minimal.  Instead of mandating that automobiles run on any mix of gasoline, ethanol, or methanol as long as it is at least 15% gasoline, he suggested mandating a mix range with at least 75% gasoline.  This would make a huge difference in cost and reliability.  He argued that the fuel impact of that difference would be nil.  If you take the largest prediction of ethanol/methanol production for 2030 and the smallest prediction for gasoline needs by assuming that mileage targets are met, there will only be enough ethanol and methanol to make a 25% methanol/ethanol 75% gasoline mix. 

The good, bad, and the ugly

Summary: Examples of good climate investment and a bad investment.  Unfortunately, the environmentalist hucksters are pushing the bad investments constantly.  The crony capitalists are doing worse.

The good

This summer the Tower 55 project got funding.  It's a $90 million construction job fixing a major railroad bottleneck, eliminating mutual traffic interference with local highways, and improving traffic flow for rail and roads.  It will be $40 million of government funds (for the highway work) and $50 million in private funds (for the rail, environmental, legal, admin, etc.).  Esitmated carbon reduction is 180 million lbs, giving a cost of $1000/ton for carbon reductions.

There are many projects like this, both large and small: CREATE, Heartland Corridor, TIGER,...

The bad

I reviewed the financial proposals for a local solar power park.  This will be a $12 million investment, paid for primarily by tax credits on the contruction (3 million) and green energy credits for electricity production (9 million).  The unadjusted revenue from power generation basically covers the operation and maintenance costs.  It will eliminate 3 million lbs of carbon, giving a cost of $8000/ton for carbon reductions.

There are far too many projects like this being pushed.  In terms of both economic impact and climate impact, this money should go the projects like Tower 55.  But this one will probably be funded.  The environmentalist hucksters want publicity, shiny toys, etc.  Actual climate impact comparisons are not part of their creed.

The ugly

The extensive corruption and mismanagement of government agencies and funds is surfacing with new stories weekly from the US, India, and elsewhere.  Crony capitalism is well entrenched and has found many ways to extract money from environmental concerns.

Part of dealing with this is to always ask "what will the cost per ton of carbon reductions be?"  Cost must include construction costs, subsidies, tax credits, incentives, etc.  Look at the total social cost.  Then compare projects.  For organizations with a track record, also compare their original estimates with the actual results upon project completion.  It's a modest step that is easy to explain and easy to justify.  It's enough to make a big shift away from bad projects to good projects.

A note on energy efficiency

I haven't ranted much lately about energy efficiency for the simple reason that it's becoming widely adopted and its saving a lot of energy.  The eco-activists are still unhappy.  I've even read some VC complaining bitterly that people are spending their money on energy efficiency rather than the VC's new alternative energy thing.

Press coverage is rare because the buyers are doing this to save money, so why waste money on PR efforts?  Sometimes you do get energy control companies that think the PR is worthwhile, especially for famous buildings.  But most of the saving is from small renovations and replacement of facilities and equipment.  Those don't make the news.

So it was nice to see the net effect is large enough that it now sometimes makes the news.

Hurricanes and Global Warming

Since there is a hurricane approaching the US coast, it's time to finally write this one.

A few years ago a paper was published in Nature that basically said:

If A, and B, and C, .... then there would be more hurricanes globally.

This is a fairly typical structure for a hypothesis.  But it struck me as odd that it was published in Nature.  Simple hypotheses like this are usually published in more specialized journals where they can attract the interest of other specialists who can contribute analysis of the proposal and data to confirm or deny the hypothesis.  The synchronized PR campaign and publicity explained this anomaly.  I've seen this before where a hypothetical is used as the basis for political campaigns. 

This particular hypothesis included two initial hypotheticals:

1. It hypothesized that hurricane frequency and intensity would increase if the temperature gradient between equator and poles increased.  This is not proven.  There are theoretical reasons that this might be the case, but there are others that would indicate the contrary.
2. It hypothesized that global warming would increase this temperature gradient.  Again, there are good theoretical arguments for and against.

After lots of publicity came the big lie, and it's a whopper.  It's another example of facts being irrelevant.  Examination of global hurricane data shows no significant change in hurricane frequency.  At the same time the press were bellowing about the increase in hurricane activity, the actual level was slightly below average.  The difference was that Katrina and a few other hurricanes hit the US.  That generates lots of publicity.

There is a recent increase in North Atlantic activity, which definitely excites lots of publicity.   There are claims that this is evidence for global warming, but the hypothesis was about global affects, not a local Atlantic effect.  The North Atlantic variability is a known weather cycle, although the underlying physics remain a mystery.  The current higher levels were first predicted in a 1955 report to the US Insurance industry.  The only reason it's a surprise to the public is the unwillingness of the public to hear the associated message about the dangers of building in dangerous locations.

But this all has nothing to do with the understanding, reality, or characteristics of global warming.   The absence of a global increase in hurricanes does not mean there is no global warming.  It might mean that global warming does not increase the temperature gradient, or that increased temperature gradient does not increase hurricane activity.

This could have been a quiet internal working paper.  But instead it was turned into a big political campaign, complete with misrepresentation of the paper, the real data, etc.