Movement on Texas Coal Fired Power Plants.

Byoliveridley

There’s been some progress on the coal fired power plants I had railed on about recently.
In Big Buyout, Utility to Limit New Coal Plants – New York Times

Under a proposed $45 billion buyout by a team of private equity firms, the TXU Corporation, a Texas utility that has long been the bane of environmental groups, will abandon plans to build 8 of 11 coal plants and commit to a broad menu of environmental measures, according to people involved in the negotiations. The roster of commitments came through an unusual process in which the equity firms asked two prominent environmental groups what measures could be taken to win their support. The result is an about-face from the company’s earlier approach to climate-change issues, and includes a goal of returning the carbon-dioxide emissions by TXU to 1990 levels by 2020. Environmental groups said yesterday that they had never known of a financial deal with such an ambitious built-in environmental component.

Better than nothing. This is good news for sure. But as I mentioned previously, the Sanders (Good ol’ socialist!) Bill calls for an 80% reduction from 1990 levels by 2050. This is required to cap CO2 levels at 450 ppm and avoid the worst effects of global warming. So, while reducing CO2 to 1990 levels sounds impressive in a breathlessly written NY Times article. It is not nearly enough. This is exactly what I was afraid of when I mentioned the moratorium word! In the absence of regulation, or a clear policy, private equity companies, power plants, and other plutocrats are setting the US global warming agenda. They are establishing the floor plan, meaning, we’ll set the bar near the floor and not budge. Yes, I know, the NRDC and Environmental Defense were involved, and this part is definitely good…

TXU will discard plans to build eight of 11 proposed new coal plants, which would have been major new sources of emissions. Those plants — which would have added more than 9,000 megawatts of new capacity, the equivalent of 3.5 percent of the nation’s current coal-fired power — had been part of a planned $10 billion expansion of coal-fired electricity.

TXU, which is based in Dallas, also intends to expand the renewable energy portion of its portfolio and reduce or offset its emissions significantly, said people who were familiar with the plans.

All very good, but as I talked about previously (man, way too much self reference, not a good thing!), a book called Reality Check just out assesses voluntary actions by various companies in the US, Europe and Japan and comes to the following conclusion:

Most of the programs it studies have positive results, but they are
small compared with business-as-usual trends and the impact of other
forces–such as higher energy prices. Importantly, potential gains may
be quickly exhausted as the “low-hanging fruit” is picked up by
voluntary programs.

Now tell me that this agreement does not fit this frame!

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Pesticide Exposure and India's green revolution

Byoliveridley

Pesticide exposure in Punjab and Haryana is out of control. When I was growing up, the Green Revolution was idolized and idealized to degree that in hindsight seems a little excessive. But back then, this octupling of wheat and rice yields in Punjab and Haryana catalyzed the transformation of India from a country mired in famine and food shortages to one that occasionally runs out of room to store excess food. So, this story (courtesy of 3QD) caught my attention.

Green.view | Chemical generation | Economist.com:

IF INDIAN newspaper reports are to be believed, the children of Punjab are in the throes of a grey revolution. Even those as young as ten are sprouting tufts of white and grey hair. Some are going blind. In Punjabi villages, children and adults rare afflicted by uncommon cancers.

The reason is massive and unregulated use of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals in India’s most intensively farmed state. According to an environmental report by Punjab’s government, the modest-sized state accounts for 17% of India’s total pesticide use. The state’s water, people, animals, milk and agricultural produce are all poisoned with the stuff.

Ignorance is part of the problem. The report includes details of a survey suggesting that nearly one-third of Punjabi farmers were unaware that pesticides come with instructions for use. Half of the farmers ignored these instructions. Three-quarters put empty pesticide containers to domestic uses.

The article concludes by saying that the government is encouraging the use of techniques including organic farming, more crop rotation, etc, and how this is ironically “reversing” the green revolution. But two separate issues are getting mixed up here. The green revolution was not won on excessive use of fertilizers, monoculture, excessive water use, and so on. Instead, the development of new hybrid, high yielding varieties of rice and wheat kick started the revolution. The wholesale adoption of water and input intensive agricultural techniques came along for for the ride with the rest of the revolution.

Hopefully, the Punjab government will not stop at writing reports, but start grassroots education projects with the farmers to encourage sensible farming techniques that take the good parts of the green revolution and leave the bad parts out.

Acrolein Main Cigarette Culprit?

Byoliveridley

Chemical & Engineering News: Latest News – Cigarettes’ Smoking Gun?

Acrolein, one of the 4,000 constituents of cigarette smoke, has been found unexpectedly to cause DNA damage in the gene for the infamous tumor-suppressor p53, which is often disrupted by cancer. In particular, the pattern of DNA mutations caused by acrolein mimics what is often found in human lung cancer samples (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0607031103).

“If cigarette smoke is the weapon that causes lung cancer, then these mutations are fingerprints on the knife,” says author Moon-shong Tang of New York University School of Medicine, in Tuxedo. Tang was also involved in identifying another cigarette-smoke component that can induce such mutations: a metabolite of a polycyclic hydrocarbon called benzo[a]pyrene. Acrolein is present in cigarette smoke in levels of up to 1,000 times greater than benzo[a]pyrene.

So, if you remove acrolein from tobacco smoke, does that make for a much safer smoking experience? Is this a research question worth answering? FYI, I watched Thank You for Smoking last night, so, fresh on my mind!

Chinese coal mines in BC: Missing the forest for the trees
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Chinese coal mines in BC: Missing the forest for the trees

Byoliveridley

The story of a Chinese company in BC hiring Chinese workers has received a lot of attention. Much of the attention has focused on the company’s decision to game the temporary worker system in order to avoid hiring “Canadian” workers. Many of the objections are made on nationalistic grounds, “OMG, THEY”RE TAKING CANADIAN JOBS”, which then leads down the path of racist anti-Chinese sentiment. This Tyee article (disclaimer: I am a Tyee monthly funder, but obviously have no editorial input!) summarizes the issues involved very well. Recent changes to Canada’s immigration laws make this kind of hiring logical, because it is now okay to pay temporary workers with little/no bargaining power 15% less than you would pay locals. Of course you have to document that there were no qualified locals, but as this particular incident indicates, there’s little/no actual enforcement unless a fuss is made.

I find temporary worker programs to be problematic because they provide no path to citizenship, no permanence for the people who want it, and cause ugly divisions in the community. If you think there are not enough “workers” in your community, open your borders, let them in and pay well, you’d be surprised.

I wanted to highlight two obvious issues that to my mind are as important:

  1. Carbon Bomb. It’s a coal mine! How many people in BC, which preens gloriously on its carbon tax, are aware that coal is BC’s Number One export? What is the point of having a carbon tax for consumers when producers get to make money off that carbon for free? Whether the coal is burned in BC, or in China, it causes the same damage. Whether the coal is used to generate power, or to make steel, it puts out the same amount of carbon dioxide. Whether the mine uses Chinese workers or locals, it produces the same climate changing emissions. So, why instead of making coal producers pay the real costs of their product, are we enabling them to evade carbon taxes, royalties, and save even more money by reducing wages? Also, coal mining is not employment intensive, as countless other people have pointed out. So it’s not really about the jobs either. Kevin Washbrook of StopCoal made this point as well in the Tyee article I linked to earlier.
  2. Does this mine have right to be there? The West Moberley First Nation, part of a Treaty 8 band is opposed to the project on its land. That should be the end of the story. The state of Canada has responsibilities as a settler entity to obtain free, prior and informed consent on development from the people it colonized. The US is a bit more honest in this regard as it regards the colonization as a thing of the past and gives its indigenous peoples little/no rights. Canada’s different, the indigenous here have specific standing because of Canada’s existing colonial links and Canadian governments and courts routinely confirm this standing. The BC government is currently negotiating treaties with many First Nations communities including the West Moberley First Nation.

We’re trying to set up a climate and environment disturbing, cost and tax evading coal mine on land that belongs to someone else using easily exploited temporary workers we can be racist towards.

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Pollution vs. Development? Hardly!

Byoliveridley

It’s clean air vs. TV in poor India village – International Herald Tribune

Across the developing world, cheap diesel generators from China and elsewhere have become a favorite way to make electricity. They power everything from irrigation pumps to television sets, allowing growing numbers of rural villages in many poor countries to grow more crops and connect to the wider world.

The headline sucks, clean air vs. TV is not really the choice here. Is the implication that third worlders somehow need to make this a “choice”? It’s not as if the rest of the world has to make this “choice”! They do seem to have both. This is a situation where poor choices are made because of poor infrastructure. Other than the headline, it is a good article because it makes all the right points:

  1. Lack of infrastructure – No centralized power to remote areas
  2. Well meaning, but poorly executed subsidies – Cheap Diesel and Kerosene
  3. Subsidy induced corruption – Diesel/Kerosene pilfering
  4. Top down approaches to development – Throw the money, pay no attention to local experts, don’t follow up, then blame the lazy villagers!
  5. Competition for scarce resources with developed countries – Germany will outpay India for photovoltaics every time.

Biomass burning as an alternative to diesel?

Given the popularity of generators, perhaps the most promising alternative is a new type like the one at the edge of the village that contributes much less to air pollution and global warming. It burns a common local weed instead of diesel, costs half as much to operate, emits less pollution and contributes less to global warming.

The main material is dhaincha, a weed commonly grown in India to restore nitrogen to depleted soils. The dhaincha grows 10 feet tall in just four months, with a three-inch-thick green stalk. Wood from shrubs and trees is used when there is not enough dhaincha.

I am not a big fan of biomass burning, but using a weed that can be replanted repeatedly seems fairly harmless, especially compared to burning diesel.

The project has succeeded partly because it has the active backing of one landlord family, the Sharans. Family members have gone on to successful business careers in big Indian cities and in Europe, and have dedicated themselves to helping their home village.

Local involvement, especially by authority figures goes a long way in rural India.
China does suggests another way forward.

China has tried another approach: supplementing an expansion of electricity from coal-fired power plants with cheap rooftop solar water heaters that channel water through thin pipes crisscrossing a shiny surface.

Close to 5,000 small Chinese companies sell these simple water heaters, and together they have made China the world’s largest market for solar water heaters, with 60 percent of the global market and more than 30 million households using the systems, said Eric Martinot, a renewable energy expert at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Not so hot during the monsoon, I guess! I remember a friend of mine having a solar heater in their home in the 1980’s. Their company used to make them, so it is old technology, with price being the prime barrier. It will work as a supplemental source, not as the prime source.

Clearly, the wider availability and ubiquity of consumer electronics, and electricity-dependent agriculture has outpaced India’s, and to a lesser extent, China’s power infrastructure. It is easy to make a billion television, it’s not quite so easy to keep them powered!

Canada – No new coal plants?

Byoliveridley

For a minute I thought the pain from playing volleyball last night, plus opening my computer up sleepily at 5:45 in the morning before catching an early bus to work had me hallucinating, but yes, the Canadian federal government actually wants to impose a moratorium on the construction of new coal fired power plants unless they include sequestration (which to me means no new power plants).

The federal government is planning sweeping new climate-change regulations for Canada's electricity sector that will phase out traditional coal-fired power

Any new coal plants will have to include highly expensive – and unproven – technology to capture greenhouse gas emissions and inject it underground for permanent storage, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said in an interview yesterday.

Ottawa also plans to impose absolute emission caps on utilities' existing coal-fired power plants and establish a market-based system to allow them to buy credits to meet those targets, Mr. Prentice said.

via reportonbusiness.com: Ottawa takes aim at coal power.

I have a certain distrust for this government, so details are crucial. The right things are being said:

  1. All new plants will need sequestration
  2. A cap and trade to deal with existing coal fired power plants
  3. Phase out of facilities after “fully amortized life” – Not clear on exactly what that means
  4. 90% Emissions free power sector by 2025

As the article points out, Canada relies on coal much less than a lot of other countries, only 18% of current emissions are from coal, as opposed to the US, where about 40% is from coal.

So, time to celebrate? Not exactly. Canada’s latest release of 2007 data indicates horrendous performance.

Canada 2007 GHG Inventory

Overall, total increase was 6 Megatonnes from 2004 to 2007. But the increases from the Tar Sands were nearly 16 Mt, meaning most of Canada’s other sectors saw decreases, thanks to a number of mild winters and greater efficiency.

Clearly, this performance is going to continue until the Tar Sands are included in any CO2 reduction strategies, whatever we do, or don’t do with the coal will have a little bit of impact, but will definitely not help Canada achieve any of its short or long term goals.

So, one cheer for this announcement. I suspect that the administration needs something to take to meetings, and is hoping that a coal moratorium will distract people from the biggest culprits, the Tar Sands and our insanely high per capita GHG footprint. A “no new coal” moratorium would be a huge deal in the States, and off the charts in China or India as far as reducing emissions go. But Canada, not bad, but definitely not good enough!

The Tar Sands will only be stopped when the US steps up to the plate and gets its Cap and Trade going.