Climate is no game, and it is never over

Dave Roberts had a wonderful post on August 30th, 2013 titled “Hope and Fellowship”, which addresses the question “Is there any hope? Or are we just f*cked?”  Here’s his brilliant summary:

And really, what else are we going to do?

Remember, there is no “too late” here, no “game over” — it will be a tragedy to shoot past 2 degrees to 3, but 4 is worse than 3, and 5 is worse than 4. Being unprepared for any of those will be much worse than being prepared. The future always forks; there are always better and worse paths ahead. There’s always a difference to be made.

When we ask for hope, then, I think we’re just asking for fellowship. The weight of climate change, like any weight, is easier to bear with others. And if there’s anything I’ve learned in these last 10 years, it’s that there are many, many others. They are out there, men and women of extraordinary imagination, courage, and perseverance, pouring themselves into this fight for a better future.

You are not alone. And as long as you are not alone, there is always hope.

Awhile back KC Golden had an hilarious post that makes a similar point (reposted on Climate Progress) titled

“Dad, Seriously, WTF Is Up With ‘Game Over’?!”

Dad, isn’t Jim Hansen that NASA mega-whiz you call “America’s pre-eminent climate scientist,” which is like geezerese for the smartest guy in the room?  And what is brain dude thinking when he says “Game over for the Climate”?

“Game”? You call this a game?  When losing it means“billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilization will collapse”?  K. Ceee, I know you’re super-busy but I need you to pay attention.

Which part of this sounds like a game to you?  The billions?  The people?  The poverty?  The civilization?  The collapse?  Daaad, back away from the smartphone.  I mean it.  Focus!  You can’t just go “game over for the climate…  New game!”… like there’s an app for what happens after you lose this one.

Dad, dude, Angry Birds is a game.  Climate disruption is just dumping on your kids’ head.  Are you laughing?  Because if you’re laughing, I can find an assisted living facility in Siberia.  Don’t push me.

Read more…

The basic message is right on:  "It’s no game, and it is never over". It resonated strongly with me because of the evolutionary approach I lay out in Cold Cash, Cool Climate:

“I advocate instead an evolutionary approach to this problem, implementing many different technologies, failing fast, and doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t. This approach, which the National Research Council dubs “iterative risk management”, recognizes the limitations of economic models and puts such analysis into an important but less grandiose role:  that of comparing cost effectiveness of different mitigation options in achieving a normatively defined target (like the 2 degrees C warming limit).

I call this approach “working forward toward a goal” and it’s a more business-oriented framing of the problem.  It mirrors the way companies face big strategic challenges, because they know that forecasting the future accurately is impossible, so they set a goal and figure out what they’d have to do to meet it, then adjust course as developments dictate.   It also frees you from the mostly self-imposed conceptual constraints that make it hard to envision a future much different from what exists today.”

This is why I’m somewhat critical of Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency declaring that “the door to a 2 degrees C trajectory is about to close”.  While I agree that there is real urgency to the climate problem, and it gets harder and harder to meet that limit with each passing year of inaction, we won’t be able to identify a moment in real time when it was possible before but it is now impossible.  Of course, we can say that if we continue on our current path for several more decades, we will indeed overshoot the 2 Celsius degree warming target, but there is significant uncertainty about exactly when we reach that point.  We won’t know until we’re well past the point of no return.

Each assessment of what is possible is flawed because of our imperfect foresight, and they all embody assumptions about what is possible and what isn’t.  The most common error is assuming that because we’ve built a capital stock we need to use it until it reaches the end of its life, but we probably won’t have that luxury.  The analysis of stock turnover I did in Chapter 5 of Cold Cash, Cool Climate convinced me that we’re going to have to scrap some capital even if we start aggressively reducing emissions tomorrow, but of course the more we build now the more we’ll have to scrap later.

That in itself should clarify things for those now fighting to build more emissions intensive infrastructure–there’s a real business risk to them because once the world finally accepts that rapid reductions of emission are required, those investors will lose their money.  This change of situation will occur in the next decade or so (it really must if we’re to turn this around–reality is a harsh mistress).  Some investors have already gotten that message and are starting to divest from fossil fuels. Once markets turn, they move very rapidly, and this situation will be no exception.

I also like Golden’s and Robert’s framing because there are always people eager to throw up their hands and say “we’re doomed!”.  That’s not helpful, of course–better that we give it our best shot even if we think it’s going to be very difficult to succeed. Humans are notoriously bad at predicting the future, for some very good reasons, so better not to be paralyzed by forecasts that are very likely to be wrong in any case.

So have hope, and be optimistic.  There’s every reason to believe that we can make more rapid changes than conventional wisdom would indicate. The future is ours to create.  With every choice we make, let’s ensure the future we create is a hopeful one.

Just because we've always done it that way doesn't mean we always need to

I just encountered another example of how re-imagining the way we deliver services can enable very low-cost access to communications.  My friend RJ Honicky wrote a paper in 2007 with colleagues at UC Berkeley describing how a “voice message mostly” mobile phone system could lead to improved equipment utilization, better service coverage, better quality of service, and much lower costs in developing countries.

The paper came out six years ago, so some technical details have no doubt changed, but the basic lesson is still a powerful one.  Just because we deployed mobile communications in a certain way in developed countries doesn’t mean we need to do the same thing in other places, and changing the business model for these services can result in substantial cost reductions and energy savings.

Honicky, R. J., Omar Bakr, Michael Demmer, and Eric Brewer. 2007. A message oriented phone system for low cost connectivity.  [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.91.1694&rep=rep1&type=pdf]

How a brilliant entrepreneurial innovator thinks about climate solutions

I visited my friend Saul Griffith at Other Lab on August 9th, 2013.  The lab is housed in the old Schoenstein & Sons pipe organ factory in San Francisco.  It’s a beautiful building, with its offices and hallways straight out of a Dashiell Hammett novel.

I loved visiting the lab because it was so inspirational.  I encountered inflatable robots, pneumatic solar mirror controls, a new kind of high pressure tank for storing natural gas or hydrogen for vehicles, 3D milling machines, high powered laser cutters, and custom-designed bicycles sized to fit your measurements.  Cool stuff, and it reminded me that we need not be hamstrung by how things have been done in the past.  The future is indeed ours to create!

Saul was good enough to write the forward to Cold Cash, Cool Climate:  Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs in 2011, and he’s given permission for me to repost it below.  This will give you a flavor for how a brilliant entrepreneurial innovator thinks about climate solutions at a high level.

If equations aren’t your thing, just skip them and read the summaries just below each one.  You’ll get the gist.

Saul Griffith’s Foreword to Cold Cash, Cool Climate

Climate change, energy independence, and sustainability: all of these things are rightly getting more attention than ever before. They are complex global problems requiring not one, but thousands, of solutions. Some solutions require mandates, some rely on politics, some need technology, and some hinge on behavioral change. All of the solutions will require entrepreneurs – stubborn, fast-moving, single-minded, goal-oriented individuals, either in the private or public sector. Without these entrepreneurs pushing boundaries and the speed of deployment, uptake of these solutions will be too slow to avert the worst consequences of these global challenges. This book is a motivational treatise that pushes the green entrepreneur of the future to fulfill this important role.

More than that, this book is about the scientific knowledge that helps define the character and limitations of these solutions. If we are to leave a livable world (and hopefully a vital and vibrant world) for our children and grandchildren, the scale of what needs to happen this century is daunting.  Achieving even a mildly ambitious outcome of stabilizing the climate at 450 parts per million (ppm) of CO₂ equivalent will mean the world of our future will look very different from today. Our transportation systems, heating and cooling systems, built environment and architecture, food systems, and even healthcare and education systems will all need to change – some a little, most a lot. Lots of people are scared of change, but the true entrepreneur embraces it. This is the green entrepreneur’s century.

Back in 2007 I was bedridden with chicken pox. Like most entrepreneurs I don’t take to idleness very well, so I set myself a task: measure every measurable impact of my lifestyle in terms of energy. I was already a ‘Green Entrepreneur’ – the CEO of a venture-financed, utility-scale wind energy start-up – and generally someone that people would look at as a model citizen when it comes to the environment and combating climate change. I was (mostly) a bicycle commuter; I was working on audacious new energy technologies.

What I learned shocked me. Although I thought I was a model citizen of the new cleaner world, I found that my lifestyle was consuming double or more the amount of energy that the average American was, and more than ten times that of the average Chinese citizen! Measuring everything that I did, quite literally down to my use of aluminum foil for cooking, and of the choice of textiles that I wore (as well as the more obvious things like miles travelled and electricity consumption), I realized that we now live in an age of consequence. It is possible to measure everything that you do – and its environmental impact. Whether you care about water, energy, carbon, or habitat destruction, we can now infer or estimate the impact of any purchasing decision on any of those outcomes. This exercise also made me furious with the often misleading reporting on new ‘green’ products and technologies. I became an angry young man again.

Being angry doesn’t help much though, whereas being an entrepreneur does. It’s been a few years since I had my wake-up call. People typically believe that the future for their children will be better, brighter, cleaner, and more wonderful than the past. That’s our challenge right now. We have to figure out how to make the future better than the past, while meeting the implied demands of the science of climate change. I no longer get angry about poorly written press releases and green-washing. In fact, they’re probably useful in that they socialize the idea of a cleaner and greener future, while the entrepreneurs who do the math, and have the analytical rigor, create the truly revolutionary products consumers are increasingly starting to demand.

I’m personally dedicated to creating these new products and services and bringing them to market. I have to acknowledge, however, that we need lots of entrepreneurs, working on lots of things, so that all of our contributions will add up to the kind of future that we want to live in – one that will be more wonderful than the past. It means that we’ll need to develop new sources of energy, and that there are thousands of technologies, solutions, and great companies to be built in the trillion-dollar energy generation game. There are even more technologies, solutions and great companies to be built in the consumer space. Here’s the trick: think of any product or service that you use today, whether it be how you get your milk, how you heat your home, or how you get your music. Figure out a way to deliver that product or service at one-half, or even better, one-tenth the amount of energy/water/habitat destruction/toxicity, and you likely have yourself a multi-million or multi-billion dollar product or service.  This is why this book will be a great guide for the entrepreneurs of this century, and why Koomey’s treatment of the subject matter provides a great handle for the time-strapped entrepreneur.

There is a huge amount of science and engineering and math that the entrepreneur of the future would like to know, but in some sense we can reduce the problem to a few handy pieces of technically grounded practical advice.  In the sections that follow, I include the equations for the technically minded reader, but you can just jump straight to the summaries that immediately follow those if you prefer.

Regarding travel of any kind

In high school, we learn mechanics in the Newtonian world, but in reality, almost any time we move, we do so through a fluid, usually air or water. Thus, for almost any transportation the power P required to move an object is given (roughly) by

where ρ is the density of the fluid (usually air or water), A is the frontal area of the moving body, C_d is drag coefficient, which is determined by the shape, and v is the velocity of movement. Colloquially speaking, this means to design any product or service that has to move with a lower power or energy requirement:

• Decrease A. Make it small and long.

• Decrease C_d. Make it aerodynamic, or ‘fish-shaped’.

• Decrease v². Travel slowly.

This means that a really big, fast, low-energy super car is never going to exist, despite the attractiveness of the idea. Beautiful designed cars that recognize the constraints of the physics above could be far more efficient, and more of a pleasure to drive (or be robotically driven in). For short trips we will do even better by not driving at all, and by utilizing modern electric drive trains in lightweight personal vehicles.

Regarding the heating or cooling of anything

The power P required to heat or cool any object is given by

where k is the object’s thermal conductivity, A is the cross-sectional area between hot and cold, ∆T is the temperature difference, and ∆x is the distance between hot and cold. As above, this equation implies that to make more efficient transfers of heat, we must

• Decrease k. Insulate well.

• Increase ∆x. Use thick walls.

• Decrease A. Small is beautiful.

• Decrease ∆T. Heat or cool only as much as necessary.

Regarding the manufacturing of anything

The average power requirement over the life of a product is given by

And E_embodied is the energy content of the material of which a device is constructed.

What these equations say is that we must:

• Decrease M_massofobject. Make it weigh less.

• Decrease E_embodied. Use materials with lower embodied energy (e.g. substitute wood for aluminum).

•Increase T_lifetime. Making objects that last much longer, perhaps with service and repair-based business models, will have the biggest effect.

Regarding the design of electronics

The average power requirement over the life of a product is given by

where I = current and R = resistance.

This equation implies that lowering resistance and current will reduce the power needed to accomplish a task. For electrical devices:

• reduce the current (I) by improving efficiency and redesigning the task

• make the wires bigger (reduces R)

Harness the power of information

Of course, the most important new tool we have in our toolbox is information. Wherever possible, use information technology to eliminate wasteful energy use. Examples abound: Replacing flights or driving by teleconferencing is a huge win for the environment. Using information to match needs with wants, such as ZipCar or City Car Share, eliminates the need for ownership of energy-intensive items. Using information technology such as Netflix, the Kindle, or the Apple iPad eliminates the physical delivery of goods.

A call for prompt action

The battle is not over once we have pioneered newer, more ecological technologies. We must still overcome the political, cultural and economic barriers to get people to adopt the low carbon options really fast. With these challenges, the imperative of this book is more apt than ever: we need entrepreneurs to lead the decarbonization of our lives now, and to make it happen pronto! I hope this book serves as a call to action for the next generation to capitalize on this age of consequence, building an awesome future harmonious with our understanding of how our home planet works.

-Saul Griffith, Ph.D., Other Lab, San Francisco, CA, October 12, 2011

Kudos to Amazon.com for making Kindle recycling simple

My old Kindle 2 gave up the ghost awhile back, and I finally got around to doing something about it.  I ended up getting a refurbished PaperWhite, which works fine, and has much longer battery life than the Kindle 2 (thanks to progress in battery, screen, communications, and computing technologies, which we discuss in detail in a forthcoming article in the Annual Review of Environmental and Resources).

The part of the process that I didn’t expect to be so easy was recycling the old kindle.  Instead of having to hunt around for local recyclers, I just searched for Kindle recycling online and found this site through Amazon.com:  http://recycling.ecotakeback.com.  I entered my name, address, and email, and it printed a prepaid UPS label.  That was it, so off to UPS it goes.  That counts as responsible environmental stewardship by any measure!

I’m sure other companies have programs like this, so I’m interested to hear your experiences, both good and bad.  Email me!

Addendum:  Readers of Cold Cash, Cool Climate:  Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs will remember that extended producer responsibility, which requires manufacturers to take responsibility for their products at the end of life, is one way to modify property rights to ensure better choices from the environmental perspective.  Almost all analyses of options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions ignore the potential for changing property rights, but it’s a powerful way to create new possibilities for better environmental performance.

The electricity used by iPhones and refrigerators, take two

Joe Romm at Climate Progress was good enough to post my analysis of the recent claim that your iPhone uses as much electricity as two refrigerators.  This issue was highlighted in Friday’s edition of NPR’s Marketplace program, which thankfully didn’t fall into the false balance trap that many journalists find irresistible.  Here’s the short summary and introduction, which will give you the overall picture:

Short summary

Mark Mills created headlines in the past week by claiming that all the power needed to bring data to the iPhone, plus all the related energy to manufacture it and the related network equipment, makes it responsible for as much electricity as two refrigerators.  A more careful analysis confirms that Mr. Mills has overestimated the electricity associated with an iPhone by at least a factor of 18. Unfortunately, some parts of the media seem unable to ignore this verifiably false but otherwise quite memorable headline.

Introduction

Last week several of my friends alerted me to a claim that the iPhone uses as much electricity as two refrigerators when you count the energy needed to make it, run it and power the “behind-the-wall” equipment to deliver data to the device.  Discussion of the original report (“The Cloud Begins with Coal”, hereafter CBC) showed up on the Breakthrough Institute site, Time Magazine Online, MSN News, the Huffington Post, MarketWatch, and Grist, among others (with most focusing on the comparison between a smart phone and one refrigerator.

When I heard this claim, it took me back to the year 2000, when Mark P. Mills and Peter Huber first made the claim that the networking electricity for a wireless Palm VII exceeded the electricity for running a refrigerator (1000 to 2000 kWh, they claimed, the lower bound of which was a bit higher than the average installed base for US fridges at that time).  It didn’t sound plausible, and so I and some colleagues investigated, finding that Mr. Mills and Mr. Huber had overestimated the electricity needed to feed data to a wireless Palm VII by a factor of 2000 (Koomey et al. 2004).

Just as happened last time, Mr. Mills, in the CBC report, has made attention-getting claims that don’t stand up to scrutiny (Kawamoto et al. 2002, Koomey 2000, Koomey 2003, Koomey 2008, Koomey et al. 1999, Koomey et al. 2002, Koomey et al. 2004, Romm et al. 1999, Roth et al. 2002).  He cherry picks numbers to achieve his desired results, and his report has vague or non-existent references (but lots of footnotes).  This appears to be an attempt to create a patina of respectibility for his calculations while obfuscating his methods, but I don’t know for sure.

The big story here is why the media is paying any attention to this report at all.  Mr. Mills proved more than a decade ago that he is not a reliable source on the issue of electricity used by information technology.  His recent work simply confirms this conclusion.  Unfortunately, it also confirms what seems to be an inability of most media outlets to report sensibly about technical topics, in part because of the pressure to generate attention-getting headlines, regardless of their veracity.  This sorry episode does not make me optimistic for our ability as a society to deal with complex issues like climate change in the 21^st century unless we change the way media reporting is conducted on technical issues.

Read more…

Story on NPR's Marketplace about the fridge vs. iPhone comparison

Adriene Hill of NPR’s marketplace program did a nice job describing the fridge vs. iPhone story today (“No, your phone doesn’t use as much electricity as a refrigerator”).  My favorite part of the story was my friend Bruce Nordman’s analogy about the three headed cat:

“If I came up to you and remarked to you that there is a one-headed cat around the corner from your house you would be totally uninterested,” says Bruce Nordman, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory*, “but if I said there was a three-headed cat you’d be amazed that it exists and want to go see it; so these fantastical assertions naturally attract people’s attention, whether or not they are real.”

Now that’s a great analogy.  I wish I had thought of that!

For more background and history about the last time people made claims like these, see this recent post.

Wild claims about electricity used by computers that just won't die (but should)

Mark P. Mills has reappeared, and remarkably is repeating some of the same wild claims that we debunked last time (circa 1999-2003).  As a public service, I’ve listed the most important documents summarizing the previous controversy for the benefit of media folks and other interested parties who otherwise would have a hard time piecing it all together.  Bottom line:  Mr. Mills has made so many incorrect claims that he simply shouldn’t be treated as a serious participant in discussions about electricity used by information technology (IT) equipment.  He cherry picks numbers to suit his narrative, and creates the appearance of doing real research by including many footnotes, but almost invariably he overestimates the amount of electricity used by IT equipment.  Last time many important people were misled by his antics–I hope they are smarter this time.

1) Read the Epilogue to the 2nd edition of my book Turning Numbers into Knowledge, which is a good overall summary of the controversy and its resolution.

Koomey, Jonathan. 2008. Turning Numbers into Knowledge:  Mastering the Art of Problem Solving. 2nd ed. Oakland, CA: Analytics Press.

2) Here’s the initial article in Forbes in 1999:

Huber, Peter, and Mark P. Mills. 1999. “Dig more coal—the PCs are coming.” In Forbes. May 31. pp. 70-72. [http://www.forbes.com/global/1999/0531/0211100a.html]

3) The Forbes article got the most attention, but it was supported by another report.  Email me directly for a copy of this one.

Mills, Mark P. 1999. The Internet Begins with Coal:  A Preliminary Exploration of the Impact of the Internet on Electricity Consumption. Arlington, VA: The Greening Earth Society.  May.

4) Amory Lovins posted an exchange of emails between him and Mills in 1999 (with a few others of us as occasional participants or observers).  It’s downloadable here:

Exchanges between Mark Mills and Amory Lovins - Rocky Mountain …

5) My colleagues and I at LBNL did an initial analysis memo soon after the Forbes article came out:

Koomey, Jonathan, Kaoru Kawamoto, Bruce Nordman, Mary Ann Piette, and Richard E. Brown. 1999. Initial comments on ‘The Internet Begins with Coal’. Berkeley, CA: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. LBNL-44698.  December 9. [http://enduse.lbl.gov/SharedData/IT/Forbescritique991209.pdf]

6) Mills did congressional testimony on Feb 2, 2000, and I did an annotated rebuttal.

Koomey, Jonathan G. 2000. Rebuttal to Testimony on ‘Kyoto and the Internet: The Energy Implications of the Digital Economy’. Berkeley, CA: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. LBNL-46509.  August. [http://enduse.lbl.gov/Info/annotatedmillstestimony.pdf]

7) Huber and Mills published a widely read op-ed in the WSJ in 2000, which is where they talked about the network electricity for a Palm pilot using as much electricity as a fridge.

Huber, Peter, and Mark P. Mills. 2000. “Got a Computer?  More Power to You.” Wall Street Journal.  New York, NY.  September 7. p. A26. [http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=4524]

8) My former group at LBNL did a careful bottom up analysis of US IT electricity use, finding much lower numbers than did Mills, and publishing in the peer reviewed Energy-the International Journal in 2002 (Email me for a copy of this one):

Kawamoto, Kaoru, Jonathan Koomey, Bruce Nordman, Richard E. Brown, Maryann Piette, Michael Ting, and Alan Meier. 2002. “Electricity Used by Office Equipment and Network Equipment in the U.S."  Energy–The International Journal (also LBNL-45917).  vol. 27, no. 3. March. pp. 255-269.

9) Kurt Roth at ADL did a study that validated the work in item #7.

Roth, Kurt, Fred Goldstein, and Jonathan Kleinman. 2002. Energy Consumption by Office and Telecommunications Equipment in Commercial Buildings–Volume I:  Energy Consumption Baseline. Washington, DC: Prepared by Arthur D. Little for the U.S. Department of Energy. A.D. Little Reference no. 72895-00.  January. [http://www.mediafire.com/?75ykfz6rdmex11s]

10) I and other colleagues published an article titled "Sorry, wrong number” in which we described the Mills’ estimates as one of several examples of widely cited energy statistics that were wildly wrong (Email me for a copy of this one).

Koomey, Jonathan, Chris Calwell, Skip Laitner, Jane Thornton, Richard E. Brown, Joe Eto, Carrie Webber, and Cathy Cullicott. 2002. “Sorry, wrong number:  The use and misuse of numerical facts in analysis and media reporting of energy issues."  In Annual Review of Energy and the Environment 2002. Edited by R. H. Socolow, D. Anderson and J. Harte. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc. (also LBNL-50499). pp. 119-158.

11) I wrote a 2 page summary article, also titled "Sorry, wrong number” but with a different subtitle, describing why getting the numbers right on this topic really matters, and giving advice to help people avoid getting fooled by charlatans (Email me for a copy of this one).

Koomey, Jonathan. 2003. “Sorry, Wrong Number:  Separating Fact from Fiction in the Information Age.” In IEEE Spectrum. June. pp. 11-12.

12) In the last of our detailed debunkings, we dissected the “network electricity use of a wireless PDA is more than that of a refrigerator” myth perpetuated by Mr. Mills, with a little help from my friends at Palm (Email me for a copy of this one).

Koomey, Jonathan, Huimin Chong, Woonsien Loh, Bruce Nordman, and Michele Blazek. 2004. “Network electricity use associated with wireless personal digital assistants."  The ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems (also LBNL-54105).  vol. 10, no. 3. September. pp. 131-137.

13) There’s an LBNL site that contains a lot of relevant material, but it hasn’t been updated since I left LBNL in 2003:  http://enduse.lbl.gov/Projects/InfoTech.html

Addendum:

14) Joe Romm just reminded me of the article he did for a Rand conference that ultimately ended up in a refereed journal (Resources, Conservation, and Recycling), in which he analyzed Mills’ claims from a macro perspective, and showed that the only way those could be true would be if electricity intensity of the economy was increasing after the advent of the Internet, but of course the exact opposite was true.  This argument was summarized in Item 10, above.

Romm, Joe. 2002. "The Internet and the new energy economy."  Resources, Conservation, and Recycling.  vol. 36, no. 3. October. pp. 197-210. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344902000848]

To download the conference paper version from Rand for free, go to http://192.5.14.43/content/dam/rand/pubs/conf_proceedings/CF170z1-1/CF170.1.romm.pdf

15) Also important is this article by Romm et al. that discusses the broader systemic effects that the Internet enables.

Romm, Joe, Arthur Rosenfeld, and Susan Herrmann. 1999. The Internet Economy and Global Warming. Washington, DC: Center for Energy & Climate Solutions.   [http://infohouse.p2ric.org/ref/04/03784/0378401.pdf]

An open letter to Google about their fundraiser for Senator James Inhofe

Some colleagues and I, all of whom were Google Science Communication Fellows in 2011, wrote and posted at Climate Science Watch an open letter to Eric Schmidt and Larry Page of Google about their fundraiser for Senator James Inhofe.  You can read the letter here.

Four of us also wrote a more extensive essay, which Andy Revkin posted at his Dot Earth blog.  We’re hopeful that our efforts will stimulate discussion of how corporate america should deal with those (like Senator Inhofe) who deny the reality of climate change.

Comments welcomed!

Here’s the link to the open letter:

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/08/01/open-letter-from-google-science-communication-fellows/

Here’s the link to the longer essay:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/google-science-fellows-challenge-companys-support-for-inhof/?_r=1&

Addendum, August 1, 2013 8:15pm:  There’s an article describing the open letter on Climate Progress that has more than 3100 Facebook “likes”, which is more than any other article with which I’ve ever been associated.

The headline is slightly misleading, as we’re not “Google’s own scientists”, but it’s still worth a read.

My Technology Review  article called “The Computing Trend that Will Change Everything” received 1100 Facebook likes and the editors thought it was a blockbuster.  Getting a tweet from Vinod Khosla (and lots of others) helped in that instance.  Given that it’s got more than three times as many “likes”, I think it’s fair to say that the open letter to Google has gone viral.

Apple patent points to the future of power management for mobile computing devices

This Apple patent points to the future of power management for mobile computing devices.  Devices will use context-specific information (like estimating how far you are from your destination using the GPS in your phone) to help decide when to reduce power use and extend battery life.  Smart everything, getting smarter all the time!

Mac Rumors:  Apple Applies for Patent on Intelligent ‘Power Management for Electronic Devices’

A newly published patent application from Apple describes a “power management for electronic devices” system, which detects the usage…

An outstanding gadget for anyone who wants to learn about temperature and heat flow

Because of the recent heat wave around here, I’ve been trying to figure out how to keep our house from heating up so much.  I started using a Maverick Laser Surface Thermometer to learn more about heat flows and temperatures inside the house.  It retails for about $35 on Amazon, and is incredibly useful, in part because it gives you a nearly instantaneous temperature measurement of surfaces up to 5 feet away.  The claim is that it can measure temperatures from -58 degrees F to 1022 degrees F, and is useful for cooking as well as home energy work.

For example, my contractor suggested putting up some reflective foil insulation on the inside of the attic ceiling.  To test this idea, I thumbtacked a sample of the insulation onto the inside of the roof in the attic and put the laser thermometer to work.  Sure enough, the reflective insulation reduced the surface temperature by 5-6 degrees F compared to the plywood next to it.

I also randomly started aiming the laser at different parts of the wall, and found that our downstairs thermostat is on the opposite side of the wall from our garage water heater, and so registers about 2 degrees F higher than the interior wall and the associated air temperature.  Good to know!

Of course, lasers aren’t for kids, so be sure to keep this tool in a safe place, but if you are at all interested in where your heat is going, this device can help.

Our article in Nature Climate Change just came out: Characteristics of Low Carbon Data Centres

This article gives a tidy summary of the key factors affecting the greenhouse gas emissions associated with data centers, and helps readers prioritize how best to reduce those emissions.  The three areas for improvement are the efficiency of the information technology (IT) equipment (servers, storage, and communications), the efficiency of the infrastructure equipment (fans, cooling, pumps, power distribution), and the carbon intensity of electricity production.

These factors can be conveniently pictured using what we call a “data center energy-carbon performance map” like the one shown in Figure 1:

Figure 1:  The data center energy-carbon performance map.  The shaded area bounds the potential operational energy and carbon performance range of a prototype US data centre and illustrates the relative performance of different data centre characteristics. Coloured areas indicate general regions of energy–carbon performance. For some data centres, only subareas of this map will apply depending on equipment and electrical power constraints. Numbered points are discussed in the text of the article. See section S2 of the Supplementary Information for details. GHG=greenhouse gas, PUE= Power Utilization Effectiveness.  Download a larger version.

The prototypical data center powered by coal-fired electricity is in the upper right hand corner, while the best place for a data center to be is in the lower left hand corner (high IT efficiency, low energy, low emissions).  Note that you can have a high energy, high emissions facility with very low Power Utilization Effectiveness (PUE, the industry standard metric for infrastructure losses.  A PUE of 1.0 represents zero infrastructure energy losses, with typical existing “in-house” facilities having PUEs of 1.8 or 1.9.  In those facilities, there is 0.8-0.9 kWh of infrastructure overhead for every kWh of IT load).

The critical lesson from the analysis is that IT efficiency (which includes higher utilization and performance improvements as well as purchasing efficient hardware) is the most important issue on which to focus.  Most recent efforts in the industry have been on improving infrastructure efficiency, which has many beneficial effects, but is not as important a lever as is the IT efficiency (in many new facilities we are reaching the limits of infrastructure efficiency, with PUEs as low as 1.04).  The article also makes clear that just switching an inefficient data center to low carbon electricity isn’t a good choice, because it uses up scarce low carbon electricity that could otherwise be used elsewhere.

Here’s the key paragraph from the conclusions:

Here we offer the following recommendations to policymakers who seek to design effective incentives for low-carbon data centres: all existing data centres should maximize IT-device efficiency, especially as these devices can turn over quickly and thereby deliver rapid improvements. Decisions regarding when to upgrade remaining devices to more efficient models can be informed in part by a break-even analysis of the embodied emissions required to manufacture new devices versus the operational energy savings that would be realized. New data centres should locate in areas with ample free cooling and/or low-carbon electricity grids to further push operations towards better energy and carbon performance. In new or existing facilities where optimal IT-device efficiency is not feasible, significant reductions in PUE critically rise in importance as a policy aim (but still result in higher energy-use levels than efficient IT devices would deliver). Where such PUE reductions are constrained by location (for example, a lack of free cooling), procuring low-carbon electricity — either from local electricity providers or through the installation of reduced-carbon self-generation such as Solid Oxide Fuel Cells — becomes the next chief lever after energy efficiency has reached its practical limit. With these insights in mind, public- and private-sector policymakers can accelerate the transition to a low-carbon Internet by aligning their incentives with data centre characteristics that matter.

The article summarizes some important lessons for those thinking about low emission data centers, and I highly recommend reading it if you are interested in this area.  It’s a short, crisply written paper, and one that should yield real insight if you’re thinking deeply about these issues.  Please email me if you’d like a copy (it’s behind a paywall).

Masanet, Eric, Arman Shehabi, and Jonathan Koomey. 2013. “Characteristics of Low-Carbon Data Centers."  Nature Climate Change.  vol. 3, no. 7. July. pp. 627-630. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1786 and http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n7/abs/nclimate1786.html#supplementary-information]

Addendum:  Katie Fehrenbacher of GigaOm just wrote a short summary of the article.

Barack Obama, Climate Hawk!

Barack Obama, Climate Hawk!

More context at http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/25/2213341/invest-divest-obama-goes-full-climate-hawk-in-speech-unveiling-plan-to-cut-carbon-pollution/

The back story about “The Fatal Flaw in the Case for Keystone”

For many months I struggled with what to think about the Keystone pipeline.  On the one hand, my friends in the Administration and elsewhere argued persuasively (at least on first blush) that the oil from the tar sands would be sold one way or another, so whether the pipeline was completed or not didn’t make any difference from a climate perspective.  On the other hand, I was instinctively skeptical of building infrastructure to high carbon resources that we simply don’t have the luxury to burn if we hope to stabilize the climate.

What I came to realize was that the first point of view was based on a flawed framing of the problem, which led me to write the op-ed titled “The Fatal Flaw in the Case for Keystone”.  The purpose of this short note is to explain the underlying intellectual roots of that framing (and the circular reasoning it engendered), so students of these matters can dig deeper and avoid making such mistakes in the future.

Neoclassical economics has taught us a lot about how economies work, but it is based on a set of assumptions that often don’t reflect economic decisionmaking in the real world.  For example, most economic models assume perfect & costless information, perfect competition, no externalities, no transaction costs, and constant or decreasing returns to scale.   In this world, it is sufficient to show that there’s a price difference between (for example) Alberta Tar Sands oil and similar heavy oil from other places, and to state that market forces won’t let that price difference persist.  That’s, in essence, what it means to state that “the Alberta tar sands oil will be sold anyway”.

In the real world, however, information is imperfect and costly, transaction costs can be large, and increasing returns to scale are pervasive.  These (and other) factors lead to what’s called “path dependence”, meaning that our choices now affect our options later.  For example, if we invest in deploying mass produced technologies (like solar panels and wind turbines) we move down the learning curve, thus reducing the costs of those technologies five or ten years hence.  If we deploy fewer of those devices, we don’t move as far down the learning curve and their costs in 2020 will be higher than they would be in the case where we more actively promote deployment of these technologies.

Another source of path dependence is the nature of the climate problem itself.  Because the most important greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for a long time, it’s the cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases that matter.  That means that we can emit only a fixed amount of carbon (our “carbon budget”) if we want to stay under the 2 Celsius degree warming limit that the US and other major nations accepted at Copenhagen in 2009.  If we burn more high carbon fuels now, we commit ourselves to even faster reductions in emissions later (because the total carbon budget over the next century is fixed).

In the case of Keystone, path dependence matters a lot.  Right now the heavy oils from the tar sands are “landlocked”, because pipeline capacity is limited.  That means that the price of heavy oil from Alberta is much lower than comparable heavy oils (like those from Mexico, called Maya heavy oil).  This discount can be tens of dollars per barrel, and it reflects the limited transportation options for tar sands producers to move their product to market.  In the last nine months it has ranged between $20 and $40 per barrel.  Building more pipelines will allow this differential to narrow and eventually close, but the rate at which it closes depends on how fast pipeline capacity is built (it is path dependent).

The idea that “tar sands oil will be sold anyway” assumes that adequate pipeline capacity will be built to allow this outcome to come to pass, so it’s circular to argue (as the State Department’s Environmental Impact Statement does) that approving Keystone XL will have no effect on the exploitation of the tar sands.  Any one project will have a minimal effect, of course, but the cumulative effect of building enough pipelines for tar sands oil to make its way to market will be to allow greater exploitation of tar sands than would otherwise be possible.

The claim that tar sands oil will make its way to market one way or another is therefore dependent on the construction of additional pipeline capacity.  If pipelines aren’t built, then the price differentials won’t narrow and less tar sands oil will be produced than otherwise (because the profitability of exploiting this resource would be substantially reduced).  The logic in the State Department’s Environmental Impact statement about whether approving Keystone would increase exploitation of the tar sands is therefore invalid (because it’s circular).

The key issue from a climate perspective comes down to whether building more pipelines would affect the cumulative emissions from the tar sands.  The State Department’s environmental impact statement comes to one conclusion, based on the circular reasoning I identify above, but the Canadian Oil Industry comes to the opposite conclusion (as I point out in the op-ed).  If the construction of additional pipelines would affect the quantity of heavy oil extracted from the tar sands, then approving the Keystone XL pipeline (and any additional pipelines to the tar sands) is counter to the interests of climate protection, and the pipeline should therefore be rejected on that basis.

Addendum:  Given what the President said in his climate speech today, the argument I make above should sink the Keystone XL pipeline.

Addendum #2:  See these illuminating musings by Dave Roberts about President Obama’s statement about Keystone and this excellent piece by Jesse Jenkins summarizing the different possible scenarios related to Keystone.  The key quote from Jenkins:  "So can rail lines really scale up to ultimately handle a couple million barrels of new tar sands oil shipments per year?  In many ways, the Keystone debate hinges on this question.“  This quote echoes what Robert and I discuss in the comments below, which is why I’m going to delve more into the question of whether rail is truly a substitute for pipelines.

The Fatal Flaw in the Case for Keystone

The US State Department recently delayed their final decision about the Keystone XL pipeline, [1] which would transport heavy oil from Canada’s Alberta tar sands to US refineries on the Gulf coast.  Proponents of the pipeline claim that it will create many US jobs and improve US national security, but in neither case are these benefits likely to be significant. [2]  [3]  They also claim (with some justification) that the pipeline would reduce the risk of local environmental damages compared to other shipping methods, but that argument assumes that the oil will flow from Alberta one way or another.

It is this last assumption that is the fatal flaw in the arguments of pipeline proponents, but it is a view that is widely shared.  For example, the State Department’s 2013 Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement assumes that approving the pipeline would have no effect on future production of tar sands:

Approval or denial of any one crude oil transport project, including the proposed [Keystone XL] Project, remains unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands, or the continued demand for heavy crude oil at refineries in the U.S.[4]

The legalistic focus on “any one crude oil transport project” guarantees that the tar sands will be exploited to their maximum potential.  Each incremental increase in pipeline capacity by itself may not contribute much to additional tar sands production, but many pipelines to the tar sands would be approved if we study each in isolation, and a significant increase in tar sands production would be the perverse result.

Conversely, we know that constraints on pipelines to the tar sands would limit overall tar sands production, because the Canadian oil industry says so.  In an explicit acknowledgement of the importance of future pipelines for increased exploitation of tar sands, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers recently described their forecast that Alberta oil sands production would be 2.5 million barrels per day in 2030 if “the only [pipeline] projects to proceed were the ones in operation or currently under construction”, but twice that if additional pipelines are built.[5]  This conclusion was reinforced by a recent Goldman Sachs analysis of tar sands economics.[6]

Of course, Canada may approve other “in country” pipelines to Alberta, but Transcanada chose the Keystone XL pipeline route because it was the cheapest and easiest method to move heavy oil to refineries with capacity to process it. The other options must be less desirable because otherwise Transcanada would have chosen those instead.  As a case in point, British Columbia recently rejected a pipeline to the Pacific that was one of the contingency routes in case Keystone XL was not approved.[7]

The tar sands are 14-20% more carbon polluting per unit of energy than traditional oil, when considering the full life-cycle of exploration, extraction, and consumption.[8]  Using this fuel therefore has an opportunity cost, because it yields less energy per ton of carbon emitted than other fossil fuels like natural gas, and much less than renewable sources like solar or wind (which have emissions associated with their manufacturing, installation, and decommissioning).

We can emit a fixed amount of carbon over the next few decades and stay under the two Celsius degree warming limit that the US and other major countries accepted in 2009 at Copenhagen (that’s our “carbon budget”).[9] Contrary to the arguments of Keystone proponents, approving the pipeline (and the ones that will inevitably follow) will accelerate exploitation of the tar sands and eat up the remaining carbon budget more rapidly than would alternatives. That’s why the pipeline is counter to the interests of the US and the world, and why the US State Department should not approve its completion.

Ultimately, we’ll need to do what former CIA director Jim Woolsey recommends: turn oil into salt.[10]  That formerly strategic commodity is now something we buy cheaply at the supermarket, made so by alternatives (like refrigeration) that rendered its former use in meat preservation obsolete.  We need to buy time until we can more widely deploy alternatives to fossil fuels, and slowing the exploitation of tar sands is one good way to do just that.

________________________________________________

Jonathan Koomey, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow at the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University.  He’s also the author of Cold Cash, Cool Climate:  Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs (Analytics Press, 2012) and coauthor of Energy Policy in the Greenhouse (John Wiley and Sons, 1992).

[1] State Department decision delayed to late 2013 or early 2014:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/11/us-usa-keystone-delay-idUSBRE94A00T20130511

[2] the number of permanent jobs associated with operating the pipeline number in the dozens, while the direct employment from pipeline construction totals 3,900 temporary jobs lasting one to two years (US Department of State. 2013. Draft supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL Project.  March. [http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/draftseis/index.htm], Executive Summary, p. ES-14.)  In neither case is the number significant for the US economy, which created about 750,000 jobs in the first four months of 2013.  http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.b.htm

[3] Oil trades on a global market where supply and demand determines prices, so there is little demonstrable national security impact from substituting Canadian heavy oil for that shipped from other countries. Replacing oil with alternatives is the only sure way to reduce significantly the risks associated with oil dependency (Lovins, Amory B., E. Kyle Datta, Odd-Even Bustnes, Jonathan G. Koomey, and Nathan J. Glasgow. 2004. Winning the Oil Endgame:  Innovation for Profits, Jobs, and Security. Old Snowmass, Colorado: Rocky Mountain Institute.  September. [http://www.oilendgame.com])

[4] US Department of State. 2013. Draft supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL Project.  March. [http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/draftseis/index.htm], p.1.4-1.

[5] CAPP. 2012. Crude Oil:  Forecast, Markets, and Pipelines. Calgary, Canada:  June. [http://www.capp.ca/forecast/Pages/default.aspx]

[6] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324069104578531713102125222.html

[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/01/tar-sands-canada-pipeline-enbridge

[8] Lattanzio, Richard K. 2013. Canadian Oil Sands: Life-Cycle Assessments of Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service.  March 15. [http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42537.pdf]

[9] Koomey, Jonathan, and Florentin Krause. 2009. Why 2 degrees really matters.  [http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/12/06/205058/copenhagen-two-degrees-warming-target/]

Koomey, Jonathan G. 2012. Cold Cash, Cool Climate:  Science-Based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs. Burlingame, CA: Analytics Press. [http://www.analyticspress.com/cccc.html]

[10] Woolsey, R. James, and Anne Korin. 2007. “Turning Oil into Salt."  National Review Online.  September 25. [http://www.nationalreview.com/content/turning-oil-salt]

My talk at Google's "How Green is the Internet?" summit last week

it was an honor to follow Al Gore on stage at Google’s “How Green is the Internet?” summit last Thursday.  I worked hard on the talk, and it’s posted (along with Gore’s talk, some “rapid fire” research talks, and a wonderfully passionate talk from Eric Schmidt, for whom I have newfound respect), at this Google site:   http://www.google.com/green/efficiency/industry-collaboration/