Five Percent: Conserve Energy

The Times posted a very thoughtful article explaining why a carbon Cap and Trade policy is now the favored approach making its way through Congress now.

In the end, the merits of the system are mostly that it is expedient, politically and from a management perspective. No one likes a tax, even if it may be the far simpler solution to the problem. But if no one likes a tax, then it’s kind of a tough sell.

Some argue that cap and trade is just a tax wrapped in a politically tolerable icing. They’re pretty much right. (more…)

Check this out. A simple (yep, simple!) explanation of why cap and trade, and another similar program called cap and rebate, both work. From TerraPass.

Funding for Federal and State highway maintenance mostly comes from gas taxes today. But this started posing a problem last summer when gas prices were high and fewer people were driving, and continues now when fewer people are driving because of other economic reasons. And the average fuel efficiency of vehicles used has improved.

The problem is that less gas purchased means less revenues to maintain roads.

So both states and federal agencies are considering a new way of raising revenues, based on miles driven. Some are even adding factors like the weight of the vehicle and where the vehicle is driven to the formula. (more…)

John from my office asked a good question the other day: why are paper cups so bad?

Actually, no paper cup is particularly bad. Certainly not as bad as a Hummer, or a gallon of corn ethanol to power it, or even the hamburger you eat while driving in the hummer and drinking your Coke.

And actually, probably not as bad as the Coke itself. But why are lowly paper cups so bad?

The first thought is that they are not easily recycled. This is only sort of true; good recycling processes can deal with food and with coatings like wax and plastic added to paper cups. However, most local recycling programs exclude items with food residue because of issues with animals as the recyclables are sitting on the curb, or waiting for processing. So even though most paper cups end up in landfills, let’s assume that the paper is recycled.

The real issue here is with one-time use, or disposable products. In the US, we use 130,000,000,000 (yes 130 Billion) disposable cups every year (260B in the world) — yikes! We use them once. They provide value for perhaps 15 minutes, yet they require significant resources to produce, transport, store, and then back again to add to our landfills (or if we’re assuming they can be recycled, back to the recycling plant.) (more…)

I came across this excellent, straightforward, and compelling page describing how cap and trade works in the Green Room blog of the Environmental Defense Fund. If anyone knows of such a clear explanation of how a carbon tax would work, please let me know and I’ll post it.

Update, 3/17/09, Here’s another article with a good explanation of cap and trade, in particular with a good contrast with carbon tax.

I have spent the last several weeks testing the HighSierra FCS-200 water saving shower head; it costs about $25, provides a great shower experience, uses only 1.5 gallons per minute (GPM) and I highly recommend it.

I have now done five low flow shower head reviews so far (sorry, no nude shower scenes in this one) and the HighSierra wins hands down on price and is a strong contender for the best feeling shower of those we have tried.

A water saving shower head can help you conserve water, and in particular hot water which means you’re also save energy.

The other very good water saving shower heads I tested are larger, and considerably more expensive. Don’t be deceived — the HighSierra model might look like those really cheapo, painful shower heads that they put in locker room showers. But HighSierra’s clever low flow design makes it really a totally different beast. Simple is good; the manufacturer claims that it is less likely to become clogged with mineral deposits, it’s very small, and solidly built.

Here are some criteria I use for water saving shower head reviews: (more…)

Projections are usually wrong when they are based solely on what has already happened — but this method is considered the most reasonable approach. When the projections are then considered predictions we start making bad decision — in other words, the status quo tends to rule the way we think about what we can do. We need to step away from raw data and factor in common sense. This may seem contradictory from someone who regularly argues that we must consider what has happened in the past as a lesson for what might happen in the future; it is not.

Today I read or skimmed a 360 page report by BP titled US Energy In Perspective: Data & Analysis of US Energy Supply, Production & Consumption (pdf). This report is truly incredible as a resource, and despite my occasionally less-than-favorable views of oil companies, this report generally seems to present the full picture of where we have been, and where we are with US energy with very little bias. The report also presents some projections, typically through 2030.

What struck me was that 2030 will play out an environmental (and political, economic and other) disaster if we actually do follow the path of the projections.

It also struck me that the very analytical, solid, fact-based analysis presented could easily be read as a foregone conclusion of what will happen. Or, if you are of a careful mindset, that which might be skeptical of “bold new plans” and other things that politicians have been heard to say from time to time, you might ask for the most reasonable set of facts and predictions available — the CEO of a major oil company might take this approach. The BP report cites numerous government studies, as well as many university and other scholarly works. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the methodology, that I can see.

Except that its implied predictions are dead wrong. (more…)

I Mean it in the Best Possible Way

But I suppose that one man’s pork is another man’s passion, to paraphrase most terribly. And in the case of this bill, tax credits for renewable energy were … renewed. And unlike several other add-on’s, this one makes sense, in context. (more…)

Amazon Green

I hope they continue to make attempts to improve their shipping practices. They do claim that their packaging is “right sized” and mostly made of recycled materials, but they have to be able to do better. As one of the country’s (world?) leading online retailers, they should have some power.

Here’s my list of suggestions: (more…)

This Spring and Summer, oil prices spiked. They got our attention. Boy did they get our attention!

But prices are falling again, and are now down. This is good.

So why are lower prices good? The recent oil price spike has done what it can to wake us up. We need a respite; a chance to calm down, and a chance to see that the oil market is doing what markets do. They go up, they go down. When things are clear and investors are confident, markets respond calmly. When there’s a surprise, markets over-react, then settle. When there’s general nervousness, they become volatile and hard to predict. (more…)