LED Lighting: A Case Study

Our company just completed an installation of 4-foot LED fluorescent-replacement tubes for a customer in Pasadena. These tubes use 11.6 watts as opposed to the 32 watts that the most efficient T8 fluorescent tube would use or the 34-40 watts that an inefficient T12 would use.

If LED lighting could save the customer money while providing the same or better light and reducing carbon emissions, it would be one of the best solutions available for going green. So let's use this installation as a case study to see if LEDs can deliver on their promise.

The Economics
The retail price of one LED tube is $59.95. This is much higher than a $2 or $3 fluorescent tube, but if you do the math on the overall cost of the lighting you see that LEDs are an excellent investment.

The 56 LED tubes in this project cost $2,997 more than the cost of fluorescents (not including the fact that you'd have to buy 5 replacement fluorescents by the time one LED tube burns out). But because they use 20.4 fewer watts and are on 24/7, together they will save 10,007 kWh per year which translates to $1,438 in electricity costs EACH YEAR. So even if you exclude savings on maintenance and disposal fees associated with the mercury in fluorescents, the electricity savings will pay for the LED tubes in 2.1 years.

Add to this the fact that the City of Pasadena has a terrific energy efficiency rebate program and our customer will see a payback on this project in 0.6 years. This is an astonishing return on investment for any capital investment.

Another way to look at it is the net present benefit of the project, since the LEDs will save electricity for their entire 50,000 hour lifetime. Over the life of the tubes (approx. 6 years in a 24/7 usage environment) the net present value of the benefit without the rebate is $5,996.

Verdict: the economics are extremely sound.

The Light Quality/Quantity
One obstacle to the adoption of LED technology is customer concern about the amount of light and the light color. This installation allowed us to test these factors in a real-world environment.

Light Color
The before and after photos only tell part of the story. The camera, like the human eye, adjusts to the light color and amount of light. So the 'before' picture, to the right, looks like it's pretty white. But in the 'after' picture on the left below (really a 'during' picture since the installation was half completed at that point) you can see that the LEDs in the center and left aisles look white whereas the fluorescents on the right aisle look yellow/orange. We measured a color temperature of 4200K under the fluorescent fixtures and 6200K under the LED fixtures. Pure daylight is generally in the 5400-5800K range, so the LEDs are putting out a high quality light.

Light Quantity
We took before and after footcandle readings from three locations: directly under the fixture, 3 feet from the narrow edge of the fixture (to the side), and 5 feet from the broad edge of the fixture (near the wall). As expected, the LED lights were about 7% brighter directly under the light, just as bright off to the side, and 8% dimmer near the wall. So the amount of light is the same, but the distribution is more focused.

Verdict: the light quality/quantity is the same if not better.

The Environment
Why do I mention the environment last? Because while I think it's important, not all customers value it the most. And I believe that to make a meaningful impact on climate change or dependence on foreign oil we have to find solutions have a beneficial impact on the environment, but would make sense for the customer on an economic basis alone. To paraphrase Mary Poppins, saving money is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine of carbon reduction go down.

In this case, the environmental impact is hugely positive. First, LED tubes have no mercury. But perhaps more important are the carbon emissions prevented. As we mentioned above the lights in this project will use 10,007 fewer kWh per year. Using the US Green Building Council's estimate of 1.771 pounds of CO2 per kWh, this translates into a reduction of 17,723 pounds -- almost nine tons -- of CO2 per year.

Verdict: LED lighting is massively beneficial for the environment.

All in all, the project is a success on all fronts. And this is not science fiction. This is happening right now, today, in a parking garage in Pasadena. People are saving money, helping the environment, and reducing the strain on our electric grids all at the same time.

Green Small Business Ideas

I was asked to be a speaker at the Pasadena seminar series, the Art of Business Survival, which is put on by the City of Pasadena, the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, and the Workforce Investment Board. The focus of the seminar was "What it Means to be a Green Business."

The audience was mostly small business owners in Pasadena and surrounding areas. Here's a copy of the presentation:

LED Lighting - Fluorescent Replacements

Sorry for the long delay in my posts, I was on vacation in the green country of Brazil... uhh... researching their sugar ethanol fuel industry. Okay okay, it had more to do with researching their fermented sugarcane, or cachaça, industry.

Today I'm going to do the math on something I've been quite excited about for a while but is now officially here: LED lighting for offices. [Disclaimer: I know it's here because our company, Go Green Solutions, is selling these]



Why am I so excited? Simply put, LEDs are the future. The ones I'm talking about specifically today are fluorescent tube replacements, which will be especially important since these tubes are almost omnipresent in our office buildings. So much so that 500-600 million fluorescent tubes are replaced each year.

OK, first let's look at the qualitative differences:
-LED lighting has no mercury. Fluorescents do, and have to be disposed of as hazardous waste
-The LED tubes we've tested use 1/4 the wattage (more on this later)
-Under LED tubes you get twice the footcandles at 6 feet!
-The LED tubes last ~6 times as long: 50,000 hours vs. 8,000
-No flicker
-No hum or buzz
-More full spectrum light. Honestly, we've set these tubes up side by side with fluorescents and it's just no contest. The LED light looks like real light. The fluorescent looks like the light they'd give you in an insane asylum.

Of course there is a hurdle: price. And it sure seems like a sizable hurdle right now. Our LED tubes are retailing for $59.95 which seems steep when compared to a cool white fluorescent that may cost $4 or $5. But let's factor in the energy costs. Our LED tube uses 10 watts. The cool white fluorescent T8 four foot tube uses 40 watts. At 10 hours a day, 260 days a year (standard office usage, assuming they turn the lights off at night) that's a difference of about 75 kWh per year, or $11 in energy costs per tube per year!

As you can see from the chart below, the bulbs will break even after four years, and over the course of their lifetime end up saving you over $360. And that's not even including the cost of labor for replacing the ~5 extra fluorescents that burned out in between, or the costs of disposing of them as hazardous waste.



That's pretty significant, and pretty much a no-brainer already. But what about locations such as supermarkets and manufacturing facilities that are running 20-24 hours per day? I did another calculation at 22 hours per day, 365 days per year. The LED tubes break even in 1.5 years.



And of course, financial considerations aren't the only ones. Each tube you replace will save 2,625 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions over its lifetime. Just imagine if instead of those 500-600 million fluorescent tubes that are bought each year, we were installing these LED tubes. That'd remove close to 14 million tons of CO2 from the air per year.



As I said, the future is here, and it's... [resists urge to say "bright"]... promising.

LEED AP Certified

Good news: today I passed the LEED for Existing Buildings exam with a score of 190 out of 200. So I'm a LEED Accredited Professional.

The exam was tough, but it's a good one. It does a good job of covering useful information and strategies regarding outdoor sustainability (landscaping, heat islands, etc), water efficiency, energy efficiency, reduction/reuse/recycling, and indoor environmental quality. In fact, even if you're not taking the exam the Reference Guide is a really useful resource if you're interested in sustainability.

Obviously the test also has questions that focus on the bureaucratic processes related to dealing with the USGBC during LEED certification, which are less interesting, but useful if you want to get into the green building field as a consultant/designer/architect etc.

Global Sustainability: The Asian Perspective

Here at the offices of Go Green Solutions we've been doing some research into the Asian perspective on global sustainability. Since this issue is going to take a global effort it's vital to know the perspective from the other side of the Pacific. Here's a summary of our thoughts:

Overview:

• China is awakening to the importance of a sustainable economy. But it seems spurred on mostly by local pollution and the goal of energy independence. Global warming is a newer concern, but a major one given its growth and coal reserves. China seems to be waiting for America to take the lead.
• India’s priority is ensuring high economic growth and raising living standards. And while it understands that global warming is a vital issue, it’s projected CO2 emissions in 2030 still won’t approach those of Europe, the U.S., or China (see image below from the Economist). It therefore feels the wealthier countries must take the lead.
• Japan has been a leader in the sustainability movement for a while. Their solar industry is 3rd in the world. They are looking to export their ideas and technology to other countries, such as China.

China

China may be the biggest enigma in the environmental issue right now, and the most important. Three facts jump out at you:

1. During the past four years both China's GDP and its energy consumption have grown at an average of 11% a year
2. China has just passed the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. By 2030 it is projected to emit almost as much as the United States and Europe combined. (Economist, June 5th 2008)
3. China is now bringing 2 full-scale coal plants online every week

Reasons for China to Act Sustainably

China has massive incentives to act. Local pollution caused by acid rain, sulphur dioxide and wastewater is a large and dangerous problem. “Acid rain affects a third of China's land and hundreds of thousands of people die from pollution-related cancer every year” (Economist, June 5th, 2008)

China also needs to protect itself against supply shocks. It doesn’t have the necessary military power to protect shipping lanes that bring the oil needed for its transportation industry, so energy independence is a key factor.

Both local pollution and energy security can be solved by renewable energy, which coincidentally addresses the larger issue of global warming. It is unclear whether China’s commitment to fighting global warming is because of a long-term view or because of these two more immediate issues. The Economist discussed China’s push into renewables: “China is making considerable efforts to boost the amount of energy produced by non-fossil fuels. By 2020 the aim is to generate 15% of energy from renewable sources, up from around 7% in 2005. This is a big step up from the previous goal of 10% by 2020. China's investment in renewable energy last year, about $10 billion, was second only to Germany's.”

The Mood From the People and the Government

According to the Economist article mentioned above, “China is looking to America for its cue. If America commits itself to carbon cuts, China will feel obliged to make some kind of promise too.”

Another article on Chinadialogue.net discusses the fact that China’s former vice-premier, Jiang Chunyun wrote two books on the environment: China’s Ecology: Evolution and Management (2005), and Paying Back Environmental Debts – Explorations in Man-Nature Harmony (2008). The fact that such an influential government official is addressing the issue head-on demonstrates its increasing importance. The article states that “environmental awareness in China – by the government and the people alike -- has moved from an awakening to vigorous growth."

Next month’s Olympic games in Beijing claim to be the first carbon-neutral summer games (or the first at least since oil-skinned ancient Greeks flung discuses and javelins in Mt. Olympus shadow with nary an automobile or coal plant in sight). They will “involve solar power aplenty, tree-planting, banning many cars from the streets and ‘reducing emissions from enterprises’ (temporarily shutting many of them down, presumably). The games, say officials, will produce 1.18m tonnes of CO2 and the countermeasures will save 1.03-1.30m tones” (Economist)

India

India just released their country’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) on June 30th, 2008. The plan addresses eight priority National Missions:
1. Solar Energy
2. Enhanced Energy Efficiency
3. Sustainable Habitat
4. Conserving Water
5. Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem
6. A “Green India”
7. Sustainable Agriculture
8. Strategic Knowledge Platform for Climate Change

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said of the plan: “[it] identifies measures that promote our development objectives while also yielding co-benefits for addressing climate change effectively.”

In a revealing line the report says these national measures would be more successful with assistance from developed countries and pledges that India’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions “will at no point exceed that of developed countries even as we pursue our development objectives.” This has been viewed as a savvy way of reminding the world’s richer countries that they can only control India’s carbon emissions by first reducing their own.

And according to the Economist article: “a senior official in the foreign ministry characterizes America's line as: ‘Guys with gross obesity telling guys just emerging from emaciation to go on a major diet.’”

India does not view itself as a main culprit in global warming, and it’s right to a large extent. It takes the issue seriously and wants to improve sustainability, but its main focus is on economic growth and living standards, and it too is waiting for the U.S. and other wealthy nations to take the lead.

Japan

Japan has long been a leader in the environmental movement:

• With companies such as Sanyo Electric and Sharp leading the way, Japan joins Germany and Spain as the largest solar markets in the world, larger than the U.S.
• The automobile industry has led the way with innovations in hybrid technology, and as a result the Toyota Prius is the top-selling hybrid in the world
• Its Renewable Portfolio Standard law from April 2003 requires electric power companies to use new energy sources, including wind power and solar
• Japan's energy efficiency is the highest in the world, according to a speech by its Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukuda

Japan’s efforts on sustainability have been prescient and it now sees an opportunity in marketing its green technologies and developments worldwide.

In a speech in January, Japan’s Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda discussed his ambition to lead the world in efforts to cut greenhouse gas emission using Japan's advanced technology on clean energy and energy efficiency. He proposed a "low-carbon society" as a model for the world and said his government plans to establish a "financial mechanism" to encourage developing countries to adopt measures against global warming.

In May this year Japan and China issued a joint statement on protecting the Asian economy that included, among other things, an agreement on the need for all major economies to address climate change. One step they’ve already taken toward that goal is the Sino-Japan Friendship Center for Environmental Protection in Beijing, an 11-story building partially funded by the Japanese government. It monitors pollution and conducts research on new environmental technologies.

Ocean Iron Fertilization - Doing the Math

I wanted to revisit the Ocean Iron Fertilization idea I mentioned in my last blog post, to run the numbers and see if it's worth the controversy. I found out some interesting things.

I compared three approaches for reducing CO2: (1) OIF, (2) replacing 100 million incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent or LED bulbs, and (3) replacing 1 million gas-guzzling cars with electric vehicles. The results are surprising. 1,000 tons of iron seeded into oceans beats both other options combined. And that's a small amount considering scientists are thinking about seeding 200,000 tons of iron into the oceans.

How do these compare to the size of the problem at hand. Consider that in 2030 the U.S. will emit 3.3 billion tons of CO2 into the air. So 40 million tons is barely over 1%. Now think that it would take 159,000 tons of iron to sequester 100% of the U.S.'s 2030 CO2 levels, and ocean iron fertilization begins to sound very intriguing, maybe even worth the risks.

Here are the rough calculations I did:

First off, 1,000 tons of iron seeded into algae blooms could sequester roughly 21 million tons of CO2.



Replacing 100 million light bulbs with more efficient compact fluorescent or LED bulbs could save 15 million tons of CO2.



A shocking finding for me was how little CO2 would be prevented by putting a million EVs on the road. Granted, part of this is because right now a big chunk of electricity comes from burning coal. If we moved more of our electricity generation to renewables, this number might increase. But right now a million EVs would remove less than 4 million tons of CO2, the same as 200 tons of iron fertilization.



On this rough evidence, OIF is definitely worth further investigation.

Forget Iron Man, How About Iron Algae?

The Ocean Iron Fertilization (OIF) Controversy

Algae, that wonder-plant that could be the biofuel of the future, could now also help solve the energy crunch problem from another angle: carbon sequestration. Simply put: there are many areas of ocean that have all the requisite elements for algae growth except iron. From time to time dust storms blow iron-rich soil into these oceans, just enough to satisfy the algae's 106:16:1:0.001 Carbon-Nitrogen-Phosphorous-Iron ratio, and huge algae blooms spring up (like the one pictured at right). This ratio means that for every atom of iron, 106,000 carbon atoms are bound into the algae. Or 83,000 pounds of CO2 for 1 pound of iron. The idea is that then 20-30% of the algae biomass sinks below the thermocline (100-200 meters) effectively sequestering the carbon from the atmosphere for hundreds of thousands of years.

I think the idea is a wonderful one in theory. But I would urge some caution when messing around with Mother Nature. A couple of anecdotes come to mind (although I'm sure you could find your own examples by throwing a rock in the air).

First is the story of saltcedar in New Mexico. In the early 20th century they brought in this non-native, deep-rooted species to solve the erosion problems they were having near the Pecos and Rio Grande rivers. The problem was that saltcedar was so successful, and so deep-rooted, that it spread like wildfire and began drinking the rivers dry. Now New Mexico spends millions of dollars a year in a near-futile effort to remove the plants and preserve water (if they're hard for nature to erode, then they're hard for us to remove).

Another story comes from my girlfriend's hometown of Medicine Lake, Montana. In the 30s and 40s they planted crested wheatgrass, a non-native prairie grass, in the Medicine Lake Wildlife Refuge thinking that it would provide a better shelter for wildlife. It proved too successful, growing so thick and so widespread that it's preventing wildlife from nesting there, opposite of the intended effect.

Maybe ocean iron fertilization would also prove too successful, pouring billions of tons of CO2 into the oceans and poisoning fish, replacing one set of problems with another.

In the next post I'll do the math to see whether it's worth exploring.

Biofuels: Algae

I've mentioned biofuels before and how they've been mandated to replace 25-55% of the oil we use for transportation. Today I came across an interesting company that has an innovative way to grow biofuels from my preferred liquid fuel source of the future: algae.

Valcent has developed a closed loop vertical bioreactor (right) which grows algae extremely efficiently. It's really quite clever as it allows the algae to get access to light by funneling it through vertically hanging curtains. The system is closed and therefore conserves water as it avoids the evaporation that occurs in open pond growth systems. Here's a video.

BIOFUEL USAGE
Algae could be the future of biofuels because it's extremely efficient. As much as 50% of its body weight is a high-grade vegetable oil. Different types can also be selected to produce different carbon chains, some better for jet fuel, some better for diesel, etc. The key measure of efficiency for biofuels is gallons per acre. As you can see from the chart on the left, algae crushes the competition.

CO2 SEQUESTERING
Algae is the fastest-growing plant on earth and sequesters the most carbon dioxide as well. So what does this mean about algae's ability to slow global warming by taking CO2 out of the air? Well, it sequesters a whole bunch of CO2, but when we burn it that CO2 is released. The net effect is that it's pretty close to being a carbon-neutral fuel source (not including the fuel involved in transporting it to its destination, i.e. your fuel tank). A U.S. Department of Energy study has shown that the production and use of biodiesel, compared to petroleum diesel, resulted in a 78.5% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

COST TO PRODUCE
I found this quote interesting: a Feb. 2007 article on biofuels in MIT's Technology Review said that "today's higher oil prices will make it easier for algae to compete." Note: oil was trading at roughly $60/barrel at that time. Today it's around $135/barrel. Algae is coming fast.

The Buzz Grows Louder: The Call to Arms is Coming

Sometimes I think it might be just me, since I'm pretty focused on alternative energies and alternative consumption, but I feel as though the "cleantech" buzz is growing into a dull roar all around me. This is from May 9:
Senator Poses 'Grand Challenges' for Energy Independence. [UPDATE: Full transcript of speech here.]

Senator Lamar Alexander is proposing a bipartisan effort "with the goal of making our nation independent within a generation." Here are the seven grand challenges he outlines:

• Supporting plug-in electric vehicle development, including "smart metering" by utilities that would allow cheaper rates for overnight battery charging.
• Making solar power cost competitive with fossil fuels, with the promise of solar thermal power plants.
• Making biofuels cost competitive with gasoline, particularly ethanol from cellulosic materials.
• Making more new buildings energy efficient
• Developing systems to capture and store carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.
• Developing ways to safely reprocess and store nuclear waste — the "most important breakthrough" needed to support more nuclear plants.
• Continuing research on nuclear fusion.

I've discussed several of these initiatives in my blog before. As you know, I'm a big believer in letting market forces and entrepreneurial energies solve these problems, but as Lester Brown points out in his book Plan B 3.0, the market is not recognizing huge chunks of costs associated with fossil fuels (climate change costs, pollution costs, national security costs, total-system-breakdown-from-rising-oil-prices costs, etc). If the market's pricing system is broken, free market forces don't work. That's the problem.

So I've always though that government action would be needed, as much as I'm loathe to depend on it. But the people seem to be demanding it... that's the dull roar I'm hearing.

Why not make this our generation's Manhattan project (although the metaphor I prefer is the moon landing)? Why not invest billions if not hundreds of billions of government dollars into this field? It's still much better than the trillions we'll hand out to governments around the world for oil over the coming years if we don't change.

Any of the three candidates will have a better chance of making alt energy/alt consumption more of a priority than Bush did. But our job is to make sure this is a major campaign issue. After all, whether your hot button is Iraq or the economy, alt energy/alt consumption plays a vital role.

The Shift Begins: Carmakers Respond to Customers Who Are Responding to Gas Prices

I've talked about it here at EnergyCrunch before, but I think we're now seeing some real-world evidence. My previous blog post talked about how consumers will start to change their patterns once they realize that the gas will cost more than the car they're buying. I mentioned $6/gallon as when that would happen. Now it seems to be starting to happen much sooner.

An article in today's New York Times reports that consumers are buying smaller cars (it would be hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric vehicles if more of those were available). Check out this astonishing real-world ripple effect:

"Light truck sales fell a staggering 32 percent at G.M., 25 percent at Ford, 19 percent at Nissan and 16 percent at Toyota."

"G.M. said this week that it planned to cut production of its full-size pickups by 88,000 units and of its large S.U.V.s by 50,000 units this year."

There you have it. Oil goes up, gas price goes up, automakers almost immediately change the blend of vehicles they're producing.

Simultaneously, the AP reported that hybrid sales went up 38% last year even as overall vehicle sales were down 3%.

If I were the Big 3 (or any automaker), I'd be fast-tracking whatever plug-in hybrid or electric car research I already had underway. And if I didn't have any underway, well I'd be hanging up a For Sale sign (or shorting my own stock) because the game's about to be over.

Update: New Job!

Well I'm back after a little hiatus. Sorry I've been gone so long! I just took a new job at Go Green Solutions in Pasadena in mid-March. I've thrown myself headlong into the new position and as a result have let my blog posting responsibilities slide a bit. But not to worry, my new job dovetails well with what I've been talking about here in Energy Crunch (did the company's name give it away?) so I'll be able to continue to bring my insights to this column, as my throngs of readers will no doubt be assured to hear.

For today I just wanted to point out this article which gives further hope that soon solar power will be cheaper than fossil fuels, and the stampede to renewables will begin in earnest.

Enjoy the article, and check back now that I've got my schedule back under control a little bit.

Yet Another Reason to Mend Your Polluting Ways

According to an article put out today by the AP, the Catholic church now considers polluting the environment to be sinful behavior. Yet another reason to subscribe to Energy Crunch!

The NoFootprint52 Challenge: Reducing Your Impact on the Environment

I thought I'd bring some attention to a project my brother Christian is launching: the NoFootprint52 Challenge. The idea is to take just one day a week and erase your footprint from the planet on that day.

Why is this important? First off, the average American produces 19.8 TONS of carbon dioxide emissions per year. So completing the NoFootprint52 challenge would prevent you from personally pumping nearly 3 TONS of CO2 into the air. Three tons. That's a lot.

So how do you do the challenge? Well, here are some of the guidelines:

Transportation

• No car or motorized vehicle. You can walk, ride a bike, or use public transportation (i.e. the idea is that the public transportation would've run without you anyway, so you're not 'leaving a footprint').

Home

• Turn your thermostat down to 50 in the winter and turn your A/C off in the summer. According to climatecrisis.net, turning your thermostat down 2 degrees in the winter and up 2 degrees in the summer could save nearly a ton of CO2 per year alone. Imagine if you turn it down to 50 in the winter. Just wear a couple extra layers and pile some blankets on the bed. Note: if you get heat from solar panels, you get to keep it!
  
• Drastically reduce electrical use. No stereos, iPods, blenders, microwaves, etc. If you must turn on a light, use a lower wattage compact fluorescent bulb which uses 75% less energy than a normal light bulb. One exception: you can leave the refrigerator on.
  
• You can shower and use the loo because water is a renewable resource. However, the average American uses 100 gallons of water per day. Christian's challenge is to cut your daily shower from the average of 6 minutes to under two. This is actually pretty easy if you turn the water off while you're lathering up. And try to refrain from using any hot water in the process unless you have a solar water heater. Don't worry, cold showers are fun once you get used to them.

Food

• No meat, no fish, and no food in wrappers of any kind. Why no meat and fish? Well, according to Gidon Eshel, assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, changing your diet "is comparable to the difference between driving an SUV and driving a reasonable sedan" in terms of environmental impact.
  
• To give you an idea of why, consider that fisheries around the world use 13 billion gallons of fuel to catch 80 million tons of fish. That means that 6.4 fl. oz. of gas were burned just to catch your ten ounce filet of fish, never mind the fuel used to transport it to your table. Add in bovine flatulence and gas released by manure and red meat has even more of an impact than fish.
  
• Eat locally-grown food. The average fresh food item on our dinner table travels 1,500 miles to get there. LocalHarvest.org can give you a good idea of how to get locally grown food.
• No cooking unless you're using hot water from a solar water heater. Eat bread, fruit, nuts, and vegetables.
  
• No plastic bags
• No restaurants
  

So there it is. One day a week and you can personally take out 3 tons of CO2 a year and do your part for getting us closer to sustainable consumption. But before you slap yourself on the back too hard, even if you meet the challenge, you're still emitting 17 tons of CO2 this year (on average), which is more per capita than citizens from most other countries. Part of the lesson to be learned by doing this challenge is to take what you've learned from your one day a week and bring it to the other 6 days a week.

Christian will be creating the NoFootprint54 website soon. I'll keep you posted.

Wallet-Driven Change: The Crazy Idea of a "Sail" Boat

In an earlier post I pointed out that simple wallet-driven economics (i.e. people start to act once it hits them in the wallet) would begin to have bigger and bigger effects on behavior and environmental impact. Well, an article today seems to bear that out. In the container shipping business, fuel is a huge cost. Hermann Klein of Germanischer Lloyd states that "ship efficiency is of paramount importance considering a fuel bill for a big container ship over a 25-year lifespan adds up to nearly $900 million." That's about $3 million a month ($100k a day) so you can see why rising oil prices would spur change.

So they're getting creative. One idea is "smack your forehead" simple: outfit the container ship with a wind-powered device, or "sail."


Inventor Stephan Wrage claims this novel idea can cut 20 percent, or $1,600, from the ship's daily fuel bill. (Never mind the fact that Klein's figure above puts the daily fuel bill at $100k, not $8k... honestly, why is it so hard for journalists to get their numbers straight?!?)

Putting that to the side, Klein goes on to point out another amazingly simple idea: "slowing down by 10 percent can lead to a 25 percent reduction in fuel use."

So if you outfitted all container ships with a sail and half of them slowed down (some shipments are urgent, after all), then we could see a combined 30% reduction in fuel usage and C02 emissions. And since the article claims that the world's merchant ships emit 5% of the world's total CO2, these two extremely simple measures, spurred on by wallet-economics, could cut 1.5% of all CO2 production just like that.

Now imagine what will happen when oil hits $200/barrel.

Can Coal be Clean? - Part 1

While renewables should still far and away be our top priority, one area that strikes me as (a) important and (b) filled with opportunity is cleaning up coal. A report from the UK's Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology states that as of Dec 2005, 1,000 gigawatts of global electricity come from coal, representing ~39% of worldwide energy. Coal provides 27% of the world's overall energy (i.e. electricity plus transportation), according to BP...

...and 23% of the energy in the U.S. now, rising to 26% by 2030, according to the Dept. of Energy.


So coal is already a huge portion of our energy supply, and China and India's booming economies will want new coal plants to help fuel their growth.

Meanwhile, coal's high carbon content makes it the biggest CO2 emitter per unit of electricity produced. So when you turn on your light switch, you're pumping CO2 into the air just as you are when you turn on your engine. It kind of makes you want to clean up coal, doesn't it??

Some organizations such as Greenpeace have dismissed clean coal as infeasible, throwing their support behind renewables instead. I disagree with their position mainly because they're not viewing the whole picture. Yes, renewables are always better even than "clean coal," but no, coal is not going away tomorrow. It has a huge installed base, and since coal is relatively cheap to produce, the temptation will be there (especially for emerging economies) to bring new coal plants online. We need to try to improve the clean-coal technologies.

My next post on coal will focus on the different technologies and their stages of development. Finally I'll look into economic opportunity, particularly from carbon trading.

To be continued...

Q-Cells and the Future of Solar Photovoltaics

The solar industry is booming. According to this article, "sometime in the next two years, more raw silicon will be going to solar panels than to electronics chips." And according to a report recently released by BCC, the market for solar PV cells will reach $32 B/year in 2013. Good news, but there's one catch: supplies of polysilicon, one of the key ingredients in many solar PV panels, are growing tight. The bottleneck isn't the raw material (sand), but rather the production capacity for refining sand into polysilicon.

This means two things: (1) a scramble among polysilicon PV cell manufacturers for supply, and (2) a move towards thin-film technologies, such as CIGS, which don't use silicon or use much less of it.

One company that's moved to address both of these issues is Q-Cells out of Germany. They've signed a long-term supply agreement with China's LDK Solar, locking in a supply of 43,000 tons of silicon wafers through 2018. And EverQ, their joint venture with Evergreen Solar and Norway's REC, has locked in supplies of up to 2,100 tons of polysilicon per year through 2015. That translates to enough silicon for an output of roughly 6,600 megawatt peak.

A quick back-of-the-envelope analysis shows that this translates to securing access to enough raw materials to convert into $16 billion of revenue, using the revenue per MW of PV cell in 2013 from the BCC report I mentioned above. So the polysilicon shortage shouldn't dent their growth:



Meanwhile, their subsidiary companies are ramping up thin-film technologies. Calyxo makes cadmium telluride PV cells and Brilliant 234 produces thin-film silicon modules. Solibro GmbH, a joint venture with Solibro AB, is a CIGS (cadmium indium gallium selenide) manufacturer.

This is an impressive company that seems to have all the bases covered. I'd keep an eye on them.