Thursday, July 28, 2005
Stuyvesant Town given high marks in energy conservation
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
This column has completed its annual non-scientific oil crisis survey by noting that our neighborhood is right on the track, as far as energy conservation is concerned. The cars parked around Stuyvesant Town are mostly of the midsize sedan or small SUV variety, 25-mpg or better. The large gas-guzzlers, a lot more visible on the road, must come from other areas. In last Friday’s 1 PM northbound traffic on the Bronx River Parkway, the large SUVs were counted as about one in eight vehicles on the road, which is slight improvement, and the warlike Hummers seem to have disappeared.
Meanwhile, the energy actions in Washington give no hope. VP Cheney the energy policymaker has not retreated from his 2001 position that energy conservation may be a virtue but it is no basis for a national policy. The White House still promotes ethanol, a gasoline additive from agricultural products, currying favor with the grain-producing middle states that vote red, despite the questionable value of the energy exchange. Is it energy-positive, in that the energy value expended in creating it is less than the energy value recovered? What are the criteria? While the government quotes an Argonne National Laboratory (why does that name worry me?) statement of substantial gain in energy, a recent Cornell and University of California study shows that ethanol from corn costs 29% more in energy expended than the product is worth. If the ethanol source is switch grass, the extra cost is 45%, if wood , it is 57%. To produce bio-diesel from soybeans, it costs 27% more energy, if sunflower seeds are used, the costs rises to 118%. The scientists, David Pimentel and Tad Patzek, include in the cost the planting, irrigation, pesticides, fertilizers, grinding and transportation, but they very properly do not discount it by the $3.57B federal subsidy (2004 figures) to build up this industry. The current compromise energy bill in the Congress has advanced the President’s originally proposed annual ethanol production of 5B gallons annually by 2012 to 7.5B, further subsidizing a product that is not a renewable energy source and that contributes to air pollution and global warming.
The President is seemingly also betting on hydrogen conversion, another costly and questionable methodology, although not too firmly, expending a measly $600M a year on technology.
Other than that, the energy bill encourages exploration, providing subsidies for oil drilling off the coasts of Louisiana and Florida, and setting up major tax advantages for the producers. The provisions for cleaning up land polluted by MTBE, an anti-knock gasoline additive that contaminates water, have failed, with the producers refusing to contribute $4B towards the $11B cleanup budget. The old CAFÉ standards, requiring that the automobile industry increase gasoline efficiency over time, have continued to be undermined, particularly since the exclusion of the SUVs, classified as light trucks and therefore not controlled.
And what about the world’s oil reserves? This column some years ago performed some arithmetic showing that the recoverable (i.e. energy-positive) oil reserves will last the world 37 years at then current rate of use (the US spends 25% of the world’s use annually). Now the reputable British Petroleum analysts see the period as 41 years, with natural gas reserves adequate for 60 years. A well-regarded oil analyst, Matthew Simmons, who is part of the White House oil advisory group, brings proof that the Ghabar reserve, constituting over one half of the Saudi $260B oil reserve, is nearly depleted. The oil companies are hopping on these findings, vying to build liquid natural gas (LNG) ports and conversion facilities on both coasts, much to the dismay of Florida and California. How long will this last, at an increased level of use?
Meanwhile, greenhouse gasses, products of burning carbons, are changing the Earth’s climate. The President’s man at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Philip Cooney, a career lobbyist for the petroleum industry, has rewritten the threatening findings of the Global Change Research Committee and the Climate Change Science Program so shoddily that he has been forced to resign, finding a refuge in the ranks of Exxon.
This brings up nuclear power, the one alternative major form of energy not guilty of creating greenhouse gases. The sad fact is that the recoverable forms, wind, sun, wave and river hydroelectric, are not of sufficient value to impact the gasoline-thirsty world’s demands. Analysts conclude that the nuclear energy-creating process can be made safe, although suicidal terrorists should not be discounted, but the disposal of residue is still unresolved. Arizona is fighting tooth and nail against storing the low-radiation residue in its Yucca Mountain caves, Hanford ditto. For the present, the plants are burying the residue locally, not a permanent solution. The old (established 1946) Atomic Energy Commission had disgraced itself with under- providing security for radiation protection, reactor safety and regulation of nuclear materials, and its 1974 replacement, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has proven itself more trustworthy, after the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown, which was handled without a major release of radioactive contamination. Let’s hope so. Our grandchildren may have to depend on nuclear power.
This column has completed its annual non-scientific oil crisis survey by noting that our neighborhood is right on the track, as far as energy conservation is concerned. The cars parked around Stuyvesant Town are mostly of the midsize sedan or small SUV variety, 25-mpg or better. The large gas-guzzlers, a lot more visible on the road, must come from other areas. In last Friday’s 1 PM northbound traffic on the Bronx River Parkway, the large SUVs were counted as about one in eight vehicles on the road, which is slight improvement, and the warlike Hummers seem to have disappeared.
Meanwhile, the energy actions in Washington give no hope. VP Cheney the energy policymaker has not retreated from his 2001 position that energy conservation may be a virtue but it is no basis for a national policy. The White House still promotes ethanol, a gasoline additive from agricultural products, currying favor with the grain-producing middle states that vote red, despite the questionable value of the energy exchange. Is it energy-positive, in that the energy value expended in creating it is less than the energy value recovered? What are the criteria? While the government quotes an Argonne National Laboratory (why does that name worry me?) statement of substantial gain in energy, a recent Cornell and University of California study shows that ethanol from corn costs 29% more in energy expended than the product is worth. If the ethanol source is switch grass, the extra cost is 45%, if wood , it is 57%. To produce bio-diesel from soybeans, it costs 27% more energy, if sunflower seeds are used, the costs rises to 118%. The scientists, David Pimentel and Tad Patzek, include in the cost the planting, irrigation, pesticides, fertilizers, grinding and transportation, but they very properly do not discount it by the $3.57B federal subsidy (2004 figures) to build up this industry. The current compromise energy bill in the Congress has advanced the President’s originally proposed annual ethanol production of 5B gallons annually by 2012 to 7.5B, further subsidizing a product that is not a renewable energy source and that contributes to air pollution and global warming.
The President is seemingly also betting on hydrogen conversion, another costly and questionable methodology, although not too firmly, expending a measly $600M a year on technology.
Other than that, the energy bill encourages exploration, providing subsidies for oil drilling off the coasts of Louisiana and Florida, and setting up major tax advantages for the producers. The provisions for cleaning up land polluted by MTBE, an anti-knock gasoline additive that contaminates water, have failed, with the producers refusing to contribute $4B towards the $11B cleanup budget. The old CAFÉ standards, requiring that the automobile industry increase gasoline efficiency over time, have continued to be undermined, particularly since the exclusion of the SUVs, classified as light trucks and therefore not controlled.
And what about the world’s oil reserves? This column some years ago performed some arithmetic showing that the recoverable (i.e. energy-positive) oil reserves will last the world 37 years at then current rate of use (the US spends 25% of the world’s use annually). Now the reputable British Petroleum analysts see the period as 41 years, with natural gas reserves adequate for 60 years. A well-regarded oil analyst, Matthew Simmons, who is part of the White House oil advisory group, brings proof that the Ghabar reserve, constituting over one half of the Saudi $260B oil reserve, is nearly depleted. The oil companies are hopping on these findings, vying to build liquid natural gas (LNG) ports and conversion facilities on both coasts, much to the dismay of Florida and California. How long will this last, at an increased level of use?
Meanwhile, greenhouse gasses, products of burning carbons, are changing the Earth’s climate. The President’s man at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Philip Cooney, a career lobbyist for the petroleum industry, has rewritten the threatening findings of the Global Change Research Committee and the Climate Change Science Program so shoddily that he has been forced to resign, finding a refuge in the ranks of Exxon.
This brings up nuclear power, the one alternative major form of energy not guilty of creating greenhouse gases. The sad fact is that the recoverable forms, wind, sun, wave and river hydroelectric, are not of sufficient value to impact the gasoline-thirsty world’s demands. Analysts conclude that the nuclear energy-creating process can be made safe, although suicidal terrorists should not be discounted, but the disposal of residue is still unresolved. Arizona is fighting tooth and nail against storing the low-radiation residue in its Yucca Mountain caves, Hanford ditto. For the present, the plants are burying the residue locally, not a permanent solution. The old (established 1946) Atomic Energy Commission had disgraced itself with under- providing security for radiation protection, reactor safety and regulation of nuclear materials, and its 1974 replacement, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has proven itself more trustworthy, after the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown, which was handled without a major release of radioactive contamination. Let’s hope so. Our grandchildren may have to depend on nuclear power.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 8:26 PM 
