the carbon race

As Beijing marks one year to the 2008 Olympic Games, the IOC has put the Chinese on notice that if they don't clean up their air, some events may need to be postponed. Some people are bound to take this opportunity to ram home the message that China should abandon coal and dirty industries before they steam past the US as the worst carbon emitter. By some accounts, the two countries are now on a par in total emissions, and China's higher economic growth rate puts it at risk of clinching the "worst offender" title in the next year or two.

The comparison is somewhat unfair, for at least two reasons. One is that the per capita emissions in China are still well below those in the US. The other is that the huge volume of trade between the two countries masks the true environmental impact of the US economy, since the US is effectively outsourcing emissions by having a large proportion of its consumer goods manufactured in China. Nevertheless, China's future emissions are a cause for global concern.

Fortunately, China is showing signs of making a serious effort to reduce emissions. I find it fascinating that China is the first country to be developing eco-cities that are intended to be carbon neutral from day one. Despite its image as a lumbering giant slowly awakening from hibernation, when the country decides to move on something it can do so with breathtaking speed. For example, in an attempt to secure its energy supplies, China went shopping. Back in 2005, the Chinese state-owned oil corporation CNOOC gave Americans a scare when it tried to buy Unocal Corp, the US oil and gas company. China backed down from that one, but everyone sat up and took notice.

Buying oil companies may seem to contradict the aim of reducing carbon emissions. Indeed it does, but China is simply doing what everyone else is doing: protecting their economy in the short-term with energy strategies that are, of necessity, carbon-intensive. I am sure the Chinese could do better with technology replacement and other strategies to reduce the growth in energy demand, but who am I to tell them so?

Bringing us back to the Olympic Games is another example of how China can implement strategies quickly. Beijing has recently tried a four-day experiment to reduce air pollution by banning cars in the city. Cars with odd-numbered licence plates were banned on two days, and those with even-numbered plates were banned on the other two, resulting in 1.3 million fewer cars on the streets. Just how successful a repeat performance would be in improving air quality during the Olympic Games remains to be seen, but American cities can only dream of using such bold strategies. Let's see what else Beijing comes up with.

what is normal?

One of the shortcomings of transporation planning (usually) is that it is focused on normal traffic conditions: a typical weekday when there is nothing unusual happening, schools are in session and it is not a public holiday. This is not a bad approach from the point of view that it is a waste of resources to design roads, parking lots and other infrastructure to be big enough that traffic moves smoothly and everyone can park easily during the few days when traffic is really heavy, like in the shopping buildup to Christmas.

Unfortunately, it misses the fundamental point that a lot of problems related to getting around are a result of abnormal conditions, like when a traffic accident is blocking the road, or severe weather is slowing traffic. Some traffic authorities recognize and deal with this, like efforts in Toronto to reduce the impact of road incidents on provincial highways by identifying accidents quickly with real-time speed monitoring and CCTV cameras, and using electronic variable-message signs to warn drivers in advance of trouble spots. But rarely have I seen other transport modes given the same consideration when their normal routes are disrupted.

When I am in walking mode, what really makes my blood boil is the way road maintenance or construction inconveniences pedestrians. This is another "unusual" condition that is often ignored. Whether it's lack of regulation or lack of enforcement, cities don't always apply appropriate standards for making sure that pedestrians have safe passage during construction activity. I am thrilled that Telkom's fixed-line telecommunications competitor in South Africa, Neotel, is coming onto the scene; but they are digging up sidewalks in the CBD and leaving gaping holes, mounds of dirt and pipes lying everywhere.

On my route from Cape Town station to the office in Greenpoint, one section of sidewalk has been dug up for burying cables at least four times in the past year, and on at least two occasions the mounds of dirt have forced pedestrians to walk on the road over a period of several weeks. One day, all four corners of an intersection were dug up, leaving no refuge for pedestrians waiting to cross. And this is on a road chosen by the Western Cape Provincial Government as a walking bus route to improve security for people walking to and from the station, because it is one of the busier pedestrian routes in the CBD.

This is not the way to promote walking and cycling, either as travel modes in their own right, or for access to public transport. Sidewalks need to be clear of obstructions and hazards, curbside lanes need to be kept clear for cyclists, and drains need to be maintained so that they actually drain the rainwater. It's not rocket science, but it does require coordination between municipal departments - something that is in short supply in many cities.

the lazyboy bike

I know this sounds ridiculous, but there really is such a thing as a solar-powered bicycle.

geopolitics of energy

Canada is the biggest external supplier of oil to the US, with a million barrels a day coming from the Alberta tar sands. The environmental impact of the tar sands is significant, not only from the emissions from using the oil, but also from the damage of open-pit mining and the use of water and natural gas to extract the oil from the sand.

That is enough of a concern, but it gets worse. In addition to supplying the US with 17% of its oil imports, Canada also supplies 18% of US natural gas demand. So Canada's natural gas goes to the US both though pipelines and as an input to oil production. Natural gas also happens to be Canada's primary fuel for heating buildings in winter, so competition for the stuff can only increase between the US and Canada.

Now, I am not so much of an alarmist as James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, but he raised an interesting point a couple of months ago. What he was suggesting is that once we reach peak oil, the decline in oil supplies will actually accelerate because the countries that are producing and exporting oil are steadily increasing their own consumption, thus reducing the quantity available for export. The theory is that export rates will drop by a far greater percentage than net production decline rates in any given exporting country. (See June 25 entry in Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle.) If he's right, that does not bode well for the relationship between the US and Canada.

we have liftoff

Considering that society's biggest project currently underway involves moving a very large chunk of the earth's surface into the atmosphere, is it really any wonder that things will change?

data monster takes the heat

Computer data centres are like the world in microcosm: not only because they house the online world, but also because they display a voracious and growing appetite for energy. In the US last year, they consumed 61 billion kilowatt hours, amounting to 1.5% of total US demand for electricity. The EPA expects this to double by 2011 if nothing is done, so they want a mix of strategies to make sure that doesn't happen.

Just like out in the real world, those strategies will need to consider reducing demand through operational changes (for you and me, that means lifestyle changes), applying available technologies to increase efficiencies (ditch that old fridge), investing in research and development (lean on the company CEO), and establishing carbon targets and monitoring (do an energy audit on your house).

An interesting new example of R&D applicable to data centres is research into using ions to create a breeze across computer chips to cool them more effectively than with conventional fans:

As voltage is applied to the ionic engine, positively charged particles (ions) are produced, and are dragged towards a negatively charged wire (a cathode), forcing constant air movement.

Unfortunately this particular development, assuming it can actually be applied commercially to computer chips, doesn't reduce energy consumption at all. It may in fact increase energy demand by allowing manufacturers to produce chips that use even more energy (producing more heat). The big energy challenge with data centres is really the air conditioning. Getting heat away from the chip is only step one. Step two is getting it out of the building, and that's where the mechanical engineers and building designers are going to have to put their heads together and start thinking outside the box for low-energy solutions.

forget Eskom - meet Fabio Rosa

Nearly ten years ago my family and I spent nearly a week in a small rural village - a cluster of homesteads, really - in Transkei, near Idutywa. Eskom had just trundled through in 1997, rolling out the national electricity grid, so every home had a connection and at least a lightbulb. Some had electric fridges and stoves and other appliances. The house we stayed in, a wonderful 8-room structure built around 1960 with sun-baked mud bricks, had a single incandescent lightbulb. At the request of our host, I added some wiring to increase the number of rooms with electric light.

Fort Malan is a traditional village, or "location", that had previously seen little change. There were very few jobs in the immediate area. The nearest were in the village of Mnandi, an hour's walk away, or the town of Idutywa, which could be reached by tortuous car or taxi journey over heavily rutted gravel roads. Residents of the location had livestock and grew crops like mealies, pumpkins, beans and marrows on land allocated to them by the location's headman. Rainwater was used for drinking, and river water was brought up the hill for other uses by plastic barrels on women's heads, donkeys' backs or in wheelbarrows.

Most residents of the location who had jobs with significant income would have been migrant labourers spending months away from home, working on mines or big-city jobs. Some of the money earned would have filtered back to the location in one way or another, but the largely subsistence economy required very little cash. What cash did arrive would be circulated in the location through local jobs such as shepherding or purchase of crops or livestock. Certainly it was not an easy life, as gathering fuel and water and certain foods required regular trips that could be strenuous and time-consuming, but there was stability in a community that shared skills and resources and an understanding of the common good.

Eskom's grid changed that. Suddenly life could be made easier by keeping food cold longer (which meant fewer trips to town); cooking on an electric stove (no more gathering wood or buying paraffin); reading by good light (a better education). All this requires cash, and cash means jobs. People complained to me that there were no jobs, and I would guess that there were fewer complaints before Eskom brought its promise of a better life. I am not suggesting that these villagers should not have electricity, but bringing the grid to deep rural villages is not the way to do it.

There is a model for providing the rural poor with electricity and appropriate technologies in a way that is affordable, without subsidies. Many of the 2 billion people worldwide living without electricity could enjoy reliable, productive and clean energy by switching from kerosene, paraffin, wood or coal to distributed solar-powered electrical systems; but there are obstacles such as mistrust of solar technology, the high cost of solar panels and the disinterest of big business (and of national electricity utilities). What Eskom did in the late 1990s in Transkei and rural South Africa does not make economic sense; it was driven by political objectives, without which the grid expansion would not have taken place.

Working in a similar rural situation, entrepreneur Fabio Rosa spent years developing a business model to provide solar power to low-income households in Brazil. Aware of the social obstacles, he started by addressing the human challenges before deciding on the most appropriate technologies. He needed to build trust and develop relationships with local champions who could spread the word and manage aspects of the business. Then he came up with a package of electricity supply and appliances that meet real needs, so that households can have light, play music, watch TV, pump water, irrigate fields and recharge cell phones.

The key is that he doesn't sell these kits, he rents them out. Buying a solar panel means paying for 25 years' worth of electricity upfront, and low-income households certainly cannot afford to do that. Fabio can provide the services that families need (on a for-profit basis) at monthly rates that are equivalent to what some households were already spending on other energy sources. And he provides employment for local businesses who install and maintain the systems.

Unlike Eskom's approach, which creates expectations without providing the means to fulfill them, Fabio also started developing 12-volt refrigerators, power saws, power drills and a thermal solar water heater. Technologies suited to the needs of his customers and their solar power sources. That's what I would call a sustainable business model.

Just for good measure, here's a more recent example (this one in Nepal) of cheap, small-scale, homegrown technologies and why they fall under the radar of mass media.

opening the sluice gates

Here's a roundup of reports on why we need to be careful about bowing to the knight in shining biofuels. In South Africa, as elsewhere, we have been assured that land used for biofuel feedstock won't displace existing agriculture on arable land, and I have mentioned an example of what seems to be non-disruptive biofuel production. What worries me is this statement from The Guardian:

Around 40% of Europe's agricultural land would be needed to grow biofuel crops to meet the 10% fossil fuel substitution target. That demand on arable land cannot be met in the EU or the US, say the scientists, so is likely to shift the burden on land in developing countries.

Did I say something about climate imperialism? South Africa's biofuels strategy may be an answer to the North's prayers, but God help us in the South. If we're going to open the sluice gates for Europe's liquid fuels, we may need to prepare for a flood.

what drives traffic growth?

Transport planners have an instinctive tendency to assume that since traffic growth has accompanied economic growth in the past, it follows that supporting economic growth requires more road capacity to support future traffic growth. However, it is a fact that the rate of traffic growth in most countries exceeds the rate of economic growth, suggesting that something else is causing the change in travel patterns.

Curiously, we don't bother to ask ourselves why traffic is growing faster than the economy, and whether the economy would suffer if we didn't build roads to accommodate the historic rate of traffic growth. In fact, in many cities, road capacity has not expanded at the same rate as traffic has grown, and yet the economy is growing well. South Africa's three biggest cities are a case in point.

Isn't it possible that the increase in traffic is not so much a result of economic growth, but a consequence of having enough available capacity for more people to drive at the same time? In many cases delays from congestion are increasing, so there could be other reasons, such as changes in the nature of the economy, or more families with two cars, or changed urban spatial patterns, or inadequate public transport. I don't claim to know the reasons - my concern is that decisions to spend billions to add road capacity are based on a limited assessment of what is really needed for the transport system (and the economy) as a whole.

Social commentator Jane Jacobs posed the question in Dark Age Ahead: if building more roads results in more traffic, isn't it logical that building fewer roads would result in less? WorldChanging reports on how shutting down lanes of Interstate 5 through Seattle has not brought traffic to a standstill. This is an unintentional experiment in using congestion to manage traffic. Usually, the problem with congesion is that it is unpredictable, often the result of traffic accidents or other unplanned incidents, so drivers don't have forewarning or access to information to enable them to make alternative arrangements. But in this case, all the hype beforehand gave people an opportunity to change - and it seems that this is exactly what they did.

The issue is an important one for sustainability. The general approach to transport planning is based on, and reinforces, the dominant trends in travel patterns. If historic trends are not necessarily critical to economic and social wellbeing, then we should take a good look at why they are being supported. It is quite possible that money could be more effectively spent elsewhere to improve alternative modes of travel and reduce the negative impacts of road traffic.

power up - and down

One of the difficulties with national electricity grids is that they don't store power, they just move it around (very inefficiently). What you don't use, you lose. There are ways to store it, such as by using excess power during periods of low demand to pump water into a storage reservoir that can be used to run a hydroelectric generator during periods of high demand. The City of Cape Town is using this method with the 400 MW Steenbras Dam pumped storage scheme, saving the city R2 million a month. And there's an even bigger 1000 MW pumped storage scheme in KwaZulu Natal.

There have also been proposals to store power as compressed air, and hydrogen fuel cells are a more high-tech method of storage. Whatever the technology, a significant benefit of storage is that it eliminates the need for building extra power stations just to meet short periods of peak demand. New storage technologies could also open up whole new markets for electricity, including vehicles that don't rely on liquid fuels. Biofuels reduce reliance on fossil fuels, but they still produce emissions and they have introduced new concerns over food security. Running vehicles on electricity (stored in some intermediate form) eliminates both these problems if the electricity is generated from a low-carbon source.

This could be a great way to overcome one of the shortcomings of generating electricity from the wind or sun: the wind and sun don't always show up when they're needed, so store their power for later use. But to make these sources reliable, on a significant scale, requires wind and solar farms to be distributed all over the place. To avoid environmental impacts, or to find enough land, many of these sources will need to be far from where the power is needed. This raises the challenge of overcoming the inefficiencies in transmitting power over long distances.

Enter a group of Norwegian companies, already building a multinational high-voltage DC grid that can transmit power more efficiently. (Norway also happens to be a country with large hydroelectric capacity.) I strongly believe we should be promoting micro-generation of electricity - distributed over local grids - but it sounds possible that an international DC grid combined with storage would allow the development of power from renewable sources at an industrial scale, which may be a necessary part of a broad strategy to slow the growth of fossil-fueled or nuclear power plants.

It is commonly assumed that electricity generation from renewable sources isn't feasible at a scale that can produce a significant reduction in carbon emissions, but Irish company Airtricity believes that high-voltage DC transmission lines can make possible a wind farm in the North Sea that could generate 10 gigawatts, and that's not small-fry. The cost would be 17% higher than building the same capacity using coal-fired plants, but with the obvious saving in carbon emissions. Carbon credits could offset at least some of that extra capital cost, but with zero fuel costs for a wind farm, the extra upfront costs should be easy to stomach. And then there's all that sun in the Kalahari Desert...