``Five-labs study
Since 1990, four major studies have assessed the US potential to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions using cost-effective, energy-efficient, and low-carbon technologies in the 2010 time frame.5-9 We have based this article in part on the 1997 study by five US national laboratories5 (which we will call the five-labs study). As participants in that study, we concur with its central conclusion--that a vigorous national commitment to develop and deploy cost-effective, energy-efficient, and low-carbon technologies could reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels. We also agree with the study's estimate that the concomitant energy savings might be equal to or perhaps even greater than the cost of deploying the technologies.
As shown in figure 3, the potential carbon reductions estimated in the five-labs study amount to about 400 MtC/yr by 2010. If no carbon-reduction measures are enacted, the US in that year is expected to exceed its 1990 carbon emissions by just this amount: 400 MtC/yr.10 Thus the technologies identified in the five-labs study should just get us back to the 1990 carbon emission levels by 2010.
The energy reductions shown in figure 3 for the building, industrial, and transportation sectors stem, in the five-labs study, primarily from improvements in end-use technology. In the utility sector, most of the savings come on the supply side, from fuel substitutions such as retrofitting, or "repowering," power plants to burn natural gas rather than coal (which generates almost twice as much carbon per kWh generated), or from adapting a procedure known as "carbon-based electricity dispatch," in which plants with lower carbon fuels are preferentially operated over those powered by cheaper, higher carbon fuels.
We now survey some of the existing and emerging technologies that made possible the savings predicted by the five-labs study for the three energy end-use sectors: buildings, industry, and transportation. We have chosen not to discuss the utility sector explicitly. That sector is changing rapidly and becoming increasingly intertwined with the end-use sector through the introduction of distributed power generation, such as combined heat and power systems (see box 2). The utility sector is also turning toward greater use of noncarbon sources, such as renewables...''
(http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-53/iss-11/p29.html)
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The reason I posted this is essentially the last paragraph. The figures mentioned in the text identify Utilities as the single biggest source of CO2 emissions, the single greatest location of added cost to implement reduction technologies---and then the article tells us, oh, well, we will skip that part and go on to what you the consumer can do to help the environment by buying green appliances and making your home more energy efficient.
I am just flabbergasted at this bullshit. Over and over, almost every damned media source of information completely elades government regulation of utilities---something the government is supposed to be regulating in the first fucking place. Shit! What is the matter with these people? I really, really, really don't understand how an article supposedly written by smart scientific people can be so utterly stupid. They locate the biggest source, identify it to be the most effective place to apply emission reduction technology that they themselves have developed, and then proceed to announce they will ignore it!
And it gets worse. The five labs are all under public administration by the US Dept of Energy! The DOE is also supposed to be both the central planning body, source of public development/funding, and the regulatory agency for the energy utilities. In other words, the responsible government agency (along with EPA, a lesser entity) for reducing CO2 emissions.
So then, why on earth is it that the people doing the studies and writing the summary of findings has chosen to exclude the single biggest source that they surveyed, and which they are supposed to be regulating, planning, and monitoring?
The last sentence is so utterly laughable and an outright lie, that I am just staggarded... ``The utility sector is also turning toward greater use of noncarbon..''
I guess what amplifies my appalled reaction is I know the kinds of scientist, engineers, and techs who work in these labs---because technically my tech job in bio-science was administered under DOE at Berkeley's LBL---so I met them on my trips up there and was theoretically one of them. Had my own DOE ID and dosimeter badge, knew the guards, passed the radiation standards course, etc.
They are top end hard core physical science, chemistry, geology, meteorology, engineering, and math people. They are the very people who can and have designed the technology we need and they bloody well know how to apply those designs specifically to fossil fuel based utility plants---because it has been part of their project assignments since probably the mid-70s. They have at least some of the plans and some the of the damned prototype applications gathering dust in warehouses since the 70s oil scare for Christ-sakes.
[The warehouses of LBL, most out in Richmond and Livermore look like the one in Raiders of the Lost Ark. So to answer Doug's point in a former post, that it would take years to develop these kinds of technological applications, is not an accurate intuition. How could anyone know any different, if they hadn't seen some of these things or talked to some of these people? A fair degree of that technology is already been through the theory, design, and tested prototype phase. It has just been shelved. Other developments from DOE are already on-line as solar, wind, and of course the old bad guy nuclear. Oh, and they also did the theoretical and basic design work on micro-battery technology or nickel, cadmium and lithium chemistry that is the energy source for cell phones and other micro-gadgetry.. I mean, did we all think hippies or oil company CEOs invented hydro-electric, solar, wind, and the cell phone? The macro energy developments were what the above quoted article was referring too in their excuse to neglect utilities. But DOE also bloody well has monitored those non-carbon contributions and know down to the micro watt/sec how much these alternatives have contributed, which isn't enough---hence the added outrage. I tossed in the micro-battery sci/tech just to remind people that big government research is the orgin of just about every damned technological advance...)
For political background, in the middle of the California utility fiasco of privatization of its public utilities (lobbied and paid for through some of Tom DeLay's bogus campaign org shills that got him indicted), the very Texas based energy suppliers who engineered this fiasco for their own profit, also through their subsidiaries bid on contracts to build COAL-FIRED power plants in California that required suspension of Cal's air pollution control laws. And as far as I know, got those bids and began building those facilities (without the known and available CO2 scrubbing tech--rejected by the bidders as too expensive!). And on top of it, of course the Democratic governor was blamed for the consequences of the frauds (later recalled out of office, replaced by idiot Arnold), while he was disparately trying to get the DOE (under Abraham) to halt the Texas based suppliers from wild price gouging that constituted the frauds. Meanwhile Spencer Abraham, the CEOs of these very suppliers (remember Ken Lay?), and the Vice President were in a closed energy conference in the god damned White House. When the Cal state district attorney sued for transcripts of those meetings, the suit was rejected (I think) on grounds of executive privilege. The same thing happened with a few limp attempts by Congress. The transcripts of those meetings are still sealed.
Why bring this up? The breath and depth of outright political corruption that is itself a crime is and has been completely ignored---yet it constitutes some of the very core reasons why the US has done so little about CO2 emissions. So I would propose that at least some left-progressive attention get focused on this issue and made public by whoever/however as part of rising public awareness of the environment and global climate.
Who knows, we could probably cut some part of our emissions tomorrow, if our government just followed its own damned laws. It could be our emissions would drop tomorrow if we had shot Bush and Cheney yesterday. For that matter we could probably cut global CO2 emissions in some measurable amount, if we succeeded in getting the US out of Iraq, or even out of Baghdad. Christ we are burning the place down, i.e generating massive amounts of CO2 with the damned war itself. What do you think all our weapons fire? Duh. Carbon compounds. Well, and their targets all burn carbon. And combustion of some of these weapons are moving nuclear waste slugs at that. Oh, yeah, and we are saving Iraq for what? So it can get back on-line to produce more fossil fuels. Shit, yeah, makes sense to me.
And it is for damned sure, we can get started cutting emissions on the power utilities industry by just mandating installation of technologies we already have, know how to manufacture and install, and know cut emissions now, period.
All this crap about carbon tax, credits, offsets, biofuels, etc is totally and completely bogus bullshit. Just fucking bullshit.
I guess what I am saying is the same media/industry/government obfuscation machine that brought us neoliberalism, privatization of public utilities and the Iraq war is also tuning us up in a panic over global climate, only to market the market solutions, non-solutions. For example, all week long PBS has run a special story on global climate, and the only information and news in these reports are interviews with people advocating one or the other of these non-solutions---as if the debate was only about which one of these non-solutions should be the publicly endorsed andfunded as a non-solution!
Gee with ADM, AT&T, and Exxon-Mobile as the corporate sponsors for public television's news broadcast do you think there is a connection?
Good night, and good luck.
CG
PS. I have completely lost contact with any resemblence to reality. So I ask, am I writing about what everybody knows and has taken into consideration and has moved on? Or is any of this or its connections news here? I really have lost it. Not kidding. The whole discussion of global warming seems so out of sync with what I know, that I don't actually understand the discussions here. What are we thinking? Have we already bought into this crap?