An Education in what Cap-and-Trade

If you want to understand what Cap-and-Trade means, and a weighing of some of the issues and proposals in a entertaining and not overbearing way, head over to GristMill and read through the slides for the long presentation.

I agree with Mr. Roberts that the musical chairs analogy works reasonable well to illustrate how this works.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Sometimes the 800-pound gorilla is really good...

AutoblogGreen article that discusses Wal-Mart's commitment to reducing emissions, waste as well as operating costs. Think what you will of Wal-Mart and their business practices, when the worlds largest retailer, and the US's single largest employer takes a stand, it is bound to have ripple effects.

Since the story on AutoblogGreen was posted, the Wal-Mart sustainability site is now live. No specifics on specific actions for reducing product packaging and assuring sustainability for the products that it sells, but they do address these topics. Recycled packaging, supply chain, etc.

And if the biggest retailer insists on this for its products, hopefully its suppliers will adopt the technologies and practices for all of the products they manufacture. Perhaps this is too much to expect, since the people running the factory are going to do whatever makes them the most money and satisfies the demands and contracts of their clients.

60 miles per gallon Hummer...yes, really.

Received a link to this extremely interesting article on FastCompany about a man who performs engine conversions on vehicles (mostly large gas-guzzlers like Hummers) to make them more fuel-efficient, reduce emissions, and more powerful. The article is very long and covers a lot of topics related to engine conversions, emissions, fuel-efficiency, industry resistance to change.

He laughs. "Think about it: a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!"

Goodwin's work proves that a counterattack is possible, and maybe easier than many of us imagined. If the dream is a big, badass ride that's also clean, well, he's there already. As he points out, his conversions consist almost entirely of taking stock GM parts and snapping them together in clever new ways. "They could do all this stuff if they wanted to," he tells me, slapping on a visor and hunching over an arc welder. "The technology has been there forever. They make 90% of the components I use." He doesn't have an engineering degree; he didn't even go to high school: "I've just been messing around and seeing what I can do."

The article discusses some of the same things that I've been harping on, and which I've been pointing out other writers thoughts on: That the ICE really needs to be rethought or gotten ride of, plug-in electric vehicles could solve the bulk of the driving needs of most people.

He speaks of the major carmakers with a sort of mild disdain: If he can piece together cleaner vehicles out of existing GM parts and a bit of hot-rod elbow grease, why can't they bake that kind of ingenuity into their production lines? Prod him enough on the subject and his mellowness peels away, revealing a guy fired by an almost manic frustration. "Everybody should be driving a plug-in vehicle right now," he complains, in one of his laconic engineering lectures, as we wander through the blistering Kansas heat to a nearby Mexican restaurant. "I can go next door to Ace Hardware and buy a DC electric motor, go out to my four-wheel-drive truck, remove the transmission and engine, bolt the electric motor onto the back of the transfer case, put a series of lead-acid batteries up to 240 volts in the back of the bed, and we're good to go. I guarantee you I could drive all around town and do whatever I need, go home at night, and hook up a couple of battery chargers, plug one into an outlet, and be good to go the next day.

I like his three point outline of how to convert the automobile fleet to more efficient technologies without disrupting consumers or manufacturers, and using market efficiencies to reduce existing "chicken and egg" problems related to availability of alternative fuels vs alternatively fueled vehicles.

Not a lot to add to what is said, other than read it.

Cement

TreeHugger has an article about the pollution generated in order to produce cement, probably the most essential building material in use today.

There is some advance in making EcoCements, but I don't see those building blocks at my local home center yet for non load bearing projects.

So, all those wonderful, low heat and emissions underground houses made entirely from poured structural concrete turn out to not be a complete win, due to the embodied energy and pollution in creating the material that makes the building possible. Further proof that nothing is free, and all environmental decisions are a trade-off.

New coal plants denied permit

Read this article on grist and this on the Washington Post.

Short version - Kentucky denies Sunflower Electric Power a permit to construct 2 new coal fired generators based on GHG emissions from such facilities.

Calculate your environmental impact

There are a host of sites out there that allow calculation of carbon footprints, but this one has something I hadn't seen before. Not just suggestions on how to reduce energy consumption and waste production, but items for sale and rent to help analyze in the home what is going on, rather than relying on the generalized assumptions and averages that are produced. As with other such quizes, some of the questions about energy usage and pollution generated just aren't easily answerable without being an expert on the subject.

I especially like their idea of doing a "wind survey" at the home with a device that you can rent from them. I don't think that wind power is going to be very popular in urban areas, and energy efforts need to be focused at the mass generation end of the scale to make energy production cleaner, but a great idea nonetheless.

I really like the powercost meter as well. Combine that with a GreenSwitch (post coming soon) and get proof positive of efforts to cut energy consumption.

They also offer a program to purchase wind power as an offset to traditional generation.