Renewables supporters twisting the facts

Die Zeit has published an article critical of the nuclear power sector in France, and it contained the following contention:

"Dass beim Abbau und der Aufbereitung des Kernbrennstoffs Uran mehr Kohlendioxid pro Kilowattstunde Strom anfallen kann als etwa in einem modernen Gas-Blockheizkraftwerk, wird in den CO₂-Bilanzen der Atomlobby verschwiegen."

(The nuclear lobby fails to mention that more carbon dioxide can be emitted per kilowatt-hour of nuclear power than in a modern combined cycle gas turbine once the emissions from the mining and processing of uranium are calculated in.)

Because that figure is much different than what I am used to seeing, I contacted the author to see if she would provide me with her source. She responded by saying that the figures are not new, and she has them from Mycle Scheider, among others.

I looked up Schneider online, and immediately found something more in line with what I am used to seeing:

"The Darmstadt-based Öko- Institut, a think tank, has calculated that a typical nuclear plant in Germany, with enriched uranium from a mix of supplier countries, emits 32 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour"

You can view a chart at that website that is in line with what I am used to seeing; clearly, once the provisioning of uranium is calculated in, carbon emissions from nuclear power are a fraction of emissions from cogeneration gas turbines (meaning that the waste heat from the gas turbine is piped to consumers nearby rather than sent up the chimney) and are more in line with emissions from renewables (while wind turbines and solar power also do not entail any direct emissions, the manufacture of such systems does).

I kept looking, and then discovered where the figures come from:

"the report concludes that unit CO2 emissions from nuclear power plants are approximately the same as those from natural gas cogeneration systems... The comparison, however, is made between a natural gas cogeneration system and a system which supplies electricity through nuclear generation and heat by oil."

In other words, since nuclear power generally does not provide heat (though it certainly does in France, where electric heating systems in many homes switch on at night to create demand so that nuclear power plants can keep running at high capacity), Schneider then added in the emissions from oil heating.

This is quite a pernicious argument, and proponents of renewables must be careful not to use it lest it be turned against them. After all, like nuclear, wind and photovoltaics also mainly produce electricity, not heat, so anyone could then make the same calculation and discover that renewables have the same emissions as a modern cogen gas turbine.

I reported this to the author, but she merely responded by saying that "I sent the figures by Schneider, and he approved the wording before publication" -- as though nonsense became legitimate if you get the source's approval.

I support renewables, but I don't support nonsense. If we want to have renewables, we have to have good reasons, and we cannot twist the facts to serve our ideology.

Desertec critic: "energy cathedrals"

Die Zeit has published an interview with German historian Dirk van Laak, who does not mince his words about the Desertec project:

Jedenfalls ist bisher nicht zu erkennen, dass ergebnisoffen, mit Zeit und auf gleicher Augenhöhe mit den Afrikanern verhandelt würde.... Solche Großprojekte wollen begeistern und faszinieren, statt nach Legitimation zu suchen. Desertec wird von einem Firmenkonsortium getragen: Das spiegelt auch wider, wer sich heute als Akteur versteht...

("There is no sign of any open-ended negotiations being conducted in good faith and on an equal level with Africans... Such large projects are designed to excite and fascinate, not prove that they are needed. A consortium of firms is behind Desertec, and that itself reflects who sees themselves as decision-makers today...)

And if you, like me, are frustrated every time you read that energy prices are rising because countries like India and China are consuming more energy, then you will enjoy how van Laak speaks of Europe's "Verlogenheit des uneinheitlichen Maßstabs..., dass andere weniger verbrauchen sollten als wir" ("the double standard that others should consume less than we do").

It is a rather nice touch that van Laak calls such large solar projects in the desert "energy cathedrals," because that brings the difference in culture/religion back into the picture.

Coal collapsing in Germany

In case this is not being reported in the English-speaking world: a landslide occurred a few days ago at the site of a disused land fill in eastern Germany. You can see some pictures of it at Die Zeit here.

Interestingly, that paper's coverage of the issue includes a mention of similar events, such as the rising land around the geothermal boreholes in Staufen, Germany, just a quarter of an hour from where I am sitting. I did not, however, know that something similar happened a few weeks ago in Kamen.

Ah, that America...

Recently, I published a post discussing how different the world of public swimming pools is over here in Germany and in my hometown of New Orleans. It now seems that Philadelphia is not much better:

"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately."

The pool denies all charges of racism:

We had originally agreed to invite the camps to use our facility, knowing full well that the children from the camps were from multi-ethnic backgrounds. Unfortunately, we quickly learned that we underestimated the capacity of our facilities and realized that we could not accommodate the number of children from these camps.

Those in charge apparently came to this realization when the kids were literally jumping into the pool for the first time.

Hang in there, Philadelphia. With any luck, you may also one day learn to live with each other.

Rolling Stone on Goldman Sachs... and energy

There has been a lot of hullabaloo about Goldman Sachs' recent announcement of its return to profitability, to put it mildly. Now, Rolling Stone has published quite an interesting article that explains the history of the bank's involvement in bubbles in language that its lay readers (like me) can understand:

[Goldman] bundled hundreds of different mortgages into instruments called Collateralized Debt Obligations. Then they sold investors on the idea that, because a bunch of those mortgages would turn out to be OK, there was no reason to worry so much about the shitty ones: The CDO, as a whole, was sound. Thus, junkrated mortgages were turned into AAArated investments.

Though there are also frequent forays into foul-mouthing for frat boys:

[Goldman] fucked the investors who bought their horseshit CDOs by betting against its own crappy product, then it turned around and fucked the taxpayer by making him pay off those same bets.

I don't know much about all that banking stuff, but I do have an opinion about the author's arguments that the recent spike in oil prices is the result of speculations:

In the six months before prices spiked, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the world oil supply rose from 85.24 million barrels a day to 85.72 million. Over the same period, world oil demand dropped from 86.82 million barrels a day to 86.07 million.

It seems in both of those cases that demand outstripped supply, which the author ignores. During those six months, the world was obviously working down some stockpile of oil somewhere. Under those circumstances, I would expect oil prices to rise considerably.

Having said that, I do think the author provides some interesting energy information:

By 2008, a barrel of oil was traded 27 times, on average, before it was actually delivered and consumed.... By 2008, at least three quarters of the activity on the commodity exchanges was speculative, according to a congressional staffer who studied the numbers — and that's likely a conservative estimate. By the middle of last summer, despite rising supply and a drop in demand, we were paying $4 a gallon every time we pulled up to the pump.

Of course, all of this specualtion is potentially dangerous, but I would actually argue that higher oil prices do us a favor by allowing us to use this finite resource more efficiently -- we waste things less when they are expensive. This thinking is behind the concept of environmental taxation, which I support. Most proponents of "eco-taxes" would, of course, prefer not to have the mechanism left up to speculators, not least because proper taxation allows price hikes to be planned so that people can prepare, whereas speculation leads to unpredictability. But overall, higher oil prices are a good thing.

Finally, the Rolling Stone article gives us a good taste of the skepticism that Americans have towards carbon trading, which I am not particularly fond of, but which we are apparently going to get in the US soon:

Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, who is intimately involved with the planning of cap-and-trade, started up a company called Generation Investment Management with three former bigwigs from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, David Blood, Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris. Their business? Investing in carbon offsets.

So there you have it: because everything in the US is corrupt, renewables and clean tech must also be. The world sure is a much different place over here in Germany...

Anyway, I actually do like the article overall because of the way it boils the financial scandal down:

Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers — one of Goldman's last real competitors — collapse without intervention.... The very next day, Paulson greenlighted a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman.

I suppose if I knew more about the banking scandal, I might find that to be an oversimplification, but it certainly seems like a poignant way of summing up events given my limited knowledge.

Ecological footprint of a Google search

Recently, I expressed my doubt about some of the figures being floated for the power consumed every time you search for something at Google. Now, Die Zeit (the German newspaper which also reported the original estimate I found exaggerated) has revised the figure. It now appears that a 60-watt light bulb would not be able to run for an hour on the same amount of electricity, but rather only for 18 seconds.

Let's now put that into perspective: if you look something up once a minute, that's like consuming around 20 watts all the time. But if you do so once every 20 minutes, it's like consuming one watt all the time. Anything less than one search every 20 minutes around the clock is consuming less electricity than some old cheap toaster or other kitchen appliance probably drains off the power socket all the time.

If you really want to conserve electricity, the Internet is not the place to start as a consumer. You would want to start with all of these standby units and "leaking" home appliances.

I want my HPV!

Alright, this is getting frustrating. It appears that an Italian scooter manufacturer plans to release a hybrid trike next year. According to this report in English, it will only cost around 9,000 dollars and have an electric range of 40 miles; according to this report in German, it will cost some 10,000 euros (closer to 14,000 dollars at current exchange rate) and have a range of 20 kilometers (around 13 miles).

Obviously, a lot of details still have to be cleared up. But what I don't understand is why my beloved Twike has to cost around than 22,000 euros in the most basic version (with a range of "40 - 80 km") if Piaggio can make a hybrid scooter for half that price.

Of course, you might now advise me to simply buy the Italian hybrid scooter, but you'd be missing the point. The Twike has two things that are important for me:

• you actually sit inside the vehicle, which is crucial if you, like me, live in a part of the world that has bad weather more than half the time
• it is a human-powered vehicle (HPV), which means you can actually get some exercise while you drive instead of being forced to sit more or less motionless for the entire trip

So if anyone wants to do me a favor, I'll have the top-end Twike HPV with a battery range of 200 kilometers for around 30,000 euros...