I took this picture at a recent classic car rally on South Congress Blvd in Austin Texas.
Classic Car on South Congress in Austin Texas
More on Failure to Deploy Clean Energry – from Technology Review
IEA Laments Failure to Deploy Clean Energy
New report from the International Energy Agency says countries must speed up use of existing technologies to address climate change.
A new report from the International Energy Agency concludes that nations have been far too slow to deploy renewable power and carbon capture technologies, and to make needed efficiency gains in buildings and vehicles. “Our ongoing failure to realize the full potential of clean energy technology is alarming,” writes the IEA’s executive director Maria van der Hoeven, in the report’s foreword. “Too little is currently being spent on every element of the clean energy transformation pathway.”
But all is not lost, the agency argues. There remains a small and quickly shrinking window of opportunity to apply existing technologies toward meeting fast-rising global energy demand and adequately reducing emissions.
The report, the latest in a biannual series that tracks clean energy technology, focuses on a specific emissions reduction target that ensures an 80 percent chance of limiting long-term global temperature increase to 2°C.The IEA’s scenario calls for the share of total average world electricity generation from renewable sources, including hydropower, to grow from 19 percent today to 57 percent by 2050.
Since there is no avoiding the need for more fossil-fuel generation as well, the agency points out nations will need to rely heavily on carbon capture and sequestration—which will need to supply 22 percent of the necessary emissions reductions by 2050. But the lack of progress in the development and deployment of this technology is “seriously off pace.” For it to remain a viable option, the report concludes, governments must “urgently” increase financial and policy support. Currently, there are no large-scale projects capturing and storing carbon emitted from power facilities.
Over a fifth of the emissions reductions must come from improved transportation fuel economy, says the report, which calls vehicle fleet fuel economy the “single biggest opportunity” to reduce emissions from the transport sector over the next decade. Although fuel economy has recently been improving across the globe—around 1.7 percent per year—it hasn’t been fast enough, says the IEA. To meet its goals, says the agency, fuel economy of new light duty vehicles must improve by 50 percent by 2030, or 2.7 percent annually.
That’s a Lot of Zeros!
IEA: Adopting Cleantech Could Save $100 Trillion by 2050
By Climate Progress | Wed, 13 June 2012 21:41 | 0
The once staid International Energy Agency continues its string of blunt, must-read reports laying bare the reality of our climate and energy system.
While so many “experts” and politicians make hand-waving pronouncements about how the primary solution to climate change is more R&D or how cheap natural gas is the answer to our problems, the IEA is one of the few international bodies with a comprehensive energy and economic model that cuts through the BS.
As their new report, Energy Technology Perspectives 2012, makes clear, new natural gas investments can play at best a limited, very temporary role “if climate objectives are to be met.” The only viable response to the threat of catastrophic climate change is rapid deployment of existing carbon-free technology.
The Executive Summary offers the key conclusion that the extra investment needed to achieve the 2°C Scenario (2DS) would be a net money saver:
Achieving the 2DS would require USD 36 trillion (35%) more in investments from today to 2050 than under a scenario in which controlling carbon emissions is not a priority. That is the equivalent of an extra USD 130 per person every year. However, investing is not the same as spending: by 2025, the fuel savings realised would outweigh the investments; by 2050, the fuel savings amount to more than USD 100 trillion. Even if these potential future savings are discounted at 10%, there would be a USD 5 trillion net saving between now and 2050. If cautious assumptions of how lower demand for fossil fuels can impact prices are applied, the projected fuel savings jump to USD 150 trillion.
Perhaps because people have misinterpreted their recent reports on natural gas — as I discuss in my May 30 post, “IEA Finds ‘Safe’ Gas Fracking Would Destroy A livable Climate” — the IEA has tried to be clearer here. And they have succeeded. Consider how the report was covered in the NY Times by Matthew Wald, who is no greenie:
Reducing carbon dioxide emissions by enough to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is “still within reach,’’ the International Energy Agency reported on Monday, but at the moment, trends in energy use are running in the wrong direction.
In the latest version of Energy Technology Perspectives, a report issued biennially by the agency, it said the technology to achieve that goal is available. But as Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the agency, put it, “we’re not using it.’’ Since the agency published its first Energy Technology Perspectives in 2006, the evidence of climate change has only grown stronger, she said, but “if anything, it has fallen further down the political agenda.’’
Point #1: Delay makes no sense, since we have the technology to start aggressive emissions reduction and delay is very costly. The IEA explains here that “every additional dollar invested can generate three dollars in future fuel savings by 2050.” It has previously explained that, “Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.”
Point #2: If natural gas is a bridge fuel, then the bridge is really, really short one. Here’s the NY Times again:
Coal consumption, for example, is still rising around the world, and that is “the single most problematic trend in the relationship between energy and climate change,” the report said. Building more efficient coal-fired plants operating at higher temperatures could cut emissions by 30 percent per kilowatt-hour. But to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, coal use would have to fall by 45 percent from 2009 levels, the report said.
Natural gas is not the answer to this problem, the report points out. Gas-fired plants may emit only half as much carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour generated than coal-fired plants, but by 2025 the amount emitted will be higher than the average for the entire electric system, it said.
The United States and some other countries are feverishly building new natural-gas-fired generating equipment, the report adds, but the level of emissions from gas raises “questions around the long-term viability of some gas infrastructure investment if climate objectives are to be met.”
The report expands on that point, to make clear that post-2030, natural gas must increasingly play a supporting role to renewables:
Post-2030, as CO2 reductions deepen in the 2DS, gas-powered generation increasingly takes the role of providing the flexibility to complement variable renewable energies and serves as peak-load power to balance generation and demand fluctuations. Natural gas will remain an important fuel in all sectors in 2050, and demand is still 10% higher in absolute terms in 2050 compared to 2009. The speci?c emissions from a gas-?red power plant will be higher than average global CO2 intensity in electricity generation by 2025, raising questions around the long-term viability of some gas infrastructure investment if climate change objectives are to be met. If near-term infrastructure development does not sufficiently consider technical flexibility, future adaptation to lower-carbon fuels and technologies will be more difficult to achieve.
In other words, either we plan now for the transition off natural gas, or our expanded investment in gas infrastructure is going to complicate any effort to preserve a livable climate.
Point #3: ”It is difficult to overstate the importance of energy efficiency, which is nearly always cost effective in the long run, helps cut emissions and enhances energy security.”
Point #4: We need to price carbon:
Ensuring that the true price of energy – including costs and bene?ts – is reflected in what consumers pay must be a top priority for achieving a low-carbon future at the lowest possible cost. Putting a meaningful price on carbon would send a vital price signal to consumers and technology developers.
Point #5: Finally, the IEA makes clear that renewable energy can play a dominant role in supplying electricity by mid-century, indeed, it must:
Low-carbon electricity is at the core of a sustainable energy system. Low-carbon electricity has system-wide benefits that go beyond the electricity sector: it can also enable deep reductions of CO2 emissions in the industry, transport and buildings sectors. ETP analysis shows how emissions per kilowatt-hour can be reduced by 80% by 2050, through deployment of low-carbon technologies. Renewable energy technologies play a crucial role in this respect. In the 2DS, their share of total average world electricity generation increases from 19% currently to 57% by 2050, a six fold increase in absolute terms. In fact, low-carbon electricity generation is already competitive in many markets and will take an increasing share of generation in coming years. Integrating a much higher share of variable generation, such as wind power and solar PV, is possible. In 2050, variable generation accounts for 20% to 60% of total electricity capacity in the 2DS, depending on the region.
It’s time for governments and journalists and opinion-makers to actually read IEA reports and stop pretending that our current energy policies are rational.
By. Joe Romm
Texas State Capitol – Abstract Painting
Took this picture in the lobby of an office in downtown Austin. Very colorful and wonderfully abstract.
Protesting in Russia
Protest in Russia
Building up the castle wall
Jun 13th 2012, 11:05 by J.Y. | Moscow
IN the weeks and months after Vladimir Putin’s victory on March 4th for a new term as Russian president, the Kremlin appeared unsure about exactly how to deal with a protest movement that it had assumed would disappear on its own after the election. The signs were contradictory: tentative hints at a more conciliatory policy were followed by signs of looming crackdown, and vice versa. One day wearing a white ribbon in the street or eating breakfast in front of the wrong café was enough to get arrested; another day tens of thousands of people were able to walk along Moscow’s central boulevards unimpeded by police.
Then came the events of recent days, when a coherent strategy on the part of the authorities for snuffing out the resilient opposition movement—or at least that part embodied by large-scale street demonstrations—appeared at last to settle into view. The Duma Russia’s parliament, passed a new bill raising fines for participating in unsanctioned protests to $9,000, almost as much as the average annual Russian salary. Organisers could face fines of up to $30,000. Mr Putin signed it into law on June 8th arguing that society must “protect itself from radicalism.”
In the morning of June 12th, officers from the country’s Investigative Committee raided the apartments of opposition leaders, supposedly looking for evidence in connection with a criminal case related to the violence between police and protestors that broke out at the last big opposition rally on May 6th. Men with black balaclavas and Kalashnikovs stood guard while investigators rummaged through family photo albums and stacks of political leaflets. After all his mobile phones and computers were seized, Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption activist and opposition leader, joked that he felt like he was back “in the twentieth century.”
The apparent logic of these moves was to scare off the educated, middle-class professionals who made up the critical mass of this winter’s protest core, while radicalizing those who remained, perhaps setting up a ready excuse for more forceful confrontation down the road. It was a crude, risky move reflecting the unpredictability of Russian political and social life at the moment, an unfamiliar sensation for Mr Putin and those close to him. It also illustrated the passing of an era from Vladislav Surkov, who as Mr Putin’s chief domestic adviser liked to play intricate games of political manipulation, to Vyacheslav Volodin, Surkov’s successor since last December, a man of direct, heavy-handed action.
In the immediate sense, the new law and the raid were meant to dampen the mood and limit attendance at the next opposition demonstration, scheduled for yesterday, a public holiday in Russia. The effect, if anything, was the opposite. Tens of thousands flooded the capital’s central boulevards in a march that rivaled this winter’s mass protests in size. Many people said that they came to show they took offense at the Kremlin’s attempt at intimidation.
Ilya Ponomarev, a deputy from Just Russia, says that the Kremlin’s moves of recent days “do not frighten anybody, but only get them angry.” Just Russia was a once reliably pro-Kremlin party that, as the protest movement gained momentum, emerged into something resembling a proper opposition force. (Last week Mr Ponomarev and others from Just Russia tried, in vain, to block by filibuster—known as an “Italian strike” in Russian— the new protest bill in parliament.) As Mr Ponomarev explains, the epoch of Russia’s recent past under Mr Putin, when the country’s politics were an illusory “carnival” and its citizens were nothing more than “trembling hamsters” has definitively come to an end.
Another member of Just Russia, Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB man, agrees: “It’s impossible to shove this many people back into the kitchen,” he said. (In Soviet times the privacy of the kitchen was the only place where political discourse could be conducted relatively safely.) Mr Gudkov says that throughout the winter and early spring he had some channels of communication with high-level officials; those channels are now closed, he says, leaving both sides dangerously unaware of the other’s intentions.
The protest march on June 12th finished on Prospekt Sakharov, where a stage was set up for a rally. Yet speeches somehow felt beside the point: the crowd had seen these faces and heard these slogans many times before. Many protest leaders, including Mr Navalny, were absent as they had been ordered to give testimony to the Investigative Committee at the very time the march was meant to begin. After a long season of protest, without much of a concrete response from the state, it was unclear to protestors where to direct another round of chants and hard to imagine what effect they might have.
In the immediate future, this near total lack of dialogue between government and opposition may benefit the Kremlin. The opposition has yet to come up with a clear, executable plan for taking power. It remains split among various factions and ideologies, and is not in a position today to force the state’s hand. But that short-term victory of the government may be setting in motion a deeper and more unsolvable crisis, as the authorities are becoming more and more oblivious of the demands on them from society and the threats to their rule.
A report last month by the Centre for Strategic Research, a think tank with government ties, argued that the Russia’s political standoff had become “irreversible”. It said the lack of dialogue is making the probability of more destabilising escalation quite high. Then, earlier this week, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a respected sociologist who studies Russia’s elite, told the Dozhd television channel that the country was in “a revolutionary situation.” So far, under the 13 years of Mr Putin’s rule, the regime has been very skillful at protecting itself. But the danger of very high castle walls is that it’s hard to tell what’s happening in the kingdom outside.
Snoopy at Cape Canaveral
Snoopy got to experience orbital flight before Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty.
Coat and Thai food Trailer – Austin Texas
A really great Thai place on South Congress in Austin, Texas. Great prices too!
57% of Chinese Can’t Be Wrong!
57% of Chinese Citizens Want More Investment in Environment over Economy
By Climate Progress | Tue, 12 June 2012 22:18 | 1
These poll results reflect a growing trend in Chinese society. As China climbs up the economic ladder, its citizens are increasingly deciding that economic growth is not enough. Being able to buy bigger houses and higher-end consumer goods is nice, but quality of life is about more than purchasing power. Real quality of life also requires good public health. In China, public health is suffering due to rampant pollution, and the citizens are desperate to change that.
Here in the United States, some anti-regulatory politicians like to claim that removing or weakening our environmental standards would make the United States a more prosperous country.
In reality, however, it doesn’t pay to be rich if you can’t be healthy too. No one knows that more than the Chinese. Ask the Chinese citizens living in cancer villages if losing their friends and relatives to cancer is a worthwhile price to pay for the dirty factory that provides jobs but poisons their villages with lead, cadmium, and other carcinogens.
Since China is not a democracy, Chinese citizens cannot vote their local politicians out of office when local governments allow businesses to emit harmful pollutants that put public health at risk. When that happens, the best option Chinese citizens have is to expose the situation through the media and hope someone in Beijing hears their story and decides to intervene.
Talking about environmental problems in China is tricky, however. Technically, the Chinese government encourages journalists to expose pollution scandals. Beijing generally finds that exposure to be useful, because it is hard for them to get accurate environmental data through official channels. They even have special transparency regulations that are supposed to give Chinese journalists access to environmental impact assessments, pollution monitoring results, and other government data.
Although Chinese leaders support exposing pollution problems in most cases, they are not okay with exposure that damages the central government’s image or sparks mass protests. They are, after all, an authoritarian regime. Because of that, they have “state secrets” regulations that make Chinese journalists liable for how citizens react to the stories they publish. If a media exposé about lead pollution sparks a protest, the journalist who wrote the story could go to jail. That means journalists have to self-sensor their environmental coverage, and citizens do not always have an outlet for exposing this information.
Environmental problems are increasingly seen as life-or-death, however. And that means many people in China are deciding they would rather risk going to jail than watch their children suffer irrevocable neurological damage from lead, mercury, and other pollutants.
When the media cannot fix their problems, Chinese citizens are increasingly taking to the streets in mass protests. We saw this in action in November 2010 when hundreds of citizens protested local government plans to build awaste incinerator near their homes in southern China’s Guangzhou City. We saw it again in December 2011 in Haimen, when Chinese citizens protested plans to build a coal plant.
Public anger is also erupting in the nation’s capital. This past winter, air pollution was so bad in Beijing, pilots could not see the runway at China’s national airport, and air traffic ground to a halt. Despite the obviously horrific conditions, Beijing’s city government rated the pollution as minor. Beijing residents flooded the internet with comments calling on their government to fess up to the fact that conditions were horrible and they were endangering public health. The citizens who posted those comments took a personal risk — any of them could have been punished for subversion, or in Chinese terminology, endangering” ‘social stability.” Since there were so many of them, however, Beijing officials were forced to side with the people and take action to address the pollution. Now Beijing is planning to close down the city’s coal plants and switch over to natural gas.
When it comes to environmental pollution, the Chinese people are getting serious. They have to — that is the only way they can protect themselves and their children from serious harm.
Here in the United States, we should do everything we can to support their cause. We should also remember that we are lucky to live in a democracy where many of these battles have already been fought and won. That is one of our greatest assets, and it is something many in China are willing to risk everything to achieve.
By. Melanie Hart
Melanie Hart is a Policy Analyst for Chinese Climate and Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress.
Progress at 2012 World Football Cup Host City
World Cup Host City: Brasília Progress
By Robbie Blakeley, Senior Contributing Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Following a 2010 series of articles detailing the World Cup host cities in Brazil, it is time again to review the progress leading up to the 2014 World Cup with attention moving to the nation’s capital, Brasília. Not a traditional footballing stronghold, nevertheless a brand new arena, the Estádio Nacional Mané Garrincha is being constructed for the tournament.
How the finished Mané Garrincha stadium will look, photo by Castro Mello Arquitetos/Wikimedia Creative Commons License.
The stadium is named after former Brazilian right-winger Mané Garrincha, winner of two World Cup titles with the Seleção in 1958 and 1962. During the second success, the former best player on the planet was celebrated for carrying an average Brazilian team to the trophy, after Pelé had injured himself during the group stages.
The finished article will bear a striking resemblance to Rio’s own Maracanã. The shape is a two tiered bowl with room for 71,000 fans inside. Behind the Maracanã, it will be the second most expensive piece of World Cup construction.
The overall cost of the entire project, which includes a heliport, is estimated to cost R$863.2 million. The actual arena takes up the bulk of the expense, with building costs set at around R$671 million.
However with so many parts as yet undefined, such as the heliport, drainage system construction and purchase of grass for the pitch there are concerns the budget could be expanded.
The size and expense of this stadium reflect its importance over the next two years. The Mané Garrincha will host Confederations Cup matches in 2013, as well as the Confederations Cup Opening Ceremony.
The stadium is scheduled to be finished by December of this year, photo by Vianey Bentes/Wikimedia Creative Commons License.
When 2014 arrives, the arena will see seven World Cup matches. It is one of only two stadiums to host that many games, alongside Rio’s Maracanã, and whilst Rio get the final, Brasília will host the tournament’s third placed play-off tie.
Read the balance of this article in the Riotimesonline edition
Behind the Scenes of the National Museum of American History – From the Smithsonian Magazine
My Trip Behind the Scenes of the NMAH’s Hip-Hop Collection
Posted on June 11, 2012 by Laurel Fritzsch
It’s always exciting going into the vaults of a museum’s collection. Ok, so actually they’re rarely “vaults,” but it’s still exciting to open collection cabinets and discover what objects may lie inside. On this particular occasion, National Museum of American History curator Eric Jentsch was showing me items in the Museum’s hip-hop collection. Although for several months I’ve been reading about hip-hop culture and technology, and looking at images related to it, this was my first opportunity to handle the objects themselves.
Afrika Bamabatta coat, front view, NMAH photo.
Eric opened up a cabinet and before me was an outfit worn by hip-hop advocate and community leader Afrika Bambaataa. Bambaataa was a pioneering hip-hop DJ known for playing obscure records, but his key contribution to the early hip-hop movement was bringing peace to a drug and gang riddled Bronx. He was a founding member of a gang in the Bronx River Projects but had a transformative experience when he visited Africa. He returned with a desire to provide his community with peaceful alternatives to gangs. Bamabatta turned his turf-building skills into peacemaking skills and used them while performing grassroots promotion for hip-hop parties. In the 1970s he formed first the Bronx River Organization and then the Universal Zulu Nation, an awareness group of reformed gang members who organized hip-hop parties for youth to provide peaceful and fun havens away from violence.
Afrika Bambaataa coat, back view, NMAH photo.
Despite having read all of this about Bambaataa I lacked a sense of what he was like in person. But by holding one of his jackets, I could better comprehend him. From the jacket’s size I got a better idea of how big he was. From seeing the outfit’s colors and examining the quality of its workmanship I got an idea of his taste. Taking it all in together I could picture him filling out the jacket and was better able to get a sense of what it would have been like to be in his presence.
Mixer donated by Grandmaster Flash, NMAH photo.
My visit to the collections also gave me information about the technological advances of hip-hop music. I have virtually no experience with sound mixing, so attempting to comprehend the evolution of mixing equipment from a record player to a mixing board has been a bit mind-boggling. For example, DJ Grandmaster Flash invented a mixer from spare parts. According to him, “today you can buy turntables, needles and mixers that are equipped to do whatever. But at that particular time, I had to build it. I had to take microphone mixers and turn them into turntable mixers. I was taking speakers out of abandoned cars and using people’s thrown-away stereos.”
Once hip-hop became popular, the music industry took notice of the technologies artists invented to produce hip-hop’s sound. The Rane Corporation worked with Grandmaster Flash to develop a mixer that in Flash’s opinion, corrected the various problems he encountered as a DJ. The Rane mixer in the NMAH’s collection was donated by Flash. I was surprised by its appearance. Having read about the heavy use hip-hop equipment got, and how even after mixers no longer functioned they were re-purposed, this Rane mixer was in nearly mint condition. I expected something with heavy wear and tear and mis-matched parts. I was also surprised by its complexity. I didn’t think it would look so much like the mixers currently in use. Seeing this mixer designed (and donated) by Flash really impressed upon me how rapidly mixing technology improved.
I think that sometimes people undervalue doing research in museum collections, but it’s something that I have found useful in my research. At the very least, it’s exciting to handle objects used by the people you’ve been researching. I look forward to delving deeper into the Museum’s hip-hop collection as research for Places of Invention continues.
Passing Through . . . . 