It's only fitting that there is a post on the weekend that gives way to the Copenhagen summit! And hold your breath, for this is the moment you were waiting for your whole life! You shall be left mesmerized by the coordinated global action on this overarching global problem!
Well, who are we kidding here! You can use your breath for other things currently for nothing spectacular is expected out of this political jamboree. And I always counted myself amongst the die-hard optimists!
Keeping with the expected tone of heated discussions at Copenhagen, some of which might question the legitimacy of the climate science, I shall talk today about something that might keep the climate skeptics awake at night:) Oh, I can see them getting all red with the anticipation of going for the kill this year! This one's for you, you Doubting Thomases!
The latest salvo against climate change comes from the most unexpected quarters, the Sun! Never knew that even the celestial powers were scheming against any consensus on climate science:) The phenomenon in question here is Sunspots. I will add a caveat here that people have spent their lives researching on this topic and I am nowhere close to being even a passive observer. So please take my post with a grain of salt, but I would be thrilled if somebody could improve my perspective on this issue.
Sunspots are complex magnetic activities on the surface of the sun, the photosphere, that creates temporary dark spots on it. These spots are cooler than the rest of the surface, they tend to appear in pairs on either side of the sun and are expected to last for about 2 weeks before disappearing. The sunspot cycle is reported to be 11 years in length, coinciding with the magnetic field cycle of the sun. So, as the magnetic field goes stronger, we observe a higher number of sunspots, which then go through a minimum until the magnetic field reverses direction bringing the number of spots back up.
Anyway, beyond the physics of it, we just need to keep note of one simple fact. It may seem that as the sunspots are colder than the rest of the photosphere, the intensity of the solar radiation would be lower than normal, 1366W/m2. This is NOT true, as the surrounding region of the spots are hotter than normal and make the incidence go higher than normal. Put simply, occurrence of sunspots makes the sun send MORE heat to earth.
A new solar cycle was expected to start in 2008, which should have led to the formation of sunspots by now. These spots are still elusive, prompting scientists to say that 2010 will mark a comeback for them, and NASA expects them to peak in 2013. However, the National Solar Observatory in Arizona, US has found that the sun's magnetism has been decreasing in strength for some time now and we may have seen the last of them, as the field would be too weak for them to form! This would mean that we might see less heat from the sun reaching earth, cooling the earth. This is not the first time we shall see such a phenomenon; the period from 1645-1715 was marked by no sunspot occurrence leading to extremely cold winters across the world and goes by the name Maunder Minimum.
You would have guessed my drift by now!:) 2010 will be an interesting year for arguments between climate wonks and climate skeptics. The global warming meets the solar cooling! Let the arguments begin:)
Surf Excel used to run an ad campaign in India, with the punch line:
"Daag ache hai na!"(Stains are good na, desi style:))
I could not agree more with them:)
Here's to Copenhagen!
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
The CCS conundrum
Retching jargons comes naturally in the realm of climate change. You have not arrived until you know what the pet acronyms mean and a recent instance made me realize that even CCS, as omnipresent as it may be, is not an obvious one to many. So today my post is dedicated to my pet concept, Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS)! And I am tempted to add, dobara mat poochna:P
CCS is the concept by which you capture CO2 emissions from point sources, viz. power plants, where the concentration of the gas is maximum. The effluent stream of a power plant contains about 12% CO2 by volume. Its easiest, technologically speaking, to capture this at the source than at any other place downstream. The captured CO2 is then compressed and stored. This method is akin to treating a problem at the source itself! Or as the slang goes, catch 'em young!:)
CCS is, in a way, like the ersatz school teacher who used to watch over your bad habits until you became mature enough to understand them! It allows you to consume the BAD energy sources, coal, oil and natural gas, while reducing their carbon impact until the world evolves to a more renewable energy based economy. It allows us the crucial time in which we can mend our ways and evolve our technologies incrementally, for a seamless transition to the 'green' future. And given that renewables constitute about 3% of our global energy consumption, we do need as much time as we can get!
Despite the crucial role for this technology, its deployment is not as simple as it sounds. The energy and cost requirements of capture are huge but the biggest problem comes on the storage side. The compressed and liquefied CO2 has to be stored somewhere. The quantity of captured CO2 is such that it cannot be used industrially, viz. in fizzy drinks or the manufacture of dry ice. Unless of course, if each person starts drinking 30 liters of carbonated drinks every day. That would not be the solution we are looking for:)
So the storage will be done mostly in underground aquifers or under the ocean. This runs into the problem of NIMBY and NIMO, something I have discussed in an earlier post. The public perception of CO2 leaking from the underground aquifers is also an issue. People are scared to death at the mere thought of this evil gas coming out of the ground and annihilating the planet earth. But most importantly, CCS is mired in the incentives problem. The costs of implementing this are such that the power producing companies have no incentives in doing this, until there is a evolved cap and trade program where they can claim credits for the tons of CO2 captured. The Government should be the ideal player to pick the tab for implementing this. We know what the Governments around the world are going through at the moment to criticize them for not sponsoring CCS.
So, there is a certain pessimism about this technology currently. A concept that should be so central to our existence, technically speaking, is languishing at the sidelines. Dr. Steve Chu, US Secretary of Energy is still very optimistic about this, professing the development of 20 demonstration plants, that capture more than a million tons of CO2 each year, by 2020. The reality is that its almost 2010 and we do not have even a single one so far. And we are talking about building 20 such plants in the next 10 years!!!
Where did I leave my magic wand? I have been trying to look for it for quite some time now. Can any of you find that for me please?:)
CCS is the concept by which you capture CO2 emissions from point sources, viz. power plants, where the concentration of the gas is maximum. The effluent stream of a power plant contains about 12% CO2 by volume. Its easiest, technologically speaking, to capture this at the source than at any other place downstream. The captured CO2 is then compressed and stored. This method is akin to treating a problem at the source itself! Or as the slang goes, catch 'em young!:)
CCS is, in a way, like the ersatz school teacher who used to watch over your bad habits until you became mature enough to understand them! It allows you to consume the BAD energy sources, coal, oil and natural gas, while reducing their carbon impact until the world evolves to a more renewable energy based economy. It allows us the crucial time in which we can mend our ways and evolve our technologies incrementally, for a seamless transition to the 'green' future. And given that renewables constitute about 3% of our global energy consumption, we do need as much time as we can get!
Despite the crucial role for this technology, its deployment is not as simple as it sounds. The energy and cost requirements of capture are huge but the biggest problem comes on the storage side. The compressed and liquefied CO2 has to be stored somewhere. The quantity of captured CO2 is such that it cannot be used industrially, viz. in fizzy drinks or the manufacture of dry ice. Unless of course, if each person starts drinking 30 liters of carbonated drinks every day. That would not be the solution we are looking for:)
So the storage will be done mostly in underground aquifers or under the ocean. This runs into the problem of NIMBY and NIMO, something I have discussed in an earlier post. The public perception of CO2 leaking from the underground aquifers is also an issue. People are scared to death at the mere thought of this evil gas coming out of the ground and annihilating the planet earth. But most importantly, CCS is mired in the incentives problem. The costs of implementing this are such that the power producing companies have no incentives in doing this, until there is a evolved cap and trade program where they can claim credits for the tons of CO2 captured. The Government should be the ideal player to pick the tab for implementing this. We know what the Governments around the world are going through at the moment to criticize them for not sponsoring CCS.
So, there is a certain pessimism about this technology currently. A concept that should be so central to our existence, technically speaking, is languishing at the sidelines. Dr. Steve Chu, US Secretary of Energy is still very optimistic about this, professing the development of 20 demonstration plants, that capture more than a million tons of CO2 each year, by 2020. The reality is that its almost 2010 and we do not have even a single one so far. And we are talking about building 20 such plants in the next 10 years!!!
Where did I leave my magic wand? I have been trying to look for it for quite some time now. Can any of you find that for me please?:)
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Blogging v_2.0
Hello to my favorite people! Its great to be writing here and to have our discussion going! I apologize for my absence, graduate student life hits you in more ways than you can imagine:) But, with the Copenhagen summit only days away, its only logical to renew our vows to energy and to saving the world:)
So where do I start? Lets finish off the 101 that we were having and that shall be a good segue to a greater discussion on Copenhagen. I had finished elucidating Cap and Trade and its only fitting to have some words on Carbon Tax today. A carbon tax works as any other tax, a levy on your consumption of certain things. In this case, it will keep account of your carbon consumption.
So, in the printout analogy, you can imagine being charged an extra amount for each page. This extra amount is supposed to induce people to print less, and use the electronic means more often. Now, this amount is difficult to determine. The extra money that will force me to print less is entirely different from the amount required for Bill Gates! The problem with carbon tax arises from this basic ideology. Who determines the amount? The Government? The same government that bails out people who cause a financial mess and regretfully apologizes for not creating enough jobs? Naah....I would have my reservations against that!
There are certain good things about the tax, when compared to the Cap and Trade system:
- The tax amount is fixed and helps people and companies plan well for the future for they can be assured of the financial impacts of their carbon emissions. In the cap and trade system, the allowance price can go as high as the markets can make them go. And we all are well aware of the consequences when speculations are allowed to run amok.
- The Government gets a steady stream of revenue from it. In the cap and trade system, the government had the revenue only at the point of selling the first set of credits. Once the credits are out there, its the market that makes money and not the government. Hence, this money can be used for further R&D and deployment of the low carbon energy sources, a much needed push! Although, if more money means that the government can bailout more banks and too-big-to-fail institutions, I am certainly moving this argument to the cons side!
- No more MARKETS!:) In the spirit of taking a dig at financial markets, a carbon tax will not form an additional market, that of carbon credits! It will be a simple, regular tax that people will get used to.
In the same breath, lets look at the cons side.
- As broached above, the tax amount is completely out there! Nobody knows the exact way to fix it.
- Fears of overshooting climate goals! The reduction of consumption due to the tax should take us to the goal of restricting atmospheric carbon concentration to below a pre-fixed number. However, the odds of that happening are lower than me dating Priyanka Chopra. I wish the odds of the latter event were higher, only so that the odds of saving the world were better:)
- The Big Brother! Denizens of the world are already fed up with large governments and what they bring along. There is a push towards more decentralization of power in all parts of the world and this tax would only entail more government presence in our lives. Where you vote on this depends on where you sit, to quote a favorite expression:)
All in all, carbon tax is not a favorite tool in the discussions currently. Cap and Trade is the way the world seems to go at the moment. However, its always good to know that one has options:)
And that goads me to quote another favorite line from the movie Matrix:
"You have already made the choice Neo, now its time to understand why you did so!"
See you next week!
So where do I start? Lets finish off the 101 that we were having and that shall be a good segue to a greater discussion on Copenhagen. I had finished elucidating Cap and Trade and its only fitting to have some words on Carbon Tax today. A carbon tax works as any other tax, a levy on your consumption of certain things. In this case, it will keep account of your carbon consumption.
So, in the printout analogy, you can imagine being charged an extra amount for each page. This extra amount is supposed to induce people to print less, and use the electronic means more often. Now, this amount is difficult to determine. The extra money that will force me to print less is entirely different from the amount required for Bill Gates! The problem with carbon tax arises from this basic ideology. Who determines the amount? The Government? The same government that bails out people who cause a financial mess and regretfully apologizes for not creating enough jobs? Naah....I would have my reservations against that!
There are certain good things about the tax, when compared to the Cap and Trade system:
- The tax amount is fixed and helps people and companies plan well for the future for they can be assured of the financial impacts of their carbon emissions. In the cap and trade system, the allowance price can go as high as the markets can make them go. And we all are well aware of the consequences when speculations are allowed to run amok.
- The Government gets a steady stream of revenue from it. In the cap and trade system, the government had the revenue only at the point of selling the first set of credits. Once the credits are out there, its the market that makes money and not the government. Hence, this money can be used for further R&D and deployment of the low carbon energy sources, a much needed push! Although, if more money means that the government can bailout more banks and too-big-to-fail institutions, I am certainly moving this argument to the cons side!
- No more MARKETS!:) In the spirit of taking a dig at financial markets, a carbon tax will not form an additional market, that of carbon credits! It will be a simple, regular tax that people will get used to.
In the same breath, lets look at the cons side.
- As broached above, the tax amount is completely out there! Nobody knows the exact way to fix it.
- Fears of overshooting climate goals! The reduction of consumption due to the tax should take us to the goal of restricting atmospheric carbon concentration to below a pre-fixed number. However, the odds of that happening are lower than me dating Priyanka Chopra. I wish the odds of the latter event were higher, only so that the odds of saving the world were better:)
- The Big Brother! Denizens of the world are already fed up with large governments and what they bring along. There is a push towards more decentralization of power in all parts of the world and this tax would only entail more government presence in our lives. Where you vote on this depends on where you sit, to quote a favorite expression:)
All in all, carbon tax is not a favorite tool in the discussions currently. Cap and Trade is the way the world seems to go at the moment. However, its always good to know that one has options:)
And that goads me to quote another favorite line from the movie Matrix:
"You have already made the choice Neo, now its time to understand why you did so!"
See you next week!
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
UNESCO Article
I recently submitted an entry for an essay writing competition organized by UNESCO. Here is that entry, would love to have feedback from you people. The topic of the essay was
"The Role of Science in Building a Better World"
I will come back shortly to wrap up the cap and trade topic and introduce further climate change topics here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Towards an Energy Revolution"
Science has catalyzed humanity’s quest to unleash its full potential. From being nomadic tribes, making a living out of hunting and gathering, science made man use his brainpower to complex challenges in life, making the impossible possible. It heralded an explosive land productivity to feed the teeming population, the green revolution, through the synthetic manufacture of ammonia and fertilizers to the tenfold increase in labor productivity in the industrial revolution. The abundance of time that science brought forth fueled hegemonic aspirations in man, resulting in historic wars, which brought about a military revolution and pushed the frontiers of science to newer areas, from nuclear power to an aviation revolution. The revolution in computing speed hit us next that is still unfolding. A year has become a long time in the cycle of science and its pursuit has brought man a long way from the early days.
The fixation of bigger, faster and better systems led to a consumption centric approach in man. The more one consumed, the more one wanted to consume. Corporations thrived on this spirit of wanton consumerism and grew at an astronomical pace by goading such behaviour in people. Intricate models were developed to assess economic profitability using the quintessential cost benefit framework but environmental protection was hardly considered as a variable in these models. Environment was conveniently assumed to be a perpetual waste bin, where all waste from our profligate consumption could recklessly be dumped. This issue is the concept of externality, where we price a good without taking into account its entire manufacturing cost.
This makes the global price structures extremely skewed. Coal and oil are dirt cheap as we do not include the cost of their emissions into their market price, inducing us to depend on these carbonaceous fuels for 81% of our energy needs. The world has taken note of this lately and is rallying together to correct the anomaly. However, it is not easy to overhaul the existing global energy infrastructure radically; it has to be done in small, seamless steps. There has to be a two-pronged approach here, first to reduce the environmental impact of these fuels either through improving the process efficiencies or by sucking up the carbon emitted, naturally or industrially. The second deals with the development of technologies and policies related to renewable fuels. My research is focused on the former, of reducing the carbon impact of the non-renewable resources and mobilizing the people towards a low carbon future. It is estimated that the carbon productivity will have to increase tenfold in the next 40 years to achieve this, something we managed in labor productivity during the industrial revolution, but the time horizon allowed is 1/3rd of that available earlier.
I am pursuing a Masters program in Energy at MIT and my research with the MIT Energy Initiative deals with a concept called Air Capture, which stands for sucking CO2 directly out of the air and storing it underground. This technology has recently gained publicity owing to the ease of mitigation of emission from the distributed sources, viz. automobiles, home heating, air transportation etc, which are responsible for more than 55% of the total emissions, and growing. The best part about these systems is their location flexibility, as they can be set up at the sequestration sites and allows skipping building the intricate piping infrastructure to transport the captured liquid CO2, otherwise required. The cost of this process is prohibitive at the moment, in the range of $500-$1500 per ton of CO2, because of the huge energy requirement of the solvent regeneration step, but a global research effort is underway to achieve a technical breakthrough in solvent characteristics. This technology is also ideal from the perspective of technology diffusion to developing nations, where the next wave of emissions will happen.
The other part of my work deals with spreading awareness among common people. I believe, unlike the Manhattan project, this transition to a low, clean energy economy is a complex social problem, which cannot be achieved by the scientific community alone. It will require the help of common people as well. I maintain a blog to share insights and also make it a point to talk to as many people as I can. In my next home visit to India, I have scheduled a series of such talks at all the major Indian universities, for the power of youth can overcome this enormous challenge, even at one of the important countries in this fight against climate change.
Science is about to undergo a metamorphosis; the flaw in our models will spur the next revolution, the Energy Revolution! The hitherto ignored parameter of environmental protection is about to trigger the next level of scientific evolution and the world is quickly getting ready for the challenge.
"The Role of Science in Building a Better World"
I will come back shortly to wrap up the cap and trade topic and introduce further climate change topics here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Towards an Energy Revolution"
Science has catalyzed humanity’s quest to unleash its full potential. From being nomadic tribes, making a living out of hunting and gathering, science made man use his brainpower to complex challenges in life, making the impossible possible. It heralded an explosive land productivity to feed the teeming population, the green revolution, through the synthetic manufacture of ammonia and fertilizers to the tenfold increase in labor productivity in the industrial revolution. The abundance of time that science brought forth fueled hegemonic aspirations in man, resulting in historic wars, which brought about a military revolution and pushed the frontiers of science to newer areas, from nuclear power to an aviation revolution. The revolution in computing speed hit us next that is still unfolding. A year has become a long time in the cycle of science and its pursuit has brought man a long way from the early days.
The fixation of bigger, faster and better systems led to a consumption centric approach in man. The more one consumed, the more one wanted to consume. Corporations thrived on this spirit of wanton consumerism and grew at an astronomical pace by goading such behaviour in people. Intricate models were developed to assess economic profitability using the quintessential cost benefit framework but environmental protection was hardly considered as a variable in these models. Environment was conveniently assumed to be a perpetual waste bin, where all waste from our profligate consumption could recklessly be dumped. This issue is the concept of externality, where we price a good without taking into account its entire manufacturing cost.
This makes the global price structures extremely skewed. Coal and oil are dirt cheap as we do not include the cost of their emissions into their market price, inducing us to depend on these carbonaceous fuels for 81% of our energy needs. The world has taken note of this lately and is rallying together to correct the anomaly. However, it is not easy to overhaul the existing global energy infrastructure radically; it has to be done in small, seamless steps. There has to be a two-pronged approach here, first to reduce the environmental impact of these fuels either through improving the process efficiencies or by sucking up the carbon emitted, naturally or industrially. The second deals with the development of technologies and policies related to renewable fuels. My research is focused on the former, of reducing the carbon impact of the non-renewable resources and mobilizing the people towards a low carbon future. It is estimated that the carbon productivity will have to increase tenfold in the next 40 years to achieve this, something we managed in labor productivity during the industrial revolution, but the time horizon allowed is 1/3rd of that available earlier.
I am pursuing a Masters program in Energy at MIT and my research with the MIT Energy Initiative deals with a concept called Air Capture, which stands for sucking CO2 directly out of the air and storing it underground. This technology has recently gained publicity owing to the ease of mitigation of emission from the distributed sources, viz. automobiles, home heating, air transportation etc, which are responsible for more than 55% of the total emissions, and growing. The best part about these systems is their location flexibility, as they can be set up at the sequestration sites and allows skipping building the intricate piping infrastructure to transport the captured liquid CO2, otherwise required. The cost of this process is prohibitive at the moment, in the range of $500-$1500 per ton of CO2, because of the huge energy requirement of the solvent regeneration step, but a global research effort is underway to achieve a technical breakthrough in solvent characteristics. This technology is also ideal from the perspective of technology diffusion to developing nations, where the next wave of emissions will happen.
The other part of my work deals with spreading awareness among common people. I believe, unlike the Manhattan project, this transition to a low, clean energy economy is a complex social problem, which cannot be achieved by the scientific community alone. It will require the help of common people as well. I maintain a blog to share insights and also make it a point to talk to as many people as I can. In my next home visit to India, I have scheduled a series of such talks at all the major Indian universities, for the power of youth can overcome this enormous challenge, even at one of the important countries in this fight against climate change.
Science is about to undergo a metamorphosis; the flaw in our models will spur the next revolution, the Energy Revolution! The hitherto ignored parameter of environmental protection is about to trigger the next level of scientific evolution and the world is quickly getting ready for the challenge.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Article about India in the New York Times
Here's something I found quite interesting in the New York Times today. Would like you to read this and think it over.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/weekinreview/05giridharadas.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=farewell%20to%20an%20india%20i%20hardly%20knew&st=cse
More on global climate change coming up soon!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/weekinreview/05giridharadas.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=farewell%20to%20an%20india%20i%20hardly%20knew&st=cse
More on global climate change coming up soon!
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Summer of '09
I think I have been able to convey the nuances of the Cap and Trade system through the printout analogy. We will be using that a lot in the coming weeks to further strengthen the concepts and cap the whole topic off.
In this post, I will be meandering off a little from the energy focus here and talk a bit about my summer time here:) No no, I am not reneging on the basic principle of this post of not putting any personal stuff here. So I will not be telling you how I am having a great time in Boston this summer, how it has been fantastic weather for the most part, how I have been enjoying the morning runs, weekend beaches and the generally lively atmosphere, minus the nagging workload of courses and going through the easy-paced research life:P Nothing of this sort here...don't worry!
I wanted to write something about the extremely enriching conferences that I have attended over the past 2 weeks. Just to back it up a bit, I had got an internship at The World Bank for the summer in their Carbon Finance Unit. It was the kind of place I wanted to work at, the kind of place for which I had come to this program in the first place. But then, as is with life, I had to give that up and work on my research to get a paper by the end of the summer. I was so angry at this turn of events....so ANGRY!! However, it has turn out to be a great experience so far, mainly because of the conferences I have been to in a span of a few weeks and the amount I have learned from them!
So last week there was this 40 year celebration of the Apollo landing on the moon. Technically, a month earlier as 20th July, 1969 was when that happened. I have always been a little critical of the Space programs, mainly from the developing country perspective. When we don't have money to feed our people, I thought it preposterous for civilization to engage in a space war to land on the moon and then come back with tonnes of moon rocks! As if, we didn't have enough rocks on earth. I have been pretty opinionated on this regard and got into lengthy conversations with my peers in the Aero/Astro department here. So, this celebration were a chance for me to see what did we learn from all the trillions of dollars spent on space missions!
Was I swept over! The man's inquest of space has shaped the way we do things in a phenomenal way! From the area of telecommunications, to education to life sciences, to the food industry! You look at something and you find it linked to the space related research efforts. I must say, this was a big eye-opener for me and I accept my rather naive opinion of this whole area.
And now for the biggest part: I met Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin at the conference! Yes, the first 2 people on the surface of the moon! Yes, the men about whom I used to read in the books in my school! Yes, the same voice which said something to the effect of "A small step for man, a giant leap for mankind":) I fall short of words to describe how I felt when I met them...goosebumps would be a euphemism!:P In one of the sessions, we were asked to clap for the people involved with the Apollo missions and I must say I would be right up there in terms of the decibel level of my clapping:)
The contribution of the space program in the realm of climate science is also crucial. The ozone layer problem was first spotted through a satellite image over Antartica that led to the Montreal Protocol. These space borne cameras have been very vital in the fight against carbon dioxide accumulation and we will have to increasingly depend on them in the future in the face of a climate treaty post Kyoto. Any global effort in this area will hinge on the confirmation that every country is following suit, primarily due to the global nature of the problem. So, if any country/region is not adhering to the assigned emission target, the problem is not getting solved and even those places that are managing their emissions well are getting hurt. These space systems will keep everyone in check and make sure that the offenders are punished/reprimanded. They have been doing a great job in the ozone layer maintenance by providing a region wise data on the emission levels globally.
So this proselytistic self is all about space program now! Go ISRO! Go NASA!
The other conference I was talking about was on Engineering Systems, the most recent discipline of Engineering that brings together an integrated approach on problems. It is the new belief of the complex nature of the problems in the 21st century and how only one discipline of engineering, or even social sciences, is not enough to solve them. It was an enriching experience, in its own way, looking at the evolution of a whole new field that could be taking up all the space in the future.
I would finish with a quote from the movie Apollo 13, motivated from my new found love for space! Tom Hanks was asked by a Senator in the movie the relevance of going ahead with space programs once they had already landed on the moon and led in the space race against the USSR. What more benefit can they derive from going to a place they have already explored a couple of times. The actor, very prophetically retorts that wonder what had happened if people after Christopher Columbus had the same logic!
Back to climate change in the next post!:)
In this post, I will be meandering off a little from the energy focus here and talk a bit about my summer time here:) No no, I am not reneging on the basic principle of this post of not putting any personal stuff here. So I will not be telling you how I am having a great time in Boston this summer, how it has been fantastic weather for the most part, how I have been enjoying the morning runs, weekend beaches and the generally lively atmosphere, minus the nagging workload of courses and going through the easy-paced research life:P Nothing of this sort here...don't worry!
I wanted to write something about the extremely enriching conferences that I have attended over the past 2 weeks. Just to back it up a bit, I had got an internship at The World Bank for the summer in their Carbon Finance Unit. It was the kind of place I wanted to work at, the kind of place for which I had come to this program in the first place. But then, as is with life, I had to give that up and work on my research to get a paper by the end of the summer. I was so angry at this turn of events....so ANGRY!! However, it has turn out to be a great experience so far, mainly because of the conferences I have been to in a span of a few weeks and the amount I have learned from them!
So last week there was this 40 year celebration of the Apollo landing on the moon. Technically, a month earlier as 20th July, 1969 was when that happened. I have always been a little critical of the Space programs, mainly from the developing country perspective. When we don't have money to feed our people, I thought it preposterous for civilization to engage in a space war to land on the moon and then come back with tonnes of moon rocks! As if, we didn't have enough rocks on earth. I have been pretty opinionated on this regard and got into lengthy conversations with my peers in the Aero/Astro department here. So, this celebration were a chance for me to see what did we learn from all the trillions of dollars spent on space missions!
Was I swept over! The man's inquest of space has shaped the way we do things in a phenomenal way! From the area of telecommunications, to education to life sciences, to the food industry! You look at something and you find it linked to the space related research efforts. I must say, this was a big eye-opener for me and I accept my rather naive opinion of this whole area.
And now for the biggest part: I met Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin at the conference! Yes, the first 2 people on the surface of the moon! Yes, the men about whom I used to read in the books in my school! Yes, the same voice which said something to the effect of "A small step for man, a giant leap for mankind":) I fall short of words to describe how I felt when I met them...goosebumps would be a euphemism!:P In one of the sessions, we were asked to clap for the people involved with the Apollo missions and I must say I would be right up there in terms of the decibel level of my clapping:)
The contribution of the space program in the realm of climate science is also crucial. The ozone layer problem was first spotted through a satellite image over Antartica that led to the Montreal Protocol. These space borne cameras have been very vital in the fight against carbon dioxide accumulation and we will have to increasingly depend on them in the future in the face of a climate treaty post Kyoto. Any global effort in this area will hinge on the confirmation that every country is following suit, primarily due to the global nature of the problem. So, if any country/region is not adhering to the assigned emission target, the problem is not getting solved and even those places that are managing their emissions well are getting hurt. These space systems will keep everyone in check and make sure that the offenders are punished/reprimanded. They have been doing a great job in the ozone layer maintenance by providing a region wise data on the emission levels globally.
So this proselytistic self is all about space program now! Go ISRO! Go NASA!
The other conference I was talking about was on Engineering Systems, the most recent discipline of Engineering that brings together an integrated approach on problems. It is the new belief of the complex nature of the problems in the 21st century and how only one discipline of engineering, or even social sciences, is not enough to solve them. It was an enriching experience, in its own way, looking at the evolution of a whole new field that could be taking up all the space in the future.
I would finish with a quote from the movie Apollo 13, motivated from my new found love for space! Tom Hanks was asked by a Senator in the movie the relevance of going ahead with space programs once they had already landed on the moon and led in the space race against the USSR. What more benefit can they derive from going to a place they have already explored a couple of times. The actor, very prophetically retorts that wonder what had happened if people after Christopher Columbus had the same logic!
Back to climate change in the next post!:)
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Cap and Trade system: The Panacea!
Cap and Trade (CAT) has been in the news for quite a long time now, and is big in the Climate Change domain. People have been citing this system as a solution to the externality problem of Climate Change, something I talked about in a previous post. It is also a market based solution and is lapped up by the developed world. I had alluded to it, briefly, in the last post on the Waxman Markey bill. Today, I wish to provide a primer to this concept.
I was looking for an apt analogy to present this concept for this past week until today morning! We had an Officer's Retreat of my dorm at MIT today, where all the elected/selected officials were huddled in a room trying to brainstorm about major problems for the coming year. A major concern has been the amount of paper wasted for trivial printouts,a s they are subsidized here, at the dorm's computer center and somebody proposed a cap and trade set up to reduce the number of printouts . Lo and behold, there was my analogy!:) And the sign to write my blog today! I must say, sometimes I have to believe in the concept of 'signs', the much hyped about concept in Hollywood/Bollywood but much maligned in the real world. What, aren't you convinced that this is a good enough sign!?!:P
Anyway, so back to the issue at hand. Let's take the case of papers we use for printouts. Say, and this is not that chimeric either, the incessant use of paper is causing a huge drain on the number of trees left. Things come to a point that we need to overtly preserve the trees and at the same time have enough papers for printing out the essential items. This can be done by calculating a sustainable yield of papers that we can use, without consuming too many trees that it threatens their existence. Lets say this number is 1000 pages. So, we have got to limit the number of printouts to less than or equal to 1000 pages.
Now that we know the number of pages we can possibly use, we need to find a way to distribute them among the people that need it. The market based solution, that is the Cap and Trade system, would go for an auction on the pages. So, people will bid a price and a certain number of quantity they want and the highest bidder will get his bid amount, say 100 pages, and then it will trickle down till all the allowance, i.e. pages, are sold off. There is a huge debate over the exact process of giving away the pages right now, for this will hurt a lot of people. The cost of printout, which so far used to be only the cost of the cartridge and the cost of paper, assuming an infinite flow of paper, will go up when the cost of paper goes up as a result of this auction. Not only is the cost of paper the cost of making it, but is also includes the externality of cutting down a tree, a valued resource and what monetary impact it might have on our future.
We will add a level of complexity here. If you assume that it was not an MIT dorm where only students, having similar economic statuses, live but a residential place where students and working professionals live together, you will have to agree that the cost would break the back of the students, who will not be able to afford such a high price and most necessarily need a lot of print outs. The professionals will most essentially be printing their movie schedules and their restaurants directions from google maps when the students have to solve their problem sets off the internet. A more telling situation would be if there were some students in the dorm who were sons and daughters of big oil barons in the Middle East, or their parents had deep pockets:) Wonder what that would do to the printout disparity!
Hence, the housing officials can decide to relax the rules a bit and give out free allocations to the students a minimum number of pages. This allocation would then reduce the pool of papers left to be auctioned and would raise the price for the professionals, the affluent sections, forcing them to use paper judiciously. We will play around with this analogy further to introduce all the concepts. But first, let us look at the real system to make the connection clear.
In the cap and trade system for the carbon dioxide emissions for climate change will need to start by, again, deciding the amount of CO2 we can emit that does not harm the environment beyond repair. Hence, we will need to define a sustainable rate of emissions, keeping in mind the different climate dynamics. The starting point will be deciding the atmospheric CO2 concentration at which we are comfortable. Lets say that is 450 ppm in 2100, refer to my first post for details here. From that concentration, we will have to figure out the amount of sustainable emissions each year that will keep the atmospheric concentration below 450 ppm by 2100. This is the most tricky part as a lot of climate science comes into play in this calculation between the atmospheric concentration and the amount of emissions. We shall look at some of the science later, once we are through with the economics! Afterall, economics is the more interesting part, right?:P
Once we have figured out the quantity of emissions, we could go on to auction all of them. This will raise the price of almost all commodities available, the price of your food, clothes, water, oil, housing repair etc. everything will go up since prices now includes the cost of externality of environmental damages! This will almost kill the underprivileged section of the society, who will not be able to bear the additional cost on essential items. Hence, to insulate them from this, the government can decide to give away the allocations free, something that the dorm officials did in the case of handing out papers free to the students. This is called the system of phased auction, which leads to a lot of interesting scenarios we will see in later posts!Just to point out here that EU has a Cap and Trade system in place for CO2 and they have been 'freely' allocating a major part of their allowance so far. Full auction will kick in at a later date.
We have seen the cap part of it so far, the part where the number of allocations are decided and then allocated through auctions or similar mechanisms. The second, and by far the more exciting part, is the trade part! Here, this system allows the entity to trade the allocations. So, if in the paper case, I had bought extra papers that I cannot use and somebody else is in a dire need of papers, I can trade my extra papers with him that it gives me a profit on my investment and is lower than the market price of the paper for the latter student. In the climate side, if an industry has allowances that it cannot use, it can trade them with one that needs them at a cost that is mutually beneficial.
This post can go on for another 15 pages and we will still be short of the exact nuances of a Cap and Trade system:) Hence, in the interest of time and space, I shall put this one to rest here. I hope I have been able to convey the basics of a Cap and Trade system and will pick it up from here for some other details of it.
Until then, take printouts with care. You never know when the externality kicks in:P I must say, my meagre graduate student salary will most essentially go into buying papers, if that happens!
I was looking for an apt analogy to present this concept for this past week until today morning! We had an Officer's Retreat of my dorm at MIT today, where all the elected/selected officials were huddled in a room trying to brainstorm about major problems for the coming year. A major concern has been the amount of paper wasted for trivial printouts,a s they are subsidized here, at the dorm's computer center and somebody proposed a cap and trade set up to reduce the number of printouts . Lo and behold, there was my analogy!:) And the sign to write my blog today! I must say, sometimes I have to believe in the concept of 'signs', the much hyped about concept in Hollywood/Bollywood but much maligned in the real world. What, aren't you convinced that this is a good enough sign!?!:P
Anyway, so back to the issue at hand. Let's take the case of papers we use for printouts. Say, and this is not that chimeric either, the incessant use of paper is causing a huge drain on the number of trees left. Things come to a point that we need to overtly preserve the trees and at the same time have enough papers for printing out the essential items. This can be done by calculating a sustainable yield of papers that we can use, without consuming too many trees that it threatens their existence. Lets say this number is 1000 pages. So, we have got to limit the number of printouts to less than or equal to 1000 pages.
Now that we know the number of pages we can possibly use, we need to find a way to distribute them among the people that need it. The market based solution, that is the Cap and Trade system, would go for an auction on the pages. So, people will bid a price and a certain number of quantity they want and the highest bidder will get his bid amount, say 100 pages, and then it will trickle down till all the allowance, i.e. pages, are sold off. There is a huge debate over the exact process of giving away the pages right now, for this will hurt a lot of people. The cost of printout, which so far used to be only the cost of the cartridge and the cost of paper, assuming an infinite flow of paper, will go up when the cost of paper goes up as a result of this auction. Not only is the cost of paper the cost of making it, but is also includes the externality of cutting down a tree, a valued resource and what monetary impact it might have on our future.
We will add a level of complexity here. If you assume that it was not an MIT dorm where only students, having similar economic statuses, live but a residential place where students and working professionals live together, you will have to agree that the cost would break the back of the students, who will not be able to afford such a high price and most necessarily need a lot of print outs. The professionals will most essentially be printing their movie schedules and their restaurants directions from google maps when the students have to solve their problem sets off the internet. A more telling situation would be if there were some students in the dorm who were sons and daughters of big oil barons in the Middle East, or their parents had deep pockets:) Wonder what that would do to the printout disparity!
Hence, the housing officials can decide to relax the rules a bit and give out free allocations to the students a minimum number of pages. This allocation would then reduce the pool of papers left to be auctioned and would raise the price for the professionals, the affluent sections, forcing them to use paper judiciously. We will play around with this analogy further to introduce all the concepts. But first, let us look at the real system to make the connection clear.
In the cap and trade system for the carbon dioxide emissions for climate change will need to start by, again, deciding the amount of CO2 we can emit that does not harm the environment beyond repair. Hence, we will need to define a sustainable rate of emissions, keeping in mind the different climate dynamics. The starting point will be deciding the atmospheric CO2 concentration at which we are comfortable. Lets say that is 450 ppm in 2100, refer to my first post for details here. From that concentration, we will have to figure out the amount of sustainable emissions each year that will keep the atmospheric concentration below 450 ppm by 2100. This is the most tricky part as a lot of climate science comes into play in this calculation between the atmospheric concentration and the amount of emissions. We shall look at some of the science later, once we are through with the economics! Afterall, economics is the more interesting part, right?:P
Once we have figured out the quantity of emissions, we could go on to auction all of them. This will raise the price of almost all commodities available, the price of your food, clothes, water, oil, housing repair etc. everything will go up since prices now includes the cost of externality of environmental damages! This will almost kill the underprivileged section of the society, who will not be able to bear the additional cost on essential items. Hence, to insulate them from this, the government can decide to give away the allocations free, something that the dorm officials did in the case of handing out papers free to the students. This is called the system of phased auction, which leads to a lot of interesting scenarios we will see in later posts!Just to point out here that EU has a Cap and Trade system in place for CO2 and they have been 'freely' allocating a major part of their allowance so far. Full auction will kick in at a later date.
We have seen the cap part of it so far, the part where the number of allocations are decided and then allocated through auctions or similar mechanisms. The second, and by far the more exciting part, is the trade part! Here, this system allows the entity to trade the allocations. So, if in the paper case, I had bought extra papers that I cannot use and somebody else is in a dire need of papers, I can trade my extra papers with him that it gives me a profit on my investment and is lower than the market price of the paper for the latter student. In the climate side, if an industry has allowances that it cannot use, it can trade them with one that needs them at a cost that is mutually beneficial.
This post can go on for another 15 pages and we will still be short of the exact nuances of a Cap and Trade system:) Hence, in the interest of time and space, I shall put this one to rest here. I hope I have been able to convey the basics of a Cap and Trade system and will pick it up from here for some other details of it.
Until then, take printouts with care. You never know when the externality kicks in:P I must say, my meagre graduate student salary will most essentially go into buying papers, if that happens!
Monday, June 1, 2009
The Waxman Markey Bill
First of all, I need to acknowledge the two very wonderfully positive feedback about my blog this week which gives me immense pleasure to keep at the task:) Man is a creature of habit, they say. And this habit is greased and facilitated by appreciation, I say:) Heartfelt thanks to the people who appreciated the effort!
So, now to the most written topic of my blog: The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, popularly known as the Waxman-Markey bill. This bill is being reviewed by several committees in the House and one of them,Energy and Commerce Committee, just approved the bill, though in a slightly different version. All these slicing and dicing by the various committees will produce a version of the bill that will be tabled on the floor of the House for voting. There is still a long way to go for this bill, or any of the radical measures included in it, to become a reality. However, it much be acknowledged that this is the first time a serious climate bill has gone this far in the US political arena. Nobody knows what the final version of the bill will end up becoming but anything with such a starting point will not go that awry! Anyway, we shall deal with the changed version passed in the House committee later, first the initial draft of the bill!
The bill has 4 titles in it, which are:
Title I: Clean Energy
Title II: Energy Efficiency
Title III: Reducing Global Warming pollution
Title IV: Transitioning to a clean energy economy
There are such radical thoughts in it that one cannot be left unimpressed by the enormity of the changes it seeks. Some of the salient features of the bill are:
- Renewable portfolio standards of 6% by 2012 and 25% by 2025. This means that 6% of the total energy by 2012 and 25% of the same by 2025 HAS to be produced from renewable sources like wind, solar, biomass etc. Imagine what impact such a policy would have on the renewable sector. This would provide the much needed fillip for this sector in the form of government backing, something that it always yearned!
- My favorite: Money has been allocated for demonstration plants for Carbon Capture and Sequestration(CCS). If this clause passes the muster, well....I must say I am smiling from ear to ear while writing this one:)
- There is some talk on cleaner fuels and vehicles and smart grid. We shall look into what a smart grid is at a later date.
- A major emphasis is on improving the energy efficiency of the economy. Logically, the more efficient you are, the less you need to consume. Simple,right? Well, keep in mind that things are not that logical in politics always:) Refer to my last week's post for more details!
- Cap and Trade system: This is the most radical proposal of the bill. It seeks to reduce the Green House Gas (GHG) emissions by 3%,20%, 42% and 83% below 2005 levels by 2012, 2020, 2030 and 2050 respectively. This is to be effected by putting a cap on the emissions, creating credits for the level of emissions and allowing the different players in the economy to trade these credits among themselves at a market determined price.One more market is being created and this one will be bigger than anyone can imagine. In the interest of time, I shall take this again in a later post. You should not be spending hours on a blog! Reading this post is not your primary job, right?:P
- There are other schemes to make a transition to a cleaner energy economy and some provisions to make this transition seamless.
This is a HUGE HUGE bill in the climate arena! I just hope it passes, in some form. I still remember the day Obama talked about this bill, I decided to go ahead and apply for a PhD after my MS. Stopping after a Masters degree would be a crime in this radical area, right? Any more doctoral candidates in the making?:P
P.S.: I intend to take a lot of the issues I briefly touched in detail in later posts. Let me know if anything is not clear above and I shall make sure to enunciate that point later.
So, now to the most written topic of my blog: The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, popularly known as the Waxman-Markey bill. This bill is being reviewed by several committees in the House and one of them,Energy and Commerce Committee, just approved the bill, though in a slightly different version. All these slicing and dicing by the various committees will produce a version of the bill that will be tabled on the floor of the House for voting. There is still a long way to go for this bill, or any of the radical measures included in it, to become a reality. However, it much be acknowledged that this is the first time a serious climate bill has gone this far in the US political arena. Nobody knows what the final version of the bill will end up becoming but anything with such a starting point will not go that awry! Anyway, we shall deal with the changed version passed in the House committee later, first the initial draft of the bill!
The bill has 4 titles in it, which are:
Title I: Clean Energy
Title II: Energy Efficiency
Title III: Reducing Global Warming pollution
Title IV: Transitioning to a clean energy economy
There are such radical thoughts in it that one cannot be left unimpressed by the enormity of the changes it seeks. Some of the salient features of the bill are:
- Renewable portfolio standards of 6% by 2012 and 25% by 2025. This means that 6% of the total energy by 2012 and 25% of the same by 2025 HAS to be produced from renewable sources like wind, solar, biomass etc. Imagine what impact such a policy would have on the renewable sector. This would provide the much needed fillip for this sector in the form of government backing, something that it always yearned!
- My favorite: Money has been allocated for demonstration plants for Carbon Capture and Sequestration(CCS). If this clause passes the muster, well....I must say I am smiling from ear to ear while writing this one:)
- There is some talk on cleaner fuels and vehicles and smart grid. We shall look into what a smart grid is at a later date.
- A major emphasis is on improving the energy efficiency of the economy. Logically, the more efficient you are, the less you need to consume. Simple,right? Well, keep in mind that things are not that logical in politics always:) Refer to my last week's post for more details!
- Cap and Trade system: This is the most radical proposal of the bill. It seeks to reduce the Green House Gas (GHG) emissions by 3%,20%, 42% and 83% below 2005 levels by 2012, 2020, 2030 and 2050 respectively. This is to be effected by putting a cap on the emissions, creating credits for the level of emissions and allowing the different players in the economy to trade these credits among themselves at a market determined price.One more market is being created and this one will be bigger than anyone can imagine. In the interest of time, I shall take this again in a later post. You should not be spending hours on a blog! Reading this post is not your primary job, right?:P
- There are other schemes to make a transition to a cleaner energy economy and some provisions to make this transition seamless.
This is a HUGE HUGE bill in the climate arena! I just hope it passes, in some form. I still remember the day Obama talked about this bill, I decided to go ahead and apply for a PhD after my MS. Stopping after a Masters degree would be a crime in this radical area, right? Any more doctoral candidates in the making?:P
P.S.: I intend to take a lot of the issues I briefly touched in detail in later posts. Let me know if anything is not clear above and I shall make sure to enunciate that point later.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Misdirected policies
We are about to see a classic case of what misdirected policies can do to a build up of momentum. Just when we were seeing an unprecedented momentum in the area of Climate Change and people had started to entertain thoughts of living in a carbon constrained world, politicians do a volte face. Or maybe this is what they are taught to do.
The US Congress is tending towards passing a Cash for Clunkers program which aims at retiring the current old fleet of cars and increasing the average mileage of the transportation sector. They aim at doing this by providing incentives to people to retire their cars, if they are older than a particular age. This is done by providing them with a tax credit for the new car that they buy. This tax would be premised on the difference of mileage between the retired and the new car.
This is how it will work: A matrix is drawn with the type of car and the difference of mileage between the cars are the axes. Depending on your x and y co-ordinates, you will be entitled to a particular tax credit amount.
This is not a new concept that the US Congress is introducing. Germany was the first one to try this. Lets get this straight, there are some good things about this concept. It will reduce the CO2 emissions from the transportation sector, the most difficult one to control in the fight for climate. This will also be the much needed fillip for the US car manufacturers, for this policy will lay the foundation for increased buying by people. It could also be the vanguard for technological change, for you might be tempted to buy the hybrid cars through a nested policy. That will be more than helpful for the hybrid technology, just waiting on the wings to take off!
There are reportedly 2 issues with this scheme, as the German experience has shown:
- This is the costliest way of reducing carbon, per unit of carbon reduced. So, if you look at the amount of carbon dioxide emission reduced by this scheme, the amount comes out to be exorbitantly higher than the ones being demanded by CCS community! It is so high that the cost of doing Air Capture, capturing CO2 from air, looks reasonable enough! This clearly shows the wrangled calculations of the policy makers!
- It also has a national competitiveness angle to it. It was seen in Germany that most of the cars that were bought new were Japanese cars, as opposed to the German cars. And this policy is aimed at providing the must needed boost to the US automobile manufacturers. I am not sure how much will they like old Fords, GMs and Chryslers being dismantled and paving the way for even more Toyotas! At least, the old Fords and GMs and Chryslers were providing some money in the form of maintainence to them!
All in all, I guess this policy needs a second, closer look at! Somehow, I feel the politicians here have come into the Santa Claus mode, where they are bent upon distributing money in the masses! Why not then give it to the hard working researchers like us who are trying to make CCS a reality than do something like this, I often wonder?:P
Ok...next time the US Climate Bill, for sure:)
The US Congress is tending towards passing a Cash for Clunkers program which aims at retiring the current old fleet of cars and increasing the average mileage of the transportation sector. They aim at doing this by providing incentives to people to retire their cars, if they are older than a particular age. This is done by providing them with a tax credit for the new car that they buy. This tax would be premised on the difference of mileage between the retired and the new car.
This is how it will work: A matrix is drawn with the type of car and the difference of mileage between the cars are the axes. Depending on your x and y co-ordinates, you will be entitled to a particular tax credit amount.
This is not a new concept that the US Congress is introducing. Germany was the first one to try this. Lets get this straight, there are some good things about this concept. It will reduce the CO2 emissions from the transportation sector, the most difficult one to control in the fight for climate. This will also be the much needed fillip for the US car manufacturers, for this policy will lay the foundation for increased buying by people. It could also be the vanguard for technological change, for you might be tempted to buy the hybrid cars through a nested policy. That will be more than helpful for the hybrid technology, just waiting on the wings to take off!
There are reportedly 2 issues with this scheme, as the German experience has shown:
- This is the costliest way of reducing carbon, per unit of carbon reduced. So, if you look at the amount of carbon dioxide emission reduced by this scheme, the amount comes out to be exorbitantly higher than the ones being demanded by CCS community! It is so high that the cost of doing Air Capture, capturing CO2 from air, looks reasonable enough! This clearly shows the wrangled calculations of the policy makers!
- It also has a national competitiveness angle to it. It was seen in Germany that most of the cars that were bought new were Japanese cars, as opposed to the German cars. And this policy is aimed at providing the must needed boost to the US automobile manufacturers. I am not sure how much will they like old Fords, GMs and Chryslers being dismantled and paving the way for even more Toyotas! At least, the old Fords and GMs and Chryslers were providing some money in the form of maintainence to them!
All in all, I guess this policy needs a second, closer look at! Somehow, I feel the politicians here have come into the Santa Claus mode, where they are bent upon distributing money in the masses! Why not then give it to the hard working researchers like us who are trying to make CCS a reality than do something like this, I often wonder?:P
Ok...next time the US Climate Bill, for sure:)
Sunday, May 3, 2009
NIMBY and NIMO(c)
No, you are not mistaken! You are on the right blog and to dispel any fears that may have arisen, we are not going to talk about animation movies here:)
NIMBY and NIMO(c) are two of the most common acronyms you would have heard, or are about to hear, as the world shifts towards a cleaner energy portfolio, or tries to pay for their past sins through Carbon Capture and Sequestration(CCS). The terms stand for:
NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard
NIMO(c): Not In My Ocean
You can easily see the connection between the large scale deployment of the renewable sources of energy and the inherent problems due to these concepts. All the major renewable sources, viz. Solar, Wind, Hydro require a distributed foot print. All the solar power, or wind power cannot be harnessed by one behemoth like solar panel, or a wind turbine of the size of the sun, installed in a God-forsaken place and the power be transmitted to your home. They have to be put up in a diffused manner, in your and my backyards. And lets not even start to talk about hydro electricity here. People in the developing world are well versed with the tragedies associated with building a large hydro electric installation.
Add to this the fact that to capture carbon and store it through the process of CCS, you need storage locations and most of these would fall within the boundaries of your home. How comfortable are people with installing a solar panel on their roof is well understood but how comfortable will you be if a wind turbine was put in your backyard or if someday people start putting CO2 in the patch of land in your home will define the pace at which these technolgies develop. The expert opinion is that the government will have to step up and make some regulations here for this is too complex a matter to be left to the public. So much for NIMBY..
There has been talks of doing all these operations off-shore, mostly sequestration of the carbon dioxide captured through CCS. It is reported that the liquid CO2 stays at the botton of the ocean for thousands of years as it is heavier than water. The fear there is that countries might oppose using their maritime boundaries for this purpose. If that is the case, this will again increase the costs of transporting the liquid CO2 over large distances over these boundaries. This is the concept of NIMO and has been promulgated and patented by my research advisor here at MIT:) Just kidding!
While I do believe that government regulations are important to overcome this issue and governments around the world have to rally together to achieve the proliferation of 'green energy', the technology also has to prove its worth to placate the sensitive behavior of people towards them. What do you propose as a plausible solution?
One thing is sure, soon gone will be the days when your energy used to be produced at slimy, dirty, unseen corners of the world and transported to your house at the flick of a switch. In the 'green age' you will have to play a role in its generation and use. How about this level of democratization!:) Thou shalt generate thy energy thyself!:P I hope Shakespeare has not turned in his grave by my misuse of his language here:)
Maybe, when US endeavors to transport the model of democracy in the future, remember Afganistan and Iraq, this concept of energy democracy will play a major role in it:) Maybe, I should start patenting some ideas soon:)
NIMBY and NIMO(c) are two of the most common acronyms you would have heard, or are about to hear, as the world shifts towards a cleaner energy portfolio, or tries to pay for their past sins through Carbon Capture and Sequestration(CCS). The terms stand for:
NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard
NIMO(c): Not In My Ocean
You can easily see the connection between the large scale deployment of the renewable sources of energy and the inherent problems due to these concepts. All the major renewable sources, viz. Solar, Wind, Hydro require a distributed foot print. All the solar power, or wind power cannot be harnessed by one behemoth like solar panel, or a wind turbine of the size of the sun, installed in a God-forsaken place and the power be transmitted to your home. They have to be put up in a diffused manner, in your and my backyards. And lets not even start to talk about hydro electricity here. People in the developing world are well versed with the tragedies associated with building a large hydro electric installation.
Add to this the fact that to capture carbon and store it through the process of CCS, you need storage locations and most of these would fall within the boundaries of your home. How comfortable are people with installing a solar panel on their roof is well understood but how comfortable will you be if a wind turbine was put in your backyard or if someday people start putting CO2 in the patch of land in your home will define the pace at which these technolgies develop. The expert opinion is that the government will have to step up and make some regulations here for this is too complex a matter to be left to the public. So much for NIMBY..
There has been talks of doing all these operations off-shore, mostly sequestration of the carbon dioxide captured through CCS. It is reported that the liquid CO2 stays at the botton of the ocean for thousands of years as it is heavier than water. The fear there is that countries might oppose using their maritime boundaries for this purpose. If that is the case, this will again increase the costs of transporting the liquid CO2 over large distances over these boundaries. This is the concept of NIMO and has been promulgated and patented by my research advisor here at MIT:) Just kidding!
While I do believe that government regulations are important to overcome this issue and governments around the world have to rally together to achieve the proliferation of 'green energy', the technology also has to prove its worth to placate the sensitive behavior of people towards them. What do you propose as a plausible solution?
One thing is sure, soon gone will be the days when your energy used to be produced at slimy, dirty, unseen corners of the world and transported to your house at the flick of a switch. In the 'green age' you will have to play a role in its generation and use. How about this level of democratization!:) Thou shalt generate thy energy thyself!:P I hope Shakespeare has not turned in his grave by my misuse of his language here:)
Maybe, when US endeavors to transport the model of democracy in the future, remember Afganistan and Iraq, this concept of energy democracy will play a major role in it:) Maybe, I should start patenting some ideas soon:)
Friday, April 24, 2009
Externalities!
My apologies for my absence! This post has taken a month and a half in coming and I know you missed me:)...I hope!Life is an interesting phenomena. Someone hit it right on the head when he opined that life is what happens when you are busy planning other things! So true man!! Little had I realized when I started this blog that I will not write a post for 6 weeks!:)
Anyway, life has changed a lot in the interim, Energy wise, politically and otherwise too, and we will take things one by one from here. We shall limit our discussion to the Energy domain, and the related political matters that come along with it! Its interesting to note how much Energy is intertwined with Politics, pretty much like siamese twins! The last technological revolution thing to have been embroiled in the political quagmire would be Biotechnology, or Nanotechnology, possibly!
Anyway, the US Energy Bill was introduced in the House recently. The one that promised to radically alter so many ways in which we do things here,and possibly around the world too! We shall deal with this in greater detail at a later post. Today, I want to talk about a concept in Economics that keeps coming up, time and again! This is called the concept of Externality, and I was completely ignorant of it until recently.
Externality is the concept by which an impact is caused on an entity not party to any economic transaction. So, if you own a power plant and emit gunk into the atmosphere and if there is a laundry next to it, the laundry is facing an externality as the poor quality of air affects its operational efficiency. Externality can be of 2 types, positive and negative. The example I stated above is one of negative externality where the laundry is facing a negative impact of your power producing operation, and it is not a party to it. A positive externality would be one where you fireproof your house and increase the safety of your neighbors as a result of which!
This concept is at the core of free market philosophy, for you are not operating under a free market until you include the cost of any such externality. The interactions are not properly valued if the externalities are not internalized. Hence, the laundry and the power plant will have to sort it out among themselves, either voluntarily or through regulations.
The above concept basically summarizes the entire debate about Climate Change. That we have not priced things right for the last 259 years, since the Industrial Revolution! We never included the cost of harming the environment in the profit calculations! I guess some bright MBA grad might have missed it in his valuations model:) My apologies if I hurt any sentiments out here....It is cool to take a dig at Management grads lately, and who doesn't want to sound cool!:P
Environment was always considered a Public Good and that everyone has a right to it. When we buy petrol or gasoline at a gas station, we pay the cost of a litre of it which takes into account only the manufacturing cost and the profit margin of the fuel. That is, the cost of extraction, refining and delivery and the profit margin. And yes, if the fuel comes from Alaska, an overhead that goes into surveillance of Russia personally ensured by Sarah Palin:) Btw, an inside info you might find useful. It is a must to have a few political jokes in your armor when you are working in the energy field! It makes you sound so possessed:)
Anyway, so the cost of removing the pollutant you put in the environment as a result of the combustion of that fuel is not included here. This concept is ought to change, when you should buy fuel at a gas station, you should be paying not only for the cost of fuel, but also for the cleanup. As one cannot expect the industries to do this voluntarily, we will have to take refuge in regulations to achieve this. This argument lies at the heart of the Climate Change debate.We need to undo the wrong we have unleashed on the environment for the last 259 years! And we must pay a price for not doing it effectively since then.
Undoing a historical wrong is not going to be easy, believe me:) Try not excercising for a long period of time and then try to lose the excess flab in one go! Take it from me, it is one HELL OF A JOB! But then , we are not supposed to talk personal stuff here, right?:) Until the next one....Keep saving the planet!
Anyway, life has changed a lot in the interim, Energy wise, politically and otherwise too, and we will take things one by one from here. We shall limit our discussion to the Energy domain, and the related political matters that come along with it! Its interesting to note how much Energy is intertwined with Politics, pretty much like siamese twins! The last technological revolution thing to have been embroiled in the political quagmire would be Biotechnology, or Nanotechnology, possibly!
Anyway, the US Energy Bill was introduced in the House recently. The one that promised to radically alter so many ways in which we do things here,and possibly around the world too! We shall deal with this in greater detail at a later post. Today, I want to talk about a concept in Economics that keeps coming up, time and again! This is called the concept of Externality, and I was completely ignorant of it until recently.
Externality is the concept by which an impact is caused on an entity not party to any economic transaction. So, if you own a power plant and emit gunk into the atmosphere and if there is a laundry next to it, the laundry is facing an externality as the poor quality of air affects its operational efficiency. Externality can be of 2 types, positive and negative. The example I stated above is one of negative externality where the laundry is facing a negative impact of your power producing operation, and it is not a party to it. A positive externality would be one where you fireproof your house and increase the safety of your neighbors as a result of which!
This concept is at the core of free market philosophy, for you are not operating under a free market until you include the cost of any such externality. The interactions are not properly valued if the externalities are not internalized. Hence, the laundry and the power plant will have to sort it out among themselves, either voluntarily or through regulations.
The above concept basically summarizes the entire debate about Climate Change. That we have not priced things right for the last 259 years, since the Industrial Revolution! We never included the cost of harming the environment in the profit calculations! I guess some bright MBA grad might have missed it in his valuations model:) My apologies if I hurt any sentiments out here....It is cool to take a dig at Management grads lately, and who doesn't want to sound cool!:P
Environment was always considered a Public Good and that everyone has a right to it. When we buy petrol or gasoline at a gas station, we pay the cost of a litre of it which takes into account only the manufacturing cost and the profit margin of the fuel. That is, the cost of extraction, refining and delivery and the profit margin. And yes, if the fuel comes from Alaska, an overhead that goes into surveillance of Russia personally ensured by Sarah Palin:) Btw, an inside info you might find useful. It is a must to have a few political jokes in your armor when you are working in the energy field! It makes you sound so possessed:)
Anyway, so the cost of removing the pollutant you put in the environment as a result of the combustion of that fuel is not included here. This concept is ought to change, when you should buy fuel at a gas station, you should be paying not only for the cost of fuel, but also for the cleanup. As one cannot expect the industries to do this voluntarily, we will have to take refuge in regulations to achieve this. This argument lies at the heart of the Climate Change debate.We need to undo the wrong we have unleashed on the environment for the last 259 years! And we must pay a price for not doing it effectively since then.
Undoing a historical wrong is not going to be easy, believe me:) Try not excercising for a long period of time and then try to lose the excess flab in one go! Take it from me, it is one HELL OF A JOB! But then , we are not supposed to talk personal stuff here, right?:) Until the next one....Keep saving the planet!
Thursday, March 5, 2009
MIT Energy Conference!
This is the week of the MIT Energy Conference, the largest student run energy conference in the world! It is scheduled for this Friday and Saturday, the 6th and 7th of March. And what an exciting week this has been! I am so looking forward to the weekend for the guests and panelists present a mouthwatering prospect. For people who want to learn more about this AWESOME conference, here is the link:
http://www.mitenergyconference.com/index.htm
As this is my blog, and I am allowed some shameless publicity here, I put together a completely new idea for the conference, the idea of a workshop. So, the day of Friday is a day of workshops, and my workshop is one of those. Details of the same can be found at:
http://www.mitenergyconference.com/workshop.htm
And if you scroll down to the last on this page, you shall see the workshop that I am organizing tomorrow. So much for my contribution to the MIT Energy Conference.
I shall take this opportunity to describe something about my research area, here at MIT, and the topic of the workshop tomorrow. This area, or technology, is called Air Capture, which quite logically stands for capture of CO2 directly from the air. This is one of the most exciting next generation CCS technologies out there and a topic of intensive research. Its USP lies in the fact that its a cheap way to mitigate the emissions of the distributed sources, like cars, planes and human beings. One can understand point sources, the thermal power plants etc., being tackled by the conventional CCS technology but we cannot install this in all the cars on the road. This is where Air Capture provides a very viable option of mitigation.
There are several drawbacks of this process too, and I shall not go into the specifics of it lest this blog starts resembling the research paper I am writing:) Suffice to say that there are promoters and critics of this technology in equal measure out there.
This is all for today, I am sure I will be posting something shortly after the conference for I will be brimming with knowledge and itching to share them with you. Hence, I shall save you the 'pain and suffering' of reading my blog twice weekly:) Enjoy the weekend!
http://www.mitenergyconference.com/index.htm
As this is my blog, and I am allowed some shameless publicity here, I put together a completely new idea for the conference, the idea of a workshop. So, the day of Friday is a day of workshops, and my workshop is one of those. Details of the same can be found at:
http://www.mitenergyconference.com/workshop.htm
And if you scroll down to the last on this page, you shall see the workshop that I am organizing tomorrow. So much for my contribution to the MIT Energy Conference.
I shall take this opportunity to describe something about my research area, here at MIT, and the topic of the workshop tomorrow. This area, or technology, is called Air Capture, which quite logically stands for capture of CO2 directly from the air. This is one of the most exciting next generation CCS technologies out there and a topic of intensive research. Its USP lies in the fact that its a cheap way to mitigate the emissions of the distributed sources, like cars, planes and human beings. One can understand point sources, the thermal power plants etc., being tackled by the conventional CCS technology but we cannot install this in all the cars on the road. This is where Air Capture provides a very viable option of mitigation.
There are several drawbacks of this process too, and I shall not go into the specifics of it lest this blog starts resembling the research paper I am writing:) Suffice to say that there are promoters and critics of this technology in equal measure out there.
This is all for today, I am sure I will be posting something shortly after the conference for I will be brimming with knowledge and itching to share them with you. Hence, I shall save you the 'pain and suffering' of reading my blog twice weekly:) Enjoy the weekend!
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Plagiarized by The New York Times!
This is an untimely post but was necessitated by an untoward incident. The New York Times, in retaliation to me stealing their editorial title few days back, has plain lifted the ideas I presented in my last post in their front page article today!!:) Here's the complete article and you can judge for yourself:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/science/earth/01treaty.html?_r=1&hp
I would also post another green, or yellow, energy article that I read this week. Quite an interesting read it was. A caveat though, its only for the avowed supporters of green:)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/opinion/27george.html?scp=1&sq=yellow%20is%20the%20new%20green&st=cse
Happy Reading!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/science/earth/01treaty.html?_r=1&hp
I would also post another green, or yellow, energy article that I read this week. Quite an interesting read it was. A caveat though, its only for the avowed supporters of green:)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/opinion/27george.html?scp=1&sq=yellow%20is%20the%20new%20green&st=cse
Happy Reading!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Climate of Change!
Hello to my favorite people! The title is not of my creation, as I have already nixed any thoughts about my creativity in an earlier post. It is plagiarized from the editorial by Paul Krugman in the New York Times today. The last few days have been an amazing experience in the Obama land, from the Climate Change and Green Energy perspective, i.e. my perspective:). The State of the Union address, and the ensuing budget brought forth by the government solidly stated that this administration believes in walking the talk. A welcome relief from the past regime, and in general of the class of politicians who mostly subscribe to all talk and no walk.
It feels great to be writing a blog during this historic week in US politics. For the uninitiated, the Obama administration has included setting up a cap and trade system in this year's budget proposal. This is such a HUGE moment in the climate change arena, such an admirable change from the last US regime that didn't even seem to recognize the concept, at the cost of irreparable harm. Anyway, as they say, good riddance!:) Not just that, the resources generated from selling the carbon credits will be channeled to further research and deployment of renewables. Did they say that double whammy was ever as good! I might say this at the cost sounding banal, but I am amazed at the amount of change I am about see in a lifetime:) Anyway, more on this later, time for the topic of today.
Again, I shall start with replying to the comment of my last post and then go onto discussing something new. And believe me, there shall be something new today:)
The one comment I got to my last post was related to ice caps in the Arctic have risen to a 17 year high and that defeats the argument of Climate Change. Its a very potent argument brought forward by a very special person, whom I have always looked upto. And this is another instance why. Thanks Anu for bringing forth this topic, for I somehow forgot to broach it. This is the distinction between the Climate and Weather. Weather is the seasonal variation of temperatures, pressure, wind speed, etc., a very temporal phenomena and I shall not even go in detail for I can hardly be aware of all the forces at work here. What we concerned about is Climate, and Climate Change. Its not the year after year temperature in a part of the world, but the environment's behavior, overall. I still doubt the data that ice levels in the Arctic were at 17 years high, but reports show that they were greater than the levels reported in 2007. However, if you compare the level of ice caps between 1979 and 2007, they have HALVED! I am not saying that the ice caps reduced each year, there could have been fluctuations in the annual level, but they have been monotonically decreasing, as a trend. Hence, the yearly levels of ice caps should be used as a point to negate the concept of climate change. As I said earlier, we have long moved beyond that phase, all its skeptics should be treated as pariahs now:) Like George W. Bush in US:)
Monotonically, aah, I love to use this word! I was introduced to this word in my high school maths, through a chapter on Functions and graphs, and have been hooked onto it ever since:) Whenever I am able to plug this word into any of my writing or conversations, the literary side of me gives a pat on the back to my mathematical side. What were the odds of my exposure to this word had I taken literature as a major:) Thanks Anu for giving me this opportunity, again!!:)
Now for the topic of the day. Since we started the post with with a political overtone, lets stick to it for the day! Consistency should be a hallmark of my blog, something that has never been of my life! So we shall discuss the policy side of Climate Change today. Precisely speaking, the development of the Kyoto Protocol and the post Kyoto scenario. Hopefully, I will be able to justice to this humongous topic.
Just to give you a little background to it, Kyoto Protocol has been modeled on the lines of the Montreal Protocol, which was signed by countries to arrest the depletion of the ozone layer. The Ozone layer protects us from the harmful ultraviolet radiations of the sun and it was getting severely depleted in the 1980s due to the emission of the CFCs into the atmosphere, the primarily refrigerants used at that time. It was a pointed problem and got a pointed policy response. The different countries ratified it without breaking a sweat, as it required a simple technological fix. The technical world had brought out a cheap and easy alternative to the CFCs and compliance was easy. The latest numbers for ozone layer confirms the fact that Montreal Protocol was a great success as countries are still sticking to the targets.
The grave error policy makers did at the very beginning was to build the Kyoto Protocol on the lines of the Montreal Protocols. But we can't blame them for basking in their glory, for seldom does a policy response meet with this level of success. The problem here is far more complex than the ozone layer depletion, and the to think of a solution would be amateurish. The second grave error that they did was to exclude the developing nations, the Non-Annex B countries, from making any commitment to reducing emissions. They were asked to jump onto the bandwagon at their own sweet will while the developed world were told to adhere to time bound targets. This was a failed strategy, right from the very beginning and confirmed only lately, when China trumped US in total Green House Gas(GHG) Emissions in 2008.
And then the poor thing hit the rock called George W. Bush, who just didn't budge an inch. US did not approve the Kyoto Protocol, and the entire treaty has been a cross between a good starting point and a meek response to a grave problem. It is too focused on the short term, with no thought given to the road ahead. In fact, the first phase of compliance started in 2008 and is until 2012 and I will not burn my hands by making any predictions here.
All is not lost yet!The world leaders reconvene in December 2009 in Copenhagen to decide the future of this treaty, post 2012, when its first compliance period ends. That should be an event worth waiting for, and it gives me great pleasure to imagine that US would be on the right side of the arguments, finally!:)
It feels great to be writing a blog during this historic week in US politics. For the uninitiated, the Obama administration has included setting up a cap and trade system in this year's budget proposal. This is such a HUGE moment in the climate change arena, such an admirable change from the last US regime that didn't even seem to recognize the concept, at the cost of irreparable harm. Anyway, as they say, good riddance!:) Not just that, the resources generated from selling the carbon credits will be channeled to further research and deployment of renewables. Did they say that double whammy was ever as good! I might say this at the cost sounding banal, but I am amazed at the amount of change I am about see in a lifetime:) Anyway, more on this later, time for the topic of today.
Again, I shall start with replying to the comment of my last post and then go onto discussing something new. And believe me, there shall be something new today:)
The one comment I got to my last post was related to ice caps in the Arctic have risen to a 17 year high and that defeats the argument of Climate Change. Its a very potent argument brought forward by a very special person, whom I have always looked upto. And this is another instance why. Thanks Anu for bringing forth this topic, for I somehow forgot to broach it. This is the distinction between the Climate and Weather. Weather is the seasonal variation of temperatures, pressure, wind speed, etc., a very temporal phenomena and I shall not even go in detail for I can hardly be aware of all the forces at work here. What we concerned about is Climate, and Climate Change. Its not the year after year temperature in a part of the world, but the environment's behavior, overall. I still doubt the data that ice levels in the Arctic were at 17 years high, but reports show that they were greater than the levels reported in 2007. However, if you compare the level of ice caps between 1979 and 2007, they have HALVED! I am not saying that the ice caps reduced each year, there could have been fluctuations in the annual level, but they have been monotonically decreasing, as a trend. Hence, the yearly levels of ice caps should be used as a point to negate the concept of climate change. As I said earlier, we have long moved beyond that phase, all its skeptics should be treated as pariahs now:) Like George W. Bush in US:)
Monotonically, aah, I love to use this word! I was introduced to this word in my high school maths, through a chapter on Functions and graphs, and have been hooked onto it ever since:) Whenever I am able to plug this word into any of my writing or conversations, the literary side of me gives a pat on the back to my mathematical side. What were the odds of my exposure to this word had I taken literature as a major:) Thanks Anu for giving me this opportunity, again!!:)
Now for the topic of the day. Since we started the post with with a political overtone, lets stick to it for the day! Consistency should be a hallmark of my blog, something that has never been of my life! So we shall discuss the policy side of Climate Change today. Precisely speaking, the development of the Kyoto Protocol and the post Kyoto scenario. Hopefully, I will be able to justice to this humongous topic.
Just to give you a little background to it, Kyoto Protocol has been modeled on the lines of the Montreal Protocol, which was signed by countries to arrest the depletion of the ozone layer. The Ozone layer protects us from the harmful ultraviolet radiations of the sun and it was getting severely depleted in the 1980s due to the emission of the CFCs into the atmosphere, the primarily refrigerants used at that time. It was a pointed problem and got a pointed policy response. The different countries ratified it without breaking a sweat, as it required a simple technological fix. The technical world had brought out a cheap and easy alternative to the CFCs and compliance was easy. The latest numbers for ozone layer confirms the fact that Montreal Protocol was a great success as countries are still sticking to the targets.
The grave error policy makers did at the very beginning was to build the Kyoto Protocol on the lines of the Montreal Protocols. But we can't blame them for basking in their glory, for seldom does a policy response meet with this level of success. The problem here is far more complex than the ozone layer depletion, and the to think of a solution would be amateurish. The second grave error that they did was to exclude the developing nations, the Non-Annex B countries, from making any commitment to reducing emissions. They were asked to jump onto the bandwagon at their own sweet will while the developed world were told to adhere to time bound targets. This was a failed strategy, right from the very beginning and confirmed only lately, when China trumped US in total Green House Gas(GHG) Emissions in 2008.
And then the poor thing hit the rock called George W. Bush, who just didn't budge an inch. US did not approve the Kyoto Protocol, and the entire treaty has been a cross between a good starting point and a meek response to a grave problem. It is too focused on the short term, with no thought given to the road ahead. In fact, the first phase of compliance started in 2008 and is until 2012 and I will not burn my hands by making any predictions here.
All is not lost yet!The world leaders reconvene in December 2009 in Copenhagen to decide the future of this treaty, post 2012, when its first compliance period ends. That should be an event worth waiting for, and it gives me great pleasure to imagine that US would be on the right side of the arguments, finally!:)
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Blogging revisited!
Yaayyy! Blogging time! Its hard to fathom that a person so averse to blogging just a week ago has been waiting all these days to write another post!:)
I am really amazed and honored by the kind of people who took time out to read my blog and post their comments. There are some very old and special friends, some very special seniors, special family members and some enthusiastic blog readers. I take this opportunity to thank each one of you for your time and effort. I will start this blog by responding to the comments first and then shall delve into a topic for today, if space permits.
The first, rather overarching, feedback I got on the blog is that I am acting as a doomsayer by saying that Climate Change is the biggest threat faced by mankind. This is certainly not a prophecy of doom based on any whim, that a comet will hit the planet earth on this day of that year. Carbon Dioxide accumulation is a hard fact of life, proved by science. And this is bound to happen, if we don't act accordingly. My endeavor here is to make people aware of a threat that is very much there, but is taking shape very very slowly. It is so glacially slow that people might ignore it, at their own peril. Climate Change is no Lehman Brothers, that it is here today and gone tomorrow, it won't be that sudden a process. It is more like a small opening in the embankment of a river. The opening is so small that nobody, in the Business As Usual scenario(BAU), hardly ever notices it in the rigmaroles of their daily life, but the water of the river is slowly eating away the sediments, and the cavity grows ever so slowly! One might say that the cavity is not there, but the process is irreversible and would get noticed at the point of no return.
You might have read this story in school, of a small Dutch boy who prevents his village from drowning by blocking a similar cavity in his village embankment with his finger overnight, until people notice him standing there and repair the damage. He saves the whole village by his prudence, else the river would have destroyed it. Sadly speaking, we are beyond the point in the saga where one heroic effort can do the needful. We need the masses to sit up and take notice of the cavity. Until then, researchers, scientists and other activists of Climate Change will only act as small Dutch boys so that the masses of the world can take notice and remedy the situation.
This blog is just a small effort in the hope of making people inquisitive about Climate Change, so that they start asking those questions that we have hitherto conveniently swept under the carpet. And make no mistake, this is pure science. There is no conjecture, or mysticism involved here. If people are still not convinced about the change, I will urge them to do a small experiment at home. Try sitting in a closed room with an open furnace, with some fresh wood, or coal,better still, in the furnace. Sit in the closed room and try to do your normal activities. See for yourself what changes begin to happen as you spend more time in the closed room. I agree, all this is happening at a very fast pace in the room, but the changes will be there for you to feel. The same is happening with the environment, albeit at a very slow level.
The second point brought about by a dear friend, Mrigank, was related to the developing world and their role in this process, given their usual problems with poverty, literacy, public health etc. While I must give him the credit for an impassionate plea for Climate Change not being as important in the developing world as it should be in the developed world, I have reasons to the contrary. And I hope that I can convince him with my reasons, something that I have not been able to do very many times in the past:) The reason is exactly what Sreekumar mentions,Sustainability, and I hate him for stealing my thunder on this:) Sustainability is the buzzword for the developing world, that can take them beyond the mentality of the third world countries.
Consider this: the total share of global CO2 emissions of India is around 5% and that of US is around 24%. If you take a per capita value of the same entity, the ratio is even more skewed as we know that US has around 300 million people emitting that amount while in India 1.1 billion people cause a smaller dent. Now do an interesting slicing of data, for all the data enthusiasts in you, take the top 5% of Indian population, in terms of personal income, and look at their average CO2 emissions. It comes out to be of the same order as an average person in the US!!! A wealthy Indian is at the same consumption level as an average American! This simply means that rich people in our part, or any poor part, of the world are hiding behind the poor. They will keep enjoying their level of comfort, and keep blaming the developed world for all their emissions, as long as they have a good chunk of poor people in their country to take care of them, in order words average out the emissions for them. Thus, there is vested interests in keeping people poor and ignorant. This may sound ludicrous, but this my friends is close to reality. We need to bring the lot of poor in these countries up in a sustainable manner. Imagine if all the poor people in India start dreaming of a life like the wealthy, at the same level of consumption, the emissions will simply shoot through the roof, literally speaking!
There has to be a 2 pronged approach for this. The rich, in the poor countries, have to cut down on consumption and the poor have to be developed in a sustainable manner, without being forced to give up any of their amenities. As a simple example, the bulk of the emissions in an Indian village is caused by the 'chulha' or the open coal furnace. Once ignited, it keeps burning for the most part of the day as it is very difficult to reignite, once put out. Just imagine, if we could harness some sort a solar powered furnace for these people, how much of a dent in the emissions we can cause at the national level,and at the global level too. We did not ask the village poor to let go of any benefits he/she was entitled to, we just changed the source of it. I am not talking chimerically here, this very much being implemented at the village level. Check out the work one Mr. Harish Hande is doing in this field in the villages of Karnataka and Gujarat and you will be convinced of the scope of possibilities here. I have met him personally, and must say that his work is really commendable. It takes a lot of guts and gumption to go the way he has gone, and endure as much as he has endured!
God! I will have to tame my blogging prolixity or else will end up making a tome of my blog! I will postpone broaching a new issue on Climate Change at a later date, on a different post. Till then, enjoy saving the planet! You are all heroes this world is looking upto:) At least, I tell myself this statement everyday, first thing in the morning. Keeps me going strong through the day!:)
P.S.: It is scientifically reported that if we start living the same lifestyle as we had in 1750, the pre-industrial era, things would come back to normal and we will not have to worry about climate at all. How many of us are willing to do so?:) Some food for thought....:)
I am really amazed and honored by the kind of people who took time out to read my blog and post their comments. There are some very old and special friends, some very special seniors, special family members and some enthusiastic blog readers. I take this opportunity to thank each one of you for your time and effort. I will start this blog by responding to the comments first and then shall delve into a topic for today, if space permits.
The first, rather overarching, feedback I got on the blog is that I am acting as a doomsayer by saying that Climate Change is the biggest threat faced by mankind. This is certainly not a prophecy of doom based on any whim, that a comet will hit the planet earth on this day of that year. Carbon Dioxide accumulation is a hard fact of life, proved by science. And this is bound to happen, if we don't act accordingly. My endeavor here is to make people aware of a threat that is very much there, but is taking shape very very slowly. It is so glacially slow that people might ignore it, at their own peril. Climate Change is no Lehman Brothers, that it is here today and gone tomorrow, it won't be that sudden a process. It is more like a small opening in the embankment of a river. The opening is so small that nobody, in the Business As Usual scenario(BAU), hardly ever notices it in the rigmaroles of their daily life, but the water of the river is slowly eating away the sediments, and the cavity grows ever so slowly! One might say that the cavity is not there, but the process is irreversible and would get noticed at the point of no return.
You might have read this story in school, of a small Dutch boy who prevents his village from drowning by blocking a similar cavity in his village embankment with his finger overnight, until people notice him standing there and repair the damage. He saves the whole village by his prudence, else the river would have destroyed it. Sadly speaking, we are beyond the point in the saga where one heroic effort can do the needful. We need the masses to sit up and take notice of the cavity. Until then, researchers, scientists and other activists of Climate Change will only act as small Dutch boys so that the masses of the world can take notice and remedy the situation.
This blog is just a small effort in the hope of making people inquisitive about Climate Change, so that they start asking those questions that we have hitherto conveniently swept under the carpet. And make no mistake, this is pure science. There is no conjecture, or mysticism involved here. If people are still not convinced about the change, I will urge them to do a small experiment at home. Try sitting in a closed room with an open furnace, with some fresh wood, or coal,better still, in the furnace. Sit in the closed room and try to do your normal activities. See for yourself what changes begin to happen as you spend more time in the closed room. I agree, all this is happening at a very fast pace in the room, but the changes will be there for you to feel. The same is happening with the environment, albeit at a very slow level.
The second point brought about by a dear friend, Mrigank, was related to the developing world and their role in this process, given their usual problems with poverty, literacy, public health etc. While I must give him the credit for an impassionate plea for Climate Change not being as important in the developing world as it should be in the developed world, I have reasons to the contrary. And I hope that I can convince him with my reasons, something that I have not been able to do very many times in the past:) The reason is exactly what Sreekumar mentions,Sustainability, and I hate him for stealing my thunder on this:) Sustainability is the buzzword for the developing world, that can take them beyond the mentality of the third world countries.
Consider this: the total share of global CO2 emissions of India is around 5% and that of US is around 24%. If you take a per capita value of the same entity, the ratio is even more skewed as we know that US has around 300 million people emitting that amount while in India 1.1 billion people cause a smaller dent. Now do an interesting slicing of data, for all the data enthusiasts in you, take the top 5% of Indian population, in terms of personal income, and look at their average CO2 emissions. It comes out to be of the same order as an average person in the US!!! A wealthy Indian is at the same consumption level as an average American! This simply means that rich people in our part, or any poor part, of the world are hiding behind the poor. They will keep enjoying their level of comfort, and keep blaming the developed world for all their emissions, as long as they have a good chunk of poor people in their country to take care of them, in order words average out the emissions for them. Thus, there is vested interests in keeping people poor and ignorant. This may sound ludicrous, but this my friends is close to reality. We need to bring the lot of poor in these countries up in a sustainable manner. Imagine if all the poor people in India start dreaming of a life like the wealthy, at the same level of consumption, the emissions will simply shoot through the roof, literally speaking!
There has to be a 2 pronged approach for this. The rich, in the poor countries, have to cut down on consumption and the poor have to be developed in a sustainable manner, without being forced to give up any of their amenities. As a simple example, the bulk of the emissions in an Indian village is caused by the 'chulha' or the open coal furnace. Once ignited, it keeps burning for the most part of the day as it is very difficult to reignite, once put out. Just imagine, if we could harness some sort a solar powered furnace for these people, how much of a dent in the emissions we can cause at the national level,and at the global level too. We did not ask the village poor to let go of any benefits he/she was entitled to, we just changed the source of it. I am not talking chimerically here, this very much being implemented at the village level. Check out the work one Mr. Harish Hande is doing in this field in the villages of Karnataka and Gujarat and you will be convinced of the scope of possibilities here. I have met him personally, and must say that his work is really commendable. It takes a lot of guts and gumption to go the way he has gone, and endure as much as he has endured!
God! I will have to tame my blogging prolixity or else will end up making a tome of my blog! I will postpone broaching a new issue on Climate Change at a later date, on a different post. Till then, enjoy saving the planet! You are all heroes this world is looking upto:) At least, I tell myself this statement everyday, first thing in the morning. Keeps me going strong through the day!:)
P.S.: It is scientifically reported that if we start living the same lifestyle as we had in 1750, the pre-industrial era, things would come back to normal and we will not have to worry about climate at all. How many of us are willing to do so?:) Some food for thought....:)
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
A 'blog' next door
'Why another blog?'
I have debated on this question over and over again, only to end up firm on my convictions of not jumping onto the blogging bandwagon. All this while that I was not writing a blog, or blogging as they say in the blogosphere, I used to pester my friends with random thoughts, to the extent of either driving them crazy with the volume of my thoughts or being completely ignored for the same reason.
Today in a session on 'Challenges in the Global Economy' by the Sloan School of Management here at MIT, Prof. Simon Johnson, a renowned faculty from that very school and the Chief Economist of IMF not so long ago, described himself as blogger first and a Professor second. Whatever may be the reason for him to make that comment, it drove home the point that I am already behind the curve on this phenomena, and its time to catch up.
Now that I have laid down the reason for this new endeavor, another rankling thought is the content of this blog. Should I just add to the mountain loads of personal information on the blogosphere, from detailing my diurnal activities as a lot of people do, to gross levels at times, or write about what my pet has done since morning? I decided to do neither, instead focus on what has become my life's passion of late. Climate Change! Now, before this name puts you off into not reading my blog anymore, and pass a word around to your progeny to follow suit, give me a chance.
I have decided that I will distill all the information that I receive at this amazing place, called MIT, and help spread the severity of the situation. Without doubt, and as more technical research claims it everyday, this is the biggest problem humanity has ever faced,probably, for it strives for its extinction. The current levels of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has reached 380 parts per million(ppm), hence the name of this blog:), and if we continue in this Business as Usual(BAU) scenario, we will end up at a concentration level in the ballpark range of 900 ppm, or in other words, cease to exist for that level of CO2 would be simply catastrophic. Hence, the problem is real, and its getting serious with each passing second. And calls for action, immediately! The size of the problem cannot be tacked by a few scientists and engineers alone, the entire world has to come together to save the situation. Anyway, we will see more on this in every subsequent post!
The motivation of doing something like this also came at a session last week at MIT, on Climate Change. Since when did I become innovative?:) That session was conducted by another renowned professor in this area, Prof. John Sterman. He drew an interesting analogy, combining two famous movements in the US history, which he claimed would be required to salvage the situation for us. And that is the amalgamation of the Manhattan Project, one that developed the atom bomb, for its technical expertise, and the Civil Rights movement, for its mass appeal and mass contribution. While he claimed we are making decent progress in the technical realm, masses are still not involved in ameliorating the situation. And he put the onus on everyone who is conducting any research in this area to help in whatever small way he/she can, to spread the word around. I shall try to come clean here!
Its hideously ironical that while all my undergrad years, I vehemently tried to enter a consulting firm, simply to get away from the academics, it was a stint in a consulting firm that sent me scampering back to academia:) And even more intriguing that I shall devote so much time and energy of my life, along with numerous other razor sharp brilliant minds, on studying a gas that had got a very trivial mention in my middle school biology books, only in the photosynthesis process. This seems to be Carbon Dioxide's attempt at redeeming itself:) And its an ugly way, indeed!
Gosh, I do love writing!:)
P.S.: Hope I am not the only person reading upto this line:)
I have debated on this question over and over again, only to end up firm on my convictions of not jumping onto the blogging bandwagon. All this while that I was not writing a blog, or blogging as they say in the blogosphere, I used to pester my friends with random thoughts, to the extent of either driving them crazy with the volume of my thoughts or being completely ignored for the same reason.
Today in a session on 'Challenges in the Global Economy' by the Sloan School of Management here at MIT, Prof. Simon Johnson, a renowned faculty from that very school and the Chief Economist of IMF not so long ago, described himself as blogger first and a Professor second. Whatever may be the reason for him to make that comment, it drove home the point that I am already behind the curve on this phenomena, and its time to catch up.
Now that I have laid down the reason for this new endeavor, another rankling thought is the content of this blog. Should I just add to the mountain loads of personal information on the blogosphere, from detailing my diurnal activities as a lot of people do, to gross levels at times, or write about what my pet has done since morning? I decided to do neither, instead focus on what has become my life's passion of late. Climate Change! Now, before this name puts you off into not reading my blog anymore, and pass a word around to your progeny to follow suit, give me a chance.
I have decided that I will distill all the information that I receive at this amazing place, called MIT, and help spread the severity of the situation. Without doubt, and as more technical research claims it everyday, this is the biggest problem humanity has ever faced,probably, for it strives for its extinction. The current levels of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has reached 380 parts per million(ppm), hence the name of this blog:), and if we continue in this Business as Usual(BAU) scenario, we will end up at a concentration level in the ballpark range of 900 ppm, or in other words, cease to exist for that level of CO2 would be simply catastrophic. Hence, the problem is real, and its getting serious with each passing second. And calls for action, immediately! The size of the problem cannot be tacked by a few scientists and engineers alone, the entire world has to come together to save the situation. Anyway, we will see more on this in every subsequent post!
The motivation of doing something like this also came at a session last week at MIT, on Climate Change. Since when did I become innovative?:) That session was conducted by another renowned professor in this area, Prof. John Sterman. He drew an interesting analogy, combining two famous movements in the US history, which he claimed would be required to salvage the situation for us. And that is the amalgamation of the Manhattan Project, one that developed the atom bomb, for its technical expertise, and the Civil Rights movement, for its mass appeal and mass contribution. While he claimed we are making decent progress in the technical realm, masses are still not involved in ameliorating the situation. And he put the onus on everyone who is conducting any research in this area to help in whatever small way he/she can, to spread the word around. I shall try to come clean here!
Its hideously ironical that while all my undergrad years, I vehemently tried to enter a consulting firm, simply to get away from the academics, it was a stint in a consulting firm that sent me scampering back to academia:) And even more intriguing that I shall devote so much time and energy of my life, along with numerous other razor sharp brilliant minds, on studying a gas that had got a very trivial mention in my middle school biology books, only in the photosynthesis process. This seems to be Carbon Dioxide's attempt at redeeming itself:) And its an ugly way, indeed!
Gosh, I do love writing!:)
P.S.: Hope I am not the only person reading upto this line:)
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