Study Describes Scenarios for Reducing CO2

The International Energy Agency released a report this week outlining two scenarios for the future of reducing carbon emissions. If left unchecked, the IEA says carbon emissions will increase 130% by 2050, with oil demand climbing 70%.

It doesn't take an expert economist to tell you that a 70% increase in oil demand is not a viable option. To avoid the dual calamities of climate change and oil shock, the IEA suggested methods for returning emissions to current levels by 2050. However, if climate change is going to be kept within a 2-2.4 degree increase, the world community must reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2050.

Suggested methods include utilizing cleaner sources of power generation and vastly reducing the emissions output of industry. However, the study says that transportation will be the hardest area to curb emissions.

Transportation is 98% dependent on oil, and transportation-related emissions must be reduced 75% to make any meaningful impact. With this in mind, the IEA points to plug-in hybrid technology, advancements in fuel cells and renewed investment in public transportation as the quickest, most viable options for achieving these gains.

IEA Outlines Scenarios for Global CO2 Reduction by 2050; Transportation Emissions Need to Be Cut Eightfold (Green Car Congress)

Comments

[r2k_in_the_vortex]

forget 2050 we are going to be driving bicycles to work in less than 5 years with oil prices going as they are now. with peak oil looming on us, co2 emission is bound to drop along with production rates

[Carlos Zavala]

I'm getting tired of all the hype concerning CO2 Emissions and grandiose plans to reduce emissions. The coal industry and the centralized electrical utilities are trying to sell the idea that "electric cars" are the solution. Coal energy pumps tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and centralized ustilities deliver energy at less than 25% efficiencey from the point of view of the energy being pumped into the powerplants.

I'm sure you understand "efficiency" , but I'll try to make a simple example. If a car is burning fuel using it at 25% efficiency and gets 25 MPG, then a car that operates at 100% efficiency would get 100 MPG. (Dream on... there is something called wind resistance too.)

Factories today could produce electricity at 56% efficiency on-site (essentially no transmissin losses) with a microturbine-fuel cell from FCEL. A small factory can produce electricity at 28% efficiency using a capsone microturbine, and that isn't even using the waste heat for something usefull like process heating needs or an absorption chiller which converts heat to cool water used in HVAC.

Batteries are heavy, and so electric cars and hybrids are not "necessarily" the solution to reducing CO2 emmisions from cars. If there would be a way to get companies to produce light, single seat cars where people move their fat butts from their front doors to work and back, without starting and stopping moving and this car fits on a rail of sorts, then we could get the American economy to switch from increasing energy costs to lower energy costs and, at the same time, lower CO2 output.

The folloing technolgy I wrote about (many times in different ways) offers a path - by charging per mile per weight - to get consumers (commuters) to change their bad habits and to get manufacturers to make small light cars that people can feel safe driving to the mass transit system.

Please read it and give me your two-cents on what I see as the future - that too many people are scared of going to because they've based their lives on the wrong goals.

Anyway, always enjoy your show.

I wrote the following to Meilsa Block:
-----------------------
Hello,

I listened to your story on All Things Considered hosted by Melissa Block “Ways to Design Gas Savings into U.S. Roads” interviewing Ian Lockwood, traffic engineer and partner with Glatting Jackson, a Florida-based community-planning design firm.

I am a mechanical engineer with 20 years experience optimizing energy systems as well as working in various fields of facilities design, construction and operations.

In college, I also studied economics, environmental science and global social issues.

Ian is correct in saying that starting and stopping increases energy consumption. What troubles me is that many people keep turning to “planners” who continue to think in the past for future solutions to today’s problems. The solutions are going to take a radical departure from “business as usual” while the “planners” continue to make money making mistakes providing bad advice.

Melissa states that, “Americans are in love with their cars...” and went on to give an example of a commuter who works four miles from home. As a resident of Southern California, the closest I ever worked to home since becoming a professional was 7 miles, and now I commute approximately 30 miles – a rather short jaunt compared to many here who commute 60 miles one way. We aren’t going to sell our valuable homes just to move somewhere else, and face the huge increase in property taxes associated with relocating in California. And if we were to do away with Proposition 13 altogether, we would need to see annual pay raises of abut 20 or 30% just to make up for the increase in state taxes. “City planners” might take such economic implications into consideration as they spin their high cost webs of inflexibility which pin people down to a low of living lifestyle in a high cost of living world.

And it is not going to get any cheaper... In a capitalistic labor market, labor needs the most flexibility to find the highest paying jobs, and improved transportation is the best manner to remedy the imbalance between greedy corporate management and labor’s need to find the higher paying jobs. Painting people into tiny communities only works for the very young (supported by their parents) and the very old (who have saved enough to retire.)

Boone Pickens, the renowned oil expert, simply stated recently that world oil demand is higher than supply. This appears to be a very true statement. China has been inspired by American capitalism and a huge influx of American capital from lowered taxes on investment to pick-up the American way of life – using the automobile as a status symbol and a huge generator of revenue for the central government and contributors to political campaigns.

Consider that the Federal Government collects much more in taxes per gallon in California and other states where commutes are long for “highway spending” wherever they chose, and state gasoline taxes may be based on the dollar amount sold or only the quantity sold, and there is no incentive for “government” to abandon “the car” as the main form of transportation. Consider also the taxes collected off vehicle sales, off parts sales, and off the incomes from people in these industries, and there are even further disincentives for government to consider “good” public transportation. Buoyed up by “engineering studies” by engineering firms who specialize in “city planning”, and we have a recipe for economic disaster.

I would gladly trade in (or better park) my vehicle to take a rational form of public transportation. The “factors” should be:

1.) move as many people as fast as possible,

2.) provide transportation from their homes to the public transportation,

3.) provide transportation from the drop-off point to the destination,

4.) do all the above in the most energy conserving means possible.

The only system I have seen that fulfills all these criteria, and then provides further incentives for conservation, is the AVT-Train (http://www.avt-train.com) which is a mag-lev train system that loads moving vehicles onto a moving train with small mag-lev shuttle trains. Just as with a long boat, a train is far more energy efficient from an aerodynamic standpoint than a single car, each successive car drafting the other behind it. The fact that the big train with many vehicles on it doesn’t stop to pick up passengers, through the old equation F(orce) = M(ass) x A(cceleration) and Energy = Force x Distance, it becomes clear, if we want to save energy in this country, we have to learn to move farther (and faster) with less force – or a smaller accelerating and decelerating mass.

A CSX recent commercial shows a hybrid driving along a highway and says ho wonderful it is that it can get good gas mileage (about maybe 60 MPG in some cases). Then they break into their advertising that a train can move a ton of freight at 423 miles per gallon. If the old fashioned “heavy rail” steel wheeled (lower friction than tires) train can move a ton at 423 miles per ton, that same old fashioned train can move a 1.5 ton hybrid 282 miles on one gallon of fuel. And that old fashioned train hasn’t changed much in terms of friction for about 150 years. Maybe a Hummer would get 200 miles per gallon of fuel on an old fashioned train.

Just imagine what an improvement in fuel economy one would have with a mag-lev train, and one that doesn’t have to speed up and slow down when picking up passengers. What a savings of time for commuters and energy for our nation to be more cost competitive – and for labor to expand their competitive area of work. Good people can get to good workplaces without having to sell their homes. Improvements in transportation have always spawned economic growth, so even though there would be industries that would be negatively effected by the switch from big cars and big waste to rational public transportation, there will be a corresponding economic boom as our society operates more efficiently and becomes more competitive on a global market.

Since the AVT-Train would charge per weight per mile, and doesn’t put commuters at higher risk by going with smaller vehicles, there would be significant incentives for commuters to switch to small vehicles, motorcycles and scooters, bicycles and perhaps certain forms of ridesharing that are impossible today.

But as long as even public radio won’t investigate the possibilities of how BEST to save energy while improving our standard of living, then we will continue to wallow in a chasm of rising energy prices and a lower standard of living.

So how about it? Start investigating the way the world will change and how that will improve our lives rather than how city planners and politicians can continue to paint us into a corner of ever more work for less personal gain. There are many other “alternatives” for energy conservation that few people like to investigate because it will remove money from some corporations’ or some politicians’ cash flow. But otherwise, if we continue to refuse to investigate these ideas, the sooner our world will come to a crashing end and the suffering for all humanity will be much greater than it should be.

Sincerely,

Carlos Zavala

Ez4menu@earthlink.net