AirScape Engineer's Blog

We love railroads. Who can’t love their efficiency. BUT… They like coal. They really like coal. According to this report http://www.aar.org/home/aar2/newsandevents/~/media/aar/railtimeindicators/2010-07-rti.ashx 44% of railroad car traffic is coal. And coal is dirty. It’s dirty in terms of carbon emissions. It’s dirty (but can be cleaned) in terms of particulate emissions. It’s not all that wonderful in terms of mercury dispersal either.

So, which way do you think railroads will lobby (they are corporate “citizens” after all).  Will they throw their weight towards laws which reward efficiency => win for rail transportation. Or will they throw their weight behind more coal burning => still good for railroads.?

The concept of sustainable living, or sustainability has wide appeal. It’s hard to argue with the idea that if you think of natural resources and energy as a bank account,  we should not be overdrawn.

If you do it right, and it’s a tall order, you could model the “real” costs of resource extraction.  Our simplistic economic models increase the Gross Domestic Product when a tree is cut down, or oil is burnt.  Basic accounting practices would at least require us to decrease the amount in our natural resource account.

Let’s table that thought. Onto the rant du jour.  Our local food co-op has the following announcement:

——————————local Co-op announcement——————————————–

FRIDAY also means PORT ORFORD Hook and Line Caught Fish are here.Port Orford fisherman also dropped off some sea water! We’re going to make our own “Port Orford Sea Salt” for Eat Local Week!

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Isn’t that great?  Well, of course not! Otherwise this would not be a rant.

How do you make your own salt?  Evaporate the water.  Great. With what energy?  Electricity as it turns out.

Let’s do some calculations …

Salt Evaporation Using Solar Energy

Bottom line. You made your own salt. If you had purchased standard packaged salt, it would most likely have been harvested using solar energy, and energy efficient vacuum evaporation process (see http://www.cargill.com/static/sb/tour.htm).

Perhaps this adventure falls into the self-contained, but not sustainable category.

new efficient house

Low leakage windows, better insulation, and more efficient heating and cooling systems are among the many wonderful energy saving products and techniques that allow us to build very efficient houses.

Houses built to the high standards of a passivhaus , can use as little as 10% of the energy required to run the average U.S. single family house. For so many reasons, reducing energy use is critical to our society’s future. So….. let’s build a bunch of new passiv houses with an American flair. Well…..here’s the problem.

In a typical year, the housing industry produces about 1.5 million new housing units per year. This is within a base of approximately 128,000,000 existing housing units. (source census.gov). So, it would take about 85 years (with no population growth) to replace all of our existing houses.

This leads us to the conclusion that we must devise a way to make our existing housing stock efficient users of energy. It’s not a simple task. Standards must be developed and a process must be implemented. Oh, and by the way, perhaps government (good government) should direct this. I think we’re not even going to ask the finance industry to be involved in this one

Many writers, including us, seem to be switching back and forth between energy savings and carbon dioxide reduction. So what’s the deal? Is there a conversion factor between these measurements? Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast conversion factors. And that is simply because it depends upon what we’re burning and how we are turning that (typically fossil) energy into useful work.

Let’s take the case that we, as whole house fan manufacturers, and users of electricity face. Imagine a typical fossil fueled electric generating plant with a windmill in the front yard. In fact, hold the imagination, just look at the actual picture.

Per the U.S. Department of Energy studies, the average pounds of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour of electricity is 1.34. This is the US average. It is reasonable to use this figure even if your electricity is “clean hydropower” or “green”. If your household does not use that hydro electricity, the dam operators will not “throw away” your kilowatts. That electricity will be used to slow down another power plant – perhaps a “dirty” coal fired plant.

Let’s do the math. For example if you replace 10 of your 100 watt halogen bulbs with fluorescent bulbs, what kind of carbon dioxide reductions can you expect. In this example, the bulbs are on for an average of 4 hours per day, 365 days per year.

Pounds of CO2 saved per year = 10qty. x (100watts-15 watts)per bulb x 4 hours/day x 365 days/year x 1kwh/1,000 w-hours x 1.34 lbs-CO2/kwh = 1,663 lbs.

Not bad, but just put that into perspective, the US per capita carbon dioxide production is 46,860 lbs – so this small example would get you 3.5% towards your zero carbon goal.

For extra credit:

Nuclear plants should emit no carbon dioxide. Is that correct ?

Answer:

There are no “tailpipe” emissions from a nuclear power plant, but compared to energy conservation, you still have to take into account the CO2 embodied in the construction materials.