Monthly Archives: March 2009

Promoting cogeneration at EGSA in San Antonio

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On Monday, March 16th, I’ll be speaking about A Fresh Approach for Developing New Cogeneration Markets in a Carbon-Constrained World to the members of The Electrical Generating Systems Association (EGSA) at their Annual Spring Convention in San Antonio, Texas.

Their website (www.egsa.org) tells us that:

“The Electrical Generating Systems Association (EGSA) is the world’s largest organization exclusively dedicated to On-Site Power Generation. The Association is comprised of over 500 companies—Manufacturers, Distributor/Dealers, Contractors/Integrators, Manufacturer’s Representatives, Consulting & Specifying Engineers, Service firms, End-Users and others—throughout the U.S. and around the world that make, sell, distribute and use On-Site Power generation technology and equipment, including generators, engines, switchgear, controls, voltage regulators, governors and much more”.

I’ve been familiar with the work of EGSA members for over 35 years, since I first arrived in Canada from the UK and as a cogeneration sales engineer in the United States’ engine industry. They are my peers and I’m honored by the opportunity to speak to them on what I consider to be a crucial topic in these challenging climate change and power generation times.

Speaking from personal experience and an in-depth knowledge of the greenhouse gas threat, there’s no doubt in my mind that cogeneration (aka CHP or combined heat and power) is the most important near-term baseload power application we can deploy today. But we must begin seeing applications as part of a much bigger greenhouse gas management picture — beyond individual technologies and the limiting industrial and campus applications we hear so much about.

Why must we do this, what is the bigger picture, what are the applications, and how might we grow this new market given the regulatory environment that’s taking shape? I have some ideas on the subject and I’m looking forward to hearing what my peers have to say about them.

More later …

Governor Crist’s Serve to Preserve Summit

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June 24, 2008

Wednesday and Thursday I’ll be attending the Governor’s 2nd “Serve to Preserve” Summit in Miami. The occasion will be highlighted by Governor Crist’s signing of Florida’s new energy bill, HB 7135, into law.

It’s a mammoth bill by Florida standards, 287 pages in all, with something for many people. Third Planet’s interests lie in community-level sustainable development and energy planning so we’ll be taking this up as a necessary process.

We had thought that the forum for this discussion could be, in part, the Florida Energy Commission in the Office of Legislative Services. The work and recommendations of the Commission appear very prominently in HB 7135. However, under the new bill, the Commission now transfers to the new Florida Energy and Climate Commission in the Executive Office of the Governor.

On the sustainable development and energy planning front, local comprehensive plans are not affected by the new bill but the Governor is now authorized to include goals, objectives, and policies related to energy and global climate change in the state comprehensive plan.

So the Summit is setting up for an interesting time for Third Planet as we look to find allies and partners for our future-thinking planning efforts. Please revisit us again soon and consider supporting our continuing activities with your financial contribution. THANK YOU!


Inventing the future

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March 26, 2008

We have entered an era where adaptation to global climate change and sustainable solutions for our energy future will be challenging to implement. It’s complicated: the facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions urgent.

The conventional concern is to protect our economic health, our way of life, but it’s also the era where we must move toward a reality of sustainable development. Without a sea-change to sustainable development our way of life will not survive and, today, as a result of these challenges we find ourselves inventing the future.

No-one has ever gone where we need to go but people are innovative, they have ideas. Third Planet has ideas, technical skills, and implementation experience.

The eminent American scholar Ian Barbour maintains there are four promising sources of social change that “contribute to a more just, participatory, and sustainable world”: education, political action, crisis as catalyst, and a vision of alternatives.

Nowhere is ‘crisis as catalyst’ a more obvious source for social change than in the twin crises of global climate change and energy security in a carbon–constrained world. ‘Political action’ is evolving as a source for change in response to these dual threats. Where significantly more work is needed is in ‘education’ and ‘a vision of alternatives’.

To Third Planet, a pragmatic ‘vision of alternatives’ in concert with smart cross-sector ‘education’ is key to accelerating the social change process on these issues—and acceleration is a much-needed outcome at this time.

The Everglades and Sustainable Energy Development

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January 14, 2008

Last weekend I moderated a Breakout Session Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Development in the Everglades at the 2008 Everglades Coalition Annual Meeting on Captiva Island. While the panel addressed some key energy and climate change issues of interest to an Everglades audience I was personally surprised that the audience wanted to know more about renewable energy related to their homes rather than exploring further the relationship of sustainable energy development to the Greater Everglades Eco-System. Fortunately for me there were people at the main conference, including ‘Rock’ Salt, my friend and Energy Advisory Committee colleague from the Governor’s Commission for a Sustainable South Florida (1996-97), with whom to share my questions.

What of the relationship between long-term sea level rise, new power plant siting, and restoring water flow to the Everglades, the latter also functioning as a climate change adaptation measure to protect our drinking water from saltwater intrusion. Modeling even 6″ of sea level rise and setting up monitoring stations at the pressure points would help us understand the rate at which change is taking place. Monitoring sea level changes at this time would be analogous to a Hurricane watch, albeit over much longer times, as a precursor to going to a sea level warning. This information has to be invaluable to the Corps of Engineers. Given that over 30% of the Everglades are less than 1 foot above sea level even a 6″ increase would be calamitous. Who is the lead agency for this kind of measurement and monitoring? Is it NOAA, USGS, USACE, someone else? Continue reading →

New biofuels studies raise serious questions

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Originally published September 2007, in Third Planet’s newsletter.

As if long-term energy planning and climate change mitigation were not difficult enough, along come two startling biofuel research reports from Europe in the past two weeks that serve to remind us of the need for constant vigilance and rational decision-making by government, especially with regard to the scientific process, long-term energy planning, and capital investments in a very uncertain future.

Worse than CO2 emissions?

In the first study (PDF), a team of research scientists from Britain, the U.S. and Germany led by acclaimed atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen re-examined the amount of nitrous-oxide (N2O) emissions from biofuel production. They found that when the emissions are calculated in “CO2-equivalent” global warming terms, many biofuels contribute as much or more to global warming through N2O emissions than by using fossil fuels alone.

There can’t be that much N2O emissions compared to CO2, you say. But N2O is a greenhouse gas with a 100-year average global warming potential (GWP) 296 times larger than an equal mass of CO2. That reason alone validates the study.

The team has published its findings for open review in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and, just like the science of climate change, their findings promise to be a hotbed of scientific debate in the months to come.

What makes the study resonate in particular is that Prof. Crutzen is no stranger to success in environmental science. In 1995 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland “for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone”. It was their Nobel Prize work that became the underlying basis for the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer. Continue reading →