The Greening of Gavin

Study the DoCM

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Yes friends, I have been head down, bum up and studying for an assignment that had a deadline of Friday midnight.  I made the deadline with a few hours to spare and it took much longer than anticipated.  The course is a Diploma of Carbon Management (DoCM), which I may have mentioned before.  It runs from February to November.  You can read more about the course at this link to the Swinburne University of Technology.
The last assignment was a cost benefit analysis for carbon emissions abatement.  In English, the cost of cutting emissions.  I had to prepare analysis on four potential abatement projects for my case study company.  Two projects were about fuel switching from Unleaded (ULP) to Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) and from Unleaded to E10 (90% ULP + 10% Ethanol) fuel.  I discovered a few things that may bust some myths out there regarding fuel emissions. 
I learnt that litre on litre, unleaded petrol is more energy dense than either E10 and LPG.  To get the true value for either of these replacement fuels, there is quite a bit of maths involved.  Firstly you have to convert unleaded fuel to GigaJoules (GJ) to get the energy value.  Then you have to calculate the equivalent energy value for the other two fuels.  Yes my brain hurt at this stage as well.  Let me demonstrate with 10,000 litres of petrol which will take my hybrid car > 175,000 km.
10,000 litres of ULP = 342 GJ of energy.  Now to get the equivalent energy to make your car go the same distance, you would need 13053.4 litres of LPG which is less energy dense (and a fuel conversion of course), or 10332.3 litres of E10 which is also less energy dense that ULP.  
Now that may seem inefficient, however there are less carbon emissions given off when LPG and E10 are burnt in your engine.   As I said, even though the volumes of fuel differ, it will still drive you the same distance due to equivalent energy content.  Here are the comparisons for all three fuels and their emissions in metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (t CO₂-e);
10,000 litres of ULP = 22.8 t CO₂-e
13053.4 litres of LPG =  20.5 t CO₂-e
10332.3 litres of E10 =  20.6 t CO₂-e

So as you can see, by using these alternate fuels to normal ULP you do reduce your emissions by about 10% from the tail pipe. What about the cost I here you say?

Well based on today’s average prices for the same energy content (it is all about the energy) here are the results;

10,000 litres of ULP @ A$1.45 = $14,500
13,053.4 litres of LPG @ A$0.55 = $7,179.30 (almost half the cost of ULP energy wise)
10332.3 litres of E10 @ A$1.42 = $14,671.86

So what does that mean? Well, it means that even though E10 may look cheaper at the pump, it cost in this example, $171.86 more to drive the same distance, even though you are lowering your emissions by 10%. On the other hand, LPG still cuts emissions by 10%, but cost $7,320.70 less to drive the same distance. LPG wins hands down, even if you throw in the one off cost of between $2500-$4000 to convert your vehicle to this fuel. This investment would pay itself off within a couple of years.

So if you think you are helping to reduce your personal carbon footprint by using LPG and E10, you can rest assured that you are, however E10 does not make sense financially for just a 10% reduction unless of course you are willing to pay the premium for this reduction as I do. It would be better to catch public transport and make an even bigger difference for far less cost as I also do. I drive the 7km to the train station and catch the train the rest of the 37km to work each day. You and I could even buy a nice bike for the difference it costs us. Then we would save a fortune in emissions and fuel costs!

I hope this post has made sense (kinda anyway), and that you have learn a little something today about energy content of transportation fuels. Just remember, its all about the Joules!

Know Thy Enemy

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Knowledge is a powerful tool to have in your arsenal.  I have been doing some research about coal and various industry lobby groups that I often write about, who say one thing, but do another, in reference to climate change.  As you have probably read, the coal and mining industry have an active front of these type of organisations, that lobby our politicians into inaction regarding climate change.  One of these is the Queensland Resources Council, who are a not-for-profit peak industry association, as is the Australian Coal Association who quite blatantly are trying to push Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology down the public’s throat as a solution to reducing carbon emissions. I am sorry fellows, I don’t think you are quite right.

They are two of the driving forces behind the New Gen Coal campaign.  Maybe they simply believe that if we give coal a fancy new name, all the problems associated with it go away.  I suppose it is better than the American campaign of Clean Coal!

So to better help everyone understand just exactly what sort of propaganda machine these lobby groups have, I have included this link that demonstrates the potential technology of CCS.  Better to understand than to dismiss, I believe.


A Low Emission Energy Future from QRC on Vimeo.

All good in theory, however the captured CO2 is a ticking climate time-bomb if released back into the atmosphere.  Would you store this stuff under your town?  However, their deception gets even better.  Have a look at this video link titled “Copenhagen, ETS and CCS”  from the Australian Coal Association, who’s delegates travelled to Copenhagen to continue their lobbying effort, which stars the ACA Executive Director, Ralph Hillman.  Herr Joseph Goebbels couldn’t have done a better job at concocting this image.  Goebbels understood the principle that a lie, if audacious enough and repeated enough times, will be believed by the masses.  I realise that the comparison of Nazi Germany’s Propaganda Minster and these lobby groups is a long bow to draw and I don’t believe that these lobby groups are inherently evil as was the regime in WW2, but my goodness, they are certainly behaving like the bullies of those times by their activities in and around the halls of our parliament.  Especially during the lead up to the second vote on the CPRS, and Copenhagen.  Profits before the Planet is all they seem to care about, and certainly not the well-being of future generations.
CCS technology, whilst in its infancy, is a long, long way off from being “bolted on” to existing coal fired power plants.  We have years, not decades to act against climate change, and no amount of money will speed the development of CCS.  All technologies take time to develop as does this one.  However, we have the means of combating the emissions released by these heavy emitting power generation technologies right now.  That is to scale them back and at the same time increase the deployment of large scale renewable energy technologies, like Solar photovoltaic, Solar Thermal, Wind, Geothermal, and many others.
These renewable energy technologies, which are already fully developed and being installed throughout the globe, except in Australia, and are catering for the increasing energy needs of the human race.  Heck, this post was powered by renewable energy generated on the roof of my house!  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that by simply reducing the subsidies that our coal companies and coal power generators receive to exist competitively from our government, and then diverting them into large scale renewable energy projects we will keep up with energy demand and reduce emissions.  That methodology has certainly worked in countries like Germany, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and some US states like California. 

The renewable energy capacity in these countries are expanding rapidly, with government assistance.  Even China, although the largest emitter, are rapidly taking up renewables because they see the massive profit that can be made and are also feeling the pinch of a changing climate.  Most of their water supply comes from two rivers that are fed by melting glaciers in the Himalayas.  Once completely melted, China and many other Asian nations face a very dry future.

So why can’t our government in Australia do the same?  Because they are shackled at the hip to these heavy polluting industries, and don’t have the moral fibre or courage to act decisively or if they do, they are not showing us this courage by their actions.  Sure, we now have a renewable feed-in tariff in most states now after many many years of environmental lobbying, but this is just a start.  We simply cannot generate enough of the required power in this country by small scale renewables, even if we put a small wind turbine and a PV array on every roof in Australia.  Energy efficiency around the home and workplace would help reduce the load, but industry would use that power in an instant, and therefore it would only solve part of the issue.  Large scale renewable generation is the answer in my mind, not coal and certainly not nuclear which would take longer to develop and implement in this country than CCS would! 

Coal fired electricity will (unfortunately) be with us for a while longer, just like the video mentions, but I hope for its rapid demise by 2020.  Otherwise, I will see catastrophic climate change in my lifetime. 

A sobering thought indeed.

Carbon Accounting

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A great course so far!  Day One was very interesting. 

We first did introductions, by playing Sustainabingo.  A little game where there are a bunch of squares on a bit of paper with a bunch of questions to break the ice e.g. who owns a worm farm (pick me), or who has a rainwater tank.  You get the general idea.  You introduce yourself to each of the course members and ask them a question and then tick off that box.  The first to get all of their boxes tick calls out bingo and wins a prize.  Funnily enough, no-one won, simply because there were 20 boxes and only 19 course members!

During the morning we learnt about the carbon cycle, and how it all works.  I won’t go into it here, but you can learn about the carbon cycle from Wikipedia if you wish.  It is very similar to what we were taught.  We also learnt how humans have thrown the natural cycle out of kilter by burning fossil fuels. 

After lunch we started to get into the National Greenhouse Accounts, and how different types of things emit Carbon Dioxide, Nitrous Oxide, Methane, Hydrocarbons, and Sulphur Dioxide, which are the known Green House Gasses as agreed in the Kyoto Protocol.  There is a book of tables that has been produced by the Australian Greenhouse Office that lists all the multipliers for each of the types of emissions.  Working in pairs, it took us a while to work through a few scenarios, and that was with the facts in front of us.  Just imagine having to go through an organisations records to get all of the details and come up with a carbon inventory.

Well guess what?  That is exactly what I have to do in the next six weeks.  During the first two weeks, I have to formulate a project plan to complete a carbon inventory for a small company or NGO, and in the following four weeks, write a report and present it to the class.  The good thing about this course is that it is competency based assessment, so you get to go through the entire process for real, and end up with an industry acceptable outcome. 

Yesterday, I approached the Alternative Energy Association, of whom I am a member, and asked them if they would like me to calculate their carbon inventory and produce a report for them for free.  Well, after a bit of consultation they jumped at the chance.  I believe it will be win-win for both of us.  I get to perform a fair dinkum carbon inventory on a real NGO, and they get a free report that they can publish in Renew magazine!  I met a nice lady named Sophie, who I am having my first meeting with tomorrow to go through what I require for the project plan phase.  It should be great fun, and I am excited to finally be doing this sort of stuff. 

I have to hand the project plan in by 27th Jan, so there goes my Australia Day weekend.  I think I will be a busy boy! 

The next classroom day is the 30th, and we hit Excel to do some pretty detailed calculations about how to put swags of emissions data together so we can present it in a meaningful way.  I am looking forward to it.

Who knows?  I might be able to do this for homes and businesses in my spare time for a few bucks!