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decarbonization

Climate Policies That Work or Not

By Energy Rant No Comments
I had already selected my topic for this week (most climate policies don't work) when I had the good fortune to cross paths with a Wall Street Journal article, 7 Years, $700 Million Wasted: The Stunning Collapse of New York's Traffic Moonshot. The policy attempted to penalize drivers for entering congested zones of Manhattan. The $15 per incident congestion charge would sum to over a billion dollars per year that would fund biking and mass transit improvements. New York City has the most snarled traffic in the world. The Journal reports, "The average travel speed in Midtown fell to 4.5…
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Electricity Rates and Reliability – Access and Policy

By Energy Rant No Comments
For 50 years ending in 2000, electrical loads in the United States expanded at an average of 5.1% per year. For the next 20 years, the growth was essentially zero. Projections for the coming five years are roughly 1% per year (compounded annual growth rate, CAGR). Although that is far from 5% CAGR, it is more than zero, and considering construction of everything from generation to transmission lines is on the decline, something must give. For example, transmission line construction fell from 4,000 miles per year in 2013 to less than 1,000 miles from 2016-2020 to a measly 55 miles…
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Elephant On 3 Legged Stool with Money on his back surrounded by powerlines

Rising Price of Less-Reliable Electricity

By Energy Rant No Comments
“Americans used to spend little energy worrying about whether the lights would come on at the flick of a switch, or how much that electricity cost. For a growing number of people, those days are over.” Those are the first two sentences of an article published in The Wall Street Journal last week, Get Ready to Pay More for Less-Reliable Electricity. Other nuggets from the article: Customers of the largest 17 utilities in the country are bound to see electricity prices outpace the consumer price index through 2030. Over the ten years ending in 2022, outages increased by 20%. The…
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Progressive Outline to Decarbonize Buildings

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Two weeks ago, I described an array of district heating and cooling plants that serve medical, college, industrial, and even city-scale loads. Last week, I explained options to decarbonize district heating and cooling plants. Those options include converting systems from steam to hot water as equipment reaches the end of its useful life, heat recovery chillers, and, most importantly, energy efficiency in facilities and processes served. But before getting started on efficiency, I must add that there are also many barriers to shutting down a district steam plant and transitioning to distributed heating and cooling plants. First, there are loads other than space…
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Decarbonizing District Steam and Chilled Water Plants

By Energy Rant No Comments
Let's begin with Oxford Dictionary's definition of decarbonization. Noun: reduction or elimination of carbon dioxide emissions from a process such as manufacturing or the production of energy. Last week, I introduced central or district plants that serve multiple buildings with steam, chilled water, and, in many cases, electricity. District plants serve colleges, healthcare, manufacturing campuses, and, in some cases, entire sections of cities. This week, I describe issues and strategies to save energy and decarbonize these plants. As I learned early in my energy efficiency career, it is essential to understand the design logic behind the system before recommending modifications. Steam moves…
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Decarbonization – An Introduction to District Plants

By Energy Rant No Comments
I would like to see a poll of peoples’ suggestions for decarbonization. My guess is solar panels would be near the top; next, maybe an electric vehicle; after that, maybe electrified appliances and HVAC. Are any of these investments cost-effective? Keeping it simple, are the accrued savings over the life of the project or object more than the cost? It depends on the baseline alternative and various stackable incentives. Without guessing and getting into details, I believe consumer electrification and decarbonization are driven more by non-financial matters. What about commercial and industrial facilities? It gets decidedly more challenging because the…
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Electric Vehicle Discoveries & Trajectories

By Energy Rant No Comments
The depth of decarbonization will ride the line where the net of cost and convenience meets that of conventional alternatives. Polling from the University of Chicago indicates 38% of Americans are willing to chip in one (1) dollar per month to fight climate change, down fourteen percentage points from 2021 (presumably, that 14% are willing to pay nothing now). Or, as one Wall Street Journal article noted in November, “Someone has to pay for it, and shareholders and consumers decided this year it wouldn’t be them.” For instance, I like to cut, split, stack, haul, and burn wood for heat. It must burn hot…
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Decarbonize and Reduce Costs with Dynamic Pricing

By Energy Rant No Comments
Market Prices Continuing from last week, how do we cost-effectively decarbonize the grid at a continental scale? Start with baseload nuclear power and, from there, load management. To achieve optimal load management to keep electricity costs low for customers, customers must see market prices in short-term forecasts, like weekly, day-ahead, or even near-real-time pricing. Tariffs, or rates today, are relics of the analog days when utilities deployed armies of people in pickup trucks to run around and manually read meters. When I was a kid, my dad tasked me with reading meters on building sites away from the home site.…
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Dive Into Cement Manufacturing Emissions

By Energy Rant No Comments
Over the years, I’ve seen numerous mentions of decarbonizing concrete or cement. Random articles describing the need and means to decarbonize cement include this McKinsey article, this DOE post, and this Canary Media article. Those don’t cut it for me. I set out to explore cement making and why it is so carbon-intensive. But first, some terminology review is advised to differentiate cement from concrete. Growing up, in college, and even post-college, we used the term cement synonymously with concrete. E.g., “cement hands” to describe a guy who couldn’t catch a basketball or football or “cement head” to tell civil engineers. Each of…
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Image shows electric car with text "Electric Vehicle Plans with the End in Mind"

Electric Vehicle Plans With the End in Mind

By Energy Rant No Comments
This week I’m repackaging recent news on electric vehicle (EV) developments – market, technical, and utility impacts. I like to look at scale (macro) rather than ubiquitous siloed micro thinking. Is it realistic to scale rare earth mineral mining, battery manufacturing, and battery disposal? What about charging logistics, third-world labor, and grid impacts? Breaking the Grid? Let’s start with the revelation that force, in the form of mandates, will break things. An aeronautical engineer’s piece in Energy Central, says EVs, at scale, will break the grid. He notes that the Biden regime is developing restrictions requiring the market share of…
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