Phone audits!

Could smartphones be used in energy 'audits', designed to help householders adopt energy conservation measures (ECMs) to reduce emissions, conserve resources and reduce operating costs? Yes.

Traditionally, energy audits are undertaken by trained staff who travel from house to house, burning lots of petrol on the way. Their audits tend to focus on heating and cooling, and ignore other energy-thirsty devices, such as appliances. The vast majority of homes will also never have such an audit.

If suitable software could be created, householders could perform their own with their smartphones. Much of the technology needed already exists: phone sensors can take pictures for reports, act as crude light meters or confirm a variety of measurements; GPS data is already available for a wide range of applications. Even existing technology could analyze users' appliances, provide the energy-efficiency rankings of similar homes, and give breakdowns of current energy use.

An intuitive tool can be developed with which an untrained user would be able to choose their house type, energy source and payment method, choose an ECM and input data as instructed. For example, a user might provide the type and number of light fittings in their home, then receive suggestions for energy-saving replacements in real time; as technology developed, the range of tasks that could be performed by smartphone would grow.

A smartphone could also 'push' users to make changes when conditions are right, for example, when a rebate or cheaper tariff was available. Unlike the traditional 'one-off' audit, this system 'has the potential to keep users actively involved and constantly engaged with the energy efficiency of their homes'.

The biggest advantage of the smartphone-based energy auditing system is the high potential for accelerated energy and emissions savings. In their Southern Ontario case-study area alone, the researchers estimated that it would take auditors 55 years to cover all 157,000 dwellings in the current fashion. With smartphone technology, all the homes could, in theory, be audited simultaneously, cumulative carbon-dioxide savings from smartphones would surpass those from traditional audits in 13 to 17 years, even with conservative assumptions.

Of things to come...

Some glaciers of the Himalayas will continue shrinking for many years to come, despite anything! This forecast by Brigham Young University geology professor Summer Rupper comes after her research on Bhutan.

Published in Geophysical Research Letters, Rupper's most conservative findings indicate that even if climate remained steady, almost 10 percent of Bhutan's glaciers would vanish within the next few decades. What's more, the amount of melt water coming off these glaciers could drop by 30 percent.

Rupper says increasing temperatures are just one culprit behind glacier retreat. A number of climate factors such as wind, humidity, precipitation and evaporation can affect how glaciers behave. With some Bhutanese glaciers as long as 13 miles, an imbalance in any of these areas can take them decades to completely respond.

Snowfall rates in Bhutan would need to almost double to avoid glacier retreat, but it's not a likely scenario because warmer temperatures lead to rainfall instead of snow. If glaciers continue to lose more water than they gain, the combination of more rain and more glacial melt will increase the probability of flooding -- which can be devastating to neighboring villages.

"Much of the world's population is just downstream of the Himalayas," Rupper points out. "A lot of culture and history could be lost, not just for Bhutan but for neighboring nations facing the same risks." To illustrate the likelihood of such an outcome, Rupper took her research one moderate step further. Her results show if temperatures were to rise just 1 degree Celsius, the Bhutanese glaciers would shrink by 25 percent and the annual melt water would drop by as much as 65 percent

US could beat Saudi to top oil position!

The latest IEA report predicts that a relatively new technology for extracting oil from shale rock could make the United States the world’s leading oil producer within a decade, beating the current leader, Saudi Arabia. The International Energy Agency estimates that US production could reach 11.1 million barrels per day by 2020, almost entirely because of increases in the production of shale oil, which is extracted using the same horizontal drilling and fracking techniques that have flooded the U.S. with cheap natural gas.

As of the end of 2011, production had already increased to 8.1 million barrels per day, almost entirely because of shale oil. Production from two major shale resources in the U.S.—the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana and the Eagle Ford shale in Texas, now total about 900,000 barrels per day. In comparison, Saudi Arabia is expected to produce 10.6 million barrels per day in 2020. The shale oil resource, however, is limited. The IEA expects production to start gradually declining by the mid-2020s, at which time Saudi Arabia will reclaim the top spot.

Shale oil is creating a surge in U.S. oil production in part because it’s easy to find, says David

Houseknecht, a scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey. The oil is spread over large areas, compared to the relatively small pockets of more conventional oil deposits in the United States.

Just how much shale oil can be produced—and how fast—depends heavily on two factors: the price of oil, and how easy it is to overcome possible local objections to oil fracking, says Richard Sears, a former executive at Royal Dutch Shell and a visiting scientist at MIT.

Oil shale costs significantly more to produce than oil in Saudi Arabia and many other parts of the world, so for oil companies to go after this resource, oil prices need to stay relatively high. Concerns that fracking will contaminate drinking water have led to objections in some areas, as have concerns that shale oil requires far more drilling wells than conventional oil production.

The IEA does conclude that the United States will nearly be energy self-sufficient by 2035, but that’s after offsetting oil imports with exports of coal and natural gas. To be truly energy independent, the United States would have to invest in technology for converting natural gas and coal into the liquid fuels needed for transportation, or have other technical breakthroughs, such as improved batteries or biofuels, that would quickly reduce the demand for oil.

Carbon tax or Sin tax?

The National Electricity Policy-2005 had promised: Access to Electricity - Available for all households in next five years; Availability of Power - Demand to be fully met by 2012. Energy and peaking shortages to be overcome and adequate spinning reserve to be available; Supply of Reliable and Quality Power of specified standards in an efficient manner and at reasonable rates; Per capita availability of electricity to be increased to over 1000 units by 2012; Minimum lifeline consumption of 1 unit/household/day as a merit good* by year 2012. The 2011 Census shows 9 crore households lack access to electricity!

There is not much hope that above promises can be met even in the 12^th five year plan unless certain urgent and strong measures are taken under the provisions of the Energy Conservation Act, 2001, the Electricity Act, 2003 and other relevant Acts & Policies.

In economic parlance, a demerit good is a good or service

whose consumption is considered unhealthy, degrading, or otherwise socially undesirable due to the perceived negative effects on the consumers themselves. It is over-consumed if left to market forces. Examples include tobacco, alcoholic beverages, recreational drugs, etc. Because of the nature of these goods, governments often levy taxes on these goods (specifically, sin taxes), in some cases regulating or banning consumption or advertisement of these goods.

Some energy experts have an interesting thought process: Considering the fact that 34 % of the households in India are still living without electricity, should over consumption/inefficient use/abuse of electricity be considered as 'Demerit Good' and be taxed heavily as 'Sin Tax' ?! What do you think??

Shades of grey light

Just when you have flushed out the last incandescent at home, researchers in Japan have modified the blackbody radiation of an incandescent bulb, demonstrating the possibility of 95% electric power to visible-light conversion and paving the way for luminous efficiencies beyond 400 lm/W.

Because visible radiation is typically 10% of the output from an incandescent bulb, with the remaining 90% being infrared (IR) radiation, an emitter should be designed with high visible emissivity and low IR emissivity. Using Kirchhoff's law, modeling shows that a material with high reflectance in the IR wavelength region and low reflectance in the visible region displays a reverse trend in emissivity. By imposing a step-function-like reflectivity onto the surface of the heating material, IR radiation is reduced. The researchers fabricated such a thin-film structure (emitter) by co-sputtering 50 nm thick chromium metal and 50 nm thick chromium oxide onto a copper substrate.

The problem with incandescents was that only 2–5% of total input electrical power is converted to visible light, translating to low luminous efficiencies of 15–20 lm/W. Now that seems like being tackled. So is it worth pursuing this line? Why?

Unlike LEDs, incandescent lamps require no external regulating equipment, are inexpensive to produce, and work on either alternating or direct current over a wide range of applied voltage values. So perhaps we must take another look.

Almost 200 years have passed since the creation of the first incandescent light; however, there is ample scope for new discoveries and new applications in incandescence. Comes down again to, no black and whites only greys in life!

Spinning out of control

It is no more about how to check climate change. No more about 2 and 3 and 4 degrees. The scenario has shifted to how we plan for a warmer world. A much warmer world! This is because it is inevitable. We have crossed the tipping point.

Going by a latest study, it will now be almost impossible to keep the increase in global average temperatures up to 2100 within the 2C target that scientists believe might avert dangerous and unpredictable climate change.

The study by the accountancy giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) sees the world as destined for dangerous climate change this century – with global temperatures possibly rising by as much as 6C – because of the failure of governments to find alternatives to fossil fuels!

An analysis of how fast the major world economies are reducing their emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels suggests that it may already be too late to stay within the 2C target of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it found. To keep within the 2C target, the global economy would have to reach a “decarbonisation” rate of at least 5.1 per cent a year for the next 39 years. This has not happened since records began at the end of the Second World War, according to Leo Johnson, a PwC partner in sustainability and climate change.

Even doubling our current rate of decarbonisation would still lead to emissions consistent with 6C of warming by the end of the century.

This could well end up as another reason why not to do anything at all!

Learning from Sandy

Sandy is the power of Nature over man, man in all his technological might. But more important Sandy shows human failure: our failure to listen to those who understand far better than most of us do the impact of human behavior on the atmosphere, our climate system, and the ecosystems that surround us.

While it is true that no singular weather event can be directly linked to human-caused global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported with increasing confidence that weather extremes will become more frequent, more widespread, and more intense with rising greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC’s assessments have led to many prominent people term global warming as this century’s greatest threat.

Sandy reveals our refusal to take responsibility for our actions and our skepticism that real change (of natural systems as well as of our own behavior) is possible, as Worldwatch Institute. (Read the excerpts from the institute's note.)

The storm devastated the Caribbean before heading up the East Coast of the United States, then turned inland and finally crawled all the way up to Canada, reminding us that climate change is a shared threat that knows no national boundaries. It is well accepted now that in order to prevent a warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius (considered the absolute maximum of temperature increase without major disruptions to the climate system and many ecosystems), human-caused greenhouse gas emissions need to peak well before 2020, possibly 2015. There is no action towards this.

Sandy illustrates what we cannot tire of emphasizing: if we don’t want our climate system to spin out of control entirely, to the point of no return, then efforts to change must be made in all sectors and on all levels of human activity and interaction. From the individual to the local, from states and provinces to nations, from the regional to the global: we need change—political, technical, and behavioral change—wherever it can be achieved, as quickly as it can be achieved.

Sandy also whos how those communities that have begun to prepare for higher sea levels and stronger storms are faring better than those that didn’t believe this would be necessary. And despite our rapid nearing of the 2°C threshold, we should not forget how much worse the impacts of climate change might already be without the many actions that humans have taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This can—and should—make us believe that, after all, change is possible.