Green Festival, San Francisco 2009

This is a 3 day event featuring just about every great and lunatic green idea under the sun. You can get information on solar panels, home energy audits, organic chocolate, hemp clothing, BPA free drink containers, and green snake oil. It's definitely an interesting mix of serious professional businesses and serious patchouli sniffers. Kids under 18 get in free.

Solar Panels Going In

There's a new roof on my house (no more leaks) and footings for the panels are up there, too. There's an inverter in my garage and the panels are due for delivery today. I am very excited.

Starbucks Via - Not Green (yet)

Went to Starbucks, yesterday, and nearly tripped over their new Via display. Posters on the door, cardboard stands in the middle of the floor, boxes and displays on the counters. This may be the greatest idea for coffee since sliced bread, but their packaging leaves a lot to be desired. Small packets of single-server coffee in non-recyclable foil wrappers surrounded by lots of cardboard for a three-pack or twelve-pack.

I haven't tried the coffee (I only drink decaf, these days), so I can't comment on it. I'm just going to have to hope that they finish this marketing campaign quickly and move to selling it in 1/2 and 1 pound bags.

What they really need to do is in every store provide recycling and compost bins. There are certainly enough Starbucks out there, they could be a force for environmental good. Walgreens has become Green with their packaging out of self-interest (reduce the packaging, ship more items, use less fuel, reduce fuel, transportation and packaging costs). I'm quite certain Starbucks stores would enjoy a similar result.

This store in San Francisco's SOMA district does it, why not more?

Turning Green At Home

We spend a lot of time, money and resources in our homes.  Focusing on reducing home energy usage (waste) not only reduces carbon emissions, but also saves money and will often make you more comfortable on both cold and hot days.  Here are some items to focus on around the house.

1. Change all lightbulbs to Compact Flourescents (CFL) or try the newer LED bulbs, which can be dimmed.  CFLs have come a long way and show light in warmer colors.  They use 20% of the energy of a regular bulb and generate a lot less waste heat.  LEDs have a similar energy profile and have the benefit of working with a dimmer switch.  Changing all of the lightbulbs in your house to one of these newer technologies is the equivalent of installing solar panels on your roof for considerably less cost and work.

2. Weatherize your windows and doors to prevent air leakage.  Airflow through window and door frame lets heat (or cold) air into/out of the house, increasing energy bills.

3. If you live in a typical SF house (built with balloon framing), your house breathes (air flows through walls, flows, attic/roof).  Seal all outlets, switches, wall mounts, etc.  Air leaks through these items into (out of) the walls and makes its way outdoors.  Money flies out the window with your heat.

4. Got a mail slot in your front door?  Air leaks there, too.  Consider a mail drop somewhere outside the door and seal up the in door slot.

5. Shorter showers save water and energy.  Less energy to heat the water as less is used.  There are expensive devices you can buy to install on your shower head that will remind you to stop after 3, 4 or 5 minutes.  Or, you can buy one of those small plastic sand egg-timers that go for 2 or 3 minutes and put in the shower/soapdish.  Just flip it over when you step in and jump out when it's done.

6. Turn off your heater in the summer.  It rarely gets so cold in the summertime that a sweater won't do.  Turn off you heater so that it never comes on.  You'll remember to turn it on the fall.

7. Window curtains can keep heat out in the summer and keep heat in in the winter.  Down during the day in the summer, down during the night in the winter.

8. Make turning off lights a game, always check the lights before leaving the house.

9. Circumvent vampire devices.  Those devices that are always on, if only even in the background drain electricity waiting for a remote to wake them up or to provide a quick start when the power button is pressed.  Put all electronic devices on a master switch (power strip) and turn off the switch.  Of course, if you own a DVR (digital video recorder), you'll need to leave that one plugged in.  Alternatively, put the power strip on a timer.

10. Unplug cellphone and battery chargers when not in use.  Many of these devices comsume power even when not charging.  Why waste money and energy to do nothing?

11. Hibernate or turn off your computer.  Why leave your home computer on 22 hours per day and use it for 2?  Even a work computer which gets used 10 hours per day should be powered off or hibernated for the other 14 hours.

12. Clean your refrigerator coils a couple of times a year.  They run more efficiently without all of that dust.

13. Clean your heater and/or airconditioner filter.  The conditioned air will be cleaner and less energy will be used to change its temperature.

Advanced Options (and more expensive)

14. With a well sealed house, you'll now save money, but it can get a bit hot in the summer.  A small, wall fan can be installed which can move all of the air in your house in about an hour.  In the early evening, open some windows, turn on the fan, and the house is considerably cooler.

15. Install solar panels, generate your own electricity and offset costs from the grid.

16. A tankless water heater located near your bathrooms reduces energy usage (a tank of hot water need not be maintained) and eliminates water waste (no need to run hot water waiting for it to reach the bathroom).

17. Blow insulation into your walls to improve heat/cold retention.

18. Change toilets to low flow/dual flush options (this isn't so much energy savings as water savings, but since we're at it...).

19. Change heaters and boilers to newer, more efficient versions.

PG&E wants to heat our world from the sky

No, I'm wearing my tinfoil hat (yet).  PG&E wants to work with a company that will put satellites in orbit to beam down energy collected from the Sun.  Good idea?  Well, let's think about the theory, the practice and the alternatives.

Theory: Energy from the Sun is free and clean, beaming it to Earth is do-able if not now, in the future.  It's better than fossil fuel.  Only if you ignore future population growth, economic growth and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  See my previous blog post on this date on this topic.

Practice: Can we really generate beams of energy that can penetrate the atmosphere and clouds but are low power enough to not bring down birds and airplanes?  Even if we achieve spectacular results, there will be energy lost in the process, how good can it be?

Alternatives: First, it's got to be more cost effective to use solar concentrators and PVs from the ground.  The fact that this stuff works at night is a Red Herring, since I'm quite sure we can find other ways of storing extra daytime solar power with the money not spent on a sky-based power generation system.  Second, what about other forms of PVs, wind and wave/tidal power?  Launching satellites is not without risk, the research and time required to get this right means not working on other, easier to manage and execute projects.

Alternatives are less risk, the technological advances are steep and, ultimately, the impact on global warming will be negative (increase warming).  Why do it?

Can we really stop global warming?

The link to the article has a great analysis of why our solutions to Global Warming must be selected with care.  Why?  Because we cannot escape the science (read: Rules of the Universe).  Thermodynamics Second Law states that all energy converts to thermal energy.  What does this mean?  Currently, the uranium buried in our crust and the geothermal heat beneath our crust is stable.  In the case of uranium, it is neither concentrated nor having its energy extracted.  In the case of geothermal energy, it is in thermal equilibrium with the surface.  By extracting energy from the uranium (rather than letting it be) we put that energy into our environment (surface and air).  Extracting geothermal energy also does the same thing.

Is this of consequence, right now? Well, not right now, because the amount of energy we are talking about is small.  However, and this is the important part, the amount of energy our civilization will require will continue to grow over time because the population of the planet will grow and more and more people will move into first-world energy use.  Sure, at some point, this energy use will stabilize, but that happens when the amount of energy can have an impact on global temperatures.

Keep in mind, we are not talking about global temperature rise due to global greenhouse gases and their ability to trap the sun's heat.  We are simply talking about the impact of adding energy to our ecosystem, and it's inevitable conversion to heat!

What do we do about this?  Since the earth/sun/heat cycle has had some semblance of stability for the earth's history, we should only use energy generated from the sun which includes Solar, Wind and Wave.  Solar would be direct production from PVs or indirect production through biofuels and burning vegetable materials.  Winds are produced by the sun via unequal heating/cooling of the land, oceans and atmosphere.  Waves/tides are generated by winds and gravity.  Sure, the moon contributes to tides.  But, it's tidal energy is also converted into heat, so the pathway is not critical, we can safely convert the moon's portion of tidal energy without adding more heat to the ecosystem.

Why is this discussion important?  So, that we don't waste time on technologies that are not sustainable.  If we are going to correct our long term energy solution, let's try to do the best we can for future generations.  We won't be perfect, we will make unforeseen mistakes.  It would be nice to not make known mistakes.  We've ignored the science of global warming for far too long.

Thermodynamics has been well understood for hundreds of years.  Let's ignore it when planning for the future.

Earth Hour, did you celebrate?

I hope you celebrated Earth Hour on March 28th.  If you didn't, you'll get another chance next year.  In the meantime, please enjoy some poetry written during the event by a young, up-and-coming writer.

Earth Hour

They say there’s an hour,

the witching hour,

when all are asleep

nothing is heard;

not even a peep.

This hour is so grim.

This hour can reap.

It is so oddly scary,

not even robots will beep.

If the lights are out and all is silent

then that is sign that it has started to creep.

Though there’s a more joyful hour,

that comes once a year,

around the 30th of march

or near.

To make the world be like it never had light;

for just one night.

Think of it as an election,

with one candidate to make a correction

You are the voter,

your light switch;

the machine.

Make the right choices

we nead 1,000,000,000+ voices

to make a beating

out of global heating

in this world

upon which we stand.

By Mason Philips