Between the Poles

Energy Efficiency and Employment in California

According to the World Factbook, if California were an independent nation, in 2007 it would have had the World's tenth largest economy.  It is important not only from a national but also from an international perspective that California has been a leading force in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and in developing renewable sources of power generation. A recent study has attempted to determine what this has meant for employment in the State, and what it will mean in the future as California continues to ramp up its efforts to reduce GHG emissions.

In 2002 under Senate Bill 1078 and in 2006 under Senate Bill 107, California's Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) became one of the most ambitious renewable energy standards in the country. The RPS program required electric power corporations to increase procurement from renewable energy resources by at least 1% of their retail sales annually, until they reach 20% by 2010.  In September 2006, the Governor of California signed the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) which requires the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to develop regulations and market mechanisms to reduce California's GHG emissions by 25 percent by 2020, which means rolling GHG emissions back to their 1990 level.  In June 2006, CARB released a Draft Scoping Plan which is a policy roadmap to meet the emissions reduction target of 169 million metric tons of CO₂.  In November of last year Governor Schwarzenegger signed Executive Order S-14-08 to streamline California's renewable energy project approval process and increase the state's Renewable Energy Standard (RPS) to 33 percent renewable power by 2020.  29 other states have RPS standards,  but California's has been the most aggressive.  To get a perspective on how California stacks up nationally, the national average per capita consumption of energy in the US in 2007 was 336.8 million btus.  In California per capita energy consumption was 233.4 million btus, 44% less than the national average.

 An economic study by the University of California at Berkeley and Next 10 examined the employment effects of the state’s energy efficiency policies over the past thirty years.  The study found that between 1972 and 2006  the state's energy efficiency policies not only saved California consumers a well-documented $56 billion in energy costs, but also enabled California households to redirect their expenditures toward other goods and services which created 1.5 million full time eqivalent jobs with a total payroll of over $45 billion.  California was also able to reduce its dependence on imported energy and direct a greater percentage of its consumption to in-state, employment-intensive goods and services.This resulted in slower growth in energy supply chains, including oil, gas, and electric power, but for every new job foregone in energy, it was found that more than 50 new jobs were created in other sectors of the economy.

Based on this analysis the study projects that the state’s proposed Draft Scoping Plan which aims to achieve the GHG emissions reduction targets mandated by AB 32 will increase the Gross State Product (GSP) by about $76 billion, increase real household incomes by up to $48 billion and create as many as 403,000 jobs in the next 12 years.  The study suggests that the economic benefits of energy efficiency innovation have a compounding effect. The first 1.4 percent of annual efficiency gain produce about 181,000 additional jobs, while an additional one percent yield 268,000 more. It is suggested that the marginal efficiency gains will cost more, but they will have more intensive economic growth benefits.  It is projected that existing energy efficiency programs and the proposed state climate policies will continue the structural shift in California’s economy from carbon intensive industries to more job intensive industries. 

In a separate study it was found that between 1995-2008 green jobs grew 36% while total jobs in the state grew only 13%.  Even in the recession between 2007-2008 when total jobs dropped by 1%, green jobs grew by 5%.  45% of all California green jobs are in the services sector, the largest portion of which is environmental consulting.  Manufacturing represents 21% of all green jobs with half of all green manufacturing jobs split between energy efficiency and energy generation.  From 1995-2008, energy generation employment expanded 61% by nearly 10,000 jobs. Employment in energy efficiency increased 63% in the same period.

Energy Efficiency of Fossil Fuel Power Generation

According to a Dutch study, Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Nordic countries, South Korea, United Kingdom, Ireland, and United States are responsible for 65% of worldwide fossil fuel-fired power generation.  The average efficiencies of power generation are 35% for coal, 45% for natural gas and 38% for oil-fired power generation.  What this means is that 35% of the energy in coal results in electric power, the rest goes "up the stack" as heat.  the highest efficiencies observed are 42% for coal, 52% for natural gas and 45% for oil-fired power generation.  If all countries produced electricity at the highest possible efficiencies, it would reduce annual CO₂ emissions by 860 million metric tons.  The Department of Energy in the US estimates that if US power grid  were just 5% more efficient, the energy savings would equate to permanently eliminating the fuel and greenhouse gas emissions from 53 million cars.

I mentioned in a previous blog post, that sugar cane is arguably the World's most successful alternative fuel.  The energy balance (ratio of energy produced to input energy) of sugar cane ethanol is 8.3 to 10.2 and it is estimated that the CO₂ emission reduction is 86-90% compared to gasoline.  For comparison the energy balance of corn ethanol produced in North America is 1.3 to 1.6, and a University of Minnesota study concluded that corn ethanol may be worse for air quality than gasoline.

The reason that sugar cane ethanol is so much more efficient than corn ethanol or gasoline is that the energy in the bagasse (residual from sugar cane) that might otherwise have been wasted is used productively, some for distilling the ethanol and the remainder to generate electric power (cogeneration).  According to Frost & Sullivan, power generation from bagasse reached 3.0 GW in 2007, and it is expected to reach 12.2 GW in 2014. In 2008 sugarcane bagasse cogeneration produced 3.0% of total Brazilian energy power generation.

In the US in 2008 49% of electric power generation was produced in coal-fired power plants, and a recent study by the Department of Energy suggests given current policies this is not going to change rapidly in the future.  However, there is a way to improve the efficiency of fossil fuel power generation plants without replacing them.  In New York City, Con Edison distributes steam heat from its seven cogeneration plants to 100,000 buildings in Manhattan, which is the the largest steam district in the world. At peak this corresponds to about 2.5 GW.  The European Union currently generates 11% of its electricity using cogeneration and Europe has the three countries with the world’s most intensive cogeneration economies: Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland.  For example, 53% of Denmark's electric power is derived from fossil fuels.  But instead of sending the heat up the stack, in Denmark it is used for district heating.  Combined heat and power (CHP) plants are responsible for 81% of district heating in Denmark.  The most efficient of Denmark's CHP plants claim 90% fuel efficiency. 

GDAL/OGR 1.7.0 Released

The GDAL/OGR Project has announced the release of GDAL/OGR 1.7.0, which is the first major release since 1.6.0 about a year ago.  There's quite an extensive list of new raster and vector drivers as well as improvements to existing drivers.

"Business as Usual" Energy and GHG Projections for the US

In my last blog post I mentioned that the US has no no explicit federal policy to reduce green house gas (GHG) emissions like the EU's objective that 20 percent of energy should be produced from renewable fuels by 2020. 

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) publishes annually usually in March an Annual Energy Outlook, where the EIA projects annual energy production, consumption and green house gas (GHG) emissions for the US.  This year because this is a period of rapid change in the energy industry the EIA published in December an Annual Energy Outlook Early Release Overview where the EIA updated what the EIA calls the AEO2010 reference case and what I'm calling the "business as usual" scenario for energy.  This projection takes into account all existing legislation including

• Corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards
• Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA2007)
• Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008 (EIEA2008)
• American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009
• Renewables portfolio standards (RPS) that over half of the states have enacted

as well as projected future oil, coal, and other energy price, new technologies such as CTL (coal-to-liquid),  and so on.  Specifically the projection assumes no explicit Federal policy to reduce GHG emissions.

Electricity Consumption

Total electricity consumption is assumed to grow an average annual rate of 1.0 percent from 3,873 billion kWh in 2008 to 5,021 billion kWh in 2035.

Electricity Generation

In the absence of an explicit Federal policy to reduce GHG emissions, it is projected that new coal-fired plants continue to be constructed, though at a slower rate as alternative fuels become more attractive, and coal remains the primary source of electric power though 2035.

Natural gas generation is projected to increase because natural-gas-fired plants are much cheaper to build than new renewable or nuclear plants and the lower carbon content of natural gas reduces CO₂ emissions.

Nuclear generating capacity is projected to increase from 100.6 GW in 2008 to 112.9 GW in 2035 which includes 8.4 GW of new capacity and 4.0 GW from upgrading existing plants. No nuclear plant retirements are projected through 2035.

Renewable generation is projected to increase as a result of Federal tax credits, the loan guarantee program in the ARRA, and State RPS requirements. Renewable generation grows from 9 percent in 2008 to 16 percent in 2020.  Assuming Federal subsidies for renewable generation expire as enacted, new renewable generation slows subsequent to 2020.

CO₂ Emissions

In 2008 electric power generation is the single biggest source of GHG emissions, accounting for 41% of CO₂ emissions.  CO₂ emissions depend significantly on electricity demand and specifically on the use of coal for power generation.  With slower electricity demand growth and increased use of renewable generation, electricity-related CO₂ emissions are projected to grow 12 percent or 0.4 percent per year from 2008 to 2035.

Stimulus Funds Saved US Wind-power Industry

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), 2009 would have been an economically disastrous year without federal stimulus funding.  The AWEA had expected wind-power development to drop 50% in 2009, but about $2.2 billion in federal stimulus money for dozens of projects kept employment at 2008 levels.  In 2009 the US added 9,900 MW of wind power, the highest annual increase on record.  2009 increased US wind capacity by 39%.  Total wind power generating capacity in the US is now over 35,000 MW.  Wind energy in the US is estimated to reduce emissions by 62 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Unlike the EU there is no national objective for renewable energy in the US, though 35 states such as California have set their own objectives.  The EU has set an objective that 20 percent of energy should be produced from renewable fuels by 2020.

Alias Sketch for AutoCAD

The Alias Sketch for AutoCAD Technology Preview integrates Alias Sketchbook Pro functionality into AutoCAD and allows you to integrate painting, illustration and image manipulation into AutoCAD design.  It supports

• Freehand drawing techniques
• Create blank screen illustrations
• Create artwork or import images
• Manipulate and composite images
• Free-hand markup (annotate) directly on top of AutoCAD geometry

The technology preview is available at Autodesk Labs and will operate for 30 calendar days after you install it.  Here's a video that shows you an example.

Green Building Code in California Mandatory by January, 2011

Governor Schwarzenegger has announced that the California Building Standards Commission has approved the first-in-the-nation statewide mandatory Green Building Standards Code (CALGREEN) requiring all new buildings in the state to be more energy efficient and environmentally responsible. The new building code will take effect in January 1, 2011.  Governor Schwarzenegger said that “The code will help us meet our goals of curbing global warming and achieving 33 percent renewable energy by 2020 and promotes the development of more sustainable communities by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving energy efficiency in every new home, office building or public structure.”
 
CALGREEN requires that every new building constructed in California must be designed to

• reduce water consumption by 20 percent
• divert 50 percent of construction waste from landfills
• install low pollutant-emitting materials
• install separate water meters for nonresidential buildings’ indoor and outdoor water use
• install moisture-sensing irrigation systems for larger landscape projects
• require mandatory inspections of energy systems (e.g., heat furnace, air conditioner and mechanical equipment) for nonresidential buildings over 10,000 square feet

The California Air Resources Board estimates that the mandatory provisions will reduce greenhouse gas emissions (CO₂ equivalent) by 3 million metric tons equivalent in 2020. Thanks to Terry Bennett for pointing me to this.

GeoREST 1.0 Released

The first major release of GeoREST has been announced by Jason Birch and Haris Kurtagic.  GeoREST is a new open source RESTful framework that works with existing open source libraries such as MapGuide and FDO to publish and interact with geospatial data as web resources, in the tradition of FeatureServer and the ArcGIS REST API. 

With GeoREST 1.0 you can enable search engines like Google and Bing to crawl your geospatial data, dynamically publish to KML, GeoRSS or any other text based format, and use web forms to search and update your data. All of this functionality is available entirely through configuration...no programming is required!

For some practical examples, here are two sites, in Nanaimo, BC and Slovenia, that have been using GeoREST in a production environment for over nine months, with great improvements in the accessibility of their data.

GeoREST is an independent open source project licensed under the LGPL. It is hoped that GeoREST will be integrated with the MapGuide project in the future. It is available for installation on the Windows platform using either the GeoREST built-in webserver or IIS.

An overview of GeoREST was presented at FOSS4G 2009 in Sydney.

Technology behind Project Butterfly

In response to a reader of my blog post about Project Butterfly, I checked with Scott Sheppard of Autodesk Labs to get a better idea of the underlying platform for Project Butterfly.

Project Butterfly Technology Preview’s Web client application is based upon Adobe Flash and Flex technology. Autodesk is hosting Project Butterfly Technology Preview’s Web servers on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. The Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) stores application and user data.  Project Butterfly Technology Preview also uses AutoCAD RealDWG technology to read and write DWG files.

EU Oks Oracle Acquisition of Sun and MySQL

After a three-month investigation by the European Commission, the EU has decided that the acquisition has the "potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products."  Of particular concern was Oracle's acquisition of MySQL with reportedly 11 million installations.

By buying Sun, Oracle acquires the world's most widely-used open source database MySQL, which Sun bought in 2008.  The Commission concluded that Oracle and MySQL dominate different database market segments. For example, Oracle dominates in the high end, where it competes with IBM and SQL Server and where MySQL has virtually no presence.  The Commission also found that there are viable alternatives to MySQL, for example, PostgreSQL (which underlies PostGIS) and which is a more competitive open source alternative to Oracle's RDBMS than MySQL. 

In the spatial market, Oracle Spatial and PostGIS are probably the leading spatial database engines, but many RDBMSs now support spatial data including MySQL, SQLServer 2008, Ingres, and several IBM RDBMSs.