Environmental Economics in the News: New York WWS Energy Policy

Examining the Feasibility of Converting New York State’s All-Purpose Energy Infrastructure to One Using Wind, Water, and Sunlight
Mark Z. Jacobson, Robert W. Howarth, Mark A. Delucchi, Stan R. Scobie, Jannette M. Barth, Michael J. Dvorak, Megan Klevze, Hind Katkhuda, Brian Miranda, Navid A. Chowdhury, Rick Jones, Larson Plano, Anthony R. Ingraffea

A group of scientists and energy analysts has laid out a path under which New York State could, in theory, eliminate its use of fossil fuels and nuclear power — including for transportation — by 2050 with the use of renewable Wind, Water, Solar (WWS) energy.

In gauging the costs and benefits of various energy options, the authors include the costs from illness and death linked to pollution from fossil fuels.

Conversion to a WWS energy infrastructure will reduce air pollution mortality and morbidity, health costs associated with mortality and morbidity, and costs due to global warming. The premature mortality rate in the US due to cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and complications from asthma due to air pollution (e.g., ozone, PM2.5) has been calculated conservatively to be at least 50,000 to 100,000 per year (about 3% of all deaths by some accounts). Using an EPA estimate to value a statistical life at $7.7 million (2007 dollars), and scaling for New York's population as a percentage of the US, 4,000 (1,200 to 7,600) premature mortalities due to air pollution cost New York state roughly $31 ($9 to $59) billion per year.  EPA estimates that non-mortality-related costs add an additional ~7% of the mortality-related costs.

The estimated payback time to convert the state as a whole to WWS, is ~16 years from the mean air pollution cost savings alone.

One of the study's authors makes the following points regarding the economics of paying for this proposed policy:

• Instead of upgrading, maintaining, and replacing deteriorating existing infrastructure, invest in new infrastructure. If we don’t appreciably accelerate retirement, there is no “extra” (early-retirement) cost to consider.
• Retrofit and rebuild for maximum efficiency and minimum environmental impact. The correct basis for evaluating this economically is a full social lifetime cost-benefit analysis with a near-zero discount rate. On this basis, I believe that most improvements will be economical.

Read Andrew Revkin's take in the NY Times blog, Dot Earth.

Read the complete paper here.

Garbage Into Fuel Venture Gains Momentum

NYTimes.com Green, A Blog About Energy and the Environment
Matthew L. Wald, June 1, 2011

Enerkem, a Montreal company that makes ethanol from old utility poles and household garbage, Valero, a major independent oil refiner, and Waste Management, a trash-hauling company, are investing big bucks to make ethanol from garbage. 

Enerkem is starting up a plant near Sherbrooke, Quebec, with a capacity of 1.3 million gallons a year, and it is building another in Edmonton, Alberta, that could produce 10 million gallons. And it recently received a $50 million grant and loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy for a third plant, near Tupelo, Mississippi, that would be a twin of the Edmonton plant. Those two plants would each consume 100,000 tons of garbage a year, company executives say.

In Edmonton, the company has a 25-year contract to accept municipal solid waste. After separating out recyclable materials, it shreds the waste and heats it to around 400 degrees Celsius, or about 750 degrees Fahrenheit.  At that temperature, the waste gives off a gas that includes hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Enerkem scrubs out the impurities, including carbon dioxide, and runs the gas over a catalyst, which converts it to methanol. The methanol can be turned into ethanol or a variety of other chemical feedstocks.  The product meets the federal definition of an advanced cellulosic biofuel, meaning a fuel that comes from plant material but not from food.

Making ethanol from garbage entails sharply lower carbon dioxide emissions than making it from corn, which needs large amounts of natural gas.  The Enerkem process relies on the heat given off by the process itself so that no fossil fuels are burned except during the start-up. Starting up requires burning some natural gas or propane, but once running, the gasification process produces excess heat that can be used to boil water and make electricity.

Read the complete article here.

Record Level GHG Emissions

Energy-related carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2010 were the highest in history, according to the latest estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The watchdog group says emissions rose again after a dip caused by the financial crisis in 2009, and ended 5% up from the previous record in 2008.

China and India account for most of the rise, though emissions have also grown elsewhere.

The increase raises doubts over whether planned curbs on greenhouse gas emissions will be achieved.

At a meeting last year in Cancun, Mexico, world leaders agreed that deep cuts were needed to limit the rise in global temperature to 2ºC above pre-industrial levels.

"This significant increase in CO2 emissions and the locking in of future emissions due to infrastructure investments represent a serious setback to our hopes of limiting the global rise in temperature to no more than 2ºC," said Dr Fatih Birol, Chief Economist at the IEA who oversees the annual World Energy Outlook, the Agency’s flagship publication.

In terms of fuels, 44% of the estimated CO2 emissions in 2010 came from coal, 36% from oil, and 20% from natural gas.

The challenge of improving and maintaining quality of life for people in all countries while limiting CO2 emissions has never been greater.  "Our latest estimates are another wake-up call," said Dr Birol.

Read more on the BBC News or on the IEA website.

Recent EPA News

It is difficult to divert attention from the devastation in Japan.  However, here are a few other news items that may be of interest to our membership:

There are efforts underway in the US Congress to strip the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouses gases.  HR910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, aims to "amend the Clean Air Act to prohibit the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from promulgating any regulation concerning, taking action relating to, or taking into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas to address climate change, and for other purposes."

Read more here, here, and here.

The EPA says that New York City’s 10-year plan to identify and replace light fixtures that are leaking PCBs in to city schools needs to be faster and more comprehensive.

Read more here, here, and here.

The EPA has added 10 Hazardous Waste Sites to Superfund’s National Priorities List.  Fifteen additional sites are proposed to be included on the NPL.

Read more here.

Natural Gas Drilling and Recyling Wastewater

Ian Urbina, New York Times, March 1, 2011

in a move hailed by industry as a major turning point, drilling companies are reusing and recycling the wastewater generated during the process of drilling for natural gas.

While wastewater reuse reduces freshwater demand, it does not fully eliminate environmental and health risks. Some methods can leave behind salts or sludge impacted with radioactive material and other contaminants.

In Pennsylvania, where the number of drilling permits for gas wells has jumped markedly in the last several years, in part because the state sits on a large underground gas formation known as the Marcellus Shale, such waste remains exempt from federal and state oversight, even when turned into salts and spread on roads. 

More than 90 percent of well operators in Pennsylvania use hydrofracturing to get wells to produce, which uses large volumes of water.  In the year and a half that ended in December 2010, well operators reported recycling at least 320 million gallons. Another 260 million gallons of wastewater were sent to plants that discharge their treated waste into rivers, out of a total of more than 680 million gallons of wastewater produced.

In addition to the potential ancillary impacts of salts, radionuclides, and other contaminants, there is currently no reliable tracking system of the wastewater's disposition. 

Given that at least 50,000 new Marcellus wells are projected to be drilled in Pennsylvania over the next two decades, up from about 6,400 permitted now, the long-term environmental impacts and benefits of the drilling and disposal methods warrant further investigation.

Read more in the NYTimes (here and here).