Green New Deal -- Limitations

My reality must be so incredibly different from those who wrote that flyer........

We can't even solve basic humanity stuff like people living in the streets and sidewalks...
We can't solve issues like drug abuse..
or people murdering each other for 5 bucks...or a pair of shoes..

But we want to dump a quadrillion dollars into the new green deal? Wake up....

Maybe the energy problems can be solved if each homeless person carried a solar panel above their head?

Here's my modification for the

What you can do....

1. Wake tfu and face reality.
2. Put your effort into something that actually can possibly be accomplished. Instead of beating yourself to death over something that will never happen in our lifetimes, work toward smaller, achievable goals.
3. Be successful at something by helping with a small change.
4. Help your neighbor with a project.
5. Get your face out of your phone and become a productive member of society.
6. Successes, however small, build upon themselves and help you have a happier life.

 

Pie in the sky.

 

Make sure your enlarged solar farm doesn’t depend on sulfur hexafluoride.

 

i live in a state where it doesn't help to push congress to green up, because they would already like to.

in the states where it might help, it won't, unfortunately.

as far as the green new deal, reading through it a while back made me a little nervous, and tbh, acc doesn't really do it for me, although i do like some of her ideas, others seem completely off the wall.

 

Sulfur hexafluoride link @4 shows this bad actor is independent of how electrical power is generated.

Getting beyond that tech in switchgear certainly does look in need of regulatory push. Other uses (including filler gas in multipane windows) may have already ceased, and good riddance.

It is extremely useful as a tracer gas for some research areas, and those dudes really hope 'other factors' will keep background concentrations low. One early study I know involved popping a small balloon filled with it in Disneyland (TM) parking lot to measure airflow out of Los Angeles basin.

 

Ouch!

You did ask "What other things can you think of?", and the sulfur hexafluoride problem will have to be solved after CO2 and Methane. It's a legit point and will need to be regulated out of high voltage switchgear.

 

You're making a basic mistake that the Big GND solution is to simply scale up the individual solution.

For example, the individual solution in your diet to fight climate change is to go vegetarian (or vegan). Scaled up would appear to imply most everyone going to a meatless diet.

However, humans are creative. If you instantly make a new market of meat-loving, but climate conscious consumers, someone invents meat-less burgers that have almost 90% less GWP than an equivalent beef burger. Add in things like regenerative agriculture and even livestock GHG mitigation good practices, and we could substantially reduce (or even reverse) climate change while still enjoying a good burger.

I suspect we'll find that we can maintain something like 75% of our current lifestyles at minimal extra cost while meeting climate goals on a GND-scale.

However, if you want a more point-by-point, here we go!

Greater efficiency (time to retire those 60's vintage 737s) + aviation biofuels: Reducing aviation's climate impact | Environmental Defense Fund

Also, substitute short/medium range flights with high speed rail.

Some technical changes (route optimization) + fuel switching: Five ways the shipping industry can reduce its carbon emissions

Electrification: How we can turn railroads into a climate solution | Grist
Or Biofuels: ETIP-B-SABS 2.

Electrification:
What’s sparking electric-vehicle adoption in the truck industry? | McKinsey

Efficiency: ENERGY STAR Most Efficient 2019 — Clothes Dryers | EPA ENERGY STAR
And electrification

Efficiency: https://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/publications/pubdocs/HeatingCoolingGuide%20FINAL_9-4-09.pdf
Better smart thermal management: Smart Thermostats: A Climate Solution That Saves Energy and Money | Outrider
Better home weatherization: Remodeling for Energy Efficiency | HGTV

Tankless water heaters: Point of Use (POU) Water Heaters | Products | ENERGY STAR
and electrification

Bioplastics: Do bioplastics have a lower carbon footprint than fossil based plastics? How is this measured? – European Bioplastics e.V.
Or more plastic recycling: APR: Recycled plastics reduce energy consumption, GHG emissions | Waste Dive

 

Heat pumps wherever possible (most efficient, in energy star links above).

Home heating/cooling and water heating: air sourced heat pumps where climate allows, ground sourced heat pumps where it does not. Ground sourced is more expensive but a lot more doable with new construction.

Clothes dryers: as above heat pumps are best, but they do not make them reliably yet in the larger sizes most Americans use.

 

Among electrics, tankless doesn't save enough energy. It doesn't make hot water more efficiently, it merely reduces storage losses, saving less than 10% of the energy used by properly insulated storage water heaters. While point-of-use additionally gets rid of the lengthy piping loss, it still doesn't make the heat any more efficiently. The theoretical maximum improvements possible with these methods are simply not good enough.

Heat pump water heats do make hot water far more efficiently, saving 60-70% on energy use. And continuing to get better. And during air conditioning season in hot areas, it can be essentially free (energy-wise) when integrated with the A/C system.

See also drainwater heat recovery, towards the end of this:
WATER HEATING Energy-efficient strategies for supplying hot water in the home

 

I think you are being much too pessimistic.

Between heat pump space and water heat, other more efficient appliances, several building envelope improvements, and better management of solar heat gain (especially winter), I've cut my all-electric home's energy use a bit better than 50%. And it is now more comfortable than before these updates..

With those improvements, the solar system needed to make this home energy-set-zero does fit on the roof's south pitch, with room to spare (waiting for a future plug-in car). Even in the Puget Sound's much less than ideal solar climate. Even with some neighboring tree interference. Yes, I still need to be connected the grid for time- and season-shifting purposes, but our high level of hydropower makes makes net-zero-carbon utility service possible.

Getting rid of any trains seems very short sighted, considering their much greater efficiency over commercial trucks. Electrify when practical, yes, but don't preemptively remove the diesel locomotives.

Making trucks smaller would increase the air drag per load unit, hurting efficiency.

Blasphemy. Low flow showers should be the norm, to limit total water use. But heat pumps can efficiently make that water as hot as desired. And in air-cooling-dominated climates, that water heat can be essentially free.

 

The problem with the GND isn't so much that it is impossible or even costly to implement a lot of low to zero carbon alternatives. For example, I've been heating my home partially with passive solar for 20+ years and have weatherized and insulated to where my NG heating bill is quite low. In the 5th percentile of similar homes in the area according to my power company.
The real problem is the proposed timelines. Let's say I wanted to replace my furnace with a ground source heat pump. On average it wouldn't need to be very big...but would need to be big enough to handle the couple of worst case winter weeks when I get no passive solar thermal and little solar PV. Sort of inefficient to install to start with.
Second, if every home had to do this by the GND's timelines we'd have to ramp up many more factories building them than we need long term.

Let's talk about cars. How many gigafactory-sized battery factories would we need to replace cars that last about 20 years as they do now? How many would we need to meet the GND's 2030 deadline or even the Kamela Harris deadline of 2035? Since it takes a few years to even start ramping up we would need to build 2-3 times the factory capacity than we really need. And probably build all those factories with diesel equipment.

Note that we's also need to build factories to make EV tractors and harvesters, of which there are ~zero today. Else by 2030 we'd have nothing to eat, even if it was meatless meat made from veggies. Are we really going to discard all that farm equipment that lasts for 20-30 years?

Mike

 

Unless those EVs never ever need their batteries replaced, I'm pretty sure we'll still need all of those gigafactory-sized battery factories. Also, if it does lead to a glut of EV batteries, that'll drive down the price such that enterprising individuals are sure to find many non-car uses for these now cheap battery packs (e.g. residential backup, battery farms to replace peaking plants, etc). I would never bet against human creativity.

As for the farm equipment (tractors, harvesters), long term they should be EV, but in the short term, existing equipment can be modified to run on biodiesel or other biofuels.

In my view, the GND-path forward is something like:

• Make electricity 100% renewable as fast as possible
• Electrify everything
• Where electrification is impracticable, use biofuels

 

The local power plant (7 miles from my house) dumps enough heated water in the river to heat 100,000 homes.

In Europe that heat would be used, perhaps we start with stupid stuff first?

 

Ships are being made that run on methanol, and there is already renewable methanol plants in operation.
Two Ships Pass Dual-Fuel Methanol Milestone
Mapping out renewable methanol around the world - MefCO₂

Drain water heat recovery systems need inspections to ensure there isn't leaks letting sewer and potable water systems mingle. For that reason, it is banned in building codes for residential use in many locations.

 

I like sulfur hexafluoride..neat stuff...bad for environment I forget why.
It is a real heavy gas, I am thinking non-toxic, that is used in lab experiments sometimes when you need a heavy gas.

But actually I agree there is some manmade stuff like that we put in the atnmosphere like that and HFCs etc that have an enormous effect and may be easier to fix than CO2.

All the media climate news we are getting is generating hysteria. We are not telling the public enormous improvements being made as we speak. In the USA in the last 10-years we have reduced CO2 beyond my wildest imagination., I thought I was going to die with 65% coal power in America.

Gasoline autos are essentially zero emissions now with 3-way cat converters, and the other big change invisible to consumers, is that EPA mandated near-zero sulfur in gasoiline, which has now pretty much taken hold after a 5-6 years phase-in. which greatly inproves cat converter performance. So emissions from autos in USA are almost zero.

Effective Jan-2020 (starting now) after a 10-15 year effort of new plant construction, uncontrolled bunker fuel sulfur emissions from the ocean ships is being stopped, and it i has been a massive amount of SOx. I gotta think this is going to help health of the oceans.

Human risk perception is poor, so altough the air is cleaner than ever before human existence, people are outraged about trace pollutants that may not even exist. My spouse is a liberal and she is unbelievably outraged about pollution from cars. But she is not exposed to any pollution in her actual life experience. What does she think the problem is? (Trunp is killing all the prior progress she feels).

We are going off the deep end of outrage. As a concerned citizen, quite experinced in grass roots organization, I know outrage is often a quantity that we try to accomplish to get the public hyped up to get a change made. But there is point when we need to be realize public opinion is being manipulated.

 

I grew up in a small town up the coast, the initial "townsite" was built in one go by the company (pulp and paper mill), around the time of the Great War. Every house had a back porch with clothesline, out to a post and platform at the back of the yard. An apartment block had a gang setup in a backyard: a long platform with with posts and clothes lines, one per apartment. All the clothes lines are pretty much gone now.

 

my wife still insists on a clothesline, and people who see it make fun of us.

i have to shovel it out in winter

 

Ah the original solar cell

Why pay for lots of extra heat and humidity in the summer?