Cost of Green energy?

Being quite curious about what Sarah Palin had to say at the India today conclave, I came across this nugget from her speech : "A recent British study shows that for every 'green job' created, nearly four jobs were lost elsewhere in the economy due to lack of affordable energy!". Now, especially given the person who said it, it is quite easy to ridicule the statement, but I looked it up. Quite clearly, Palin oversimplified the argument (and messed it up), but the actual study did conclude that the costs associated with higher energy prices and government subsidies outstripped job creation by a factor of 3.7. So they were looking at it purely from a jobs/economic perspective, and in the near-term (and not the impact on the environment). This is not just in isolation.. studies in Holland, Germany and Spain have also indicated similar (though not as drastic) results and it has prompted some governments to cut back on subsidies.

These kinds of studies are always open to severe criticism. It is not even easy to nail down a number for the cost of wind energy. Direct generation costs (cost per unit of energy generated by a wind turbine) are easier to estimate, but if you consider the plethora of subsidies and tax-breaks, it gets a lot more muddled (there is also this small matter of effectively distributing it to the customer). If I have to pick a number, I'd say perhaps 6c/kW-hr (not including subsidies), which at least about 30-40% more than conventional sources like coal and natural gas. The good news is that wind energy used to cost many times more about 25 years ago, but the bad news is that the rate of cost reduction has tapered off in recent years.

Now, if wind energy were completely reliable and we had a good transmission/distribution model and the quantitative effects of man made carbon emissions on the atmosphere can be determined  and we had a better idea of when we would run out of oil, then paying the extra 30-40% would be pretty easy.  Fact is, there is no guarantee that ANY of these issues will be resolved in the near future, so it will just boil down to cold numbers: Cost of wind energy has to go down (along with the % of subsidies) by quite a bit. With the discovery of all kinds of shale gas and assorted resources, in my opinion, fossil fuels will be too useful to ignore because they will continue to be cheap in the near future.  With new developments in Fischer-Tropsch techniques (coal to gas and gas to liquid conversion), alternative energy will find the going a bit difficult unless the hammer comes down on pollution (good luck with that in the near future). Incorporating Carbon capture technologies in fossil fuel based plants will increase costs considerably. Till then we will hear more and more Palin-type rumblings and they won't be completely unjustified.

ps: If you are thinking about bias, please consider the fact that part of my research is on wind turbines.

Monitoring energy use... in great detail

This post was spurred by a couple of nice developments - one at home and one at work.

First, while paying my electricity bill on-line, I noticed a link to "usage statistics". I clicked on it and found that I could monitor my energy usage monthly/weekly/daily and even by the hour. This is how a sample day looked like:

I think that it is super-cool. About as important a development as any and as I said on Facebook, this is truly deserving of the smart prefix.  Nothing helps a cause more than affixing good hard numbers to stuff ($ values are even better). That said, we gotta go easy on using my HDTV and microwave.

I work with some kids in the computer science department and the last time I went for a meeting there, I noticed cell phone sized devices attached to each power-outlet and the computers and other paraphernalia were connected to these. It appears that some student is running this thing using which you can monitor how your energy gets used - in a way that is way more detailed than my home usage. Take a look at this awesomeness:

powernet.stanford.edu is where its at - If you set up an account with them, you can monitor every power-outlet you use and break it down in great detail. True to form, the nerds (sorry guys) that I work with even had a powernet device monitoring the energy usage of another powernet device.

I was thinking about breaking down the energy usage in my laptop and that got me going on how incredible it would be if we were able to do this on our cars - I'd be interested in knowing how much energy I lose in applying brakes, stepping on the gas for no reason, air conditioning, idling, etc. I'd pay to be able to graph it. Think Prius times 10 levels of greatness.

Seriously though, there is no better innovation in energy efficiency than cutting down wastage. Monitoring energy use is the first step.

Edit: People will protest anything http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_17545753?nclick_check=1

American College sports for the uninitiated

One of the most intriguing things about this country is the craziness that is College sports. Most people are aware of the four major professional sports (NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA), but very few  outside of America can comprehend the magnitude of college sports. I have to mention that while I really enjoy college sports (an understatement), I am not a fan of many aspects of how they are run.

There are two major sports at the college level that bring in a lot of revenue (American football and men's basketball, collectively referred to as revenue sports) and every university has about 20 other sports that are pretty much dependent on profits made by the revenue sports to survive. College football and basketball are deeply interwoven into the fabric of every major university (pretty much) and can evoke unbelievable levels of passion among the student base and alumni - so much so that the major programs have football stadiums that seat 90000+ fans and sell out EVERY single game.

The athletes that generate this passion and revenue are students at these universities and typically get a tuition waiver and a stipend (amounting to about $20 k a year). The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) keeps a "tight" watch to make sure no illegal transactions take place between the students and the university. These athletes are recruited by college programs while they are in high-school and university coaches bend over backwards to attract their attention. Think of 50+ year old millionaire coaches impressing 17 year old kids by dropping a home-visit on a helicopter (and I am not even kidding here). Recruiting of big-time players can become quite shady involving "handlers", middle-men and even sneaker companies.

On the economic side, most major football programs run annual revenues of $50 M with profits running in the tens of millions. College coach salaries are in the millions (even excluding handsome bonuses).  Money is generated by ticket sales, TV revenue (for instance, CBS pays about $ 1 billion a year for exclusive rights to the season-ending college basketball tournament) and alumni donations (in some extreme cases, people have donated in excess of $100 M. I will touch upon this again later in a post on alumni donations).

On the insanity scale, nothing can perhaps quite match the craziness of the NCAA basketball tournament - 64 of the 330 or so "division 1" colleges are selected to play in a direct-knockout over four weeks in march/april and about half of the American workforce participates in the so-called "tournament pools" which is essentially a betting game. The apparent loss of productivity and the billions of $ that change hands is always talked about. Needless to say, Vegas is all over this one.

The end of the season in college football, on the other hand, is a complete mess. There are no playoffs... instead,  about 64 of the 100 or so division 1A football programs,  participate in -ONE- so-called "bowl" game each, with 5 major "BCS" bowls paying $15 M to each participating team (payout in the other bowls isn't anywhere near this amount). The two teams that play in so-called national championship are selected by a much-maligned computer ranking system that weights winning percentage, strength of schedule and human rankings. The system is so messed up that the Feds are looking into the legitimacy of the BCS.

American college sports is a billion dollar industry many times over (revenues growing by 50% during the current recession) and is increasingly becoming an arms race with the big players (Florida, Texas, Ohio State, etc) controlling the landscape.

So.. what about other sports in college? Though not adequately appreciated, an overwhelming majority of student-athletes use sports primarily as an opportunity for funded education and as a stepping-stone for a professional career in something other than sports - what a concept !! -  (save for some specialist schools in Florida and California that produce Olympic athletes).  As a side note, Stanford is one of the best at Olympic sports (Stanford-associated athletes won 25 medals in Beijing '08).

Ecological footprint and sustainability

The impact of mankind's activities on our planet is unquestionably one of the major issues in the 21st century. While it most definitely is a highly subjective topic and everybody has an opinion that ranks somewhere on a scale spanned on either end by Gore and yee-haw, I doubt anyone can argue against the fact that natural resources are finite and that we are (at the very least) using up a non-negligible fraction. Given that a significant portion of the world's population is poor and several developing countries are growing very rapidly, I often wonder about sustainability.

I came across this rather interesting report  put together by a bunch of organizations including the OECD and WWF. Using various metrics of carbon footprint, grazing land, used forest areas, fishing, cropland and built-up areas, the report gives numbers related to the ecological footprint of various nations and the world. Paraphrasing from the report "Ecological Footprint (which represents demand for resources) and regenerative capacity (which represents the availability of resources) are expressed in units called global hectares (gha), with 1gha representing the productive capacity of 1 hectare of land at world average productivity." In essence, it is use vs availability. Obviously the metrics are somewhat subjective and open to criticism, but not too unreasonable in my opinion.

With some help from the good wife, I was able to get  data from the report and correlate them with per-capita income (adjusted for purchasing power parity, data from UNHD web-site) and came up with a couple of graphs. I have just considered countries with populations of more than 30 million to avoid noise.

Here is Graph 1:

I think the straight line fit is pretty cool. As expected, we have low and middle income African and Asian countries consuming less than the global average and good ol' uncle Sam going to work at the other end of the spectrum. Now, in about 20 years, China is expected to grow almost three-fold and overtake the US as the largest economy and India won't be too far behind. These countries will constitute about half the world's population in that time-frame and will be moving north-east on that graph, doubling the global average consumption by themselves in no time.. oh.. and there will be the little matter of about 500 million people in equally hot Brazil and Russia.

So how about sustainability? Here is Graph 2 (again, countries of pop. > 30 million, with the ratio of "available" to "used" hectares. So, a ratio of less than 1 is bad. Note that this ratio can be less than 1.0 because much like over-drawing from your bank account, you just don't allow regeneration to take place at its natural pace.

Not too unexpectedly, it shows that, as global citizens, we're using up more (50%) than what the planet can regenerate... and this is just in 2010. South Korea and Japan are in scary territory and India and China aren't looking very good given they're expected to grow multiple times.

With better energy sources, more productivity (in developing countries) and change in consumption practices (in developed countries) etc., the outlook can be more positive, but this is nevertheless a very critical issue and needs more serious characterization and attention. Sustainability is becoming a major issue and will soon (if not already) start stifling growth in many developing countries. Herein lies the grandest challenge of all for the two emerging Asian giants.

Welcome

This venture primarily resulted from a bit of overindulgence on my part on facebook - I thought I should convert some of the narcissistic, incoherent energy into thoughts on a variety of subjects that have piqued my curiosity over the years. I would hesitate to call this a blog in the traditional sense of the word (in contrast to my prior exertions which fit the mold). I have always been interested in fundamental processes that make nature tick, but of late, I have also gotten increasingly interested in the limits (and lack thereof) of human endeavor and various economic and social issues. Besides, I want to write outside of my research and in non-formal language, so you can expect blind extrapolation. I hope to use some of my commute time and general downtime, so please bear with me on the inevitable intermittency in posting.

So why is the site called "turtleonthefarm.blogspot.com"?

When I think of the way the world works, I feel like a turtle among farm animals - I feel out of place ?

The Maryland mascot is a Terrapin and the Stanford Campus is called the farm ?

But really it just sounded intriguing to me and was somewhat relevant

Happy reading!!!

Edit #1: For some unknown reason, some of the posts in this blog have taken the route of sounding like essays for the general public. I don't know whether this has anything to do with my age or my profession.

Edit #2: In the age of google-induced itis, I have expended some effort in some of the longer articles to highlight (in red) some important points so that it is easier for you to power skim.