Little social research seems to be aimed at population control. How to meet religious objections, how to deal with demographic changes, how to handle the politics are as taboo subjects as the general question. Standards of living will have to fall for better off countries as less well off countries increase theirs. Technological fixes may mitigate this some, but seem unlikely to solve the issue completely.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/11/biochar-could-offset-12-o_n_678489.html

The main problem is that to make rail transport fuel efficient, you have to:

1. Have a long train

2. Have the train stop and start as little as possible to avoid wasting energy.

3. Have the infrastructure to get freight to the railhead in an efficient manner

This means having large depots and long lines. For some countries this may make sense, but for the UK it didn’t look quite like a magic bullet.

I don’t remember the precise conclusions the program reached, but *I think* they said that ~20% of the current road freight could be moved to rail with an overall Co2 benefit.

I have to say it was a conclusion that surprised me, as I’ve always been keen on seeing the move to rail and thought it would be win win, but the arguments put forward (some by a rail company) made sense.

But I see that your California company gets most of its business overseas, where there IS legislation supporting clean energy.

I’ve been struggling with this problem for a while and believe that the same problem I’ve been running into may be affecting other efficiency/carbon reduction initiatives. Specifically – for system improvements – I’ve noticed there is often a disconnect between who has to front the bill for an efficiency improvement and who receives the benefit.

As an example in the US, power generation, transmission and load (end users) are separated by law and all transmission efficiency costs are passed along to the load (i.e. consumers pay more because our system is inefficient). The decision to reduce line losses by installing better equipment falls on transmission companies, but in doing so they only reduce the rates consumers pay. By law it’s a pass-through. Sure, the additional throughput from an efficient line would pay for the line in 3 years (not to mention the CO2 reduction), but transmission companies won’t see a penny of that.

It makes me wonder how many efficiency/carbon reduction initiatives are held up because of ill-conceived legislative nonsense… and yes, my company does do well overseas because the aforementioned problem doesn’t exist in most places and foriegn governments seem to like the idea of less waste… =)

We lose 3-6% of our generated power to transmission losses every minute of every day… that may not seem like a large number, but 3% of all electricity we use everyday adds up real quick… and all that wasted energy just pumps more CO2 into the atmosphere.

In the last 5 years a new transmission conductor has been developed that reduces line losses by 40%… which, in terms of this study would be translate into about $15 per ton of CO2 saved (saved from avoided generation)… but that’s not the end of the story because the reduced line losses also increase throughput for renewable energy sources – meaning we can squeeze more energy out of our solar and wind farms. The best part of all of this is that the continuous energy savings directly translate into $’s… so the improvements quickly pay for themselves (usually within 3-5 years) at which point the CO2 savings and extra energy are just gravy!

That being said, I work for this ‘efficient conductor’ company, so I do have my biases. It is nevertheless an awesome new technology (which is why I joined this company in the first place) and has tremendous potential to mitigate our country’s single largest source of fossil fuel emissions.

What existing policies and programs do you propose to cut to help fund some of the above programs? Or, what tax hike do you propose?

I understand well that many of these pay for themselves over the long run, while some are iffy. But, the average American does not.

Here is a slide show clarifying many misconceptions about forests, logging, and carbon:

http://www.slideshare.net/dougoh/forest-carbon-climate-myths-presentation/

(For full effect click “full” in the lower right.)

Here is a more detailed foot-noted report on forests, carbon and climate change:

http://tinyurl.com/2n96m5

19 is one of my least favorite. Georgia has recently passed legislation that allows Georgia Power to pre-bill customers to raise funds to construct a nuclear plant. Nuclear costs so much money that Georgia Power had to resort to such legislation in order to be able to afford to build it.

4, 5, 6, 7, and 10 are some of the easiest to implement and some of the easiest and most important steps we can take to gradual reduction in emissions. Creating a Property-Attached Loan program to help home and business owners to implement number 6 on existing buildings would have the added benefit of boosting the economy by putting construction workers (and, therefore, auto workers) and construction materiel manufacturing workers back to work; this would be most effective in boosting the economy if the loan is available for domestically produced materiel, only.