Energy Saving on Specific Campuses

Posted on July 21, 2020 by climatechangefork

There are two branches to making campuses more sustainable: reducing carbon emissions (with the objective of zero carbon by mid-century) and increasing resiliency in the energy supply. We have dealt with both objectives throughout this blog. One campus’ conversion to zero carbon emissions is a small-scale part of the stuttering global energy transition. The goal is to mitigate climate change by both substituting sustainable energy sources for fossil fuels and increasing energy efficiency. With this shift comes the need to increase our energy storage. Given the inconsistent energy availability of renewables, we must be able to store at least as much as the expected required load.

Climate change worsens extreme weather events and makes them more frequent. (Note that climate change does not create these events; it fosters the environment that does.) That means we are facing prolonged heat waves and major storms. Both of these can overload power grids. We therefore need to increase the resiliency of our energy availability to counter such predicted major disruptions. One way to do so is to redistribute some of our energy away from centralized grids toward smart grids and micro—or-semi-independent—grids.

I have consistently said that we can use the energy transition on campus as a hands-on laboratory tool in teaching. We can, and should, engage students in major practical activities so that they can apply these skills post-graduation.

The National Renewal Energy Laboratory (NREL) has summarized state-of-the-art campus conversions to zero carbon emissions:

University Campus Goals

The higher education sector spends more than $6 billion on annual energy costs and totals an area of about 5 billion square feet of floor space (Better Buildings 2018). Universities are among the leaders in the United States in setting goals such as zero energy or carbon neutrality. The primary origin of significant U.S. university leadership on campus emissions reductions was the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). The ACUPCC was launched in 2007, and 336 institutions had joined the initiative by September 15, 2007 (Second Nature 2017). As of early 2018, more than 650 institutions have signed up, with representation from all 50 states. Several university systems have pledged climate goals for their entire university system. For example, the University of California (UC) has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2025 (buildings and vehicle fleet), becoming the first major university system to commit to this goal (University of California 2013). Further, several university campus energy and sustainability ratings have emerged, such as the Sierra Club’s Cool Schools (Sierra Club 2017). One of the most rigorous sustainability ratings is the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS). STARS is a self-reporting system that provides a bronze, silver, gold, or platinum sustainability rating. By June 2018, more than 900 institutions had registered to use STARS, but only four campuses have achieved the STARS platinum rating: University of California, Irvine (UCI); Stanford University; Colorado State University; and the University of New Hampshire (AASHE 2018). As the largest energy users at universities are buildings and infrastructure, with labs and food service as the highest energy using sectors, this paper focuses on the energy use of buildings and infrastructure (Better Buildings 2018).

The Japanese corporation Hitachi has recognized US schools’ work in sustainability and their potential for leading the way in non-centralized energy distribution:

North America leads all other regions of the world in terms of annual capacity and revenue in this customer segment. Total capacity in 2015 was 219.7 MW and is expected to grow to almost 1.2 GW annually by 2024 with annual revenue for this segment in North America expected to reach $4.2 billion by 2024. College/ university campuses are particularly attractive microgrid candidates due to their large electric and heating loads. Further, they frequently have their own electric and thermal infrastructure and typically have only a few points of interconnection to the utility, making projects technically easier and less expensive. Universities have found that maintaining power supply during a grid outage is an important point for many fee-paying parents in the USA. Further, the ability for microgrids to help address the aggressive sustainability targets that many colleges/universities have adopted as well as using the microgrids as a research and educational platforms are important considerations. Example microgrids include those at the University of California, San Diego; New York University; Fairfield University; and Princeton University.

New York University and the University of Texas at Austin have each had success in their attempts to integrate both trends.

NYU:

“Here’s why the lights stayed on at NYU while the rest of Lower Manhattan went dark during Hurricane Sandy” 

New York University continued to buzz and glow throughout the night. The reason?

NYU runs on a microgrid, a semi-independent energy system able to generate and store its own power.

When the storm hit, NYU kept humming along.

Cut off from a central utility, it continued to produce its own electricity.

“If you take a look at the blackouts that were in the New Jersey, New York, Connecticut realm of Superstorm Sandy, the only places that were up and operating were those places that had a microgrid,” said Steve Pullins, Vice President at Hitachi Microgrid Solutions.

In an effort to build more resilient power systems and provide more low-carbon energy, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority is awarding $40 million for the design and construction of microgrids across the state. Microgrids can help communities keep the lights on during the next Sandy, all while providing cheaper and cleaner power than the local utility.

New York state is reforming its energy system so that utilities have a stake in renewable power. The New York Public Service Commission just approved a plan that incentivizes utilities to work with developers to set up microgrids. Under the new structure, utilities stand to earn money by the making systems more efficient and resilient. Speaking at a conference in Manhattan last month, New York Energy Czar Richard Kauffman said, “The good news is that there are going to be a lot more microgrids.”

University of Texas at Austin:

The University of Texas at Austin houses what is often described as the most integrated and largest microgrid in the US, a model for saving energy and money.

Built in 1929 as a steam plant, the facility has evolved to provide 100 percent of the power, heat and cooling for a 20-million square-foot campus with 150 buildings.

The university is known for its premiere research facilities, which demand high quality, reliable power.  And its microgrid has delivered with 99.9998 percent reliability over the last 40 years.

The facility features a combined heat and power plant that provides 135-MW (62-MW peak) and 1.2 million lb/hr of steam generation (300k peak).

The system also includes 45,000 tons of chilled water capacity in four plants (33k peak); a 4 million gallon/36,000 ton-hour thermal energy storage tank; and six miles of distribution tunnels to distribute hot water and steam. The microgrid engages in real-time load balancing for steam and chilled water. Since 1936, natural gas has fueled the energy plant.

… The plant’s CHP system allows it to recover heat energy that a conventional plant would waste – even a state-of-the-art supercritical unit might discard 40 percent of the heat it produces, Ontiveros said. But a CHP system extracts the heat from a steam turbine generator and re-uses it to heat the campus. Leveraging the existing distribution system captures more efficiency in cooling technology.

“We use all the tricks. We can do turbine inlet-air cooling, thermal storage, load shifting, load shedding. It’s all built into our load control system. We produce our all electric cooling at probably 40 percent (of the cost) that the rest of the world does,” he said.

The campus has become so highly efficient that despite its expansion it now uses no more fuel – and emits no more carbon dioxide emissions – than it did in 1976.

“The overall plant efficiency in those days was 42 percent; we’re at 86 percent now,” Ontiveros said.

Net Zero

While some microgrids sell power or services to the grid, UT Austin does not. This is because its energy plant is sized to be net zero, to produce only what it needs.

The university holds a 25-MW standby contract with the local utility for back-up power if equipment fails, at a cost of about $1 million annually, a small portion of the plant’s $50 million annual operating budget. Other than that, UT Austin operates with autonomy from the central grid.

“I see ourselves as at high risk anytime we are on the grid because we are more reliable than them,” Ontiveros said.

Energy reliability is extremely important to the university. Eighty percent of the campus space is dedicated to research valued at about $500 million.

“If a professor loses a transgenic mouse with 20 years of research built into it, that’s a nightmare. That’s what keeps me up at night,” Ontiveros said.

Another paper, “Living labs and co-production: university campuses as platforms for sustainability science,” does a great job explaining the concept of treating a campus as a learning laboratory.

I will probably spend the rest of my working time trying to push my university forward in this direction.

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School Energy Use: Smart Grids & the Long Term

Posted on July 14, 2020 by climatechangefork

Last week I outlined my school’s effort to measure its energy use during the COVID-19 lockdown. As I mentioned there, I got the data following my (approved) visit to the campus. While I was there, I realized that even without students, faculty or staff, the campus is still using about 80% of our pre-COVID-19 energy. Our Director of Environmental Safety addressed my observations and said that the school is working to minimize energy use when possible. However, she said that this work is done building by building by maintenance staff.

I believe that all these adjustments (e.g. A/C, lights) can be done electronically (and remotely). By coordinating all such matters in one place, this remote management could be a giant step in mapping and accelerating our campus-mandated conversion to zero carbon emissions status by mid-century. It would also save money and serve as an opportunity for our students to practice applied energy transitions that they can replicate in other facilities after finishing school. In my view, it’s never a bad thing to provide our students with preparation for the post-graduation job market.

Meanwhile, given that our campuses are already closed, it makes sense to take this time to plan for future contingencies. In terms of energy use, we need to learn how to convert the campus from a passive energy user to a participant in the energy distribution and delivery processes. This goal mirrors one of the campus’ missions: encouraging application of learned concepts in the real world.

I have discussed the two main terms that describe energy distribution—smart grids and microgrids—before. The figure below shows microgrids integrated with a smart grid:

smart grid

Schematic diagram of energy distributed through a smart grid and microgrids

National Renewal Energy Laboratory (NREL) defines a smart grid in this way:

[A] Smart grid is a nationwide concept to improve the efficiency and reliability of the U.S. electric power grid through reinforced infrastructure, sophisticated electronic sensors and controls, and two-way communications with consumers.

There are two parts to the smart grid concept:

  • Strengthen the transmission and distribution system to better coordinate energy delivery into the grid.
  • Better coordinate energy delivery into the grid and consumption at the user end.

Many large research campuses have already begun to build smart grids. Most operate electricity grids that include power generation; load control; and power import, distribution, and consumption. Because of their size and affiliation with electricity consumers on campus, plant managers often have better central management and greater opportunities to improve distribution and end-use efficiency than most electric utilities. Furthermore, most campuses already have two-way communications through interconnected building automation systems. Campus plant managers use these communications for energy management and load shedding, which are among the top goals of utility smart grid projects.

Ultimately, research campuses may play a central role in developing and testing smart grid concepts ultimately used to improve the national utility grids. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is investing approximately $4 billion to encourage the development of smart grid technologies. More information regarding the demonstration projects can be located at the Smart Grid Projects website.

New York State, through its NYSERDA agency, is heavily involved in both research and some implementation of the concept. Here is an excerpt from my July 2, 2019 blog:

Other key issues, such as the “DG Hub,” were new to me; I needed some background:

The NY-Solar Smart Distributed Generation (DG) Hub is a comprehensive effort to develop a strategic pathway to a more resilient distributed energy system in New York that is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the State of New York. This DG Hub fact sheet provides information to installers, utilities, policy makers, and consumers on software communication requirements and capabilities for solar and storage (i.e. resilient PV) and microgrid systems that are capable of islanding for emergency power and providing on-grid services. For information on other aspects of the distributed generation market, please see the companion DG Hub fact sheets on resilient solar economics, policy, hardware, and a glossary of terms at: www.cuny.edu/DGHub.

I was particularly interested in a joint-published work by NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) and CUNY, which offered a detailed analysis of the effectiveness of solar panel installations in three specific locations in New York. The paper included a quantitative analysis of the installations’ contributions to the resilience of power delivery in these locations. Below is a list of the different models that they have tried to match to the locations. The emphasis here is on the methodology and what they are trying to do, not on the sites themselves. REopt is a modeling platform to which they try to fit the data:

CCNY (City College of New York), one of CUNY’s major campuses, has an important research presence in the effort:

The CUNY Smart Grid Interdependencies Laboratory (SGIL) at the City College of New York is a research group focused on: the rising interdependencies between the power grid and other critical infrastructures; power system resilience; microgrids; renewable energy; and electric vehicles. We use our expertise with power system fundamentals, control, operation and protection, as well as analytical and machine-learning based tools to contribute to the national call for a greener, more efficient, reliable and resilient power grid.

Microgrids are localized grids that can contribute to a main grid or a smart grid. They can also operate completely independently. Likewise, microgrids themselves can be “smart.” Thus, they might be an important initial contribution to electric power delivery to smart grids, adding resilience to that power delivery. Portland’s recent PGE effort makes a great example.

Microgrids are also contributing to Europe’s energy transition:

According to the new report, titled New Strategies For Smart Integrated Decentralised Energy Systems, by 2050 almost half of all EU households will produce renewable energy. Of these, more than a third will participate in a local energy community. In this context, the microgrid opportunity could be a game changer.

The report describes microgrids as the end result the combination of several technological trends, namely, rooftop solar, electric vehicles, heat pumps and batteries for storage. The key is that these technologies are decentralized—they can easily be owned by consumers and cooperatives in local systems.

A team at the University of Calgary in Canada is also developing mobile microgrids that can be used for safety and resiliency.

The other branch of an effective transition to more efficient energy use is obviously the change in source. We need to replace some of the conventional power sources with sustainable ones such as solar and wind. But these bring their own issues. Sustainable energy sources depend on the weather and the availability of light and wind. Nor does this variability coincide with the variability in energy usage. Given that weather is mostly unpredictable, it is vital that we synchronize weather and load.

Universities are the ideal places to experiment with these technologies before they reach the larger market. I’ll look into some examples soon.

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Using COVID-19 to Measure Energy Consumption at Brooklyn College

Posted on July 7, 2020 by climatechangefork

I am on the faculty at both CUNY Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center in Manhattan. CUNY is a huge institution:

The City University of New York is the nation’s largest urban public university, a transformative engine of social mobility that is a critical component of the lifeblood of New York City. Founded in 1847 as the nation’s first free public institution of higher education, CUNY today has 25 colleges spread across New York City’s five boroughs, serving 275,000 degree-seeking students of all ages and awarding 55,000 degrees each year.

I am scheduled to teach three undergraduate courses in the Fall 2020 semester, all of which focus on climate change. All three include both background and research components. I am also directly involved in implementing Brooklyn College’s mandate to become a carbon neutral facility by mid-century. Two of the three courses will research the similar NY State and City mandates to convert the state to carbon neutral by the same time (see last week’s blog and the June 4–18, 2019 blogs).

We still don’t know how next semester will play out. Whether we teach remotely or on campus (or alternate between the two) will depend on higher authorities—especially the status of the coronavirus within New York. We are using the summer to improve our remote teaching skills.

I want to look here at how we can use the lockdown to better understand Brooklyn College’s energy structure. Fortunately, we already have some data that can be of use.

During my single approved visit to the campus since the mid-March lockdown—to collect some papers from my office and that of my wife—I was struck by the beauty of the empty campus on a lovely spring day. I was also struck by the wasteful mid-day use of air conditioning and lights with hardly anybody around.

I forwarded my impressions to our Director of Environmental Safety and she responded that she was aware of the issue. She said that, “Facilities did go through the buildings and turn things (AC, lights) off where possible/access. However, some building utilities could not be shut due to IT closets, animals, chemicals, etc…” The CUNY central Office of Sustainability and Energy Conservation immediately followed her statement with a short communique including three graphs of Brooklyn College and CUNY energy use from mid-March through the end of May. I am including both the graphs and the attached explanations here:

Figure 1 – Brooklyn College energy consumption during the lockdown

Figure 2 –Brooklyn College reduction in base and peak loads of electricity used during the lockdown

All CUNY colleges achieved reductions in Base load and Peak load Demand during COVID-19 reduced occupancy. These graphs show reductions from a March (pre-COVID) Baseline. The Baseline is an average of Demand (kW) over the first 2 weeks of March.

Here’s what you need to know about peak loads and base loads:

Peak load is a period of time when electrical power is needed a sustained period based on demand. Also known as peak demand or peak load contribution, it is typically a shorter period when electricity is in high demand.

Base load, on the other hand, is the minimum amount of electrical demand needed over a 24-hour time period. Also known as continuous load, base load requirements do not change as much.

Figure 3 shows the schematics of base load and peak load on a daily basis:

Figure 3 – Illustration of base load, intermediate, and peak load

The base load roughly corresponds to nighttime energy use and anything above it corresponds to intermediate load or peak load. However, weekends in many business places see demand that more resembles an increase in base load throughout the day and corresponding reduction (or shift) in peak load with an overall reduction in load. In that sense, the coronavirus lockdown should resemble most businesses’ weekend demands.

All three figures show power use. We convert power use to energy use by multiplying the power by the time; we can do this by measuring the areas under the curves. That’s much easier to do with the base load than with the peak load (the curve is usually simpler). In order to calculate the average reductions in base loads and peak loads throughout the time periods, we add the reduction %s in Figure 2, and divide the sum by the number of periods. The results come out as a reduction of 17%/week for the base load and 21%/week for the peak load at Brooklyn College.

We can then compare these to the corresponding numbers in NYC at the zenith of the pandemic (April 16th—see the June 2nd blog). The reduction in electricity use during that day compared to the amount used on the same day in 2019 was approximately 20%. Considering the differences between the two sets of data (baselines of one year vs. several months prior, datasets of one peak day for NYC vs. 6 weeks average for Brooklyn College), the similarities are almost too good to be true.

One of the focal points for students analyzing these kinds of data is to figure out what actual activities are responsible for the base load and the peak load and where we can institute saving. For instance, can we identify how much power goes toward A/C in nonessential buildings?

Next week, I plan to put forward some suggestions on how we can save energy once we get the data.

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How to Use COVID-19 to Make your Workplace Greener

Posted on June 30, 2020 by climatechangefork

The “lonely” Brooklyn College in June

This is the beautiful campus where I teach. There are almost no students; it looks lonely. Granted, I took the photograph on Sunday, June 21st, a day when the campus likely wouldn’t look much different under ordinary circumstances. It was the first time that I visited since the beginning of lockdown in mid-March. Like most schools in the country, Brooklyn College is still in lockdown; we can expect to see a similar picture through at least the beginning of the fall semester. Over this period, we will continue with distance teaching/learning. We are definitely getting better at it—both on the students’ part and that of the faculty. But the experience is different—all of us miss the mix of formal and informal interactions with each other that are an essential part of the college experience.

The NYT thinks this might become the new normal. Its article, “’We Could Be Feeling This for the Next Decade’: Virus Hits College Towns,” predicts some long-term impacts that the pandemic will have on college campuses.

Today, I would like to do something somewhat rare: emphasize an important advantage of this new reality.

In previous blogs (June 4–18, 2019) I described New York City and State’s detailed legislation regarding how to bring the state to carbon neutral by mid-century. This goal approximately conforms with the Paris agreement’s commitment to limit climate change to a temperature rise of 2oC by that time. My June 18, 2019 blog outlined my suggestions about how Brooklyn College (and other institutions) could use these requirements as a teaching moment for its students. By incorporating our students in our implementation of this transition, we could impart certain experiences that might be marketable in their post-graduation job searches.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdown have provided us with a unique opportunity to directly differentiate between student-driven and infrastructure-driven energy use on campus. This opens the door for a more detailed understanding of how we can reduce the energy needed to serve the same student population.

As I mentioned in the June 2019 blogs, NY State and City regulations do not directly target schools. Rather, they tackle buildings, businesses, transportation, and other large energy users. The emphasis is on carbon emissions. The two main tools to achieve the desired reductions in carbon emissions are: reducing the amount of energy used and transitioning the sources of that energy to non-fossil fuel sources (solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, etc.).

In other words, simply replacing energy sources and updating the corresponding storage capacity is not the full answer. We must also examine how we use energy, especially if that comes in the form of electricity use. Our energy saving should directly scale with our number of users. COVID-19 and the resultant shutdowns give us an important reference for how much energy we use to support the infrastructure with almost no individual users.

In my June 2, 2020 blog, I gave an anecdotal example of the consumption of electricity in New York City during the pandemic. In spite of the increase in domestic consumption because of the lockdown, the total electricity consumption has decreased relative to the pre-pandemic period. This is a direct result of the decrease in electricity consumption in the business sector. That power draw is now restricted to the electricity needed for immediate infrastructure use. Looking at this, my college hopes to find a way to minimize such infrastructure energy requirements without affecting the energy needs of its users.

The not so simple solution that is emerging—which will be the focus of my next semester—is localizing the electricity infrastructure and limiting energy use to absolute essentials. We can achieve this in part by more extensively incorporating microgrids into our local electrical sourcing.

I have written extensively on microgrids throughout the more than 8 years of this blog. You can search for the term for previous entries.

Microgrids are not new to CUNY. I have outlined their general definition as well as explained how they relate to my school. From the July 2, 2019 blog:

Electrical systems that can connect and communicate with the utility grid that are also capable of operating independently using their own power generation are considered microgrids. Single buildings or an entire community can be designed to operate as a microgrid. Microgrid infrastructures often provide emergency power to hospitals, shelters or other critical facilities that need to function during an electrical outage. Microgrids can include conventional distributed generators (i.e. diesel or natural gas gensets), combined heat and power (CHP), renewable energy such as PV, energy storage, or a hybrid combination of technologies. If inverters are used, such as for a resilient PV system, they must be able to switch between grid-interactive mode and microgrid (intentional island) mode in order to operate as a microgrid. For large microgrid systems that include distributed energy resources (DER), a supervisory control system (a system that controls many individual controllers) is typically required to communicate with and coordinate both loads and DER.

Obviously, CUNY is not the only institution interested in microgrids. A piece from the Journal of Higher Education from January 2018 summarizes the more general attention:

The Department of Energy defines a microgrid as: “a local energy grid with control capability, which means it can disconnect from the traditional grid and operate autonomously. A microgrid, for the most part, operates while connected to the traditional grid but can break off, or island itself, and operate on its own. It can be powered by distributed generators, batteries and renewable sources.”

Essentially, these energy systems are capable of balancing captive supply and demand resources to maintain stable service within a defined boundary.

… Schools such as UC San Diego, MIT, Montclair, Princeton, and Santa Clara University, have stepped up to the call for greater resiliency. Although the microgrid industry is relatively young, it’s popularity is growing in higher ed …

Resiliency is another huge draw for universities, especially in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and most recently, the devastation from Harvey, Irma, and Maria.

Brief brownouts, let alone blackouts, are highly detrimental in the event of extreme weather, where universities are looked upon to be strongholds for the community. The threat of cyber attacks is yet another push. The ability to operate independently from the central power grid is invaluable in the face of disaster, as proved by Princeton’s resilient response while half a million people lost power during Superstorm Sandy.

I have also looked into how certain developing countries are using microgrids:

We tried to monitor this process through a documentary film; to accomplish this we needed some help but the result, along with the full list of contributors, can be seen in the short film “Quest for Energy.”

The film illustrates the initial delivery of electricity in the small town of Gosaba. This delivery comes by way of a microgrid that runs through some of the main streets in town. Here, the microgrid doesn’t function as an additional, supplemental aspect of the main grid. In fact, since in this case, the microgrid is the only grid, in a sense, it resembles the main grid in the US more than 100 years ago.

My school has collected some preliminary data on our use of electricity during COVID-19 shutdowns. I will try to analyze these in next week’s blog and draw some conclusions about applying the methodology in the larger context of more general applications outside of the home.

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Extreme Weather & the Energy Transition

Posted on June 23, 2020 by climatechangefork

All over the world, people are getting tired of the lockdowns and frozen economies, and yet the virus is still on the rise in many places. As countries and states reopen, carbon emissions are resurging. Here is what that means in terms of the transition between fossil fuels and sustainable energy sources:

As countries begin rolling out plans to restart their economies after the brutal shock inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic, the three biggest producers of planet-warming gases — the European Union, the United States and China — are writing scripts that push humanity in very different directions.

Europe this week laid out a vision of a green future, with a proposed recovery package worth more than $800 billion that would transition away from fossil fuels and put people to work making old buildings energy-efficient.

In the United States, the White House is steadily slashing environmental protections and Republicans are using the Green New Deal as a political cudgel against their opponents.

China has given a green light to build new coal plants but it also declined to set specific economic growth targets for this year, a move that came as a relief to environmentalists because it reduces the pressure to turn up the country’s industrial machine quickly.

These are characteristic approaches. Europe, more than ever, is trying to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. The US federal government continues in its denial of the necessity to do so, and China is still vacillating.

But the US government does not always speak for its residents or industries. Four days ago, the NYT ran an article about how climate change is becoming an important consideration in financing projects:

Changes to the housing market are just one of myriad ways global warming is disrupting American life, including spreading disease and threatening the food supply. It could also be one of the most economically significant. During the 2008 financial crisis, a decline in home values helped cripple the financial system and pushed almost nine million Americans out of work.

But increased flooding nationwide could have more far-reaching consequences on financial housing markets. In 2016, Freddie Mac’s chief economist at the time, Sean Becketti, warned that losses from flooding both inland and along the coasts are “likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and the Great Recession.”

Threats of large climate change-induced fires are starting to have similar impacts on the financial industry. As climate change continues to intensify extreme weather phenomena and make them more frequent, it would not be surprising to see more such concern in financial sectors.

Meanwhile, in correlation to these shifts, investments in renewables are beginning to surpass those in oil. So too has renewable energy production surpassed that of coal in the US:

Solar, wind and other renewable sources have toppled coal in energy generation in the United States for the first time in over 130 years, with the coronavirus pandemic accelerating a decline in coal that has profound implications for the climate crisis.

Not since wood was the main source of American energy in the 19th century has a renewable resource been used more heavily than coal, but 2019 saw a historic reversal, according to US government figures.

Coal consumption fell by 15%, down for the sixth year in a row, while renewables edged up by 1%. This meant renewables surpassed coal for the first time since at least 1885, a year when Mark Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and America’s first skyscraper was erected in Chicago.

Are these changes convincing major energy companies to shift their investments? Not yet:

Investments in solar and wind energy projects by the world’s oil majors over the next five years are expected to reach $17.5 billion, a Rystad Energy analysis finds. But a closer look at the numbers reveals that some $10 billion, or 57% of the amount, is expected to be invested by a single company, Equinor, the only investor whose majority of greenfield capex will be towards renewable energy.

Equinor, the Norwegian state-controlled energy giant, will drive renewable investment among majors, spending $6.5 billion in the next three years to build its capital-intensive offshore wind portfolio. We do not expect this forecast to be heavily affected by the fluctuating oil price or capex cuts, as much of the company’s renewable portfolio is already committed, such as the massive Dogger Bank offshore wind project in the UK.

What about the politics?

Is the world at large (aside from Europe, the US, and China) ready to adapt some of the lessons of the pandemic to try to mitigate the ongoing climate change disaster? Among the 10 most populous countries that make up roughly 60% of the total global population (see my May 5, 2020 blog about their pandemic levels), the loudest anti-climate change mitigation voices are those of the presidents of the US and Brazil. We rarely hear much from the other 8 countries. Most of the mitigation-supporting voices come from the European Union, the UK, and the many small countries that climate change threatens directly.

Our presidential election is scheduled for November. This election will likely decide the US’s attitude to climate change going forward. Please make sure you vote! If the federal approach to the problem were to change, the US could potentially match Europe in its commitment to mitigation.

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COVID-19-Inspired Longer-Term Changes to the Energy Transition

Posted on June 16, 2020 by climatechangefork

I started to write this blog on Thursday, June 11th. On that day, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that, “we can’t shut down the economy again.” The Federal Reserve and others had already made grim predictions about the long-term economic impacts of the pandemic. Meanwhile, many countries and some major US states were reporting the virus’ acceleration. It was crystal clear that the coronavirus is still with us and will be for some time. By Thursday, even in the face of this continued threat, the US (and many other countries worldwide) had begun to reopen the economy and ease lockdown protocols.

Secretary Mnuchin’s announcement implied that if the feared second wave materializes (as it almost certainly will), the shutdown steps that proved to be effective in “flattening the curve” in the first wave will not be repeated. He did not specify what would replace them. When the stock market closed a few hours later, stocks had dropped by nearly 6% (S&P 500).

As I have mentioned, the first wave, which, by all accounts is still not over in many places, ravaged the world, with more than 7.5 million confirmed cases and more than 400,000 deaths. The US itself has had 2 million confirmed cases and more than 100,000 deaths. The 1918-1919 Spanish flu marks the only valid global precedent for what we are experiencing now. In that event, the second wave was more damaging than the first.

So how should we interpret Secretary Mnuchin’s pronouncement? The most straightforward interpretation is that a direct threat of 2 million additional cases and at least 100,000 additional deaths will not be enough to convince him to apply the tools that proved to be effective in the beginning of the pandemic. I prefer to be a bit more generous to the Secretary and assume that he is simply discounting the future, hoping that a second wave will not materialize. The stock market’s immediate reaction, however, indicates that the market doesn’t share his blind optimism. It seems that regardless of what the federal government does, the economy will follow the health and safety of the people. Likewise, the real pace of the economy’s reopening will follow the virus and not the government’s official pronouncements.

This discounting of the future has expanded into the private sector with a familiar, “heads I win, tails you lose” twist: management is requiring employees to sign a waiver to go back to work:

Whether companies are liable if their workers and customers catch the coronavirus has become a key question as businesses seek to reopen around the country. Companies and universities — and the groups that represent them — say they are vulnerable to a wave of lawsuits if they reopen while the coronavirus continues to circulate widely, and they are pushing Congress for temporary legal protections they say will help get the economy running again.

In other words, policymakers want to discount our futures, not their own. No wonder there is no mass consensus on the issue.

Now, there is no question that if the lockdowns last much longer, the global economy will freeze and many people will die as a result. Much of the death will take place because of a shortage of necessities such as food, healthcare, and shelter. So, if Secretary Mnuchin had been completely honest, he would have presented the issue as a choice of who will live and who will die. Once the healthcare systems are overwhelmed, this is the kind of choice they face. Politicians never want to present choices in these terms; discounting a possible bad future is much easier because nobody can hold them accountable until the future becomes the present—often after they leave office.

Here is Dr. Anthony Fauci’s take on reopening:

Reopening requires caution, he says. Over the past decades, we have never experienced a shutdown on such a global scale.

“That certainly contained what would have been a much more massive global outbreak, but you can’t stay locked down forever,” he says. “That’s the reason why we’re trying to carefully and prudently, with guidelines, get back to a degree of normality, and we’ve never ever had that situation before.”

During the interview, Fauci digs further into the country’s reopening. He looks ahead at what we may face in the future and shares advice on how we can best prepare. Read the highlights below.

My interpretation: we should open slowly—in stages following the guidelines that make workplaces conform to social distancing protocols—and we should engage extensively in testing and contact tracing. If a serious local outbreak erupts, we close again. The practical implications of this kind of opening are very complicated. Since I am teaching at a university that is trying to follow similar guidelines, I will be able to report on its successes and failures as we go along.

When will all of this be over?  We will be on our way to pre-pandemic conditions, with some pandemic-learned improvements, when vaccines are universally available globally. We need to approach global herd immunity with infection rates (R0) significantly smaller than 1. Even at that point, the virus will still be with us but we will be able to live with it.

Energy Intensity

The condition of an economy obviously drives energy use. The parameter that quantifies this connection is called energy intensity. It ties into the amount of energy we use and how that reflects economic activity, usually measured by the GDP. I have discussed energy intensity on many occasions here; just put it in the search box for more background. The global energy intensity for 2018 was 0.11koe/$2015. To clarify, the units are as follows: 1koe (kg of oil equivalent) = 40,000 Btu or 10,000 Cal; $2015 is the US $ value in 2015. With constant energy intensity, the decline in energy use follows the decline in GDP. However, as we have seen in more recent blogs, the coronavirus drives changes in the kind of energy used in addition to lessening total energy use. Domestic electricity rises but business electricity decreases, resulting in a decrease of total electricity use. In addition, as public transportation is one of the most dangerous virus transmission mechanisms, many people are shifting to bicycles for short distance travel. This shift is positive in terms of a transition to more sustainable energy mix but is likely temporary. We can expect that as the economy starts to reopen, the use of private cars will exceed pre-pandemic use, which is bad for sustainable energy use.

Almost every major transition starts with the destruction of business as usual habits, followed by trial-and-error-established alternatives (have a look at the September 17, 2019 blog about polar bears). Throughout history, we have been better at the destructive part of the process, while the constructive part requires more pain and effort. But eventually we learn how to benefit from the transition.

We are currently facing the virus-driven destructive phase. Many of us are now thinking about the transition and how we could shape it to help mitigate the coming climate change disaster.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), one of the most influential international organizations in the energy field, has taken some flak for its approach:

(Bloomberg) — The International Energy Agency marginalizes key climate goals in its research, according to an open letter from dozens of investors, business leaders, researchers and climate policy advocates.

The Paris-based organization is largely funded by rich countries and advises nations on energy policy. It publishes an annual report called the World Energy Outlook, which projects how the global energy system is likely to look in years to come. The scenarios it uses have become the bedrock of energy policy for governments around the world and provide key insights for global investors to check whether they are putting money in the right places.

The letter sent to Birol this week, which was coordinated by campaign group Mission 2020, asks the agency to make central an energy-use scenario that shows how quickly emissions must fall to see the Paris Agreement’s more aggressive target of limiting global heating to 1.5°C. The signatories include Laurence Tubiana, chief executive officer of the European Climate Foundation; Nigel Topping, climate action champion for the COP26 climate meeting; Christiana Figueres, former chief climate negotiator at the United Nations; Oliver Bate, chairman of the board at Allianz SE; Jesper Brodin, chief executive officer of Ikea Group, among others.

If the world were to warm just a few tenths of a degree further, the economic damage wrought would be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. It would bring the forced migration of millions, and the extinction of thousands of more species, according to an influential 2018 report from the United Nations.

The world has warmed 1°C since 1880, and the pace of warming has accelerated in the last three decades.

The same article cites the IEA’s response to the letter:

The IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario does show which energy pathways are consistent with a 50% chance of keeping global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5°C, an IEA spokesperson said. The critical lever that would help achieve it is called “negative emissions,” or removing CO₂ from the air by natural means or technology.

Under the most ambitious climate target, scientists warn that global emissions must reach net-zero around 2050. The most aggressive scenario in the WEO sees carbon emissions fall to about 10 billion metric tons globally by 2050—a quarter of 2019 emissions.

Next week we will see how we are doing in adopting, or expressing intentions to adopt, some of the IEA’s recommendations.

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Negative Energy Pricing

Posted on June 9, 2020 by climatechangefork

Last week, I outlined some markers of how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the global energy transition and how that ties in with climate change in the long run. For instance, the global decrease in GDP and the resulting drop in energy use have led to a temporary reduction in global carbon emissions. Even though we are using more electricity while stuck at home, our businesses and services are using less electricity due to lockdown protocols. This may become more permanent as our society reshapes in the wake of the pandemic.

What I didn’t cover last week is the emergence of a relatively new term in the global energy vocabulary that might also stay with us after the pandemic decays: negative energy pricing.

The meaning of the term is simple: the producer of the energy pays the user, instead of the more common scenario where users pay for energy. The need for this action has the potential to create major disruptions in the energy transition.

Keep in mind that in this context, to “produce” means to convert energy from a less accessible form such as crude oil in the ground to a more useful form such as gasoline in your car. You cannot produce energy from nothing. That would violate one of the central laws of physics: the law of conservation of energy.

Ok, back to negative energy pricing. Why should the producer pay us to use the more convenient energy that cost him money to convert? In short, because there have been major disruptions to the producer’s supply and demand assumptions.

I have mentioned changes in oil prices pretty often on this blog (see July 14, 2015 and/or type oil prices in the search box). Figure 1, compiled on April 20, 2020, shows a striking drop. Up to the start of the pandemic at the end of January 2020, we see the normal fluctuations driven by changes in supply and demand and various countries’ interest. As in all capitalist enterprises, the goal is to market the product at the highest possible price.

negative energy pricing

Figure 1 – Price of West Texas Oil (Brent Crude), as of April 20, 2020

Shortly after the pandemic started, we saw a free-fall in prices. On April 20th, the value reached around -$50/barrel. That meant that if you wanted to buy the oil, you could get it for free, along with an extra $50. The main reason for such generosity was that at the time, the producers couldn’t (or didn’t want to) stop drilling—but they had no customers who wanted to buy the oil and had run out of places to store it. So, they resorted to paying people to take it. Today, the price of oil is hovering around $40/barrel. We are starting to notice some increase in economic activity and many of the producers agreed to decrease production.

Similar dynamics apply to electricity use. Below are some paragraphs from a May 22nd piece in The New York Times:

 

The pandemic is turning energy markets upside-down. Some consumers will get paid for using electricity.

by Stanley Reed

The coronavirus pandemic has played havoc with energy markets. Last month, the price of benchmark American crude oil fell below zero as the economy shut down and demand plunged.

And now a British utility this weekend will actually pay some of its residential consumers to use electricity — to plug in the appliances, and run them full blast.

So-called negative electricity prices usually show up in wholesale power markets, when a big electricity user like a factory or a water treatment plant is paid to consume more power. Having too much power on the line could lead to damaged equipment or even blackouts.

Negative prices were once relatively rare, but during the pandemic have suddenly become almost routine in Britain, Germany and other European countries.

With Britain in lockdown since March 23 and offices and factories closed, demand for electricity fell by around 15 percent in April, while at the same time wind farms, solar panels, nuclear plants and other generating sources continued to churn out power.

In recent weeks, renewable energy sources like wind and solar have played an increasingly large role in the European power system both because of enormous investments in these installations and because of favorable weather conditions. At the same time, the burning of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, has slipped. Britain, for instance, has not consumed any coal for power generation for weeks.

 Such a critical shuttering of the balance between supply and demand is not restricted to major global disasters like COVID-19. The energy transition from fossil fuels to more sustainable energy sources can be an instigator on its own. Below is an example from Germany from December 2017:

Power Prices Go Negative in Germany, a Positive for Energy Users

by Stanley Reed

Germany has spent $200 billion over the past two decades to promote cleaner sources of electricity. That enormous investment is now having an unexpected impact — consumers are now actually paid to use power on occasion, as was the case over the weekend.

Power prices plunged below zero for much of Sunday and the early hours of Christmas Day on the EPEX Spot, a large European power trading exchange, the result of low demand, unseasonably warm weather and strong breezes that provided an abundance of wind power on the grid.

Such “negative prices” are not the norm in Germany, but they are far from rare, thanks to the country’s effort to encourage investment in greener forms of power generation. Prices for electricity in Germany have dipped below zero — meaning customers are being paid to consume power — more than 100 times this year alone, according to EPEX Spot.

I discussed the energy transition in Germany after my visit there last summer (October 1, 2019). At the time, I was not aware of the associated negative pricing. Such pricing always has a short duration, lasting only until the energy market learns to adjust its supply to sudden changes in demand. With sustainable energy sources in the form of wind and/or solar panels, it is a bit more challenging to address oversupply than it is with oil drilling because most of the expenses come during the installation stage. Once the systems are installed, the supply is weather-dependent and basically cost-free. But you can’t exactly reduce production. Excess electricity storage with hydroelectric facilities and/or batteries are almost never constructed to accommodate sudden changes in demand. Probably the only economically feasible way to achieve balance is through agreements with power companies that can cross state lines. Europe, the US, and other countries are pursuing such options. We all benefit from better distribution of abundant supply.

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Coronavirus Impacts on the Energy Transition

Posted on June 2, 2020 by climatechangefork

 What impacts will the COVID-19 pandemic have on the longer-term climate change disaster? I’ll begin to address this topic here, starting with some observations, and expand upon it with some suggestions in future blogs. Throughout my more than 8 years of running this blog, I have emphasized the global energy transition, I have aimed to apply a variety of strategies to maximize economic performance while minimizing the impact of energy use on the climate. Understanding COVID-19’s impacts on the energy transition will benefit all of us in our quest to optimize future prospects.

The pandemic started in Wuhan, China, reaching its first peak around the end of January. The first cases were reported toward the end of December 2019, and the virus was identified on January 7th. By January 23rd, the city of Wuhan went into complete lockdown; the rest of China followed shortly.

Figure 1 illustrates the country’s almost immediate drop in coal use around the Chinese New Year (January 25th). It shows the coal consumption at six power plants, compared to previous years. Initially, there appeared to be no significant difference because the Chinese New Year is a holiday that usually leads to sharp drops in economic activity and therefore in power consumption. However, after the holiday, for every year but 2020, the economic activity and power consumption soon returned to normal. We can directly associate 2020’s drop of about 25% in coal consumption with attempts to block COVID-19 via an extended lockdown. That lockdown marked a halt to most economic activity, which in turn resulted in a major decrease in coal consumption across China.

Figure 1 – Drop in China’s coal consumption at six major power firms, surrounding the Chinese New Year (January 25th)

As the virus spread around the world, lockdowns followed—and with them, a sharp decrease in energy use. More than 80% of the world’s energy still originates in fossil fuels. Figure 2 shows estimated global carbon emissions as they reflect the growth of the pandemic.

Figure 2 – Model estimating global carbon emissions for  2019 – early 2020

One cannot measure changes in global carbon emissions on a daily basis in the same way that we look at changes in coal use (Figure 1) but intuitively, everyone has predicted major pandemic-driven reductions in carbon emissions. After all, economic activity—measured in terms of GDP/Capita (see February 24, 2015 blog)—is the dominant term in driving carbon emissions. It is not a surprise then, that a drastic virus-powered economic decline will result in a major drop in carbon emissions.

By the same token, since the pandemic is self-terminating, either through herd immunity or effective vaccine, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to predict that once the pandemic runs its course, energy use and resulting carbon emissions will return to pre-pandemic levels. In the meantime, though, we can enjoy a clear view of the Himalayas from New Delhi and a much cleaner sky almost everywhere on Earth.

However, one of the coronavirus’ direct impacts on energy use will probably be longer lived. This has to do with our use of electricity. Most of us, locked in and forced to do our work remotely, cannot escape the need for more electricity. Almost everything that we do at home now requires it. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs (see October 22, 2019), electricity is a secondary energy form. In most cases, that requires conversion from a primary energy source, many of which originate with fossil fuels and emit a lot of carbon dioxide. The conversion efficiency from primary energy to electricity is a little more than  30%. We can see this difference directly by comparing the price of a unit of energy derived from electricity to one derived directly from oil, natural gas or coal (think for example, heating a room). We pay about three times more for the energy coming from electricity than that from direct fuel.

Doing everything from home, especially during the summer, when the air-conditioners, TV, and all of our computers are constantly on, increases the amount of electricity that we use significantly. However, we mustn’t forget the piece that we have just cut out of the picture: our workplaces. Those extra buildings require even more electricity.

Figure 3 shows the total power load in New York City on April 16, 2020 compared to the same date in 2019.

Figure 3 – Electricity use in New York City on April 16, 2020 and the same date on 2019

We see a clear decline in electricity use. Every indication suggests that some of this result from an increase in the amount of work that we can perform remotely from home. That’s a factor that may well become permanent once the pandemic runs its course. This transition will probably leave other major imprints on our energy use. I will address some of the more extreme consequences of some of these developments next week.

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Global Disasters at Different Speeds: How Do We Teach and Learn Now?

Posted on May 26, 2020 by climatechangefork

Israeli beach, May 16th

My university just wrapped up its 2020 spring semester. As in most schools, our classrooms all moved online shortly after the semester began. This shift has applied to most other activities as well. In the US we are just starting to get out and try to return to some semblance of normality.

Connecting climate change and coronavirus

The summer semester at my school will run completely online and there are very good chances that the coming fall semester will follow suit. All of us have to be prepared. I am scheduled to teach three courses next semester, all of which focus on climate change. All of my students will come into my classes having experienced the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This blog is an important tool in my teaching and gains even more importance as I teach online. I have tried, over the last two months, to emphasize the connections between the pandemic and climate change. Both disasters stem from our interactions with our physical environment. Both are global ailments that have disastrous consequences for humankind. But they have very different time scales.

The viral pandemic rose in a matter of days and has taken weeks and months to begin its decline. Climate change, on the other hand, has risen over several generations and may not ever reach a peak. We can immediately see the consequences of the pandemic but many refuse to recognize those of climate change. As I mentioned last week, both phenomena are explicitly contagious. In the case of the pandemic, the agent of contagion is the virus. In climate change, the spread comes from the heat that we produce via our changes—both direct and indirect—to the chemistry of the atmosphere. All of this is somewhat theoretical but the two disasters certainly interact with each other.

Today I wish to look at how COVID-19 has impacted four countries:

Present status of the impact of COVID-19 on four countries (as of May 23rd)

The opening picture of this blog shows a happy, boisterous beach scene in Israel. But these days the emotion it provokes in viewers may be more of trepidation than anticipation. The photograph was taken in Israel on Saturday, May 16th, in the middle of a week- long heat wave with temperatures ranging between 40-50oC (104-122oF) throughout the country. This was the most extreme mid-spring heat wave to strike Israel for at least ten years. The same heat wave struck the entire Middle East, with peak temperatures that reached 55oC (131oF) in some Gulf states.

These temperatures are much higher than the boundary of extreme danger where heat and/or sun stroke become highly likely (see the July 3, 2018 blog titled, “Heat Wave”). Israel has had one of the most successful lockdowns against the pandemic. The heat wave came only a few days after Israeli society started to reopen. The people above are trying to fight the heat wave the best way they can think of. As you can see, however, beachgoers completely broke all social distancing protocols. Many Israelis are now fearful of a second wave of the pandemic.

Australia

Meanwhile, we have Australia, where I have some family. My wife and I travel there as often as we can and I have frequently written about climate change impacts there (most recently on November 26, 2019). Nearly everyone that I know was critical of the government for its handling of the recent fires. The extreme fires seem to be growing almost every summer.  Australia is very sensitive to climate change and the fires are one of the most important (and visible) consequences of this vulnerability. The country’s current government is in full agreement with our own president in denying climate change and refusing to actively attempt to decrease its impacts.

Yet, in terms of fighting the coronavirus, the same Australian government has been one of the most effective. The data in the table above show the numbers. The New York Times printed an interesting article about the government’s transition:

Did the Coronavirus Kill Ideology in Australia?

HOBART, Australia — Until four months ago few leaders seemed more influenced — even inspired — by President Trump’s worldview than Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison.

Mr. Morrison’s government was climate-denying, globalism-bashing and displayed an increasingly authoritarian bent. His rhetoric, even if it lacked the sriracha of Trumpetry, riffed on Trumpian themes.

As of Monday morning, Australia, with its 25.5 million people, had recorded a total of 7,054 infections and 99 deaths, according to Worldometers. That’s 277 infections and four deaths for every million people. In the United States, the per capita figures were 4,619 infections and 275 deaths per million by Monday; in Britain, 3,592 infections and 511 deaths per million.

Scientists, whom Mr. Morrison’s party has derided for over a decade, were respectfully asked for their views about the novel coronavirus and, more remarkable still, these views were acted on and amplified. Mr. Morrison dismissed the idea of trying to build herd immunity among the population, calling it a “death sentence.”

A national cabinet was formed in which the states’ premiers (the equivalent of governors) from both the left and the right regularly met by video to plot the course of the nation through the crisis. In this way and others, a government that has been sectarian and divisive became inclusive.

The economic response was as extraordinary. Civil servants who had been told they existed to serve politics and politicians also found their expert advice heeded. A huge relief package of direct fiscal stimulus was rolled out, amounting to 10.6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product — second only in the world to Qatar’s (13 percent). Unemployment benefits were doubled, a generous (though not universal) program of wage subsidy was introduced and child care was made free — all measures that only a few months ago Mr. Morrison’s party would have pilloried as dangerous socialism.

The stimulus plan was designed after negotiations with various civil society groups, including the trade unions. “There are no blue teams or red teams,” Mr. Morrison said in early April. “There are no more unions or bosses. There are just Australians now; that’s all that matters.”

He thanked Sally McManus, the first woman to head Australia’s trade union movement — a socialist and feminist, a bête noire of the right and to the left of the Labor Party mainstream, Ms. McManus is an activist who allies her politics with the likes of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn.

It was a moment of grace, and as surreal as if Mr. Trump sought the counsel of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and then praised her.

After reading the article I couldn’t escape a certain envy: I wish that our government could show such flexibility from one disaster to the next.

Possible effects of temperature on COVID-19

So far, there has been a rather common assumption (one I shared) that COVID-19 will follow its close relatives, the influenza viruses, and disappear with rising temperatures.  Nobody had any data to support or refute this assertion but China, Iran, Europe, and the US were already heavily infected while many countries in the Southern Hemisphere remained immune.

The possibility of the temperature impact was attractive because it suggested that climate change could be a force to counter such viral pandemics. However, there are still no data to support it. Indeed, Brazil now seems to be the latest hot spot in terms of the virus’ spread. The fact that its president, Jair Bolsonaro, is even worse than President Trump in his rejection of science is not much comfort. He acknowledges neither the underlying science of the virus nor that of climate change. The issue is under active research but the conditions make such work challenging. We will probably will have to wait until the end of the pandemic before we can see solid science on the matter.

Meanwhile, other climate change-amplified natural disasters continue to play out that limit people’s abilities to retain social distance. The super-cyclone Amphan struck India and Bangladesh in the middle of the lockdown, especially affecting hundreds of Rohingya refugees, who have been placed in large, crowded shelters. In the US, dams in Michigan and Virginia collapsed due to unusually heavy rain, but more than 800 people turned out to volunteer despite the pandemic. Both of these instances show the strong inter-connectivity of COVID-19 and climate change.

Stay safe.

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Phased Reopening and Lessons to Learn

Posted on May 19, 2020 by climatechangefork

Figure 1 – Dana Summers’ cartoon on phased opening

Roughly two months ago, my campus completely shifted to remote learning and teaching and I started lockdown. I have made a corresponding shift here, covering the COVID-19 viral pandemic that now dominates our life. Epidemiology and virology are not my fields and aside from my general science background I don’t have any more to contribute here than most of my readers. As a result, I have tried to focus my discussions on comparing COVID-19 with climate change. Both are global phenomena that have disastrous consequences for humankind but they have very different time scales.

Since talk of the pandemic has now shifted to the safety of opening the world economies based on various countries’ rates of infection, death or stability, I feel that I need to make the interconnection between COVID-19 and climate change more solid. To do that, I will resort to a much more basic aspect of both climate change and COVID-19: their contagiousness.

The dictionary defines contagiousness as, “capable of being transmitted by bodily contact with an infected person or object” (Dictionary.com). There is no question that COVID-19 is highly contagious. I described its mechanism of contagion in some detail in a previous blog (April 14, 2020). It is essentially a chain reaction in which the virus replicates in its hosts and given the opportunity, moves to other possible hosts to spread its impacts. The quantitative parameter that I described in that blog was the R0 (R naught) number: “the average number of individuals that are impacted in a given situation.” In that blog, I included the R0 number for a few previous viral pandemics. Any virus with an R0 number greater than 1 is considered contagious. COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) has one of 1.5-3.5.

Germany is the only country that I am aware of that uses the R0 number as its criterion for the controlled reopening of its economy. The R0 number in Germany rests around 1. Some days it’s a bit higher and some days it is lower.

“[A]s long as it remains around 1.0, that is considered a stagnation and not an increase.” … A reproduction factor of 1.0 means that, on average, one infected person is spreading the virus to another person.

This article explains some of the reasons for these fluctuations. However, to calculate an R0 number you need a solid estimate of the spread of an infection. Our best estimate is that in the US, only about 3% of the population has been tested. We cannot calculate the extent of infection or an R0 number based on such a low availability of testing.

Viral pandemics are not the only processes that proceed through chain reactions.

The most positive example of this type of growth—and the one that is probably the most familiar—is money that is deposited in the bank with a constant interest rate. The bank pays interest on the growing money. So, if I start with $100 at 10% interest per year, I will have $110 at the end of the first year, $121 at the end of the second year, etc. I will double my money in 7 years. The formula for this growth is:

Doubling time = 70/P(%)

Where P is the interest rate. This kind of growth is known as exponential growth, and I have discussed it throughout this blog in varying degrees of detail. Populations grow in a similar way.

Perhaps the most famous growth that follows the same mechanism is that of nuclear fission, which gives rise to the energy released in nuclear reactions (for a power plant) or nuclear explosions (in atom bombs).

This is probably the most visible analogue to the viral spread. Figure 2 shows how it works with a fission of uranium. A single neutron (one of the basic components of the nucleus of an atom) hits a uranium nucleus and the collision splits the nucleus into approximately two smaller nuclei. In the process, the collision releases a few more neutrons and a great deal of energy. In the case of uranium, the collision releases 2-3 neutrons which, if they can, will hit other nuclei and repeat the process. This will continue as long as the neutrons can find other uranium nuclei to collide with.

Figure 2 – Nuclear chain reaction

The viruses in a pandemic are the equivalent of the neutrons and the R0 number corresponds to the average number of the “productive” neutrons that actually split the next nuclei. To be able to sustain the chain reaction, the R0 number has to be greater than 1. If it is smaller, the chain reaction is quickly extinguished. If each nuclear collision releases between 2-3 neutrons, how can the equivalent “productive” collision have a value smaller than 1?

  1. The geometry of the material is such that many of the neutrons escape and thus are unable to hit other nuclei. Since the target nuclei are not absorbing all of the collisions, some of the neutrons are wasted in propagating the chain reaction. The easiest way to control the average number of neutrons that actually participate in the process is to adjust the geometry of the sample with a big enough mass to minimize the number of escaped neutrons. This configuration with this mass is called a critical mass, below which a nuclear explosion will not take place (December 18, 2018 blog).
  2. The second way to adjust the equivalent of “productive” neutrons is to adjust for their velocity by moving the neutrons through a medium such as graphite that can slow them down. This technique is mainly used in nuclear reactors.

In terms of the virus, the easiest way to minimize the transmission and reduce the R0 is to maintain social distancing through lockdowns, use protective gear that will block transmission, and/or find a vaccine to combat the virus.

What does all of this have to do with climate change?

To answer this question, I have to go back to a graph which I have used in multiple previous blogs. The last time that I used Figure 3 was on April 28, 2020, when I compared the uncertainty in predicting the impact of climate change and COVID-19. This figure is especially helpful when discussing the role of feedback in climate change.

Within a chain reaction, any propagation accelerates through positive feedback. This means that the products of the reaction accelerate its further progress. As I mentioned in the July 10, 2018 blog, Figure 3 illustrates the impact of the most important greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide) on the rising global temperature. However, only about one third of the impact comes directly from the physical properties of the greenhouse gas. The other two thirds of the impact originate from feedbacks such as: the rising temperature of the ocean, which enhances evaporation and increases atmospheric concentrations of water vapor; the heated atmosphere’s ability to hold increased amounts of water vapor. Another feedback mechanism involves the melting of snow caps, which decreases reflection of solar radiation (decreased albedo). In Figure 3, the main accelerating element is heat.

GHG, global warming, stabilization, carbon intensity, modeling

Figure 3 – Carbon intensity (July 10, 2018 blog)

This is because two thirds of the driving forces behind the temperature rise do not come from direct exposure to greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide but rather feedback to the direct heating. The feedback comes from physical heat-dependent driving forces such as changes in the atmospheric water vapor, clouds, snow melt, permafrost melt, changes in solubility of carbon dioxide in the ocean, etc. The J. Hansen et. al. manuscript, “Climate Sensitivity: Analysis of Feedback Mechanisms” (1984), is an excellent early paper on many of these feedback mechanisms.

Wild fires, such as those that took place in California and Australia, represent another important climate change feedback mechanism: a chemical one. Wood burns at a high temperature and heat increases its flammability, so local ignition raises the temperature in the close vicinity and thus spreads the burning area.

I teach climate change at various levels in my school. One of the research projects that I am doing with some of my students is following and quantifying our school’s conversion into a more sustainable energy user. Such conversion is now mandated by both state and city laws. The COVID-19 lockdowns are an opportunity to differentiate aspects of Brooklyn College’s energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Some of the energy serves the students directly; some powers the school’s infrastructure. This information is crucial to optimizing campus energy use on both budgetary and sustainability levels.

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