June 21st, 2010 by footprintzero
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This is the first post in a while, mainly because there has been no progress in Congress on taking action on our energy issues despite the Gulf crisis we are dealing with from BP right now. I was contacted recently by fellow Pickens Plan volunteer Rick Freeland of Maryland about a project to drive a 1966 Pontiac GTO powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) from California to Chicago on Route 66. Intrigued by this ‘Natural Gas Goat’ I talked to Rick who put me in contact with Mark McConville, who will be driving the clean burning classic.
I talked to Mark earlier this morning, he is driving out to California from his home of Birmingham, Alabama for the start of his cross country tour. Starting next Sunday, June 27th he will drive from Santa Monica to Chicago on historic Route 66. My recollection of Route 66 is the oddish show on Nick at Nite when I was a kid but before the interstate system was fully developed, Route 66 was the way to get across the country. Now it is a little bit slower than driving out west on I-80, but it cuts directly through the wind and natural gas corridors of the Texas panhandle and Oklahoma. Missouri is a beautiful state and the drive up through southern Illinois to Chicago is scenic and full of history from a tumultuous era of American history.
The full story of Mark’s GTO and how he converted it are available on the Route66GasGoat website. Suffice to say that Mark has taken a favorite muscle car of the past and had it fitted with a kit that allows the existing engine to burn CNG (for about $3500). Mark told me the CNG unit with the BTU equivalent of a gallon of gasoline costs about $1.36 versus about $2.40 for the gallon of gas. He said there was a slight reduction in horsepower but he doesn’t notice it in driving the car. Mark will be supported by a truck carrying CNG since the infrastructure is not fully in place to refill along the way. Route 66 drives through Oklahoma, however, which has one of the most developed systems for CNG filling stations anywhere. The GTO gets about 10 mpg but using CNG is cheaper and produces significantly less emissions.
I’ll be posting updates on the trip and will try to get Mark to post some of his thoughts on the blog as well. Using CNG to power existing cars is a technology that is available immediately. With proper support through tax credits and incentives the infrastructure for refueling vehicles can be added to existing truck stops and main transportation centers at a modest cost. At the very least the government should have all federal fleet vehicles running on CNG. Hopefully this trip raises awareness of CNG as a viable transportation fuel and demonstrates a potential positive effect of good energy legislation.
Mark plans to make it to Chicago on July 4th depending on how the schedule plays out. Check back for updates and the where to meet Mark when he makes it to Chicago!
April 8th, 2010 by footprintzero
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The Climatini event last night at the W Hotel in Chicago’s loop was a great time. I would say 50-60 people showed up and it was a good mix of private enterprise as well as NGOs and those working in government. I met professionals in the legal and financial professions as well as scientists and a PhD student in public policy.
A common thread through many of the conversations I had was about the need for Congress to enact some sort of climate legislation, ASAP. The Obama administration clearly overreached with the ACES bill out of the House last summer and then wasted six weeks of the Senate’s time as Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe sniped at each other in committee. After that it was decided to table climate legislation in favor of working on health insurance reform and we were all treated to the spectacle of the town hall meetings during the August recess. I especially enjoyed the irony of seeing senior citizens on Medicare railing against a government takeover of health insurance and complaining about the prospect of a public option, but I digress.
In light of the experience with the HIR legislation, the Obama administration needs to adopt a new strategy with better tactics to push through any sort of meaningful legislation before Congress retreats into a collective shell before the midterm elections (i.e. Memorial Day). There should be a series of small bills focused on existing technology that can go to scale NOW (like next week). They should open with an iron-fisted energy efficiency bill and a separate bill on promoting the use of natural gas in government fleet vehicles, followed by a bill to modernize our legacy electric grid. By passing these bills, House Democrats will have a pile of small triumphs to point to going into the midterms. Federal cap-and-trade should be tabled until Spring 2011. Unfortunately the coal lobby is simply too strong to enact meaningful legislation with the scope of the ACES or CEJAPA bills. Reducing demand for power is the next best available option. With enough small legislative successes it may eventually be possible to embolden legislators to be more aggressive in the future. » Read more: Post-Climatini Reflections
March 15th, 2010 by footprintzero
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To encourage potential customers to retire our credits, we will make matching retirements for the first 100 credits retired through Climafixit. So let’s say you’re willing to spend ~$65 to buy 5 credits somewhere else and offset your 5 metric ton carbon footprint. For $65 you can retire 10 CCX Ag Methane credits and we will retire an additional 10 on your behalf. It is obviously better to retire 20 credits than 5. If you feel better about buying a more expensive credit then you could just buy 5 of the CAR credits and still save $15. We think this is a better service model for customers who are serious about carbon offsets and hope you agree. We are committed to providing our customers with high-quality carbon credits at a great value. Click here to go to our store.
March 14th, 2010 by footprintzero
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The blog now seems to be up working properly and carbon credits can be retired through the Climafixit page. At this time Paypal is the only payment option. If you notice anything not working properly on the site, please leave a comment. The site is a little lacking in content at the moment but due to an issue with our previous hosting provider (stay away from SilverRack), the first six months of content were lost. With climate legislation being fairly dead in the water since Copenhagen, there hasn’t been much to blog about recently. Thanks to the support people at iPage for help on getting set up and Robbie Abed of rawdesignr for his suggestions.
We try to provide insightful commentary about carbon markets and advocate for sensible energy policy that sets America up to succeed. We started the Climafixit service because existing retailers simply charge customers too much to retire carbon credits. We understand that price should not be the overriding factor when choosing carbon credits. However, emissions credits trade on open markets and it is of no benefit to the customer to completely disregard price.
There is a wide range in prices of credits issued from different voluntary and mandatory standards in the US and around the world. While quality is certainly a concern, the price of an emission credit is driven mainly by whether or not it is accepted (or is expected to be accepted) as valid within a mandatory emissions reduction program (like the EU ETS or RGGI). We have selected credits for our inventory that represent a range of prices while maintaining quality across the board. All of the projects we buy credits from have been audited to make certain that the credits they yield are equivalent to eliminating one metric ton of carbon dioxide from the environment. The price differences between our credits are due to the perceived likelihoods of different standards being included in future mandatory cap-and-trade programs.
We have sorted through the hodgepodge of credits out there and feel that each of our selections will have a certain appeal to customers. The landfill gas and agriculturual methane protocols produce the highest quality credits the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) has to offer. Long-term sequestration is not an issue with methane destruction, it is easily measured and it is unquestionably additional. These credits are a great value without giving up anything in quality.
For customers who wish to pay a bit more and retire credits immediately (CCX credits must be retired in lots of 100, please check out our policy in our FAQ), we offer Climate Action Reserve (CAR) credits from a forestry conservation project. These credits are more expensive because it is virtually certain that they will be valid in the California state cap-and-trade program mandated by AB32.
There is no scientific difference in the environmental impact of any of our credits. We believe it is important for customers to have choices at different price points and we want to offer better value and selection than existing retailers. If you don’t offset your footprint, think about doing so. If you already do so, consider our options and know that you could be retiring twice as many credits for the same price of existing retailers. You will be retiring only carbon offsets (not RECs for reasons explained here), you will know precisely what project your credits came from and you will get a better deal.
Please leave any suggestions in the comment section. If there is demand in the future we would be happy to offer credits from other standards but felt CCX and CAR were the best two options to start.
January 18th, 2010 by footprintzero
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I found a very interesting blog post via @greenwind on Twitter today at BioFuelsWatch. Google filed paperwork late last year to create its own subsidiary and Max Rutherford points out that:
Parallel to the founding of the subsidiary, it also put in a request in conjunction with a federal agency to enter the wholesale market in order to both buy and sell electricity.
Google’s purpose appears to be focused on more easily achieving carbon neutrality and increasing operational efficiency rather than becoming a bona fide power company. However with services such as PowerMeter it seems that Google potentially could be a big player in future smart grid applications. It would not surprise me at all if Google came up with a process to manage its own energy preferences and electricity requirements that could ultimately be extended to other companies and individual users. Wholesale electricity is a notoriously volatile and difficult product to price since there is no ability to store excesses and short-term spikes can occur at any time. Google may view solving such a problem to be an important contribution to society and certainly has the resources to become a serious energy/electricity player if it so desired.
I will be interested to see how aggressive Google is when entering into these markets and am also interested to see how other market participants react if/when Google becomes more than a minor player. Google is constantly trying to find ways to leverage the enormous amount of information it has access to and I believe that expertise will eventually make them successful in this new foray.
