Goodbye Solar Thermal energy production: we hardly knew you

This article is about Google’s closure of a solar power project. Google started the program in 2007 and invested $168 million in Brightsource’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS). Google abandoned the program citing that other institutions were better positioned to advance the research. The focal point of the ISEGS was a solar tower that stood in the middle of a field of heliostats. Heliostats are mirrors that are used to reflect sunlight to a specific point, in this case the top of the tower. Google’s abandonment of the heliostat technology illustrates a trend in the industry; photovoltaic (PV) cells are taking over the market. Lately the prices of PV cells have dropped, giving them an edge over heliostat technology.

Personally I see this as a last nail in the coffin for heliostat technology. Google is one of the largest and most profitable companies in the United States. If they cannot see an economic reason to continue to conduct research, then there is little hope for the technology. Overall I think it is a great idea for large companies to invest in solar power R&D. Private companies are usually better at sorting out the winners and losers when compared to the government. Hopefully investments like Google’s can lead to innovations that make solar power a more viable option in the near future.

--Alec Fields

Dumpster Diving

Curious after hearing that a few Towson students have dumpster dived for groceries at the local Trader Joe’s, I thought this kind of activity must be pretty common in this economy and with rising food prices, so I did some research. First, I found a clever and entertaining documentary called “DIVE!” which confirmed that, yes, this is an increasingly common activity in the United States, but not just amongst college students. Jeremy Seifert, the creator of Dive!, and friends put food on the table by dumpster diving, and argue that doing so is helping to counteract the extreme amounts of food waste from grocery stores and by people who cling too tightly to expiration and sell-by dates. I also discovered through this assignment that our very own professor, James Manley, has dumpster dived for bread before.

Seifert is not the only one responding to rises in food prices that have lead to even more food waste. Pope Benedict XVI commented on food speculation in an address to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization that “poverty, underdevelopment and hunger are often the result of selfish attitudes which, coming from the heart of man, show themselves in social behavior and economic exchange.” According to The Wall Street Journal, the Pope’s views on food speculation are not aligned with the views of Ben Bernanke, who feels that increased demand in Asia is contributing more to the increase in food prices. For those who love data, corn prices have gone up by 61% in the past year. Coffee prices have risen by 46%. Investment in food has risen by 1900% in just five years (from $13 billion to $260 billion). I would argue that both the demand and heavy speculation can be attributed to rising prices; neither factor should be brushed off.

In preparation for World Food Day, 461 economists, according to National Public Radio, called for better regulation of speculation on food prices and other commodities, arguing that it has contributed to volatile price changes and global hunger. There is plenty of food out there, but the price is just too high, and the increasingly impoverished population of the United States and other nations are suffering because of the high prices. Who is benefiting? Obviously those making a profit from speculation, but some readers of NPR argued that speculation helps farmers feel more secure when producing and knowing that they will not be operating at a loss. Are the benefits to this small portion of the population worth the losses and hunger put upon the global population? Would you dumpster dive for food?

--Jade Clayton

Freeing Maryland of Nutria

This article in the Baltimore Sun talks about how the invasive species, nutria has caused the eastern shore’s wetlands serious damage. Nutria is an orange toothed, web-footed beaver-like species that was brought to the United States from South America in the 1880s. They were brought over for the fur industry because they were cheap to feed. Unfortunately the industry later collapsed and the nutria were released into the wild, devouring the marshlands and reproducing rapidly.

In the past several years thousands of nutria have been hunted and killed to protect the wetlands. Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, an area of 150,000 acres is where the nutria lived, and in the last three decades they destroyed over 5,000 acres of vegetation. Without the plant’s roots erosion occurs, which allows sediment s and pollution to flow into the Bay, as well as loss of habitat for many other species. An economic report was done, by Southwick Associates and they confirmed that Blackwater nutria cost Maryland $4 million annually and it will only keep increasing. The damage done by this animal costs more than removing it, so since 2000 Congress has provided a $1.5 million annually budget for its removal. Since 2002, almost 20,000 nutria have been killed in the Eastern shore, and so far this year Blackwater is nutria-free.

I personally hope Blackwater can stay this way, but I find it highly unlikely that they are completely gone forever. Nutria is an animal that burrows in the mud and hides extremely well like any other rodent. Also their rate of reproduction is very fast which is not good, and they will continue to destroy the marshlands and cause the Chesapeake Bay more damage than it already has.

--Kelsey Myers

CAFE standards

An article in today's NYT by Thomas Friedman pointed me to this document published a few weeks ago by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Apparently the auto industry sat down with the EPA and NHTSA and worked out a slow increase in required fuel efficiency to go into effect over the next 15 years. If all goes as planned, greenhouse gas emissions should be down significantly by 2025, reaching about 50 mpg as a fleet average for all cars and trucks on the road. That seems pretty huge to me, since the trends up until about 2008 were for more fuel consumption and not less. This more fuel efficient generation of vehicles will be more expensive, but they are expected to make up for those higher costs over time, saving the consumer an average of about $4000 (assuming gas prices stay constant over the next 10 years) by reducing the amount people are paying for gas. New standards allow for larger vehicles to still get lower mileage, so they aren't supposed to push everyone to drive a golf cart, but we'll see. The NHTSA document talks about both goals for the entire set of vehicles on US roads, but also sets goals for types of vehicles, such as 33 mpg for large pickup trucks like the Chevy Silverado.

Economists say that CAFE standards aren't the most efficient way to reduce fuel use- gas taxes are more likely to be effective partly because of the rebound effect. I also don't see much in the NHTSA document about safety: it's easy to make a highly fuel efficient vehicle if you build it out of fiberglass, for instance. You just don't want to be in a fiberglass car when you get hit by something more solid. It'll be interesting to see how manufacturers go about meeting the standards.

Inefficiency of Local Food

Nice post over on the Freakonomics blog (by a guy in the program I graduated from!) about the true costs of the locavore movement. (That post is a short version of this 4-page description of a study he did.) While no one is opposed to people growing vegetables in their home gardens, Steve Sexton argues that a large scale shift to local food would be disastrous for several reasons. Here's why.

Right now, most crops are grown where conditions fit the crop the best. For example, conditions in Idaho suit potato production, so they have specialized in growing potatoes. If people were to shift to producing them locally, they wouldn't be as productive, because the conditions aren't as well suited. So if we want to eat anything near the same amount of potatoes that we eat now, we could, but it would be more expensive from many perspectives.

1) It would require more chemicals, such as fertilizers and pesticides, to get the potatoes to grow in places that aren't so suitable.

2) It would require more land, since almost all land outside of Idaho produces a smaller amount of potatoes per acre than in other places. (Potatoes are just an example: the 4-page version of the study talks about corn, soy, oats, and milk.) More land used for farming means:

3) Cutting into wilderness

4) More spread out housing, which means

5) More gas burned as people have to drive more.

6) Finally, getting rid of "big ag" means higher prices on food.

While higher prices of corn will discourage us from producing tons of high fructose corn syrup, which may have positive effects on health in this country, higher prices on corn are potentially a nightmare for people in poor countries.

Campus recycling

Just wanted to make sure you had seen the university's "Go Green" web page, which features a recycling video (featuring one-time ResEcon student Malinda Ross) which, in turn, has (at the end) a link to this video of what goes on at a recycling plant.

Somehow, objectives of the green movement have become enshrined as goals of the administration. Instead of people camping out on campus with signs and sleeping bags, the banner has been taken up by the people in charge. That's less likely to make the news, but almost certainly more effective than the demonstrations.

Environmentally unfriendly jobs booming

This article claims that the key to job creation in the U.S. is non-renewable domestic energy in the form of natural gas and oil. The industry has grown 80% more jobs and 20% of total new net private jobs since 2003 are in the domestic oil and gas industry. The author credits the boom in non-green jobs to new technologies like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing that are renovating the harvesting processes in both oil and natural gas. Areas in the U.S. seeing the job boom are North Dakota with 200 oilrigs producing just under half a million barrels/ day and a subsequent 3.5% unemployment rate. Pennsylvania Marcellus shale formation is credited with creating 18,000 new jobs in the first half of this year. I understand where the author is coming from when he/she criticizes Obama administration and the political left for proposing a 5-year plan to ban drilling on outer shelf and delaying the Keystone pipe-laying project. However, I am hesitant to say that more jobs now is more important than a cleaner planet for future generations. All in all I do not agree. Although investing in renewable energy is not yet cost effective, I think is still an important option in terms of a healthy earth. Even though Obama’s green loan program has failed to create the 65,000 estimated jobs (only 3,500 have emerged from the $38.6 billion loan) I think it is important that the research continues hopefully resulting with a viable green energy option in our country’s future.

~Natalie Ciletti