Let fossil fuels support themselves

Indeed, it is time for fossil fuel subsidies to end... as if there ever was an appropriate time for them.

Energy policy reform must begin with ending fossil fuel subsidies. And with the current "anti-spending, balanced budget" rhetoric in the US congress these days, that should be something that can gain bipartisan support by our elected representatives... at least if politicians' rhetoric was consistent with their actions. But I'm not holding my breath. Nonetheless, ending fossil fuel subsidies makes fiscal and environmental sense.

As it stands today, the fossil fuel industry gathers a fat welfare check every year, while posting huge profits. The Environmental Law Institute (ELI) completed a study and released a report on the subsidies distributed to various energy interests in the United States. The report was accompanied by a fabulous info-graphic that nicely summarizes energy subsidies in the US:

Breakdown of US energy subsidies by type: Fossil Fuel and Renewable.
Carbon sequestration and ethanol subsidies are displayed on their own for better resolution.
Source: Environmental Law Institute

According to ELI, the US government distributed $101.5 billion (via tax breaks and direct spending) to the energy sector between the years 2002 and 2008. $72.5 billion of that went to fossil fuel interests: petroleum, coal, natural gas, or carbon sequestration efforts. $29 billion went to what they categorized as renewable energy interests, including wind, solar, hydro, and corn ethanol. The graph separates carbon sequestration and corn ethanol subsidies because it's inaccurate to categorize them with either traditional renewable or strictly fossil fuel. We know that ethanol derived from corn has been shown to be hype and not really renewable. Corn ethanol received $16.8 billion of the $29 billion given to renewables, leaving only $12.2 billion given to true renewable energy efforts like solar, wind, or hydroelectricity. And despite the fact that myself and others may be skeptical about the prospects of carbon sequestration, it is an avenue towards an improved coal technology and should at least be explored.

So let me propose that we cut all subsidies that fall beneath the horizontal axis of the ELI chart above. That would mean $70.2 billion of fossil fuel subsidies and $16.8 billion of corn ethanol subsidies would have been cut between 2002 and 2008. A total of about $14.5 billion cut per year in government spending between those years. It may not seem like much, but it's a start. Furthermore it helps the US federal budget and the environment simultaneously.

Fossil fuel subsidies are a problem around the world, not just in the US. The IEA said that there were $312 billion dollars in subsidies distributed to fossil fuel interests worldwide in 2009. That's about five and a half times more than the amount of subsidies distributed for renewable energy globally in the same year, which was $57 billion. IEA estimates that by 2015 fossil fuel subsidies will reach $600 billion if no action is taken.

An article from Scientific American, reported on a document released by the International Energy Administration (IEA). The IEA reported that cutting fossil fuel subsidies would go beyond positive effects for the environment it would even spur economic development. "Eradicating subsidies to fossil fuels would enhance energy security, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollution, and bring economic benefits," the IEA said in its World Energy Outlook report. There are some fantastic graphics in there and if you're interested in this topic I recommend you peruse that report. The IEA went on to estimate that cutting fossil fuel subsidies would decrease energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions each by about 5%.

Back in the United States, there is at least one bit of good news on this front. The subsidies for corn ethanol in the US are set to expire at the end of this year. This would end the $0.45 per gallon of ethanol produced as an additive to gasoline that the government pays to ethanol producing companies. It's not a slam dunk yet though. The Friends of the Earth Website reports that Congressman Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) introduced a bill that would extend ethanol tax credits for another five years, to 2015. However, with the current anti-spending sentiment in the US it's unclear if this will get much support. If the subsidy isn't extended before the new year when the House of Representatives switches hands to Republican control, then it won't be extended at all and will likely die then and there for good.

Kevin Bullis, over at the Technology Review at MIT, points out that even with the elimination of the subsidies for fossil fuels renewable energy technologies would still be struggling to be economically competitive. This is most likely true for solar energy, but wind energy would become an economically favored energy generation technology in more places. Regardless, Mr. Bullis is right in that the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies isn't the only policy change that would need to happen for renewable energy to be widely adopted. There would still need to be some kind of policy that instigates a more accurate reflection of the cost of fossil fuels in the market place pricing. But let's start somewhere, and I don't see any better place than here: ending fossil fuel subsidies.

Science Fiction comes true

The announcement has been made: The Spaceship Company will begin construction on its private commercial spaceship manufacturing facility. The Spaceship Company already has a dedicated launch facility. This new fabrication facility is a joint venture between Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites. NASA plans to rely on private space companies like this one for a significant amount of its future missions. Private companies will be contracted to deliver payloads to NASA space stations and even deliver satellites to orbit. The Spaceship Company is the first private company in this field to be developing at this level. It will almost certainly be one of NASA's private contractors.

Thinking about this development is boggling my mind. I remember reading science fiction stories, only a decade ago or so, where human society had commercial space flight. But none of the stories were set in the year 2010 or 2011, they were set much farther in the future. The future is roaring towards us at an ever increasing rate. It's exciting and frightening at the same time... but mainly exciting!

Follow-up to the last post

On November 6th, I wrote a bit about what I thought could happen once mining companies begin to feel the squeeze of depleting reserves of various minerals. I pointed out that scarcity in this sector can easily result in economic trade wars between nations with abundance of the particular mineral and those without. China was an example where this may be already happening with regard to rare earth minerals. By the end of my post, I was assuming that mining will eventually run into scarcity problems in conventional mines and I posed a question about where mining companies will explore next: landfills or the ocean floor?

Well it seems I've received at least a preliminary answer. Six days after my post, on November 12th, Popular Science ran a piece about mining prospectors looking at the ocean floor for new mineral reserves (They cited an article from the NY Times which was published Nov. 8th, but it's behind a pay-wall). According to Popular Science, mineral nuggets, called manganese nodules, are fairly common on the sea floor and contain a myriad of minerals other than manganese, including rare earth minerals. They contain gold and copper in concentrations much higher than ores found on land. Geologists say these nodules are remnants of hydrothermal vent activity, and they indeed find the most nodules near active vents. Some comments on the Pop Sci article claim that sea floors have an advantage over conventional mining locations, because sea floors lack any overburden. Overburden is the soil and plant life that must be displaced before mining can take place. Displacing overburden is one of the major environmental costs of conventional mining.

Popular Science cited the economics of mining and the scarcity of various minerals for the renewed interest in sea floor mining. They specifically referred to China's virtual monopoly on global rare earth mineral production as prompting other countries to look for alternative mineral sources.

Companies like Canadian Nautilus Minerals have apparently been way ahead of us on this one. They've been looking into sea floor mining prospects as far back as 1985, at least in a research capacity. Their website prioritizes gold and copper above any rare earth minerals, but they also will retrieve silver and zinc. But once robots are sent below, they may as well bring back everything they can, I suppose.

Robot sampling marine rock outcrop for mineral content.
(Copyright Nautilus Minerals, Reproduced here under Fair Use.)

It's true that robotic technology, like that pictured above, is sophisticated enough to do this and stands to gain from innovation motivated by the push for marine mining. It's true that the economics are leaning towards sea floor mining more every day. But there are still very many unknowns about the process. And estimating consequences for marine life has yet to be done and will probably be difficult.

I will withhold judgment on the wisdom of this for know. But I am disappointed that the other mining alternative, landfills, is not being considered for comparison with mining the sea floor.

*Update: I shouldn't be surprised that the idea of ocean floor mining has been around for a long time. Discover Magazine published a great article in May 2009, and talked about ideas of this sort back in the 1920's. Discover Mag's article does a great job of profiling Nautilus Minerals.

Thoughts about mining & scarcity

Mining from an individual mine gets more expensive with time because the useful component of remaining ore decreases as the higher grade ore is removed. Eventually a mine must close because the concentration of useful ore becomes too dilute and, therefore, uneconomical to extract. We also see this sort of lifecycle trend in petroleum wells. Old, tapped mines and wells must close, and, to keep up production, prospecting geologists survey for new ones with fresh bounty to tap.

But can we ever run out of new mines and thus new raw material? Well it seems we can. Slate.com ran an interesting article about the demise of cryolite. This mineral was used in aluminum processing and has become too rare to mine. Don't worry, though, aluminum processing continues. Cryolite has been replaced by a synthetic substitute. And of course, anyone familiar with the Hubbert Curve and Peak Oil has heard about predictions of the global decline and eventual depletion of petroleum resources. In the United States, oil production has been on the decline since about 1973. But these predictions haven't come true globally yet, and seem to be constantly postponed, in part, due to discoveries of additional resource reserves.

As mines or wells are exhausted, there are a couple of strategies to maintain production. First, mining/drilling operations may spread out to new places with new reserves. We have observed this in the petroleum industry. Drilling for petroleum now occurs commonly in the ocean and in ever deeper waters. Sometimes with disastrous results, i.e BP oil spill in the gulf. Second, mining/drilling operations may upgrade equipment that can economically extract even lower grade ores and ever more depleted wells. We have also observed this trend as the oil industry uses new equipment capable of drilling sideways underground or pumping gases into wells to force out more oil.

There is one other trend that can occur, although it isn't exactly a strategy: the price of the commodity that is being extracted can rise. This makes extracting from low yield mines and wells economical once again. So mines that were closed because the ores were not of high enough grade can be re-opened.

These prices can rise for many reasons, but one especially worrying reason is on display now: China's rare earth mineral trade embargo. China is demonstrating, perhaps, the first of a recurring pattern of material embargoes undertaken for economic dominance and the country's own manufacturing security. China is suspending exports of rare earth minerals which are an ingredient in all kinds of electronic products today. China produces about 97% of these minerals globally, according to the Scientific American article. The US is responding by reopening rare earth mineral mines that had been closed for decades, due to the poor economic return of those mines. This could be an early example of a much more common problem in the future. Certain minerals will be of military and economic importance and will be too valuable to export. As a result some materials will be scarce in parts of the world not endowed with their own domestic sources. This can create pressures to innovate on mining strategies. Recall the two strategies that mining operations can use: mine new locations and mine with better equipment.

Due to the various pressures mentioned above, mining could be finding itself in new territory in the future. Mining for certain materials could be following the petroleum industry into the oceans eventually.What is to stop mining companies from remotely surveying and prospecting ocean floors for neodymium, terbium, dysprosium or even gold and platinum, among other minerals if the price becomes high enough and those minerals scarce enough. The other option, if remaining on land is a priority, would be for mining companies to begin prospecting landfills. Mining landfills his advantageous since we have a decent idea of the potentially useful materials that are there.

The idea of mining the ocean makes me shudder. I can't imagine such an operation that doesn't stir up massive amounts of sediment which is then transported by ocean currents half way around the globe. Roiling the ocean waters on a global scale must have consequences on ocean life.

I'm not sure which will prove to be more economical for mineral mining: digging the ocean floors or digging old landfills. But I think for the sake of the ocean, we'd better hope we start mining landfills first.

Some thoughts on Mining

Too many people do not know where the materials that make up the products they use come from. Worse still, too many people do not even wonder about it.

I confess to being one of those people at one point. I only really learned about the larger story as an undergraduate. I really should have known considering that I was studying materials science (a modern offshoot of Metallurgical and Mining Engineering).One of my professors asked our class about this and, receiving no response, said, frankly, that most materials come from giant holes in the ground. He was of course referring too mines. Clearly other materials, like some textiles, food, wood, etc. come from biomass. However, metals, ceramics, and polymers (except bio-polymers) were exhumed from the earth at some point in some other form.

Materials like metals and ceramics usually aren't found buried in usable forms. They are dug up in a raw form called ore and must be refined. Polymer feedstock is usually petroleum which must be drilled for and refined. Reaching these raw feedstocks requires displacing massive amounts of rocks and soil (including all the plants living in it). The term "material rucksack" refers to the mass of material that must be moved, displaced, transformed or otherwise upset in order to get a final engineering material... sheet metal, for example. This term, "material rucksack," generally does not consider the mass of material that finds its way into landfills from disposal of products after consumer use. "Material rucksack" refers to all the material displaced during the fabrication of the product, before it even gets into the consumer's hands.

For some materials the mass of earth moved compared to the mass of the final useful material can be staggering. Consider platinum, an important ingredient in fuel cells and catalytic converters. Obtaining 1 gram of platinum requires a mining operation to displace 350,000 grams of earth. On the other hand, drilling for petroleum is surprisingly benign judging from this particular environmental metric. See other "material rucksack" ratios in the figure below from an IEA coal research and DOE study:

Material Rucksack ratio of various engineering materials. From IEA/DOE: 1983.

The "material rucksack" is an important environmental metric but is rarely considered among manufacturers and virtually unheard of among consumers. But every time one hears of a disaster like the Kingston coal fly ash spill in Tennessee in 2008 or the recent aluminum tailings spill in Hungary, it is an example of the negative consequences of letting the "material rucksack" get out of control. There are usually some nasty leftovers in the displaced material from mining processes. For example, Coal mining leaves behind displaced earth from mining and fly ash from processing and burning. Aluminum mining leaves behind a rich cocktail of ingredients collectively called tailings. Leftovers have various names like slag, sludge, tailings, leach residue and others. The mining leftovers often have high concentrations of dangerous heavy metals (arsenic, mercury etc.) and the slurry can be highly acidic or highly caustic and can severely injure living tissue.

In order to create a truly sustainable industrial ecology, the "material rucksacks" of all extractive processes must become smaller and under better control. There are some attempts at solving this problem but it is not an easy nut to crack. Consuming less is always an option, however unattractive. Re-manufacturing can be very effective. This approach implies that products would be re-obtained by the manufacturer to be fixed or upgraded when they break or become obsolete. Then they can be resold at a discount.

A fairly new idea is using bacteria, so called biomining. This uses various extremophiles or other specially adapted bacteria to break down various ores for recoverable resources. There are two promising possibilities here for sustainability. One, these bacteria can make very dilute mines economical again by recovering ores that would not be recoverable by mechanical or chemical processes. This reduces the number of new mines that would need to be opened. Two, these bacteria can even be set on the tailings and sludge heaps to recover various minerals that would otherwise head for a landfill or a permanent sludge reservoir. This could potentially reduce the volume of toxic sludge while recovering useful materials from it simultaneously! This creates some exciting prospects, but I don't believe it is a widely used technique because it isn't a mature technology quite yet. But there's promise here.

Recycling also helps reduce the amount of virgin raw material that needs to be mined but it isn't a perfect solution. Ideally materials could be recycled through infinitely cycling loops such that no new material would ever need to be mined. This is nearly feasible for some materials, like aluminum and perhaps iron/steel, but some imperfections and losses will dictate that new virgin aluminum/iron be periodically added to the respective loop to refresh it now and then. For other materials this indefinite recycling loop is not even theoretically feasible (at least given current recycling practices). One such material is plastic. Recycling plastic degrades its mechanical properties a small amount each cycle through, thereby preventing it from becoming the same product it started as. This is called downcycling and plastic must be downcycled. Eventually it becomes of such poor quality that nothing more can be done with it other than putting it in a landfill or incinerating it.

A uniquely promising solution is approaching this problem from a design perspective. By carefully choosing materials used in product design for their affinity for indefinite recycling one can decrease "material rucksacks." Product designers committed to this approach would compile a "palette" of materials and remove any from it that cannot be indefinitely recycled. All of these options must be explored to find a production regime that optimizes sustainability. It won't be easy and it will take lots of people thinking a lot about it. It'd be great if more people would begin to wonder more about where the material in their possessions comes from and maybe even go the extra step of wondering how that whole process could be redesigned for sustainability.

Electrification of the automobile

Obviously, I'm late to this story, but I wanted to catalog it here anyways. When General Motors and Chrysler basically failed in 2009 and were bailed out, I thought to myself that this was the opening that electric cars needed to get a foothold in the market. A couple of electric car companies had been operating prior to the auto company decline, but now there was a large enough void to make a big difference. GM and Chrysler have since bounced back to some extent, but they both have learned from the crisis about the electrification of the automobile. I think the next decade will see lots of electric car companies contending for market share along with GM, Chrysler, Ford and foreign veterans as well. But after a decade or so, that number will come way down until we see a just few big contenders in the US. I wanted to list the electric car companies operating as of now and try to assess which ones have the most promise.

Venturebeat.com has a great list of 30 electric car companies around the world which have some chance of maybe becoming Blue Chip some day, who knows. Of course, GM is releasing its hybrid Volt next year. Ford is already into the hybrid business and talking about an electric Focus by 2012 or so. Chrysler actually has a subsidiary, Global Electric Motors, which has the e2, an electric cart really. It's not exactly highway material. Nissan is going to raise GM's Volt with the fully electric Leaf next year. Mitsubishi's fully electric MiEV should begin sales in the US in 2011. Volkswagen and Infiniti both have plans for a full electric car by 2013. And we all know that Toyota and Honda have had great hybrid electric vehicles for years. So the major auto manufacturers are heading towards electrification, but what of the new guys?

Well, the brashest one has to be Tesla Motors, which has been selling its luxury electric Tesla Roadster for years, and plans to start selling a more reasonably priced Model-S full electric sedan by 2012.

Zenn Motors and Smart USA both have full electric cars out now but they are very small and have limited speed capabilities. They're great for getting around town, though. I see quite a few around Rochester, and am a little jealous when I'm driving my clunky SUV. These two companies seem to be betting that Americans will compromise on size, which is a prediction that might be on shaky ground.

Think is a promising looking company with full electric car models offered now that can reach highway speeds. This is one to watch.

Phoenix Motorcars was a company I hadn't heard of before, but has surprisingly competitive full electric SUV sized models. It may be the cost of $45,000 or the range of 250 miles (not bad, actually) that is keeping consumers from buying them. This is another one to watch.

Fisker Automotive is a competitive company with hybrid electric model called the Karma. And it's available now. I'm not quite sure of the prospects of this company, but I wouldn't be surprised if they pull ahead.

I've omitted companies profiled in Venturebeat's article if they are not offering vehicles in the US anytime soon. I've also omitted some companies offering only three wheeled electric car options, because I don't see those appealing to the average American consumer.

I think that Tesla Motors, Phoenix Motorcars and Think will have the best chances of supplanting the dominance of GM, Chrysler and Ford. I wish all of them luck. It's likely too, though, that some foreign auto companies could capitalize on this market void and be the first ones to jump in with viable electric cars. Toyota and Honda have a head start with that, but don't seem to be cinching it.


The good news here is that there are already plenty of contenders to fill the electric car void. And the winners could easily be brand new automotive companies. It would be something if they end up usurping the Big Three and upsetting the automotive market. Perhaps the electrification of the car is a bit of a silver lining to the whole automotive financial meltdown. But it's more likely that the financial meltdown of the automotive sector was the first signal of an approaching systemic shift in automotive drive train conventions.

How can technology make the trade-offs we face less severe?

The title of this article is a question which I pose because of its importance. I also have it in my profile description at the top. It is an important driving question for engineers or technologists to ask. What is more fundamentally important is that everyone thinking about the problems we face should realize that none of the solutions come Scott-free or unattached to other consequences... there are always trade-offs.

I find that this concept that trade-offs are inescapable is missed by many. I've argued with others over the benefits of wind turbines even if they are nearby to the person's property. Sometimes the individual finds them an unpleasant sight (an opinion I am baffled by), so they reject the idea. However, they fail to realize that by choosing to reject a few wind turbines on the horizon they have inadvertently chosen a coal plant down the road instead... Because I am certain they will not choose to live without their electronics.

As is said in economics: there is no such thing as a free lunch (TINSTAFL). We must begin every design problem with the notion of trade-offs in the back of our minds. When we think we have a probable solution, one must ask: what are the opportunity costs? ... that is: how would this solution constrain our options if we implement it? Of course this question of trade-offs is useful as an idea filter of sorts. A quick mental check to make sure ideas you have pass muster.

Let me explain how I use this concept in decision making by recounting an interesting lecture. There is a TED lecture video where Barry Schwartz talks about the paradox of choice. His thesis is basically that choice is a good thing that people want and benefit from, but too much choice hinders decision making and is ultimately a bad thing by leading to poor or irrational decisions or paralyzing your ability to decide. Schwartz mentions that there is some optimal number of options to have, the question is: how many is that? Although Schwartz offers an answer, it is somewhat of an open question in no small part because it varies case by case. But the lesson is for every decision we face, we should approach it first by asking what are the extraneous choices. Extraneous choices generally are the options that, upon quantitative scrutiny, are not competitive on any direct metrics, not competitive on the majority of direct metrics or have an unacceptable opportunity cost. Then we are left with only the choices that are true trade offs. Here we are faced with options which have rival benefits and comparable opportunity costs.

From here it takes some cost-benefit analysis. One must also begin to look at indirect consequences of the decision or "cascading effects," so to speak,  to being to differentiate the choices. At this point, rather than committing to one choice or the other as is, one might ask is there an extant technological option that, if implemented somehow in the decision, can sway the choice/cost/benefits/trade-off in one direction to make the decision an easier calculation? If there isn't an extant technology for this, is there feasible or conceivable technology to do so?... Then the question is what will it take to mobilize that technological option?

Incidentally, I find that some of the RPG (role playing game) style games I enjoyed playing as a child uniquely prepared my mind for handling these kind of mental checks and trade-off comparisons. RPG's are all about constructing a character with favorable traits and equipment. So these games constantly presented me with choices to calculate: "Should I choose a long range archer or a durable warrior? Should I use the sword with +10 to all attributes or the spear with +40 strength and decent reach?" Hmmmm.... aren't these just mini cost-benefit analysis problems?

I believe so, and they make for good practice. Eventually we will have to bring this mental process to bear on trade-offs with much more at stake. It helps to have a general process to guide one through the decision making steps... and it helps to have some practice, too.