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American Physical Society Report on Energy Efficiency
JoulesBurn, The Oil Drum
The American Physical Society has just released a report on improving energy efficiency in the transportation and buildings sector:

Energy = Future Think Efficiency

There are links from the above to an Executive Summary and the full report (100 page PDF). This is not just a "change your light bulbs" document, but rather a comprehensive, information-filled challenge to the status quo with regards to government inaction with regards to energy conservation. It is also not a document on energy production and future difficulties in being able to do enough of this to keep the lights on -- even with better efficiency. But it is well worth a read, with lots of data on energy use and great graphics.

This is a political document as well, with salvos aimed at both the Department of Energy and the outgoing administration.

To DOE:

To meet the out-year technology goals this report sets for energy efficiency, DOE must take steps to fold long-term applied research into its scientific programming in a more serious way than it currently does.

On the "Hydrogen Economy":

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) are not a short-term solution to our oil needs, but rather a long-term option requiring fundamental science and engineering breakthroughs in several areas. Without such breakthroughs, FCVs are unlikely to be more than a niche product. The main challenges are durability and costs of fuel cells, including their catalysts, cost-effective onboard storage of hydrogen, hydrogen production and deployment of a hydrogen-refueling infrastructure.

To Dick Cheney:

As this report shows, we are not remotely near any physical limitations on efficiency improvement. What we need are the innovations, policies and will to achieve the goal.

For Free Market advocates:

Transportation and buildings, which account for two thirds of American energy usage, consume far more than they need to, but even though there are many affordable energy efficient technologies that can save consumers money, market imperfections inhibit their adoption. To overcome the barriers, the federal government must adopt policies that will transform the investments into economic and societal benefit. And the federal government must invest in research and development programs that target energy efficiency. Energy efficiency is one of America’s great hidden energy reserves. We should begin tapping it now.

(22 November 2008)

Challenges To Environmentally Responsible Energy Use In Today's Society
Science Daily
... Now we are rushing to escape the energy culture as we know it, in order to remake it as we don’t know it. The irony is that a marginal amount of planning – continual improvement in mileage standards, closing of the loophole in those standards that exempted light trucks, steady federal investment in renewable energy – might have alleviated the energy and climate crunch facing us today.

“We could be using half the energy that we’re using,” says political scientist and energy policy expert Mark Bernstein, managing director of the new USC Energy Institute. Launched earlier this year, the think tank aims to build a community of energy and environmental researchers, expand research and education programs, engage outside companies and agencies, and – perhaps most important – help form good policy.

Such policy will have to fit through a shrinking window. Society had more options in the early 1970s, when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was only around 320 parts per million – somewhat higher than the pre-industrial concentration of roughly 280 ppm. Today, with CO2 levels nearing 390 ppm and growing faster than ever, time is a luxury. Predictions of looming “peak oil” – the point at which global oil production starts to decline – add to the urgency.

The energy crisis is not rushing toward the world so much as gaining on it. It’s more a problem from the past than a threat from the future. If only we could have some of that burned carbon back. “We’ve wasted an opportunity,” Bernstein says.

Bernstein’s job at the Energy Institute is to make sure we don’t find ourselves in the same boat 30 years from now. It is the ultimate cross-disciplinary challenge. Today’s policymakers need solid environmental research in a wide range of areas: atmospheric chemistry, land use, biology, physics, materials science, engineering, public policy, health, history – any field that touches on our relationship with the planet and its resources.
(22 November 2008)
Long article.

At a New York Seminary, a Green Idea Gets Tangled in Red Tape
Jim Dwyer, New York Times
Here was the easy part about an elegant, smart alternative energy project at an Episcopal seminary in Chelsea: drilling 1,500 feet through Manhattan schist to reach the water that runs deep and warm in the earth.

“An 8 3/4-inch carbide button drill bit,” said Dennis Frawley, who managed the project for the General Theological Seminary. “Behind that, there was a fluted percussion hammer. That pounds the rock into particulate.”

Drilling a quarter-mile into solid rock was simple, said Maureen Burnley, the seminary’s executive vice president, compared with persuading government officials and agencies that had the authority to say no — or to simply do nothing and stop all progress.

“We had to answer to 10 agencies,” Ms. Burnley said. “It took three times as long as it should have. The left and the right hand did not know what the other was doing.”
(21 November 2008)