nyackwindfarm.com

What’s Up with Ethanol?

Administrator — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:34:04 +0000

Ethanol is not the energy or environmental panacea many supporters would have the public believe. Proponents (particularly President Bush) have been pushing corn conversion to energy. I have never understood this policy since corn is one of the absolute worst crops to convert to fuel. Recent studies by Goldman Sachs posit that corn based ethanol uses 75% as much energy as it takes to produce. It is common knowledge that sugar cane is by far the best ethanol producing agriculture product.

The following chart details the relative ethanol producing efficiency of various agriculture products.

While Bush has joked about saving enough corn to eat, correlations between the agriculture and oil futures markets have increased recently. This may simply be the result of inflationary US monetary policy causing prices for all goods to rise, however, I would not be surprised to see the correlation continue to increase with higher global ethanol output. For developing nations, this becomes a nontrivial issue with those who can afford agriculture derived energy pricing out those who are looking for food.

Furthermore, Ethanol as an alternative energy source is still a hydrocarbon based fuel with, albeit reduced, CO2 emissions. As detailed in this NYTimes article, emissions produced from clearing land to produce ethanol grains emit 93 times the greenhouse gas saved from using the cleaner ethanol vs fossil fuels.

NYTimes Article: Link | PDF

Gretzky’s Ponds No Longer Freeze

Administrator — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:13:17 +0000

Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky grew up with a pond in his backyard on which he used to skate. These days however Gretzky’s pond no longer freezes. With the advent of indoor rinks and the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, the future of hockey probably does not depend on backyard ponds. The nostalgia and romanticism associated with the outdoor rink however would probably convince most sports fans to give an extra moment’s thought to climate change.

The full article is here:
Globe & Mail

Low Hanging Fruit

Administrator — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 19:17:07 +0000

Bjorn Lomborg discusses urban heat pockets and some interesting temperature reduction and energy conservation measures for these areas. His pragmatic but caring approach to environmental issues is refreshing.

“Consider Los Angeles. Re-roofing most of the city’s five million homes in lighter colors, painting a quarter of the roads and planting 11 million trees would have a one-time cost of about $1 billion. Each year after that, this would lower air conditioning costs by about $170 million and provide $360 million in smog-reduction benefits. And it would lower LA temperatures by about 3°C – or about the temperature increase envisioned for the rest of this century.”

Read the rest here: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lomborg17

Rubin Endorses Green Economy Growth

Administrator — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:21:17 +0000

Many have lamented the consistent decline in US industrial production since the 70s. Manufacturing has lost ground to a plethora of components within the Services economy – information, financial, legal, education, health and advertising services. You can review the stats at the Bureau of Labor Statistics but even Kanye West knows this story – “do anybody make any real shit anymore?”

Former US Secretary of the Treasury and current CEO of Citigroup, Robert Rubin discusses climate change policy in this first blog post. Although Rubin is not the most polished speaker, he presents global green demand as an enormous growth opportunity for US manufacturing. This is more than just the long unheeded call for Detroit to focus on fuel economy of their vehicles rather than the location of their 17 cup holders.

If you look at something like Denmark-based Vestas Wind Systems’ (ticker: VWSYF) market cap the picture is pretty clear about first mover advantage for green technologies. Let’s get that public and private sector research going.Rubin also comments on US dollar policy in the full version (6 minutes) of the clip here:
http://www.nyackwindfarm.com/video/rubin_full.mpg