Obama

I try to keep poltics out of this blog to focus on the issues at hand. If you noticed I mentioned regardless of who wins the presidential election both have mentioned cap and trade systems.

The president elect has a site to give input. I would have given the same input to either victor. Here is my submission:

Troops: Bringing the troops home safely after a successful conclusion to the wars and supporting their needs upon their return in recognition of their ability to endure the challenges they have faced and will face is the highest priority.

Global Finance: The stability of the global financial system along with regulatory adjustments to keep it stable is the next priority.

I don’t have any specific suggestions on those two items other than…

Buy steel: Global steel prices have retreated but they won’t stay low for long. There is a lot of infrastructure work ahead with plans already drawn up. Get the steel for the projects and have the projects store them now. That will save money in the long run. Getting full funding for projects so they can start should be a separate issue. This can be applied to other commodities as well. This saves money in the long run and boosts the economy.

Gasoline Disincentive: High gas prices ($4) are painful but low gas prices ($2) feed our addiction. Gasoline needs an increased tax when it is cheap to allow its replacement. The increase tax should fade when the price increases. Automatically doubling the federal tax when the yearly average is under $3 may be the way to go. It provides new revenue and declares an end to cheap gas that makes alternatives suffer. We saw the real suffer of not having alternatives when the market went over $4.

Biochar: There is some evidence that placing wood based charcoal into the soil increases productivity. The productivity lasts for multiple years and since charcoal is made out of carbon the carbon is sequestered for multiple years. The process of creating biochar produces usable energy, syngas, and other products in varying amounts. Biochar use could provide a combination of agricultural productivity, carbon sequestering, and energy. Every soil and crop in different. Every institution that supports agricultural research should be directed and supported to look into this. It won’t solve anyone problem totally but it’s something that can provide three partial solutions at once.

Northern Kentucky Carbon: We are energy challenged. 98% of our electricity comes from coal. We pay more than 30% less for electric than the national average. Local wind power will not have an impact. Remote wind power will most likely be used to supplant fossil in other places with none left for here. Geothermal will be common on the east coast before it comes here (the earth’s crust is thickest here; geo-hvac is an option though). There is no remaining usable hydro (unless we make the region into a great lake and live in boats upon it). This is also not an ideal place for solar (but out of alternatives solar leads, and solar water heating works well). Considering all that conservation, limited solar, and limited biomass are the only cards we have to get away from coal. When constructing national policy please use us as a case study. The nation needs to change its carbon footprint and we are one of the largest toes. Policies that make sense nationally have the potential to either lean us towards nuclear (which we have negative local memory (Fernald,Zimmer) or it will depopulate the region. Basically we are a region with little local energy, even the coal is barged in from hundreds of miles away.

Biochar

Some paraphrased comments made on the biochar yahoo group relaying our local situtation.

Even though biochar may produce less energy than turning all biomass to ash, it should be pursued since it may have long term benifit in our loam soils.

Details...


> We have to stop burning coal!
Our electricity is 98% coal here.

> We have to find another resource for the energy.

> hydrology power
The local source has been tapped. It provides 1%. While we are at the confluence of two rivers damming them for power would flood the region (which would take care of our energy problem). Also a series of locks was put in decades ago so the river is more a seris of lakes as it is that only rarely has large movement (while the rivers
are wide before the locks one could wade acrossed the river except in spring).

> wind
There is little harvestible wind. In fact locally I would be oppossed to wind. We live in one of those valleys that does not get much fresh air. While our modern activities cause pollution even before that time we had an issue with pollen. Mark Twain was quoted as something to the effect that people in Cincinnati were disgusting .. they spit all the time. An effect of the pollen. (He also said "When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always twenty years behind the times.")

> Nuclear power
Bad memories.
I think we have the only nuclear plant that was converted to a coal
plant.

And then there was dear Fernald...

While it is unrelated we have low levels of radon also which is subconsciously attributed to the above two things.

However these nifty mini-generators might be acceptable locally.


> geothermal
The earth crust is extremely thick here and cool to a great depth.
The east coast of the USA will have Geothermal before we do and that is a long way off.

However geo heating of homes works well here. It just needs to be used more. But it more often replaces natural gas and not electric.

> solar electric (photovoltaic)
Also not a real great place for solar but out of all the non-waste alternatives that could be built widely this one would be the leader here. I have hope that some of the newer cheaper flexible solar design that our out will be a good match here. They aren't as efficient as the hard silicon light but they cut in in lower light.

> solar thermal
This works well here. We need to do more of it. Again it replaces more natural gas than coal.

> Conservation
Would you be surprised that this is on TOP of Duke Energy's list?

Also Carsharing may help here as well.

> biomass energy conversion
While we don't have alot of biomass available locally this is my interest in biochar here.


> We could set the price paid for carbon emissions so high that it
drives coal-fired power industry out of business, because it won't compete any longer against the other carbonless forms of energy.

You've hit upon the key as to why I felt the need to start this NKY Carbon thing and my interest in biochar and any solution. Change is coming. Both presidential canditates support cap-and-trade. We have some of the lowest electric rates and we import all of out energy (the coal comes by river, the natural gas and gasoline is
pipelined in)

> [8] As a temporary alternative to coal E&S, biochar from agricultural wastes can be used right now to achieve a net gain in carbon capture and storage, as compared with business as usual, in the course of which these wastes are usually burned. Also denuded forest areas can be replanted. And so on.

> So for existing coal-fired operations for the time being, I would require only a significant reduction in emissions and compensating activities off site for the balance, until we get the technological breakthroughs to make retrofits economically feasible.

Duke is current experimenting with:
- CO2 injection to the saline auqifer
- algea from flue gas
- they want to replace the oldest coal plant with a IGCC system
- their alliance to get biomass burning facilities desinged has been
mentioned in this group