(How) We Can Solve It

I just signed up for We Can Solve It [No longer available on the Internet; you might want to go here instead: http://www.climatecrisiscoalition.org/].

They asked the question:

How can the We Campaign help you and your blog?

This is what I shared with them:

Help me find or help me to put together/maintain national maps!!!!!

• Where do we use/don't use power; BTUs and BTUs per capita (by US county)

• Where do we use/don't use renewables; green BTUs and green BTUs per capita (by US county)

• Where do we emit greenhouse gases (in tons) per US county

• Rate of increase in greenhouse gas emissions (in tons, over time) per US county

• Rates of energy efficiency (where is the US best/worst in saving energy)?

• Energy intensity map of the US (BTUs needed to create $1 GDP) in the US.

Help show us all where we are doing well, who and where the leaders are, and where we need improvement! Make it apparent!

I have a vision, and ideas for patentable technologies on how to create the equivalent of 'weather maps' to track the social needs and changes occurring in our world.

I want to work together with We Can Solve It to create these maps for you and with your team. Please contact me at my mobile phone: 650-906-3134, or email petercorless{at}mac.com.

I altered the email here, adding braces to avoid the auto-spammers.

To my blog readers, if you have any desire, technological training, mapping tools, computing resources or ideas to help in this regard, I would love to hear from you. This interweaves directly into the Global Understanding Institute I am endeavoring to found.

The campaign inspires me, the way they are linking in the social networking aspects of the web into its activist nature of social change. I spent just a few minutes getting set up, and earned through signing petitions, the equivalent of a 50 cent donation. I am apparently the 1,482,043 person to sign up to be a Climate Champion. They are well on their way to get 2 million people to sign up by 2009.

Is 20/20 by 2020 “Clearsighted”?
We Can Solve It wants to get to 100% renewable power within 10 years (2018). Whereas I had proposed, through 20/20 by 2020, to get to 40% from renewable power, specifically solar and wind.

It is vital we even consider logically the possibility to get to 100% renewable by 2018. My prior proposition of 40% by 2020 can be considered a “backstop” or minimum. Yet this is higher than the California state goal of 33% from renewables as presented in the current CARB proposed Climate Change Draft Scoping Plan (June 2008 Discussion Draft), pursuant to AB 32.

Yet California only recently elevated that number to 33% from a lower figure. We are ramping up what we need to do, because what we are doing to the environment is also ramping up.

Source: Greenhouse Gas Inventory Data - Draft 2020 Forecast, California Air Resources Board.

As you can see from this chart, since the time when I first came out to California in late 1989 (c. 1990), our state has increased its Greenhouse Gas (GHG) output from ~440 million tonnes CO2 equiv. to ~470 million tons in 2002-2004, when I was having Green Knight Publishing wilt around my ears.

That is roughly a 7% increase over the period of 12-14 years, or about a half-a percentage per year (not figuring in “compounded interest” or any other true mathematical progression).

The future is going to get warmer before it gets cooler. Oil and other fossil fuels will increasingly be pressed for their utility value, price, and distribution. I mean that also sociologically. Pressures will drive greater competition and conflict between individuals, companies, communities, countries, and entire regions and alliances.

Hence why I have to step up my game now. History will judge us on what we do. This is why I went to the Department of the Environment, and posed the 20/20 challenge to them, to get to 20% solar and 20% wind, instead of the 33% goal in the report.

It is mentioned on page 9 of my copy, under II. Preliminary Recommendation:

• Expansion of the Renewables Portfolio Standard to 33 percent;

This standard, proposed by the wind power industry c. 1997, and adapted by the US Department of Energy and National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners c. 2000-2001 has really not been pushed far enough.

California already has a standard to get 20% of California utility power from renewables (solar PV, solar thermal, wind, biomass, landfill gas, digester gas, geothermal, and ocean) by the year 2010. This goal is coded in law, has regulatory oversight in place, and, though challenged like any program for budget, commitments and completion, it is on its way for successful compliance.

In fact, this 20% rate was originally set for 2017, but SB 107 accelerated the requirement from 2017 to 2010. Amazingly seven years were shaved off and automagically we could still get it done. Which simply means we weren't pushing hard enough for change. We were lowballing what we could do.

In the same manner, we are now raising the goal, and the rate of change to reach the goal from 20% by 2010 (based on a 1% increase per year) to 33% by 2020 (about 2.55% per year). Which means we are just now raising our heads and realizing a) how far we have to go, b) how much we can change things if we set our sights higher, and c) we haven't craned our necks back far enough yet.

This standard only includes utility power, not overall power use in California. So, for instance, transportation fuel and power and off-grid power use is not included in these numbers.

Let's look at this in terms of national numbers:

Source: Energy Analysis, NEED Project, Manassas, VA, 2006-2007, Grade Level 7-12 study guide. www.need.org

Renewables, as you can see in this graphic derived from EIA data, comprised 6.12 quadrillion BTUs (“quads” or Q's) out of a total energy supply of 104.17Q. That is only 5.88% of total U.S. power needs.

How did matters change in the past three years? Here's the latest EIA chart:

Source: Energy Information Administration (EIA), State and U.S. Historical Data, http://www.eia.doe.gov/overview_hd.html

According to the 2007 data, out of a total supply of 106.96Q, renewables were 6.8Q, or only 6.36% of our total energy production. That's an 11% increase in renewable power production in 3 years, and an 8% increase in renewable power contribution to overall national needs.

If we presume this trend continues at the present rate, of 11% increases over periods of 3 years, by 2019, the US will achieve about 10.36% of energy production from renewables.

That is far short of my projected 20%/20% by 2020. In fact, it would be about a quarter of the 20/20 by 2020 goal, and only, of course, 10% of the goal for We Can Solve It.

What it does not take into account, though, is increasing growth rates in the renewable energy markets. I have not sat down and done trendline analyses of current rates of growth, or when we would expect to start seeing bends and jiggles in that perfect "S-curve" for adoption.

As an aside, check out this older article on Energy Intensity, and see what it has to say about California. I'll return to that thread another day I hope. Yet what this article alludes to is that California, with its better energy intensity numbers, may have more flexibility and freedom to get on the early adopter curve than many other states in the country. This is not to brag or lord over those other states and geographies who will have a harder time adopting. Yet like many things in California history, we may be able to learn, and then allow other states to follow based on our lessons learned.

Overall, though, we have to raise our sights from where they are presently set if we want to move from better than 10% energy from renewables to 20%, not to mention 20%/20%, and then, of course, the “We Can Do It!” goal of 100% by 2020.

Hence why I am compelled to toss my hat in the ring, or, to be more gallantly belligerent, my own gauntlet down. I must challenge myself!

The Once and Future Green Knight

It is happenstance my own business withered during a time when the world was warming. Yet even then we were watching fuel prices rise, causing paper product costs to skyrocket. Once gas hit $2.00 a gallon, and after having a few wholesalers go south on us, I decided to send my inventory off to other businesses and just cut back to the bone. Fuel and, thus, shipping costs for products, were getting too expensive for me to manage given the lack of distribution networks and marketing infrastructure we had.

We were also watching as people were moving from dice-and-paper games to online games. That was a bandwagon I wished to get on, yet felt the right circumstances were not present during the time of the Dark Age of Camelot.

Unlike a few thousand dollars for a print run for a game product, online games take a huge startup cost to really get going. It is the equivalent of the difference between writing a short story for Analog or Asimov magazines, or getting a blockbuster Hollywood movie made out of the same idea.

Anyway, I still have dreams to revitalize ways to make King Arthur, his Knights of the Round Table, and the themes of the Grail and chivalry more popular. After all, he's still around after centuries. In comparison, and thank heavens, I am still here after only a few years of a dry spell of personal energy.

So, I wished to hereby declare my intent to revitalize Green Knight. Not just the publishing company, but to truly stand up and declare myself as a Green Knight!

Environmentalism, stewardship of the earth, renewal of life, and that Quixotic view of chivalry, humor, love and the world are all compelling me to declare this.

It's a cute schtick that makes people laugh. Yet it is also based on some sublime philosophies of ethical respect and duty for those who I shall serve, and also infuse my work with natural business practices and organic organizational processes. I'll file a DBA later this month. Get business cards. Put the web site back up.

Stay calm! I am sound in mind and body. I have not gone completely starkers.

Yet just as Don Quixote de la Mancha tilted at windmills, it is time for a whole new generation of people to tilt at our own windmills. Yet now, the windmills are metal turbines like those parked at the top of the Altamont Pass and other wind-producing sites around the world. And rather than mistake them for monsters, these shall be the gentle giants to enable us to power the world for the century to come.

We Can Solve It challenges each of us to become a hero in this world epic. No Gandalf is going to call upon you. No stormtroopers will land to force you to take action. It is up to you, young Jedi, young hobbit, young Harry, to cast off any fantasy of the problem solving itself and take factual, personal action.

How can we change the world? For my own part, I am renewing my commitment to the world in many ways. Follow my blogs and you will see. I know how I want to help change it now. How do you want to commit to this epic?

Onwards to adventure!

-Pete.