_ The Zero Emissions Strategy Conference
_ The Zero Emissions Strategy Conference
This section in due course will be reordered and probably altogether reorganized for easier reference and retrieval. As it stands you have a pretty complete recapitulation of the main content-related comments thus far received in electronic form.
Date: Monday, 1 September
From: E. Britton, britton@the-commons.org
The following comment arrived over the transom this morning which I share with you, without feeling it necessary to identify its source. But her point -- the failure of both individuals and organizations to understand that the cross-cutting nature of the phenomena that bring us around our virtual table here -- is extremely well taken. Certainly one of the major barriers to the drive toward a more sustainable world!
'By the way, re the information on the World Bank consultation I have been told that many international environmental and energy organisations had already been responding to the consultation. But unfortunately the people at the Bank who prepared the paper did not reach out to any transport organisations apparently. The sectoral organisation of the Bank may be one reason... they didn't see the links to transport or they didn't want to deal with it so as not to tread on the toes of the relevent Bank department. I am speculating here.'
Perhaps we can open up some more discussion of this, as well as your ideas about eventual ways round this horrid little behavioral box (entirely self-imposed, of course). Clearly, the technologies and open communications arrangements that we are experimenting with in this forum will have a significant role in this. Or do I have it wrong?
To be a cut less abstract, let me point you to one example of the kinds of more inclusive thinking which in my view are called for in our case. The British group GreenNet maintains a quite extensive linked data base of sources and programs under the heading Environmental Web Sites, which stretches out to cover the following categories. If you are genuinely curious to follow what is going on in this diverse and stretched out domain, it is well worth a visit. As just one example, of which you can already find many on the Net.
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 17:10:18 -0700
From: Ralph Luken rluken@unido.org Organization: UNIDO
To: postmaster@the-commons.org
Subject: comments on the introduction
Dear Bob, I now only had time to look at the introduction and found it interesting, particularly the comments. I think that there is so much to be achieved in terms of energy and materials reduction that I question the need to focus much effort on the third stage "product to service transformation." From my experience in the more significant developing countries (China and India), I know that the potential for CPT is significant and yet these countries are not taking advantage of CPT. Why not?On a editorial point. I do not use the word "clean"... The word should be cleaner because only at your third stage (product ...) could one argue that there is clean ...
Another point along these lines is that the name of the UNIDO/UNEP programme is cleaner production and the most advanced application of the concept is thru the UNIDO/UNEP National Cleaner Production Centre programme that is currently operating in ten countries. These Centres are continuously finding significant opportunities for CP/pollution prevention/waste minimization, whatever you choose to call it.
Skip Luken
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Comment by Bruce Hannon, University of Illinois Urbana
Mon, 18 Aug 1997 16:24:39 -0400 (EDT)
Comment on Zero Emissions summary by Bob Ayers:
Each firm should minimize the material and energy use per unit of their product as a strategy to zero emissions. I am at ease with the concept of zero emissions as a goal. It is analagous to the idea of the sin-free existence as a measure of perfection in Judeo-Christian theology. It is the aim and yet, we are all sinners! The idea is to keep improving relative to this goal.The problem comes with the idealist who has no "quantity of sin" concept--they think that a little sin and a lot of sin are the same, and default from the path. So, embedded in the zero emissions concept is the need for an attitude of continued improvment toward a ZE goal, staying on the ZE path, as it were. 'nuf said about sin.
The main point here is Bob's idea that EACH firm should minimize the materials and energy input to their product. This is a double minimum and not clearly achievable in the strict mathematical sense, and not likely so in the real world one. For example, suppose I want to install insulation to reduce heat loss in my 10,000 apartments. This is a clear TRADEOFF of energy and materials--use more of one to use less of the other. With ZE as my goal which should I do?
Another example: I use a lot of aluminum to make my product--so much so that I now make my own aluminum. To reduce energy and aluminum ore material use, I close my aluminum line and buy the needed aluminum from a large aluminum manufacturer. My material and energy use went down in a direct sense but perhaps not in a total sense. The energy and materials use of the aluminum supplier went up due to my firm's decision to cut material and energy use. And who knows what the transport tradeoffs were? More shipping of finished aluminum for sure but maybe (and maybe not) more shipping of raw aluminum production inputs. Actually since in the US, the aluminum factories are quite near the source of federally subsidized electricity (and these sites have nothing to do with the location of the aluminum production inputs), transport energy (and consequently material) flows increase overall, due to my firm's decision to buy finished aluminum and stop making it myself.
These are old points as I am sure that Bob knows. The way out of these dilemmas is for each firm to minimize the direct and indirect free energy (non-solar?) use in the provision of a unit of service to a consumer. This keeps the decision-making decentralized and it will send us toward the ZE goal unambiguously. (Since the free energy of materials is small compared to the energy embodied, the minimization of the direct and indirect energy use per unit of product is a good first approximation of the theoretical optimal strategy.)
The first order approximation to this minimization could be obtained via the use of input-output techniques, a well developed process that was used in the 70's by our Energy Research Group for the same reasons as the ZE group wishes to employ. The idea that we should only minimize fossil, hydro and nuclear energy use, would let us substitute solar and geothermal energy for them. But their are great environmentally unsustainable aspects of more land use to capture more solar energy as a substitute.
The ZE path is fraught with dilemmas. How do we get firms to do any of this even if we had the answers for them? Either thru regulation or financial incentives, of course, the latter being composed of taxes, rights-trading and subsidies. Both are fraught with well-known difficulites.
These firms could use a technology data base to find new (and Approved) ways of moving toward the ideal. Perhaps there should exist some sort of International Technology Assessment Office that does the research on the technologies that meet these goals and on the strategies that can achieve firm-level action at all economic levels. (I suppose one could call the goal Zero Emission Neutrality, ZEN, but that would bring in the religious thing again.)
Bruce Hannon
Jubilee Professor Liberal Arts and Sciences
Davenport Hall, MC 150 University of Illinois Urbana, IL 61801
reply to: b-hannon@uiuc.edu
http://www.gis.uiuc.edu
office: 217 333-0348 Fax 217 244 1785
To: Bruce Hannon, :b-hannon@uiuc.edu
From: Robert Ayres
Date: 8/19/97, 12:08 AM
Re: Your comment on Introduction
As regards ZE, you seem to be reading more into my intro than was intended to be there. Certainly I never supposed that firms would individually adopt strategies of zero materials OR zero energy consumption. I assume they will continue to seek to maximize some discounted stream of future profits -- more or less as they do now. (A lot more less than more, sometimes, but let that pass). Anyhow the double maximization problem is a bit artificial, I think.
Still, let me respond first in the spirit of your tradeoff example. As a purely technical point, I would first suggest that E = mc2, so, of course, materials and energy are really interchangeable.
If that is too abstract, I have another suggestion: let the firm minimize EXERGY losses. Again, this offers a way to reduce two optimizations to one. However, my more serious answer is that society must seek (and find) ways to induce firms to do well by doing good. That is, make more money by using less exergy.
The simple-minded way to achieve this is through tax policy. But that is a sledgehammer approach.
What about other ways. Would "extended producer responsibility" have a useful impact, do you think? For instance.... Your suggestion seems to be that government can help by providing more and better information, especially with regard to technological possibilities. I guess my question is: how far will that take us? (In other words, how far from the frontier are firms operating in the real world?
And to what extent would better information reduce materials/energy (i.e. exergy) inputs? I love ZEN. But I'm a bit allergic to cuteness (after ZERI) . Could you elaborate a bit on the "neutrality" idea? (I BOUGHT your book with every intention of doing some dynamic modeling but haven't had any chance to get around to it yet).
Comment by Bruce Hannon, University of Illinois Urbana
ZEN. Neutrality, here, means that when we humans have reached Zero Emissions, we will have reached Neutrality re the question of our existence in the view of the natural world. We would not be adding to the store of exergy, but we wouldn't be depleting it either. My, how ZEN-like!
I once wrote a piece for EE claiming that we didn't have to reach the zero exergy generating condition to be acceptable to (a working member of) the rest of the living world. We only had to keep the rate of net exergy release at or below the level that the natural system had before we emerged. This I claimed was the only provable sustainable condition. Until we could prove otherwise, we exceed this limit at our peril. This condition turned out to be an interesting exercise. Nature, if left to its own devices, when starting on bare ground, gradually increases the rate of exergy formation as the system succeeds and matures. The largest exergy release rates (the lowest radiation temperature releases) are found over the mature forests and prairies; the hottest, over rock and sand. But a limit is reached by any system, averaged of course over a landscape, and that limit is caused by the end of technical change that nature can dream up for that place. The final biologic structure needs for maintenance all the solar energy that it can capture. This means that when people use agriculture, a truly juvenile ecosystem, they are not generating necessarily more exergy than nature was before they got there.
So there may actually be some room for humans. But when we started to dig up the coal and pump the oil, we were clearly intended to exceed any natural exergy rate. I suppose that one could work out the exergy emission trade-off rights to allow people in one area to exceed the natural limit for that area, if they could somehow reduce the exergy rate elsewhere. Maybe that is doable in a city-farm setting that is "balanced". In my paper I showed that we far exceed this balance, but that it appears that the Amish don't.
All this rambling in response to the idea of Zero Emissions. Nature doesn't have zero emissions and if we are part of nature, why should we be expected to reach such a condition? Which brings up Sadi Carnot and your living in Paris. This Carnot as you no doubt know is the father of thermodynamics. He died at 36 in an insane asylum at Ivry. His grave stone is there, claiming him to be the founder of Thermo, but his body is not there. Mystery of mysteries! Where exactly IS the father of TD and why isn't he where the stone claims he is? For years, I have asked every physicist and engineer who goes to Paris to raise this question with the Science Academy there. If you have a sense of history, you may want to ask the cemetery manager at Ivry about this. He will verify this and then just raise his hands indicating ignorance. Then you may wish to put the question to some Parisian authorities. The Carnot family was very wealthy (Sadi's father was the only aristocrat to be a member of the Directorate during the Revolution) and to have the then-not-well-known member die in such a place was no doubt quite a stigma. So they said that he died of cholera, took most of his important papers and disposed of them. In the 50's a French scientist did all the research on Carnot and I have read his paper. But even he did not know that the grave was empty! I did a paper years ago on an imagined exchange of letters between Carnot and Malthus, on the importance of energy and the importance of economics. Hence the detailed knowledge of his life. Bruce Hannon, University of Illinois Urbana, b-hannon@uiuc.edu
Mon, 18 Aug 1997 10:02:33 -0400 (EDT)
From: DPrice000@aol.com
To: postmaster@the-commons.org Subject: Introduction
Liked the introduction. However have some personal observation. I am a mechanical/process engineer who has worked in the extractive industries.With regards to extractive industries the technological tools are ever increasing. The value of gold used to be related most directly to the amount of labor required to climb the mountain dig tunnels and process ore. The willingness of people to be rewarded from their efforts dictated the supply of the metal. However new technology cyanide leachant, improved testing methods, and computer mapping has allowed the discovery and exploitation of some large producing gold fields. I believe these technological advancements as much as anything has lowered the price point for gold. The U.S. and Australia are now producing more gold than in the gold rush years, after many people thought these fields would be played out.
Copper production has a similar analog with new refining technology, new sx-ew technology, and mapping. Oil exploration and production has exceeded expectations due to 3-D seismology, deep drilling and improved enhancement technologies.
What will happen to these industries is that the current round of technological improvements will be exploited. Once the demand catches up with supply the prices will again begin to rise. Later some other technological improvement may create the next dynamic.
On the manufacturing side. Improvements in metal working processes that lower costs or improve functionality can have positive effects on the recyclability of metals. Typically old equipment uses more material than new equipment. If the new machine costs less in real terms than the old machine the old machine can be recycled. Then there is excess metal available to create part of another new machine. And through improvements in the machine this machine can have more productive use than the original machine did. In this regard then less durable products that are more often recycled can accelerate the reforging of an economy towards a more efficient state. Not to say that durability is a bad economic virtue, but that durability is not purely working towards a zero emissions state.
Tuesday, August 12, 1997
To: robert.ayres@the-commons.org, eric.britton@the-commons.org
From: Nathan Keyfitz, Harvard University
Many thanks for your invitational letter, that raises a fundamental question when you say that we need "to think of ways to "restructure" the global economy such that the incentives facing CEOs and Prime Ministers are consistent with the requirements of global eco-sustainability."
Plainly in the long run everyone has an incentive to make their economic actions consistent with global sustainability. No one wants to live in a world as desolate as the Sahel, or Coney Island after a hectic Sunday of picnicking, or a polluted, fishless ocean.. If the long-term rate of interest was zero and there were no externalities they would act on this and there would be no need for exhortation.
But when the long-term rate is 7 percent (I round up the Economist’s 6.5 percent for convenience in calculation) then money doubles in 10 years, multiplies 32-fold in 50 years, a million-fold in 100 years. So should the owner of this hardwood forest replant after cutting—if it will take the new forest 10 years to mature? Yes—the loan he takes out will undoubtedly be repayable with the sale of the wood. If the forest takes 100 years—impossible to repay the replanting loan.
If there is prosperity there will be more alternative investments, and the forest is even less likely to be economically replantable. This factor will be superimposed on another: in good times there is more need for raw materials AND it is more expensive to borrow money, so your goal will be more elusive than ever.
Where the demographer comes into this is that in the meantime the population is growing, so the land under the forest comes to have alternative uses, and that adds to the (opportunity) cost of keeping it undeveloped. I am not sure that anyone has realistically modeled numerically how population worsens situations that are already pressure from discount rates and externalities.
The more I think about the present configuration the less capable I feel of thinking up ways of changing motivation in the desirable direction that you propose. Unless in the name of the community of future generations payment is made by this generation to change the incentives for CEO’s. We would have to put across to accountants everywhere that practically all productions involves some costs not covered, so charges should be made for global warming, for exhaustion of oil, for the finite life of anti-biotics as they develop resistance.
Presumably you are hoping someone will come up with a less distorting method than simply offering money, that will have to be collected by directly or indirectly taxing production.
But I had better stop telling you things that you already know better than I do, and wish you luck in the organization of your innovative conference.
Nathan
Nathan Keyfitz, 1580 Massachusetts Ave. #7C, Cambridge, MA 02138-2928 Tel 617 491-2845 fax 617 491-7396 e-mail keyfitz@aol.com
Office: Dept. of Sociology, Wm. James Hall, Harvard University
To: Nathan Keyfitz
August 14 1997
I realize that the subject of our virtual conference isn't exactly your area of expertise. On the other hand, as a population expert, your area is closer than it might seem at first glance.The sad truth is that very few people have given any serious thought to a very fundamental question: How to have economic growth without increasing the load of environmental pollution that necessarily accompanies population growth, mass production and mass consumption of materials-intensive "goods". What we need to think about is how to get firms to see that even if they become very efficient at converting raw materials into products, their activities -- in the aggregate -- can still lead to planetary destruction.
From a slightly different perspective, we need to think of ways to "restructure" the global economy such that the incentives facing CEOs and Prime Ministers are consistent with the requirements of global eco-sustainability.
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To: Felix Kaufmann
From: Robert Ayres
Date: 8/11/97, 12:08 AM
Re: Your comment on Introduction
Thanks for being so persistent. We have tried to improve the entry procedures, in order to overcome the "Felix Kaufmann syndrome". You are now immortalized. (Look at the "And if all else fails..." line at the bottom of the first entry page to the site.)As you say, this conference itself can be regarded as a "zero pollution" event and, if such conferences could replace even a small proportion of the big international zoos, where hundreds of people fly thousands of miles in Boeings and Airbuses (it matters not), we will have made some progress in the right diredtion. As it happens, Eric Britton (my collaborator) is an international expert on both transportation technology and "telework". Perhaps he can be persuaded to get up on the podium himself...Anyhow, keep checking in, and let us know how the conference looks from a Florida perspective.
To: Dan Price
From: Robert Ayres
Date: 8/8/97
Thanks for your inquiry. Eric has already replied, I see, but to answer your first question specifically -- and you may not be the only one to ask -- no formal registration is required. All you need do is show up at the Website.Your second question concerns the relevance of your work on innovative dam-free hydropower. I must admit, I would not have thought of something like that as a possible candidate case study, but on second thought that is only because I wouldn't have thought of such a possibility. I was thinking more in terms of wrinkles on existing technologies. But actually, the more I reflect, the more it seems to me that we should take a look at your ideas. So, if you are willing to expose them to comment, please feel free to do so. I would only suggest that you be careful not to prematurely publish anything that might be patentable.
Subject to that constraint, I must admit I am very curious about your scheme. Tell us what you can about your ideas. But don't go on at length about why they haven't attracted attention thus far. All truly innovative ideas run into the same sort of barriers. The trick is to overcome them. It will take good arguments and perserverence.
Sender: DPrice000@aol.com
Fri, 8 Aug 1997 14:03:
To: postmaster@the-commons.org
Subject: Conference subjects - Paper topics
The subject matter of this conference seems to be open. I am wondering if it is appropriate to submit a paper concerning a hydropower energy conversion scheme. Our technology is novel and does not use dams. Both the high costs of the dams and the environmental pitfalls of dams can be avoided. Today I sent an E-mail to register. Dan Price, Denver, Colorado USA.
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I find the subject of the conference most interesting, though, alas, not urgent, taking into consideration the economic, political and, at this point, even technological, problems that will have to be solved before any of this becomes more than theoretical, pedagogic, and visionary. I hope what I learn at this conference will change my mind about that.
It will also interest me to learn about means of enhancing exchanges on the Internet, promised as one of the (non- polluting) byproducts of the conference.
Felix Kaufmann, Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Florida Atlantic University
Former Professor of Interdisciplinary Technology, Eastern Michigan University
Former Director of the Futures Program, Hudson Institute
Telephone and Fax No.: (954) 344-3830
Snail mail: 3621 Cypress Fern Way, Coral Springs, FL 33065, USA
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Communications Received in Last Week
The fact is that the above can now be thought of mainly as an archive. And while we shall maintain it as long as direct emails come in, we are already in the process of shifting 100% of all communications into the new channels. So do take the time to go to Instructions for Joining and Using the Discussion Panels so that you can fully profit from these next stages of the conference.If you have already registered, you can access it directly from here: New Discussion Panels.
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