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This morning I was sent a link to an amazing collection of art by Chris Jordan called Running The Numbers. The thumbnail of the detail view to the right really doesn’t do it justice either – you have to see the full size image to understand exactly what this image is. What it represents is 28,000 42-gallon oil drum: the amount of oil consumed in the US every 2 minutes.

And then keep looking at the other images in the collection. Others that stood out for me were:

• One hundred million toothpicks, representing the number of trees cut down to support the junk mail business (what a total waste);
• One million plastic cups: the number used on US airlines every 6 hours;
• Two million plastic bottles: the number used in the US every 5 minutes (that’s an amazing 576 million bottles a day!);
• 426,000 cell phones being “retired” every day in the US (most probably still working perfectly);
• 1.14 million brown paper bags: the number used every hour in the US;
• And finally, 60,000 plastic bags: the number used every 5 seconds in the US (that is over 1 billion every day).

In addition to the environmental issues represented by these numbers I’ve highlighted, there are also other social issues in the collection, including an image representing smoking, healthcare and even the issue of prisoners, both in the US and in US run detention facilities outside the US.

Light Bulbs

One image though I have a slight disagreement with: the image of 320,000 light bulbs floating in space. Said to be equal to the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage (inefficient wiring, computers in sleep mode, etc.). The issue I have with this statement is that it is missing the real solution to this problem. The solution is not for consumers to unplug everything. The solution requires two parts:

1. More equipment designed to really use a lot less power when in sleep mode;
2. More electricity being generated from clean and renewable sources.

The second of those is perhaps the most important. Once we can produce enough electricity from clean renewable resources, why shouldn’t we use it to make our quality of life better? Sure, cutting consumption helps keep the bills low, and in the short term, while the world still depends heavily on dirty coal, and other non-renewable resources for our electricity, will help reduce emissions. But the logical extrapolation of that argument is to say that we should just stop using electricity completely. That’s a stupid argument. Much better to talk about how we can use technology to bring our clean generation levels in line with our consumption needs. Sure, don’t waste electricity unnecessarily, but the Vertography position is one of moderation. Sleep mode, done correctly, is a useful compromise, and better than just leaving the kit on all the time!

Many new flush mechanisms for residential use are coming with a dual flush option that can be used to save water. Typical modern single flush toilets will use 1.6 gallons of water per flush (gpf), or 6 litres. That is already a big saving on older units that could use as much as 5 gallons per flush). A dual flush unit adds a 0.8 gpf option for flushing liquid waste.

While the savings at home can be significant, the savings in a commercial installation are much higher since we spend so much more awake time at work than at home in general. So, installing dual flush options for office facilities and in other commercial buildings makes a lot of sense. If done right.

The photo shows the sign affixed to the wall above a new, eco-friendly flush unit installed in the building where my office is located. All sounds good, but I have two problems with this particular installation:

1. The reduced flush option is activated by pulling the handle up, which means most people will continue to use the full flush without even thinking about it.

2. It was fitted to a urinal, which should never need the ’solid waste’ option.

The combination of those two flaws makes this particular installation essentially useless. A regular 1 gpf urinal flush mechanism would probably have been a better choice for this location, especially since most people will press the handle down.

I have no idea what these solar panels are going to be used to power. If I had to guess, I would say that there are batteries under the seating and the power will be used to provide lighting after dark. The lower one of the two collectors in the close-up shot looks like it might have a light fitting there. And if it is light the rest of the Venetian public lighting we saw, it will be using CFL, or perhaps another low power technology (perhaps LEDs).

Take a look at the photo to the right, and you will see a photo of one of those famous lamps, in the area of St Mark’s square, and the bulbs inside each of those pink lamps are compact fluorescents. The same was true for most of the street lighting we saw around the city. I haven’t seen any other city with so many CFL bulbs in use for its street lighting.

When booking the trans-Atlantic flight, on United Airlines, we were offered the choice to pay for upgrades and given links to partners for booking cars and hotels, but nothing more. When we booked the Venice flights with EasyJet, a UK based low cost carrier, right there on the booking page, in addition to other offers, we were offered the option to buy carbon offsets for our flight.

Carbon Offsets?
What are carbon offsets? How much are they? Do they do any good? And, if they do, why don’t US airlines like United offer customers a chance to buy them too?

Essentially, a carbon offset scheme is a financial mechanism allowing you to buy credits in a project designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to offset the emissions associated with an action you take. In the case of our flight from London to Venice, easyJet calculates that we contributed 102kg each way, per person. And the cost to offset that via easyJet’s UN certified emission reduction projects is just £1.33 (about $2.45) each way, per person.

Obviously, given that every airline we looked at booking the flights within Europe with offered them, there is a widely held belief that they work in some way. Some would argue they just allow people (or companies) to continue generating greenhouse gas emissions, but erase any guilt they have about it. Some are concerned that the amount of emissions the projects receiving the money can reduce is hard to quantify, so does the money really cover the emissions from the flight?

More pragmatic people seem to believe that if people at least feel guilty enough to contribute to a carbon reduction project voluntarily at the checkout, that in itself is progress!

Why did United not offer them for the trans-Atlantic segment of our trip? Well, it looks like they’re getting there, but just haven’t finalised the plans. Other US airlines do have plans, or are working on getting them set up as well, so expect to see the option to buy carbon offsets when booking a flight in the US soon too.

Should You Buy Them?
I look at this somewhat pragmatically. You can choose to not fly somewhere, but realistically there are few other ways to travel long distances. Buying carbon offsets for your flight seems like the next best thing to me (and, yes, we did buy them for the Venice trip).

Independent Carbon Offsets
Since the trip, I’ve also discovered that you can buy carbon offsets for your flight from a third party like the Carbon Neutral Company. I just used their calculator to work out an estimate of the emissions for our San Francisco to London flight: around 4000kg for two people on round trips. That would cost between £30 ($55) and £60 ($110) depending on the type of project being contributed to – the Carbon Neutral Company lets you choose.

The first article, in Inhabitat, talked about a solution from Australian company Going Solar. Their idea combines solar panels with a sound barrier along the sides of freeways that pass through residential areas. This cuts the noise level in the houses, while at the same time supplying them with electricity.

Local Distribution
While the roadside system may not be ideal for solar, it does have the benefit of being relatively local to the places where the power is needed. Some of the larger wind and solar projects being talked about for remote areas of the US at the moment are facing the problem of getting the power from the remote location to the towns & cities where it is needed. Our aging power grids are not able to cope, so these projects find themselves being able to generate plenty of green power, but not being able to get it to the people who need it easily.

Going Solar’s roadside solution brings the power generation closer to the homes that need it, reducing the distribution problem to essentially the last mile.

Stored Heat
The other article I read about energy from roads was about using the actual asphalt. Our roads are essentially a massive network of solar energy collectors. Anybody who has walked barefoot on a road surface on a hot summer’s day knows just how hot the roads can get. Even better, that heat is retained for a long time after the sun goes down.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute scientists have been working on a plan to collect that heat energy using a heat exchanger embedded in the road surface. As roads are resurfaced, the heat exchangers could be embedded in them. The hot water flowing out of the heat exchanger can then be used to generate power, or even just as hot water!

At the moment it is still very experimental; the test surfaces the team have been using have copper pipes embedded in them which will need to be changed for a practical solution, but nonetheless it is a promising idea for reusing an existing infrastructure for another purpose. Also, removing the heat from the roads has the added benefit of helping to reduce the heat island effect of dense urban areas.

Why this incredible waste? Turns out it is simple economics: it is cheaper for these companies to burn this gas, and pollute the atmosphere than it is to transport it to where it can be used. Perhaps some financial penalties for their polluting actions would help, but Synfuels thinks they’ve found another way to get these companies to clean up their act.

The Fischer-Tropsch Process
The idea has been around for a while. Basically, it allows the natural gas to be converted to a liquid fuel. Synfuels, which licenses its technology from Texas A&M University, claims it can do this better and cheaper than others ($25/barrel of gasoline instead of the typical $35/barrel from the Fischer-Tropsch process).

The company has been fine tuning its process since 2005, but says it is now close to signing its first commercial contract for a plant, potentially near Kuwait City.

Hopefully this will make it economically sensible to collect that natural gas that is being wasted today, and convert it to fuel. Doesn’t help much with the CO2 emissions, but at least the fuel will be burnt to do something useful (hopefully).

[Via Earth2Tech]