Energy Matters

Assam, India: Perpetually Without Power

I am working on a research paper on rural electrification in India and today I have been looking at the Indian state of Assam (in red on the map below). Fewer than 20% of the households in Assam are electrified and significantly fewer than 75% of the villages there are electrified. It is in the top five states of India with the lowest amount of electricity in rural areas. With nearly 27 million people (that's more people than Texas) it is India's 14th most populated state.

The question is why are so many people in this part of India without power? To provide a rough idea, I took a look at the wikipedia page on Assam and took out some key points of interest.

• Connected to the rest of India through a narrow strip in West Bangal, the Siliguri Corridor -which is flood and cyclone prone

• The climate is characterized by heavy monsoon downpours reducing summer temperature and foggy nights and mornings in winter. Heavy monsoons and frequent mild earthquakes
  

• The river Brahmaputra flows through it to Bangladesh 
  

• Has coal, natural gas, and petroleum resources. Supplies 25% of India's petroleum needs,
  

• Lots of protected forests and national parks, home to 2 UNESCO sights, it is one of the richest biodiversity spots in the world with its tropical rainforests
  

• Terrorism from separatist group and ethnic strife.

The terrorism from the separatist group and the flood and cyclone prone SIliguri Corridor make building large amounts of transmission infrastructure to connect Assam to the not-really-existing grid in the rest of India impossible. But that's not too surprising as the continental United States is not served by one fully connected electrical grid either. The heavy monsoons in the summer and foggy mornings in the winter are horrible for photovoltaic or solar thermal power. The river could be dammed, but it would significantly effect Indian/Bengali relations, destroy one of the most biodiverse parts of the world, be a huge terrorist target, and one of the earthquakes could weaken the structural integrity of the dam and significantly decrease its lifespan if not outright destroy it.

While it is rich in fossil fuel resources, any further exploitation of these would have to proceed with extreme care so as to avoid spills and other forms of environmental contamination. Wild-life tourism to the region is a big part of its economy so resource extraction would have to be balanced against that. Also as Assam is not as wealthy as other regions on India, it would make more sense to export any fuel resources they extract from the region to fetch a higher price.

Industry is growing in the region, but village scale agriculture still dominates the economy and share of the workforce. It may be possible to provide electricity to the residents if they were to move out of the villages and into new city centers. This would make centralized power systems and grids more economically efficient as well as less environmentally damaging as it would cut down on transmission needs. Fossil fuel use in the region would likely grow as a result, using the extracted resources, putting more pressure on the natural areas from miners and also degrading their quality through local air pollution.

If Assam were to keep its population rural and its economy agriculturally based, their best shot at electrification may be small scale wind coupled with biofuel generators that can make electricity out of waste agricultural products. These smaller solutions may be best suited for the region as they are less susceptible to damage during earthquakes, may be moved during the monsoon and are less of a target for terrorists.

But if farms in Assam do not generate much waste products, their may be pressure to encroach on the UNESCO sites and other semi-pristine environments to harvest materials to burn. Also, Assam has frequent afternoon thunderstorms which may mean that there is some good winds blowing at low heights, but it may be too intense and thus unsuitable for small-scale wind turbine use. Of course, more studies would need to go into looking at local wind potential before you can determine if that is an appropriate technology for the region.

It is possible that Assam's energy security may be one day guaranteed through an as of yet unproven technology like river power harnessing technologies that do not change the course of a river or population shifts to cities, but until then Assam will likely stay one of India's poorest regions in terms of energy availability.

Landfill Gas Power Plants

At the end of our waste steam is the landfill. At the landfill things that can decompose get broken down to their basic molecular building blocks and typically release methane. Methane is 20x the strength of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, so it is also an important gas to consider limiting when discussing Climate Change. Luckily for us (and unfortunately for Kenny), methane is combustible. So by capturing the methane from landfills and directing them to a power plant located on site we can generate electricity and break down methane to carbon dioxide and water vapor* thereby reducing the greenhouse gas potential of the emissions of our landfills. It's a big win for everyone: we make energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and create stronger incentives for waste companies to research and develop strong catalysts and microbes to break down the stuff they have in the landfills to make more methane and to save landfill space. So talk to your city council, find out where your waste goes and encourage them to use recaptured landfill gas to make clean(er) power.

It is important to know that this is different than trash incinerators. Trash incinerators take the raw waste in landfills, burn them and then bury the ashes. The trash is rarely sorted before being put in these incinerators so you have all sorts of crazy plastics  and chemicals being burned and releasing who knows what kind of crazy toxic chemical compounds into the air like dioxide. For a good intro to the issues of this, watch Annie Leonard's The Story Of Stuff's part on disposal

*CH₄ + 2O₂ --> C0₂ + 2H₂0

Solar Decathlon 2009!!

The Solar Decathlon is now up and running, So come down to the National Mall and check it out. Right now there are 20 entirely solar powered houses set up off the grid on the National Mall as part of a biennial university competition to encourage green design and solar power. 

So far I've seen the houses of the teams from University Minnesota, University of Kentucky , University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, University of Puerto Rico, and Rice University. So far my favorites have been that of Minnesota and Kentucky. The Minnesota house was particularly note-worthy as their goal was to make a house that is a carbon sink. In other words, a very well designed and engineered house of wood. But it wasn't just any wood, it was locally grown and sustainably harvested wood. The Minnesota team is doing a fine job reminding us all that sustainability is not just generating power without fossil fuels, but it is also an intrinsic part of all materials.

The UK house was pretty nifty mainly for its use of the small space. The dinning room table slides into one of the walls like a Murphy bed and the chairs normally hang as flat decorated panels on the wall and can be quickly assembled as chairs in seconds. Thus the chairs are always in use either for sitting or for art, no opportunity is wasted.

If you can't come down to the competition at least check out the standings here.

Rate Decoupling and the Average Joe part II: The Utilities

A year and a half ago I wrote about rate decoupling and how by decoupling utilities' profits from their energy sales you would create a system that would encourage a race to the bottom of energy use through better and smarter demand-side management*. I explained that utilities would be guaranteed a certain level of revenue so the price per kWh would be changed depending on the demand to make sure that revenue is earned. This means that if an individual's energy use goes down everyone else who didn't cut their energy use would have a higher electric bill since the dip in demand was made up for in higher cost per kWh. The new system would provide huge carrots and sticks to make people become more energy efficient.

That is still all true, but I was looking at it from the wrong angle when I last wrote on the subject. I said:

...due to the lowering costs of CFLs, and cheaper, more efficient appliances, the costs of lowering your energy usage will go down, so the financial threshold to enter this energy saving frenzy is relatively low. Also, as the utility has an incentive to help each person cut energy usage they may subsidize or provide micro-finance loans to help people afford more energy efficient appliances or household improvements.

I was focused on motivated individuals taking actions and only gave a passing mention when in reality the utilities themselves would be the main drivers behind this. Yes, individuals would have a big incentive to cut their energy use, but the profits of the utilities would be the amount of money they save by reducing their expenses. They are given a certain level of revenue and told to provide a level of service, the cheaper they provide that service, the more profit they have. If that level of service is satisfying energy demand 99.9% of the time^, the best way they can provide that service cheaper is by reducing energy demand in their region.

Utilities profit would be directly tied to how much they can reduce demand by implementing energy efficiency.

Imagine that. Individuals wouldn't just decide to save some money one day and go replace an incandescent with a CFL, utilities would come knocking on your door and asking you to switch them. If the yearly cost savings of CFLs or any other efficiency technology is significantly more than the initial capital needed to get the technology, utilities may just give them away or provide them at steep discounts. Free home energy audits would be given away like candy (like the current program in DC), and the demand to hire people to do energy audits would skyrocket.

Profit motive is one of the strongest motivations there is in the world. Utilities pay coal companies to literally move mountains in the name of profit. If we bind profit to energy efficiency, the way we use.

Consider this example from the EPA: California implemented rate decoupling in the early 90s and utilities started energy efficiency programs that, along with state building and appliance energy efficiency programs saved 40,000,000,000 kWh of electricity every year- roughly 2.8% of total American residential electricity usage in 2007 and roughly 20% of the amount of energy generated by California in 2007. If we did rate decoupling in every state and were about half as successful as they were, we would cut national energy use by 10%.

Imagine that. 

Oh and I'm not the only one who thinks rate decoupling would shake up the world. Thomas Friedman wrote a new book Hot, Flat and Crowded last year he devoted nearly an entire chapter to the subject (chapter 12, "If It Isn't Boring, It Isn't Green).

*Just make sure their is a clause which stipulates that the utility must provide a certain high level of service or else they can just stop making energy, causing mass blackouts and collect the revenue anyway. Closing loop holes is important.
^Blackouts happen

Traveling Choice: You or Your Food?

Why is it that we know where our pants were made, but not where are fruit is made? Why is it not a federal requirement of grocery stores to list the countries (and better yet regions) of origin of all its produce? Stores generally keep these things separated by shipment so it would not be tough to add information on its origin to the label. Some foods proudly display their regions of origin, but others don’t. Why is this piece of information not made available to the consumer? Keeping consumers ignorant does not benefit them and as consumers have the real power in the marketplace, dispelling this ignorance should be a high priority.

We should know if our oranges are from Florida or from Spain. We should know if our tomatoes are grown locally or are from the other side of the nation. Maybe if we knew where our food was from we would be better able to support local farms and strengthen the regional economy. Doing this would also help protect the environment by limiting distances traveled by your food (that is of course only if you give preference to local food). The only reason it might be a good thing to keep the miles traveled of our food secret would be to preserve our self-esteem. 

I find something unsettling about the fact that I typically eat food that has traveled more than most people have. It is an unnecessary luxury and it is an insult to my region’s bounty. We are not at the point where long distance travel can be pollution free or even low on pollution, so it is our responsibility to cut down where we can. Personally, I would rather cut emissions by nearly always eating local food and occasionally traveling myself instead of nearly always eating food that has traveled while I stay put. Both would cut emissions, but one sounds like more fun than the other.