Recently, questions around the life cycle greenhouse gas footprint for natural gas have been appearing. (I know, natural gas can’t compete with Fat Tire, or even asparagus, for flavor, but it is a critical fuel as we strive for energy independence.)

Natural gas is a relatively clean burning fuel, releasing about half as much CO2 as coal during combustion. But natural gas is mostly methane, which when leaked into the atmosphere has a greenhouse effect 25 times more potent than CO2 (100 year GWP, IPCC AR4).

As discussed in this Times article, some recent studies have raised the estimate for the amount of natural gas that is leaked to the atmosphere during natural gas extraction, particularly during hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” One study went as far as saying that shale gas could have a greenhouse gas footprint 20% greater than coal.

This will certainly lead to contentious debate. These studies will be cited by opponents to fracking as reason to avoid the practice. The gas industry and its allies will argue that the figures are overestimated and don’t reflect recent improvements in leak protection. Further analysis will be needed before any verdict can be declared and before any policy decisions are made.

(It should be noted that, even if the gap in greenhouse gas footprint between gas and coal shrinks, gas is still cleaner than coal in terms of particulates and other toxic emissions.)

Even if the worst-case estimates for gas leakage are true, it seems to me that gas won’t necessarily lose its long-term luster. Leaking gas is like leaving the refrigerator door open–it wastes money. When that gas is captured, it can be sold for additional revenue. According to ProPublica, ”Several studies show that maintaining and installing equipment to capture the emissions pays for itself within 24 months.” In other words, gas can notably reduce its life cycle footprint with positive NPV investments.

On the contrary, shrinking the footprint of coal will require capturing CO2 pre- or post-combustion. Carbon sequestration technology for coal power plants is about 15 years from widespread commercialization, and it will add about 30% to the cost of electricity.

For an in-depth analysis of the issue, and for information on EPA’s recent upward revision of its estimates for natural gas leakage, see this article from ProPublica, Climate Benefits of Natural Gas May Be Overstated.

The New York Times article discussed above: Studies Say Natural Gas Has Its Own Environmental Problems.

Before going on, let me state that this post isn’t about my opinion on the matter of expanding nuclear power. Rather, it’s about the public perception of nuclear power.

(For the record, I am Goldilocks on the future of nuclear. Not too cold: we need a carbon-free source of electricity until renewable energy reaches baseload scale, and nuclear power is a better option than devastating climate change. Not too hot: nuclear is expensive and waste disposal is an unsolved problem. But that’s the subject of another post.)

I initially started pondering this subject when I noticed that, day in and day out, I was finding far more U.S. news stories about the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant than about the tens of thousands of citizens who were killed or displaced by the tsunami. Although disappointed, I was not surprised that the media had seemingly misdirected its attention. (This is the same media that brought you Balloon Boy, after all.)

The issue gained a name when I read Andrew Revkin’s post on the Times DotEarth blog, “The ‘Dread to Risk’ Ratio on Radiation and Other Discontents.” Of the many links in his post, check out at least these three: Humans ‘Wired’ for Terror Over Remote Radiation Threats (Greenwire), Reflections on Fukushima: A time to mourn, to learn, and to teach (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists), and a Radiation Dose Chart infographic (from the artist behind XKCD).

These articles explain the issue quite coherently, so I won’t rewrite them here. The summary is this: humans instinctively fear certain types of risks, including things they don’t understand (e.g., nuclear power), and humans do poorly at assessing the relative risk of different threats (e.g., driving a car vs. nuclear power).

What do you think is the relative risk of coal versus nuclear? Here’s a visual answer. Seth Godin created this image comparing the death rate per watt produced from nuclear, oil, and coal from these statistics:

(Godin attributed this discrepancy in risk assessment to successful coal industry marketing, which if true, could explain why the risk of coal is underestimated, but he does not directly address the overestimated risk of nuclear.)

What I am particularly interested in are the lessons that can be learned from this event and society’s reaction to it. I believe these lessons have relevancy to science and technology issues far beyond nuclear power, including potentially to my own career when I launch a startup technology in the future.

Here are a few takeaways from me.

• People will inherently be afraid of technologies that they don’t understand (for another example, see the recent smart meter hubbub with PG&E)
• The public needs exposure directly to scientists communicating the facts, for accuracy and believability, but only recently have scientists started to accept they have a role in communicating directly with the public
• The public will mistrust authority when that authority has wronged them in the past. In this case, the secretive history of nuclear testing has clouded the future reputation of the technology.

Can public perception of risk be managed? What other technologies are being held back by a similar situation?

Last year, a study of the carbon cost of the global wine trade found that it is actually more “green” for New Yorkers to drink wine from Bordeaux, which is shipped by sea, than wine from California, sent by truck. That is largely because shipping wine is mostly shipping glass. The study found that ‘the efficiencies of shipping drive a ‘green line’ all the way to Columbus, Ohio, the point where a wine from Bordeaux and Napa has the same carbon intensity.’

via Switchboard, from NRDC :: Kaid Benfield’s Blog :: Think globally, eat locally? Maybe, maybe not . . ..

Well, novel if you don’t count the fact that evolution invented this technique first.

A company called Carbozyme is finishing lab tests to mimic the method used by our bodies for transporting CO2 by applying it to the challenge of capturing and sequestering CO2 from coal power plants.

As cells pump CO2 produced during respiration into the blood, the enzyme carbonic anhydrase converts the gas into bicarbonate for easier transport to the lungs. There the same enzyme works in reverse, turning the molecules back into the CO2 gas you exhale. This action could play the critical role of selectively capturing CO2 from mixed gas emissions for later sequestration.

The company Carbozyme is finishing up lab tests of a system that consists of millions of microscale, porous tubes coated with a synthetic version of the enzyme. As a mixture of smokestack gases passes through the tubes, the enzyme pulls CO₂ from the mix and turns it into bicarbonate and back, isolating CO₂ so it could be pumped underground and stored in layers of basalt rock. Based on lab tests and models, the system should use about a third less energy than other methods while avoiding the hazardous chemicals typically used to grab CO₂.

via Human Blood May Hold the Secret to Clean Coal | Popular Science.

So cool. Don’t give up on this challenge just yet.

For example, take a simple-sounding question like, “How much energy is required to produce a ton of iron?”

This is a relatively straightforward analysis if the scope of energy usage includes only the iron plant. You count the fuel and electricity going in; you count the iron coming out. Divide the former by the latter and badda-bing. Done.

But what about the energy consumed to mine the iron ore out of the ground? And to transport the ore to the iron plant? And to transport the iron from the plant to its destination? And to mine the coal out of the ground? And to convert the coal to coke? And to manufacture the bulldozers and trucks that mine the coal and ore? And to manufacture the steel that goes into the equipment? Now we’re back to iron, again. We’re not close to done and we’ve already tied ourselves in a knot.

In practical terms, it’s impossible to include all the factors in an energy analysis like this. At some point, the analyst has to draw an arbitrary line and say, “Good enough.” Hopefully, this line is drawn in a place where the ignored factors constitute an insignificant percentage of the total result.

A recent report from the National Research Council tries to expand the scope of the analysis of energy costs. It takes into consideration the health impacts of energy use, which are rarely specified in quantitative terms.

By design, this report does not include the costs of energy use in terms of climate change, but that is a beast of a study on its own. Analyzing climate change costs requires forecasting the future, while this report is based on historical data.

The report also ignores the national security costs of energy use. I understand why this is hard to measure, but it should definitely not be ignored. What is the cost of wars over control of the terrorist-riddled oil-producing nations that we are dependent upon for importing petroleum, both in dollar terms and in lives lost?

Food price increases are not considered, either. What is the cost, particularly to the poorest in the world, of using food crops to produce ethanol? An economist could, if necessary, produce a figure tying these figures together. “Malnutrition deaths per gallon”, perhaps.

Nonetheless, this is a valuable report that will hopefully illuminate for many the hidden costs of our energy use. Understanding these costs allows us to make better-informed decisions, considering all the benefits and pitfalls before creating unforeseen negative side effects.

Don’t forget the importance of scope. It’s always a bigger picture than you can imagine.

Excerpt:

“Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use,” a new report from the National Research Council, a branch of the National Academies, tries to put a dollar figure on what economists call externalities.

The study, however, comes with a major caveat: it did not look at the impact of energy on climate change and ecosystems, or at rising food prices and the risks to national security.

Still, the report, which was requested by Congress in 2005, estimated that the hidden cost of energy on human health was $120 billion in 2005, the last year for which full data was available.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest contributors to these extra costs were coal-fired power plants, which generate half of the nation’s power but which also accounted for $62 billion in hidden damages associated with the emissions of pollutants like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, and particulate matter like soot or fine dust.

The report also found that in 2005 the vehicle sector produced $56 billion in health and other non-climate-change damages, with $36 billion from light-duty vehicles and $20 billion from heavy-duty vehicles.

via Report Shows Hidden Costs of Energy – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com.

In essence, cheaper CCS will produce a greater volume of carbon credits, thereby dropping the price of the credits supply-and-demand-style.

Hopefully this reevaluation of the costs of capping carbon emissions will give a helping hand to cap and trade regulations that have yet to reach the Senate floor.

Excerpt:

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — There’s good news for supporters of the Waxman-Markey climate bill from Professor Stefan Reichelstein. Although passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June 2009, the bill is expected to spur a contentious debate in the Senate starting this fall. Opponents argue that the bill’s proposed “cap-and-trade” system will take a high financial toll on energy consumers and companies alike, and devastate the economy at a time the country can least afford it.

Reichelstein and doctoral student Ozge Islegen believe they have evidence to the contrary. Reichelstein and Islegen have examined the financial impact of regulating coal-fired power plants that produce carbon dioxide emissions under a cap-and-trade system and found the financial burden to be much less than previously projected.

via Reducing CO2 Emissions Could Be Significantly Less Costly Than Predicted.

Climate bankruptcy would not be so benign. How much is saving the lives of billions of people worth?

Another study has been released which estimates the cost of long-term climate change mitigation is not that high, with figures in this case of only 1 to 3 percent of GDP.

“The net cost to U.S. households and the economy looks to be pretty small,” said Frank Ackerman, a professor at Tufts University and a senior economist with the Stockholm Environmental Institute, in a recent interview with Green Inc.

He suggested that the 1 percent to 3 percent estimate was akin to one year of foregone economic growth in the United States.

The article:

A group of eight leading climate economists has a message for United States senators now considering a bill to cap emissions: don’t think of long-term mitigation costs as a massive expenditure, but rather a form of reasonably-priced “planetary climate insurance.”

via The Economics of Climate Stabilization – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com.

Why is the Chamber so opposed to our nation taking action to prevent further climate change? According to at least 3 major reports, a green economy will create a net number of new jobs, anywhere from 3 to 30 million, depending on your source.

All these new green businesses are just the kind of company that should find friends in a chamber of commerce. But something tells me the clean tech industry and the Chamber don’t see eye to eye today.

Excerpt:

A new report released today says that if we shift our economy — to a greener, low-carbon economy — we will have more jobs, not fewer.

Earlier this week, Tony Blair (former prime minister of the UK) and the Climate Group reported that if we worked to avoid climate change we’d create 10 million new jobs by 2020 — worldwide. Another recent study by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council says that such a shift could increase employment in the EU by 2.7 million jobs by 2030.

One more report, released today by the Global Climate Network (an alliance of nine influential think tanks) comes to similar conclusions.

via Green Economy = More Jobs : CleanTechnica.