Where is the CO2 coming from and how can we reduce it? This is the big argument for nuclear. They say we can’t meet greenhouse gas reductions without nuclear. As far as lies go that one is a whopper. Now let’s take a look at where C02 is coming from and I hope you’ll agree with me that the problem is one of design. Looking at the world this way the entire world is composed of people who couldn’t put up a shelving unit.
Figures from the World Resources Institute estimate that around 31% comes from heating and lighting our world, which is by far the biggest percentage. This points to a pressing need to redesign our buildings, the use different materials in their construction and different methods of lighting.
The use of light shelves, basically a reflective shelf on the inside of the window that reflects sunlight onto interior ceilings greatly reducing the need to use lighting during the day. Then of course there are skylights which funnel daylight from the roof or side wall into the room and diffuse it. A company in the UK called Ceravision has invented a lightbulb that’s massively more electricity efficient than any present bulb and which promises to last decades, which will be in production shortly. Then of course there’s the materials that houses are made from. I’d personally go for a rammed earth house since it’s cool in the summer heat and warm in cold nights, but then again I’m hopefully heading to Oz the world capital for modern rammed earth construction. Then of course there are houses built into the ground, which are likewise cool in summer and warm in winter such that heating and cooling bills are massively reduced. To me there’s something very wrong about using heat for cooking then venting it straight out the chimney. Granted you need heat to cook, but there must be a way to take that heat and use it for warming water or rooms. Passive heating and cooling using smart materials, supplemented by heat pumps to draw heat from out of the ground and concentrate it in our house also represent the way forward. There really is no need for anyone to heat their buildings with anything that vents CO2 into the environment. It’s not only good for the environment but will save every homeowner a fortune.
Another 17% comes from agriculture. There’s a lot of this that you’re not going to stop. Cattle and sheep fart methane and corking them up is out of the question. Methane is a greenhouse gas that’s 1000 times more powerful than C02. But then again there’s a lot of methane coming from shit just spread onto fields. This is frankly nuts as methane is a fuel, extracting it from shit is a cost effective process requiring only some plastic tubing, toilet plumbing and not a lot else. It’s called a biodigester and it uses bacteria to turn really nasty shit into some really wonderful products, and the bugs do it for free. When Katrina hit the US all those pig farms, the massive reservoirs of shit next to them got flooded and all that shit escaped into the rivers. Sheer lunacy. A biodigester system could provide these factory farms with all the electrical and heating energy they need. Permaculture offers the prospect of growing massive amounts of food in 3 dimensional galleries that extend into the sky.
15% comes from transportation. Some of this you won’t change in a hurry, but battery powered family cars were pleasing consumers in the US last century; that is until they all got recalled by GM and scrapped. Now a company in the US called Tesla Motors is getting ready to produce a battery powered sports car, a luxury family car in 10 years. The big drawback has always been battery charging speed and range, but battery tech is advancing in leaps and bounds. A recent development is a battery/capacitor made from cellulose. However, all that aside the most efficient to move goods from A to B has always been by rail and sea. The number of trucks in cities is a scandal. Then there’s transporting food around the planet. Why do we need to do that as much as we do? If you’re reading this chances are your burger has seen more of the world than you have on its way to your mouth.
13% comes from manufacturing and construction. A lot of this comes from the fact that we are making things from scratch instead of making things that can be recycled or refurbished to be as good as new. Caterpillar does this with industrial engines and it makes them a ton of money. There’s also the environmental benefit in that all that energy used to drag the metal from a hole in Papua New Guinea, ship it to the US for smelting, engineered into parts, assembled and then shipped to Europe just doesn’t happen. That feeds into transport emissions. Rammed Earth construction is infinitely reusable and doesn’t require the massive amounts of energy that concrete requires.
11% comes from other fuel combustion. This is so general that it’s hard to know what it refers to. Could be shuttle takeoffs?
5% comes from fugitive emissions. To be honest I have no idea what fugitive emissions might be. It could have something to do with Harrison Ford being chased all over the US by Tommy Lee Jones for a crime he didn’t commit.
4% comes from waste. Waste? Yes, all those landfills that we cover over release greenhouse gases into the environment. Half of the 136 million tons of construction waste taken to landfills every year in the USA is concrete. Another thing is that waste is basically a resource that we haven’t got processes to handle yet. Handling this is going to be big business this century. Charging people to handle their crap then making money from processing it, while generating energy from waste at the same time to fuel that process is just crying out for an entrepreneur.
4% comes from industrial processes. Toyota long ago developed a system for reducing waste to almost zero by turning their entire business that only operates when a customer presses a button. Virtually everything in Toyota is made only when it’s needed.
Looked at rationally, reducing the CO2 in each source, as well as reducing the CO2 in the linkages between each source could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% or more. Very few people are taking a systems approach to handling this and the first country that grasps that nettle is going to wipe the floor with its competitors and that’s because the savings you get from these measures is greater than the cost of putting them in place.
Imagine a nation that spends half what yours does on transportation? Imagine a nation where the buildings use 90% less to heat and light. Imagine a nation where agriculture isn’t fighting nature; it’s using it as free labor force to produce more organic, better quality food without paying for pesticides, fertilizer, herbicides and GM frankenseeds. Imagine a nation where shit is composted and urine is used as fertiliser. Imagine a nation where factories are placed next to each other so that one factories waste is another factories resource.
Now eventually a nation is going to do all these things. The big question is will it be yours?
