Sustainability - - A Focus On Carbon

What's the significance of buying products made outside Oregon or outside the U.S.? Certainly, there are many reasons why we might care about where - and how - the stuff we buy is made. What I'm interested in is how total CO2 equivalent (CO2e) of goods purchased by Oregonians changes as the locus of production changes.  For 2005, CO2e emissions from consumption of goods and services by Oregonians resulted in 56.7 MMT CO2e (note that some but not all the goods purchased were from within Oregon). If Oregonians purchased the exact same goods and services but they were all made outside of Oregon, those emissions would climb to 67.7 MMT CO2e. If instead of buying U.S. made products, Oregonians purchased that same bsdket of goods  all made outside the U.S., total CO2e emissions jump to 113.5 MMT.

Here's an EPA document that provides quite a good overview of greenhouse gas emissions from activity across the U.S. economy. Hopefully, this compilation of GHG data (including but not limited to CO2) provides both an understanding of the range of activities that generate CO2 but also how they chage over time. I've spent some of yesterday and most of today reading through it. Here are some initial observations, mostly with an eye towards activities in and around Portland and the Tri-County Area. Land Use decisions affect overall CO2 emissions. For example, CO2 emissions are reduced by not converting ag. and forest land to development, or demolitions.  For 2015, it’s estimated that the net effect from all types of land use changes/avoiding changes was a reduction in CO2 emissions of 670MMT CO2 equivalent. Turning to electric generation, from 1990 to 2015 overall emissions rose 4 percent while carbon intensity rose ~16 percent. Most of the increase in carbon intensity was ...

By using Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Climate Accord as a justification for setting a target of 100% renewable energy, our political leaders are in reaction mode. It's like having an alcoholic in the family, something I have personal experience with.  If we use the alcoholic’s actions as the reason for our choice, we don’t change our narrative.  It's incumbent on us to act with the gravity and wisdom that changing the narrative on climate change will require.  One of the more important ways we can begin is to resist the temptation to engage in sloganeering.  It’s not “Big Oil versus Humanity."  We don’t wear the White Hats while “They” wear the Black Hats.  To be sure, sloganeering seems to be part and parcel of marketing and politics.  Even so, politics and governance are different specialties that require different skill sets. Here are three steps we can take to be smarter about climate change. First, stop drawing boxes around people and ...

A bill (SB1547) signed into law in March '16 does not contain language banning coal-fired electricity from delivery to Oregon's retail customers.  Even so, the Oregon Global Warming Commission’s 2017 Biennial Report to the Oregon legislature (Report) erroneously reports the existence of such a ban after 2030.   It also erroneously reports that both Portland General Electric (PGE) and PacifiCorp (PAC) are prohibited from allocating to Oregon retail customers any cost or benefit from coal-fired plants.  Figures 7-9 in the Report illustrate past and future CO2 emissions by these two utilities (Fig. 7 for PAC and Fig. 8 for PGE) and the statewide CO2 emission levels (Fig. 9) assume that Oregon takes credit for lowered CO2 emissions, even though SB1547 did not address coal plant operation in any way.  Furthermore, the statute in question expressly permits PGE to continue to include costs of its portion of Coalstrip in Oregon retail rates after 2030.  The law als...

Trump’s announcement that the US is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord is deeply disappointing.  His decision flies in the face of solid science on the role of human activity in climate change.  What is needed is climate policy grounded in a solid set of facts.  It is for this reason I take issue with the Resolution adopted by the Portland City Council and Multnomah County at the Council Session on June 1st.   "Until economic forms of utility-scale electricity storage are achieved, it will be next to impossible to economically replace all fossil fuel electricity generation with renewables."   Two policies were adopted in that Resolution.  Both policies apply community-wide, not just to City or County facilities.  One goal states that  by 2035  all residents and businesses in the City and County will only use electricity generated from renewables.  This means that PGE and PacifiCorp must deliver electri...

Maybe yes, maybe no.  It depends on several factors that boild down to the qualityu of the offset.  The Natural Reosurces Defense Council, NRDC, has a concise summary of the issue with some suggestions. It's worth noting that at least there is the potential for a carbon offset to reduce current CO2 emissions whereas a Renewable Energy Certificate, in and of itself, will not reduce current CO2 emissions. As the NRDC summary indicates, the first course of action is to reduce our current activity that is causing the CO2 emissions.

No, a REC does not cut existing CO2 emissions. If an existing fossil-fuels electricity generating plant is retired, that can cut exizting CO2 emissions if and only if a new one isn't built. image courtesy of groupe-edsi.com