WANT TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS: CONSIDER NOT BUILDING TO LEED STANDARDS

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, commonly known as LEED is a set of privately established building standards established by an activist non-profit, the U.S. Green Building Council, to promote “green building” through a system of points theoretically designed to allow a building to be constructed in a way that enhances the environment.

As a way to promote elitism in the environmental world, LEED works well.  It costs architects, contractors, and the manufacturers of “green” products thousands and tens of thousands of greenbacks to become certified for LEED.  Governments and others with the money to pay to achieve a variety of “grades” offered by LEED get to brag about the wonderfulness of their buildings; “Look at me, ordinary people can’t afford this so I’m special.”  And, of course, the cost be damned.

But consider:

One of LEED’s big efforts is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to the environment.

The problem is, in many ways, LEED’s standards work to increase greenhouse gas emissions rather than reduce them.

As just one example consider, trees removed from a power line right of way project then milled into lumber using the most environmentally advanced equipment (very thin kerf sawmilling) do not qualify for LEED even if the milling company is willing to go through the huge extra cost needed to qualify as a provider of LEED certified materials then do the chain of custody tracking necessary to qualify for LEED points.

Lumber acceptable to LEED mostly must come from healthy forests, certified as being managed for long term sustainability (exceptions include some salvage or recycled lumbers).

That means lumber created from trees removed as the result of right of way clearing, removal of danger trees and for other, similar uses, cannot be substituted under LEED's system for lumber harvested from healthy forests. 

So, consider the millions of acres of trees killed in the intermountain west by pine beetle, mistletoe and other epidemics.  Lumber milled from the trees is perfectly usable and, absent being utilized for things like construction, will rot or be burned in catastrophic forest fires, emitting thousands and even millions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.  Why shouldn’t lumber from those trees not only be eligible for LEED points regardless of the custody chain?  Where's the LEEDership in that?

A Colorado Home Built Entirely From Beetle Killed Pine Trees - This Would Not Qualify For LEED Points Except Those Available For "Locally" Produced Materials

Well, allowing those kinds of substitutions (lumber milled from dead, but not certified, trees for lumber milled from healthy trees wouldn’t bring in much money, would it?

And all that begs the question regarding LEED’s apparent love affair with concrete, one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emission in the world.

The LEED program was so elitist, and thus so restrictive in excluding many of the greenest green approaches to construction that California took the remarkable step a couple of years ago of establishing its own green building provisions using the California Building Code.  CALGreen, as the new program was dubbed, went into effect in January of 2011.  Many believe CALGreen has made LEED irrelevant in California as a result of its broader approach to green building.

As one pundit, writing for Reed Construction Data put it,   “Prior to CALGreen, some forward-thinking building departments seeking to improve energy efficiency and other building performance criteria, had required LEED certification for certain types of buildings. Los Angeles has now taken the step of replacing LEED standards with CALGreen, and has even extended the green building code to include renovations, going beyond the baseline requirements of CALGreen. Many experts and pundits in the green building industry have wondered if USGBC's LEED certification (a third party program) would remain relevant in light of government initiatives. For Los Angeles, the answer is now clear.”

As put forward by Wayne Engebretson, writing for Reed Construction Data, “A key result of the code is that it will allow designers, contractors, and owners to plan and build to a certifiable green standard without having to go through the submittal process, and pay, for third-party certification. The CALGREEN Code mandates required field inspections using a public, transparent infrastructure. The advantage is that one code covers all occupancy types, while various third-party certification systems require a different set of guidelines for each occupancy type covered.  There isn’t a point-based system, standards and regulations replace a measurement system. The regulations were developed by consulting with both the California building industry and environmental groups. Additional provisions were written in case local jurisdictions wanted to adopt even more stringent code. CALGREEN also provides design options that will allow the designer to determine how best to achieve compliance for a given site or building condition.  In other words, the state of California is eliminating the need for third party, proprietary certification standards by establishing a tiered system.”

When the owner of a thin kerf band portable sawmill buys a truck load of firewood and mills it up into very high end lumber for use in remodeling a home, that owner has performed a remarkable service to the community in terms of environmental enhancements. 

All the unpainted wood here was milled from firewood or untreated poles destined to be chipped or burned but, instead, milled into high value but low cost products by Pony Boy Gilbert of Veneta, Oregon.  Pony Boy also did the remodel and, provided the photo.  The lumber cost a fraction the cost had it been purchased through conventional channels and, does not qualify for LEED other than the points available for local production of materials.

LEED might not allow credit for that but the purchasers of goods and services who are interested in actually building green should be.

Garbage In - Garbage Generated Greenhouse Gasses Out

Garbage in, garbage out?

Not if you live anywhere near my neck of the woods where, it seems, we are dedicated to shipping our environmental problems elsewhere; at the cost of many tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year.

Garbage disposal has been an issue for mankind for as long as mankind has existed.  Few things make an archeologist lick his or her lips more than the discovery of a new midden with its treasure trove of broken kitchen utensils, shells, bones, and other stuff even the poorest of our ancestors tossed.

When I was young, most “garbage” was disposed of in either private dumps or in the town dump.  My dad, and many others, cheated the archeologists of the future by picking through the local dump for items someone else might have seen fit to throw away but we could use.  “Waste not, want not,” was the rule of the day in our house.

In the modern era nearly everything has become disposable.  I don’t know if that is bad or good but, it is a fact of life.  We, especially in America but, elsewhere as well, create mountains of garbage as we live out our lives.

How we dispose of that garbage says a lot about how we view the environment around us.  Is garbage a resource as it was to my father's generation or, is garbage waste; to be filed away somewhere for the archeologists of the future to ponder over?

In my home town, the pop-environmentalists have had their way so we do all we can to assure our garbage disposal issues are resolved by the “out of sight, out of mind” approach to problem solving;  “Got a problem? Ship it somewhere else and put it in a hole so I don’t have to look at it.”

The problem is, of course, a “Ship it somewhere else and put it in a hole so I don’t have to look at it,” approach results, in our case as least, in tens of tons of unnecessary diesel emissions to the atmosphere, an increase in fossil fuel use as electricity that could have been created through the incineration of non reusable garbage is not produced and, perhaps worst of all, the creation of an attitude that as long as we can ship a problem elsewhere there is no problem. 

In my community, garbage is collected then taken to a central location, compacted, containerized and loaded aboard freight trains for shipment. 

Containers loaded with garbage await shipment; out of sight, out of mind

It is an interesting aside that with few exceptions, manufactured goods cannot be shipped in or out of the community by train but, in order to avoid handling our own garbage we’ve managed to find a way to get the containers onto trains.

The garbage is then shipped across the mountains bordering coastal Washington to one of two destinations a couple of hundred miles out of sight where it is off loaded and dumped into a hole in the ground.

We are so proud of getting our garbage out of sight and out of mind in Whatcom County that we, as part of a report on greenhouse gas emissions in the county done under the auspices of our local Northwest Clean Air Agency and a pop environmental group of governments called ICLEI, proclaim:

“The greenhouse gas emissions generated from waste are dependent on the type of waste being disposed of and the configuration of the landfill where waste is disposed. Two processes usually occur in a landfill. First, the waste does not completely decompose, which causes some of the carbon that would have been released as CO2 to actually be sequestered in the landfill. Second, because of the lack of oxygen in the landfill, the decomposing matter is released as methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than CO2. If methane is not captured or burned, the landfill is a net source of greenhouse gas emissions. And in these cases, waste disposal can be a significant part of a community’s climate pollution profile. Some solutions include capturing the methane to produce energy or burning it to convert it back to the less potent CO2.”

Whatcom County’s waste is sent to Columbia Ridge and Roosevelt Landfill, sanitary landfills with methane recovery factors between 56% and 80%. This means that the majority of what decomposes in the landfill and is released as methane gas is captured (or “recovered”) at the landfill. In the County’s case, the net result is that a little bit more carbon equivalent is buried and trapped in the landfill than is added to the atmosphere. This effect explains why eCO2 emissions from our waste sector are reported as negative.”

Whatcom County is to be emulated world wide.  Who else can gather garbage, transport it by train for hundreds of miles, throw it into a hole in the ground and END UP WITH NEGATIVE EMISSIONS?

But wait.  We are proud of burning thousands, maybe tens of thousands of gallons of diesel to get our garbage to a place where we can produce methane from it but, happy days, we only emit 20 – 44% of that methane to the atmosphere?

We used to incinerate our garbage in our community, making electricity in the process.  The result?  Sure, carbon is emitted, but not concentrated in the form of methane!  And, fossil fuel emissions resulting from producing electricy using coal or gas fired plants are avoided.

And think about what the pop enviros don’t consider here.  Any strategy for disposal that can be utilized 200 miles away can be utilized in the community.  So where is the consideration of the emissions caused by a 200 mile trip to get the resource out of sight and out of mind?  Or is that kind of like the local city’s being lauded for purchasing 108% of its power from green energy sources?

Coal As An Environmental Enhancement?

A commenter on this blog recently asked, albeit indirectly, if I thought coal had a future as an energy source.

That is a good question. 

Coal, at present, has a pretty bad reputation.  How much of that is deserved and how much is manufactured is a matter of speculation. 

I think the answer to the question is probably “Yes.”

Despite all the angst about shipping and burning coal the fact remains coal is one of the most abundant energy sources on earth and, in some ways, if we learn to use it properly, one of the least impactive in an environmental sense.  In many of the largest economies coal also has the advantage of being abundant within the borders of the nation, therefore providing at least the possibility of energy independence.

Coal hasn’t always had the reputation it has today.  A 1946 advertisement for Pope and Talbot Lines brags up my hometown’s port in part because the city contains, “…the largest coal mine in the state.” 

Just as coal’s reputation has slipped, coal’s reputation can rebound.

As just one example, consider Germany, projected to be one of the United State’s leading customers for coal in coming years.  Germany is decommissioning nuclear power plants and building dozens of new coal plants to serve the energy needs lost to that decommissioning. 

The key to the future of coal is probably in a process called “gasification.”

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, “Coal gasification offers one of the most versatile and clean ways to convert coal into electricity, hydrogen, and other valuable energy products.”

 (http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/gasification/  

Addressing the environmental aspects of gasification, the department reports, “The environmental benefits of gasification stem from the capability to achieve extremely low SOx, NOx and particulate emissions from burning coal-derived gases. Sulfur in coal, for example, is converted to hydrogen sulfide and can be captured by processes presently used in the chemical industry. In some methods, the sulfur can be extracted in either a liquid or solid form that can be sold commercially.  In an Integrated Gasification Combined-Cycle (IGCC) plant, the syngas produced is virtually free of fuel-bound nitrogen.  NOx from the gas turbine is limited to thermal NOx. Diluting the syngas allows for NOx emissions as low as 15 parts per million. Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) can be used to reach levels comparable to firing with natural gas if required to meet more stringent emission levels. Other advanced emission control processes are being developed that could reduce NOx from hydrogen fired turbines to as low as 2 parts per million.

The Office of Fossil Energy is also exploring advanced syngas cleaning and conditioning processes that are even more effective in eliminating emissions from coal gasifiers. Multi-contaminant control processes are being developed that reduce pollutants to parts-per-billion levels and will be effective in cleaning mercury and other trace metals in addition to other impurities.

Coal gasification may offer a further environmental advantage in addressing concerns over the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. If oxygen is used in a coal gasifier instead of air, carbon dioxide is emitted as a concentrated gas stream in syngas at high pressure. In this form, it can be captured and sequestered more easily and at lower costs. By contrast, when coal burns or is reacted in air, 79 percent of which is nitrogen, the resulting carbon dioxide is diluted and more costly to separate.”

A coal gasification plant in Tampa, Florida

As study by the United Kingdom’s Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology speculates future emissions from the use of coal (with carbon capture technologies employed) will be about 1/7^th what they are today but there is an additional factor needing to be considered.

The Department of Energy discussion regarding coal gasification points out, “Gasification, in fact, may be one of the most flexible technologies to produce clean-burning hydrogen for tomorrow's automobiles and power-generating fuel cells. Hydrogen and other coal gases can also be used to fuel power-generating turbines, or as the chemical "building blocks" for a wide range of commercial products.”

For decades, hydrogen has been considered to be the premier fuel of the future in the nation’s automobiles.  When hydrogen combusts the major product of combustion is water but, hydrogen is difficult to produce in a cost and energy effective manner.

If coal provides the means to shift to a hydrogen economy in lieu of a fossil fuel based economy as the result of gasification, enormous benefits in terms of green house and other gas emissions might be realized.  The carbon footprint of coal might be negative in that use of the hydrogen produced in the gasification process replaces the use of petroleum products.

Does coal have a future?

Almost certainly it does.  In fact, the future of coal might just be bright. 

Unintended Consequences Harm The Environment As Much As Deliberate Actions Sometimes Do

Sometime later this year I hope to be releasing a book tentatively titled, “15 Ways To More Efficiently Pollute The Environment.”

The work will explore ways in which we, as a society, speak out of both sides of our mouths when it comes to environmental issues.

The issues discussed in this blog, and later in the book, often use Whatcom County, Washington as an example.  In part, that is because I live in Whatcom County so examples are more easily explored from the standpoint of personal experience and, in part because Whatcom County is a smallish county that has, due to its location and its amenities, attracted large numbers of the kind of snobbish elite commonly associated with the pop-environmental movement.

Unfortunately, to paraphrase the Las Vegas slogan, what happens in Whatcom County seldom stays in Whatcom County.

The kinds of environmentally adverse actions so often seen in the county are important examples because they are often the same kinds of actions being implemented in other regions of the state, the nation, and the world.   

As just one example, the local community is in an uproar over a bulk cargo port being proposed for an area of the county called Cherry Point.  Cherry Point is an industrial preserve set aside some years ago specifically as an area in which large scale industrial projects are to be located.

The issue in the current phase of the port project is coal.  The local pop-environmental community is coming unglued over the possibility coal might be shipped from Wyoming to Cherry Point, then loaded aboard ships and sent to China.  It is important to note, serious environmentalists are also involved in the discussion.

Railroads have been a fixture in the West for most of 150 years

Prominent in the discussion is the issue of emissions as trains pass through the region pulling the long strings of coal filled cars from one place to another.

All that is fine; the issues surrounding both the larger issues involved in selling coal for use overseas and the small issues involving communities impacted as significantly increased train traffic passes through those communities deserve full analysis as decision makers attempt to come to rational decisions regarding permits, mitigations and other aspects of the effort.

But the pop-environmental blasts are also disingenuous.  Some years ago a proposal for an intermodal freight facility in Whatcom County was brought forward by a group interested in providing a place where containers loaded aboard trucks could be transferred onto train cars for shipment to ultimate destinations.  The proposal would have resulted in very large reductions in diesel emissions along a hundred mile stretch of the I-5 corridor connecting the Canadian border crossings at Blaine to Seattle.  That proposal was objected to by some of the same interests now claiming diesel emissions are a problem.

A map dated 1903 showing Whatcom County and its links to transcontinental train routes

Whatcom County is on the border between British Columbia, Canada and the United States.  The border crossings in Whatcom County are among the busiest along the long border between the United States and one of its major trading partners.  Tens of thousands of trucks cross the border daily, carrying goods back and forth to markets located in both the U.S. and Canada.

Each of those trucks travel past the area once proposed for the intermodal facility, a facility that would allow containers destined for U.S. markets to be loaded aboard trains or, alternatively, containers destined for Canadian markets to be off loaded from those same trains. 

Either way, the destination or, the point of origin for the truck traffic is usually Seattle, the closest practical intermodal opportunity available today.  In Seattle, the containers are loaded aboard the same train cars they could have been loaded aboard in Whatcom County or, in the case of imports and exports, aboard ships.

The distance between the proposed intermodal facility in Whatcom County and Seattle destinations is more than one hundred miles each way or, a two hundred mile round trip.

The point?

Again, as explained above, many of the same people and the same groups opposing the coal terminal on the basis of emissions opposed the intermodal facility; a facility that had it been built would have taken thousands of trucks, and their emissions, off the crowded I-5 freeway system in favor of an alternative that would have reduced diesel emissions by as much as 80 – 90 percent and, in terms of wear and tear on roads and the consequent need to repair those roads with greenhouse gas intensive products like concrete, significant additional savings.

Thus, the point of the book; all too often the pop-environmental, based at best on knee jerk emotion and, at worst, on self-aggrandizement, takes over discussion of an environmental issue and, as a consequence, leads the rest of society into dead end roads that, in the final analysis, amount to little more than more efficient ways to create more pollution rather than less.  But they sure do feel good!

 

Finding Ways To More Efficiently Produce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The State of Washington has passed legislation to the effect that by the year 2020 greenhouse gas emissions in the state will be reduced to 1990 levels.  As usual, most of the efforts aimed at achieving that ambitious goal revolve around big, dramatic and socially disrupting projects that, in the end, will have little impact.  Almost no attention is paid to easily implemented changes that, taken in total, can significantly reduce emissions with little cost or need for bureaucracy involved.

An artifical "forest" lines a freeway off ramp in Washington State

One example is the widespread use of concrete to build sound barriers along the nation’s roads.

By all accounts, concrete manufacture, from the creation of the cement needed to create the concrete to the end use, is responsible for about 5% of annual greenhouse gas emissions influenced by the actions of humankind. 

On the other side of the equation, trees are one of the primary storage units for carbon.  Trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breath out oxygen; in comes the bad air, out goes the good air.  In the process the carbon is sequestered (trapped for the life of the wood) in the woody parts of the tree until the wood decomposes or is burned.

Using wood for lumber and other products  is considered to be an important greenhouse reduction strategy.  While in place, the wood retains the carbon it contains in isolation from the atmosphere and, where substituted for more carbon intensive uses, substantial reductions in emissions are achieved.

Over the past decade the U.S. Forest Service through its Forest Products Laboratory research arm has conducted extensive investigations into the impact on greenhouse gas emissions substituting wood for other materials might have.  A recent study indicates the potential to reduce emissions by substituting wood for concrete or steel in, especially, construction is very large.

Regarding noise barriers, the Forest Products Laboratory, more than a decade ago, released papers demonstrating that wood could effectively substitute for concrete in terms of effectiveness, cost and durability.

Maybe the tree can be removed to preserve the view of the "forest."

So, the question needing to be asked is; why are transportation departments like the State of Washington’s not changing over to wood as a primary material for sound barriers if that change would help the State meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals?

The answer is, for much the same reason most easily implemented environmental strategies go unattended to in favor of large scale, expensive and bureaucratically intensive approaches to environmental issues:  What is sexy about switching from concrete to wood when one can talk about high speed rail or tearing down dams that have produced low cost power for decades with little environmental downside once they were built?  Will the press flock to the governor’s office to hear about using lumber to build sound barriers or is the press more likely to be there regarding a big announcement regarding closing down a power plant?

Unfortunately, publicity drives the actions of too much of the environmental movement to the detriment of actual environmental enhancements.

Efforts like those proposed in the State of Washington’s grandiose proclamations regarding greenhouse gas reductions are doomed to failure when “feel good” becomes more important than good results.

wind power and rural lifestyles in Whatcom County

An interesting juxtaposition of recent events where I live serves to illustrate how convoluted the politics of the pop environmental movement can sometimes be.

Bellingham, Washington, where I reside, proudly proclaims its “green” orientation having won awards for the fact that all the power purchased by the city to run its operations is “green” power.

It is mildly amusing and indicative of how things work in the pop environmental movement to note the EPA Green Power website regarding Bellingham documents a remarkable “108.3%” of the power consumed by the city is green.

Even as it pursues a green image, the city involves itself in planning issues, especially planning issues outside its own urban growth area boundaries; for environmental reasons, of course.

Recently the city, one of its functionaries, a few citizens and a downtown Seattle based environmental watchdog group called Futurewise (also a promoter of “green” power) challenged Whatcom County (Bellingham is the county seat) in the legal venue regarding growth allowed outside the growth boundaries of the cities on private lands not set aside for the preservation of agriculture, forestry or resource extraction.   The lands, designated “Rural” under the auspices of Washington’s Growth Management Act are land defined by the act as, among other things, areas:

·        In which open space, the natural landscape, and vegetation predominate over the built environment;

·        That foster traditional rural lifestyles, rural-based economies, and opportunities to both live and work in rural areas;

·        That provide visual landscapes that are traditionally found in rural areas and communities;

It should be understood that rural lands, as defined by the Growth Management Act, do not include lands already set aside by a jurisdiction like Whatcom County for large scale (some call it factory farming) agriculture.  Rural lands are the lands set aside to provide for small scale family farms and other traditional lifestyle choices generally found in rural areas.

In Whatcom County, because so much of the land is owned by government, a bit less than 10% of the County is even available for small scale family farms and traditional rural lifestyles; zoned for rural uses.  86% of the county is reserved for larger scale agriculture, forests, national parks and other uses precluding development.

In general, over the years, the discussion in Whatcom County, with a cadre of Bellingham City Council members, residents of the city, the urban based group Futurewise and others leading the charge, has been that large scale farming is good while traditional rural lifestyles based on small acreages are bad (they call it rural sprawl).

One big issue with allowing people to live on small family farms or other small acreage homesteads in the county has been the idea that allowing too many people to choose to live in the County radically changes, and thus destroys, the traditional rural views city folk have come to expect as they traverse the county on the way to the ski slopes or to their condos in the mountains. 

The County’s Comprehensive Plan waxes poetic in its description of what rural life in Whatcom County is to be:  “Rural," the plan proclaims, is, “ a middle ground between urban/suburban settings and true wilderness, consists of large spaces, low-intensity uses, and environmentally fragile areas. Rural evokes images of fields and crops, farm buildings, rolling hills, great sweeping valleys, wooded ridges, wide inspiring views, peace and quiet, and a sense of small town community. Often associated with these images is the fragrance of fresh cut hay, spread fertilizers, and plowed earth. These are all characteristics not normally associated with more urbanized communities.”

No one reading that lofty language would be surprised that more than 70% of the oversight committee for the plan were city residents.

In short, at least to city dwellers, large scale farming is more picturesque and allow for more open views of the hills and trees than all those icky little farms and rural dwellings do.

So consider the photo here.



wind farms to help feed Bellingham's appetite for "green" power



The photo was taken near rural Thorpe, Washington.

In the foreground are all those icky little farms (rural sprawl) the City of Bellingham, some of its residents and Futurewise so despise and are working to eliminate.  Notice how all those little farms ruin the view.

On the ridge overlooking the view despoiling farms are 400 foot tall behemoths busily helping to provide the “green” energy the City of Bellingham consumes and actually pays extra for in order to allow the building of even more of the beautiful structures.  Each of those structures consumes between one and three acres of ground (pasture, cropland, wildlife habitat depending on where it is located) and, requires a road system capable of allowing semi trucks and heavy equipment to traverse the hillsides for construction and maintenance.  Each of the structures is nearly twice as tall as the tallest building in Bellingham from the ground to the top of the propeller. 

If you peek through the wall of windmills you can see, the “wide and inspiring views” of the Cascade Mountain range, views like those the challengers to the rural element in Whatcom County say must be preserved near Bellingham.

Bellingham and Whatcom County illustrate almost perfectly why terms like NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) come into the vocabulary.  What they also illustrate is the willingness of the pop-environmental movement to impose the consequences of life in the modern world on other communities; “I need the electricity, just make sure I don’t have to watch it being made; and when I go for my Sunday drive, I have a right to see wide open vistas without all those icky rural people cluttering up the view.”