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Could New York City Cut Emissions 90% By 2050?
First time accepted submitter jscheib writes "According to Will Oremus in Slate, a report released today finds that 'New York City could slash its emissions by a whopping 90 percent by 2050 without any radical new technologies, without cutting back on creature comforts, and maybe even without breaking its budget.' The key elements are insulating buildings to cut energy needs, converting to (mostly) electric equipment, and then using carbon-free electricity to supply the small amount of energy still needed. Oremus notes that including energy savings would reduce the net price tag to something more like $20 billion."
In Detroit. The population's gone from 1M to 800k in twenty years, and energy consumption has plummeted. New York can emulate this success just by continuing it's current direction.
Of course new technologies will make it possible to reduce emissions, possibly even by 100%, but anyone claiming to plan these things 37 years into the future is full of it. Read some Ray Kurzweil books to get some perspective - maybe he's too optimistic, and then again maybe he isn't. By that time we could definitely have StarTrams, asteroid mining, SBSP, space nuclear, space antimatter, who knows...
Central planners have a long history of screwing things up...
--libman
If he would just stop saving the city and let the League of Shadow destroys the city and kill all its inhabitants, then yes it is possible.
Cutting CO2 mainly depends on technology (or cutting the standard of living, which most people don't want to do), aimed at two areas:
1) Non-emitting cars. Electric cars look more viable every day; it's not inconceivable that most people could be driving them by by 2050.
2) Power generation. Whether it comes from coal sequestration or my preferred solution, nuclear fusion, cutting CO2 relies on improvements in power generation technology.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Sounds like they get to have their cake *and* eat it too. It's a miracle! Let's not kid ourselves: regardless of whether or not you personally think that it's worth it, important, essential, whatever--cutting CO2 emissions is extremely costly. Even 20 BILLION doesn't just grow on trees. It has to come from somewhere. It's all trade-offs. If your personal paradigm says it's worth 20 Billion, than you're unlikely to care if your taxes go up to cover the bill, and your ability to afford your "creature comforts" declines.
Will they? Ah! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!
Last I checked, NYC does not exist in a vacuum. Addressing residential energy efficiency would barely put a dent in our enormous energy consumption. Perhaps if we succeed in completely moving industry over to China it could mean something, but not something good in either case.
Efficiency is a worthy pursuit, but we need focus on real energy solutions, not the fantasy that we can arbitrarily reduce our energy consumption to zero, or that we will ever derive a significant fraction of our energy from renewables.
We might also move to 100% green energy if we carpet the entire surface of the earth with solar cells. Until people reduce and make their own efforts to reduce there energy needs through economic (if you don't save on costs or get paid, it is not reasonable to ask people to change their habits) means then it wont work.
Please don't repeat Gillard's absolute failure in Australia when it comes to insulating buildings. She was responsible for numerous deaths and nearly bankrupting our country.
As a lifelong rural inhabitant, I've always been amazed, whenever I've visited NYC, at just how energy-inefficient many of the buildings are. Single-pane windows, little insulation, baseboard heaters, drafty weatherstripping, the works. I've been there when it's been blazingly hot, and again when it's been bitterly cold, and in both cases the standard solution seems to be to just crank the environmental controls to max. When you split wood in the summer for heat in the winter you quickly develop a respect for how quickly those little inefficiencies add up, and you do something about them. Apparently New Yorkers don't have a similar feedback loop between their effort and their energy usage. Either that, or they're making so much money packaging derivatives their power bills are below the monthly bill noise floor.
...better than first post ;)
That's what they achieved when they retrofitted the Empire State Building. Paid for itself in only 3 years, and now delivers $4.4M savings annually.
Insulation, smart energy controls etc do cost money, but the energy savings can more than pay for it over the life of the building. Better designs can save up to 69% of energy costs. And there's a lot of ripple-effect savings too, by reducing emissions and freeing up capital.
Of course, getting completely off coal, oil & gas will eventually cut emissions to zero, but there's a more immediate & guaranteed payoff simply by improving efficiencies.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_set_in_New_York_City#New_York_City_destroyed_on_film
Or maybe not...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Nuclear has a very low carbon footprint.
One of the things they mention in there is insulation. It's a bit hard to insulate big glass windows, which new york has a lot of. Yes you can double pane them and even (very expensively) vacuum the middle but they still transfer heat pretty well.
Unless of course you got rid of those windows, but they said without removing any creature comforts. I don't know about anybody else, but sunlight fits into my definition of a creature comfort.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Really? By then I sure hope that most cars will be using some kind of "clean" energy, if not, someone is clearly not doing his job right.
New York can reduce Co2 emissions by doing the following:
1) Stop burning oil. Start with outlawing the burning of #6 oil then stop the burning of #2 oil. Convert to gas.
2) Home insulation, double pane windows, better weather stripping
3) Hybrid cars, electric cars, Hi mileage cars
4) More energy efficient appliances, lighting, and air conditioning
I stayed at a really fancy hotel in NYC, where enormous amounts of money had been spent on interior decoration. But the windows were single glass windows which let through a lot of cold and noise. You cannot buy such bad windows in many European countries. Why do they not install proper triple-glass windows? I have not seen any building in NY with proper windows. Do they not sell them in the US?
Everybody sensible already knows you can, but people are afraid of investments. Of course insulation pays back quite soon but people are afraid of investments.
The only ones who can really help are banks. They could lower mortgages on well insulated houses. 1% is a big incentive.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
So, Lovins has been promoting "super-[insulating]-windows" a well as "curving" pipes (that may have been bent, in original designs, by 90 deg's, thereby causing increased friction, to fluids moving through them, thus requiring larger pumps, that require far more power to drive them), to bring buildings closer to being zero-emissions.
This is what happens when a Physicist is put in[to competition] with the architects, et al., who typically have more to do with how much a building costs to run, over its lifetime.
He calls for contracts with architects, that call for post-completion payments - whenever the building saves $$$ for its owner, in reduced operating costs. (An architect could even earn such payments by modifying the building to save running costs, in conjunction with checking its various systems, that routinely occur in the early years, after being released into service.)
(See Lovins' talks, etc., on TED.com & Fora.TV, etc.)
rick rolled how original.
While I know NYC has it's problems it's got lots of great people. You know what happened to the last bunch of idiots that attacked NYC don't you? They've been running and hiding and dying ever since.
What a stupid question! They could ban cars and force all people to become vegetarians. Of they could kill all inhabitants of the city. There are endless possibilities to cut down emissions.
It has zero good people. New Yorkers are cunts.
"This video contains content from Channel 5 and WMG, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."
I find that hindering would-be Rickrollers is actually the best outcome of copyright law.
What, exactly, is the zero carbon source of electricity that could power NYC?
As I read the criteria "creature comforts" I take that to mean there would still be buses and taxis, presumably running on electricity (ignoring for the moment that cabs run 24x7 and have no real window for battery charging), heating and air conditioning would keep everyone warm or cool, and that Times Square would not go dark, the stock market will still be run out of NYC, etc.
Ken
Lots of NYC buildings are heated by centralized steam or hot water systems. Most of them have only a single thermostat for the whole system. In an individual apartment, the typical way to adjust temperature in the winter is to crack open a window when it gets too hot. This is because an old-fashioned steam radiator is either on or off - it offers no in-between setting. It is possible to retrofit radiators with thermostatic controls, but this just isn't done very much (despite the fact that it typically does save the building owner money). In addition, some rooms are heated by pipes without any available controls. The only way to adjust their heat output is to put insulation around them partly. And occasionally, some idiot will leave the boiler room door open, and since that's where the thermostat is located, the heat will run continuously.
Because burning more would be pointless unless it were for some use.
But if you're reducing your profligacy, you're not going to be buying tat from abroad, so there's no need.
PS does your complaint mean that you are THANKING the Chinese for buying more coal and oil because that reduces how much the rest of the world is burning?
'cos I've never heard anyone say that.
Only 10% of the city will be above sea-level by then.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Total up how much water is in the ocean and how much New York uses.
And it will only cost 20 billion!???..... Hmmm. I have a new defense technology for you. It's made of paper, weighs only 20 pounds, will carry about 1 - 2 tons of explosive bombs or missiles, flies by remote control so there's no risk of casualties, and has a range of about 10,000 miles, uses solar energy and will only add about 65 million to the defense budget. Of course, there might be a few extra additions to the cost as we add more research and testing. No more than 10 bil or so, I'm sure. And we'll have to spread it around to different congressional districts. Why? Er, because such a good project deserves the support of more than a few nice congress people.
What do you mean I'm over-rating the project? Pork!? C'mon! Maybe you need to spread your project around a bit more in the same way. Oh, you say that's the plan. Uhh. . . . OK, nevermind.
If a headline asks a question, the answer is no.
Oh goody! You found the Internet. Welcome!
If you think this is good, just wait until you find the sites about Free Energy and alien pyramids on Mars. They will blow your mind.
...the answer is no. Not that it isn't technically possible. It almost certainly is, but the collective will required for such a change, and to no small degree the collective will of those that oppose such a change, makes it virtually impossible.
Anyone going into NYC for a day is impressed with their subway system. It is affordable and there is a stop on almost every corner.
If "they" could find a way to reduce the remaining need for automobiles and trucks their pollution levels would drop like a rock.
Much less and more efficient transportation.
More efficient living situation.
Steward Brand, one of the early environmentalists and Silicon Valley technologists, wrote an interesting book on this.
One can still make more improvements.
I founded an award-winning startup a couple years ago whose software tells you what your potential energy savings are, using only your street address and zipcode as inputs, so I've been tracking developments like this closely. What the experts call "sealing the envelope of the building," or thoroughly insulating the structure, does give you the biggest bang for the buck (although the ROI for triple-paned windows, as the article suggests, just isn't there). But that's not terribly sexy because once the insulation's in it's hard to brag to the neighbors about something that's invisible. An array of solar panels or a cool wind turbine are much better for that.
And NYC's solar potential is decent, at 4.08. That means that on average NYC gets 4.08 hours of peak solar production every day. A 200 Watt panel in NYC would therefore produce 200 Watts/hr for 4.08 hours, or roughly 0.8 kwh/day. You need 15 of those panels to produce the 12kwh/day, or 440kwh/month, that the average family uses.
When you consider those kinds of numbers, it quickly becomes obvious that all the chatter about "stressing the grid" with increased demand for electricity is FUD. What they're really worried about is this, which is already happening in Germany with the solar capacity they have today. That is, the profit curve for the fossil-fuel powered utilities has been gutted by renewables because they make most of their moneye during the height of the day when the demand is highest, and coincidentally exactly when solar performs best.
Especially now that we have seen several times this year, thanks to Hurricane Sandy and the Superstorm last week, that the grid is not reliable everyone is reaching the collective 'aha!' moment that causes a huge shift in energy consumption behavior and that the fossil fuel companies are terrified of.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Of course this is because the oil is supposed to tap out by 2046 and scientists are not supposed to be able to find a viable alternative to gas until ~2146.
All "by 2050" stories are pretty stupid due to this.
I tend to see them as private property-- because they are. As much as I support green energy, I oppose increasing government power. I find the use of government to impose regulation on the people when not in the interest of defending the rights and safety of others to be immoral. A city is a place to live, not a toy that special interests should be allowed to tinker with, especially using the $167 billion I assume they will be stealing from taxpayers who probably won't even live in NYC, but will be from around the state or even around the USA through federal graft.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"converting to (mostly) electric equipment"
And where are they going to get all of this electricity? I would wager that at least a third, if not half of the energy usage in NYC is fossil fuel based. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it, but you're not going to do it with renewables (baring discover of a cheap high density storage medium). Building new Nuclear plants is the only reasonable path, the number of which would be determined by how successful you were in implementing the other areas of the plan (insulation, sun shades, heat recovery, PV, Wind, etc)
On a more serious note, it's odd and disturbing that the idea of population control has been abandoned. In a lot of '80s sci-fi you can see that it's recognized as a serious problem, and then somewhere in the early/mid '90s it's like everyone just...gave up. It just doesn't get brought up anymore. It's like it's been accepted that attempts at population control are futile and we'll have to deal with the fallout.
I wonder if that could be the future of the global warming debate. Accepting that we're going to trash the planet and just dealing with the consequences, moving onto treating a symptom of a problem we've given up on.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It will just take a really big hurricane ;-(
Yeah like sitting in a 90 degree apartment block in the middle of winter with all the windows open isn't the norm in NYC. Or the crazy case of a known university where the thermostat for the inside of the building was outside - You had to heat up the whole of NYC before the damn heating would turn off.... A start at least...