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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
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."
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.
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"?
They already refitted the Empire State Building, and achieved payoff in only 3 years. Now it's saving $4.4M/year of pure gravy.
It can certainly cost millions, but the returns can be much more, over the life of the building.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Nitrogen. That is just air really. Strangely, Nitrogen is cheaper than dried air. Got to be dry else you get condensation on the inside of the glass.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Nitrogen. That is just air really. Strangely, Nitrogen is cheaper than dried air. Got to be dry else you get condensation on the inside of the glass.
Amusingly, it is also significantly more insulative than air, even though so much of air is nitrogen.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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.
You would only need to cover some percentage of desert area (not even all of it: do a computation using the solar constant, total world energy production and assume only 12% conversion efficiency for PV - you'll be surprised of how low the percentage of the world surface would need to be covered by PV-es. I've done this computation in the past). The only engineering problem is the transport of the energy around the globe.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Nice diagram, though it's 39 quadrillion BTUs, not 39%. Still, 40% of $280B total electricity cost would be $39B annually; a pretty significant savings. But it's more than that, because thermal efficiencies result in a lot of savings from gas & oil heating too.
But it's unrelated to the issue of fossil fuels. Efficiency gains reduce and delay the impact of CO2 emissions, but transitioning our energy infrastructure away from fossil fuels will still have to happen sooner or later, even if only to maintain supply.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
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.