Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Creating a Sustainable “City?”

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007

So, is El Salvador a model for Sustainable Energy Use?

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007

Optimistic Energy Supply Projections – WEC?

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Optimistic Energy Supply Projections?

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 American Association of Petroleum Geologists

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Assumed popul. peaks at 7B (1.85 children per family) Danish and German experience indicates that as the fraction of generation from wind approaches 20 per cent in a region, both transmission and backup requirements become more costly.

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 The Promise of Wind Energy?

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 The Promise of the Hydrogen Economy?

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 The Promise of Biomass Energy? Typical Best Energy Efficiency Solar Fossil fuel / power plant Fossil fuel / I.C. auto 50% ~40% ~20% 0% Mass at Atmospheric Temperature Pre-industrial revolution <0.1%

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 The Promise of Solar Energy? 6 Boxes at 3.3 TW Each Nathan Lewis, California Institute of Technology

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 ISES Sustainable Population Ecological Footprint: Present 9 hectares/ person

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Short term fixes? Plug-in hybrids or electric vehicles: 100 new nuclear plants or 200 new coal-fired power plants in the U.S. Clean coal?

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Earth Systems Engineering Possible short-term technological fixes?

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Odum and Odum: “ The Prosperous Way Down” Basic Premise: Resource scarcity and rising costs cause the global economy to contract. Question: How to do this gently if possible?

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007

Odum and Odum: “Pulsing Cycle” (1)growth on abundant available resources, with sharp increases in a system’s population, structure, and assets, based on low-efficiency and high competition (capitalism and monopolistic overgrowth); (2) climax and transition, when the system reaches the maximum size allowed by the available resources, increases efficiency, develops collaborative competition patterns, and prepares for descent by storing information; (3) descent, with adaptations to less resources available, a decrease in population and assets, an increase in recycling patterns, and a transmission of information in a way that minimizes losses; (4) low-energy restoration, with no-growth, consumption smaller than accumulation, and storage of resources for a new cycle ahead.

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Odum and Odum: Empower What is it? Energy embodied in a product or service?

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Odum and Odum: The Prescription 1. Use biological model to develop paradigm for world’s economy  Maximum empower. ‘in the self-organizational processes, systems develop those parts, processes, and relationships that maximize useful empower’. So, we need to maximize the “production” of both the smallest and largest scales in the economy. ‘Choose alternatives that maximize empower intake and use’.

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Odum and Odum: The Prescription 2. Population has to be reduced at the same rate as the rate of resource use in order to maintain same standard of living. 3. Decrease urban concentration

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Odum and Odum: The Prescription 4. Eliminating wasteful consumption of fuel without reducing empower 5. Reduce prominence of automobiles…communication replacing transportation. How do we recreate our cities / communities to eliminate the need for cars while still providing maximum empower. Humanity must still thrive (think, learn, grow, work, etc..). How to retain these while reducing waste?

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Odum and Odum: The Prescription 6. Establish a livable greenhouse gas balance. Policy to reward energy efficient appliances for home $$ Fuel saved Tax relief returned to reward those who saved energy Point: People will still be able to realize benefits of appliances (emergy), but not in a way that kills the economy. The fuel savings are a real economic benefit.

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Odum and Odum: The Prescription 7. Use lower intensity agriculture Eliminate use of high energy fertilizers, grow crops suited to locale, mixed cropping systems, and more

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Odum and Odum: The Prescription 7. Use lower intensity agriculture Eliminate use of high energy fertilizers, grow crops suited to locale, mixed cropping systems, and more 8. Shift back to agrarian society Focus on sustainability. Soils and forests are renewable, but only with slower rotations than operated by our present economy. We can let fields go fallow for seasons, cut and replant forests on renewable cycles, and let swamps build peat and filter to sustain water quality. These are ways to keep slowly renewable materials available.

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Odum and Odum: The Prescription 9. Peace and maximum empower by global sharing of information Examples of important messages that need to be shared globally are: protecting the purity of the global atmosphere, maintaining cordiality and trade between neighboring countries that are culturally different, and sharing technologies that Are useful anywhere. 10. Selected saving of civilized culture Significant resources are needed to copy, store, disseminate and test the existing information. Like the brain, society has to select and condense the clutter of short-term memory into fewer items of long-term memory.

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Odum and Odum: The Prescription 11. Priority use of “hydroelectric”?? power….Rather solar power!

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Odum and Odum: The Prescription 12. Move from growth capitalism economic paradigm. When most growth is over and the public realizes the fundamental change, a destructive stock market crash is possible. Some mechanism is needed to program a gradual, non-catastrophic deflation of the money held in stocks and bonds. For example, an economy-wide stepwise limitation of interest and dividend rates could shift money from stocks and bonds to ownership and efficient operation of those productive enterprises with good annual yields. Other Impacts? ….Retirement?.... Investment in companies?.....Loans?

Creating a Sustainable City, Cities and Energy, Winter 2007 Odum and Odum: The Prescription 13. Built infrastructure should be long-lasting and derived from biological and technological cycles. Materials stage Manufacturing stage Post-use stage Use stage