Climate & Energy

Summer 2021 was different in New York than past summers. It wasn't the relentless brutal heat that we'd experienced the last few years. The heat that finally drove my parents in Vermont to install air conditioning.

That was constant and oppressive, but not acute. You did kind of adapt to it. You learn that the Walkway Over the Hudson opens their gates at 7am, so 6:30am is the earliest bike ride you can take to see the Hudson in the morning before the heat and humidity makes the return climb on the bike just too much. It meant that if it was too humid, maybe a walk at 6am was a better option, back in by 7, then buttoned up in AC the rest of the day. It was definitely climate change, but it onset slow enough through May and June that it felt just like some new normal.

This summer was different. It was acute. The first big hit was a rainstorm in the middle of July. The rains were different this summer. There were almost no rainy days. Only rainy minutes. The bursts would come as a quarter or half inch of rain, in 20 or 30 minutes, then pass. Sometimes with a rainbow on the other side. The rainstorm in July was hard, but not that notable compared to the rest. Except, the watershed is wide. Many of our local streams are fed from tends of miles away in every direction. And the Sprout Creek had more than it could handle.

Flooding damage at Freedom Park

Our daughter was in camp at the park this July. Finally signed up for swimming lessons. And the lake was now closed. It's still feels incredible to say "climate change cancelled my daughter's swim lessons." And just when that was starting to sink in, the second shot.

The Bootleg fire, and the fires raging across western Canada, brought their smoke to NY. I went out for a morning ride on the 19th, and the Sun was definitely the wrong color. It rose as a deep eerie red, both striking and horrifying at the same time. The Sun was weak on the ride. The air cooler than it should have been. It made me think of the 1816 year without summer, or what a future attempt to dim the Sun to address the deadly heat might feel like.

The wildfires and volcanoes of elsewhere have always brought colorful sunsets to the North East, but this time was different. The smoke came down. Sitting on our porch eating dinner that night, I smelled a campfire. Folks in the neighborhood have them all the time. But this time I checked the air quality, and realized, to my shock that I wasn't smelling a backyard marshmallow roast. This was old forests, 3000 miles away. Forests that were part of carbon offset payments.

The next day my wife started complaining of a headache. I looked, and the AQI was 180 outside where she'd spent the afternoon. And a new habit was formed. Check the AQI every morning when I wake up. Was it healthy enough to go ride a bike. We've now got our own Purple Air sensor to help map out this new risk to our region. The wildfires of far that now burn so big, so hot, that they can blanket the entire US in smoke. The world literally on fire.

When Henri formed as a storm, I watched closely. We were predicted for 4 - 6 inches of rain, which I knew would be devastating, having seen Irene and Sandy's impacts to the region. But modeling rainfall is notoriously hard, and we only saw about 2.5 inches over 2 days. The rivers swelled, but stayed in their banks. The rivers were now high, springtime high, but not dangerous on their own.

We had a interlude. A kid's birthday party, outside on the Hudson River. Next to the freight rail, which 5 big trains passed us while we were there. I was talking with a friend about climate change and the Hudson River. People forget it's tidal. That the ocean pushes up it twice a day. It changes direction 4 times a day. And that sea level rise will come for it. I pointed out how exposed the MTA Hudson Line is to sea level rise. To the south it's barely 2 feet above current high tide. 2 feet of sea level rise, which with no real climate action, will happen within 30 years. Aggressive action might give us a century. And what will this region look like when that train is gone. Pre-covid, those commuter trains were full all the time. The growth of Beacon and Poughkeepsie has been fueled by easy access to New York City. It represents a huge amount of the money flowing into the economy.

And then Ida. The meteorologists were right, Ida should not have taken us by surprise. They wrote the warning for the storm before it had a name, 5 days out. They gave the North East 48 hrs notice of catastrophic flooding possibilities. They couldn't have done a better job. But people can only hear things that they believe are possible. Their imagination is shaped by what they saw before. When I mentioned to my wife that Weather Underground thought we were going to get 3.5 inches of rain, she said, I hope not. It can be wrong for sure. But they always thought Henri was a 2 inch event for us.

The rains came. Steady at first. And building. And when it was all said and done over 5 inches had fallen here in less than 24 hours. On top of the saturated ground. This time the rivers did not stay put. It took the whole of a sunny day after the storm for with Wappingers creek to crest, and it's still receding. Areas remain under water, there is no where for the water to go.

Freedom Lake is gone again. This didn't surprise us. After going 7 years between flood induced rebuilds, this time it was 7 weeks. They'll have the whole off season to fix it. But for how long?

But the real surprise. The one we weren't expecting. The trains are stopped.

Riding across the Walkway over the Hudson seeing a silent Poughkeepsie Train station was bizarre. The MTA is working on it, trying to find a way to repair enough for limited service on those lines. It also means Amtrak for Albany to NYC is shuttered until further notice. And there were no freight trains on the CSX rails on the West side of the river yesterday.

Labor day brings the unofficial end of summer. The temperature, humidity, and air quality have all dropped back to extremely pleasant.

But we are only half way through Hurricane season. The ground is saturated, there is no where for more water to go. And we are still in a Pandemic.

Many parts of the world have been living this kind of climate emergency for years. Disaster after disaster, no breathing space between them. We can't rebuild from climate disasters fast enough. Our town's park budget is broken, because of Climate Change. And this isn't a new normal. As we continue to burn fossil fuels, this gets worse every year. This will be "one of the good years" when we look back from mid century. It's why we have to do everything we can to transform our society away from extraction of dirty fuels, and to something far more collaborative and cleaner. This is a special time in history where the future will really be decided over the next few years. Not many people have the chance to live in a moment in history where this much change is possible. It's a brutal responsibility, but one that if you embrace you'll look back knowing you did what you could to really shape the future for the better.

This past week I was talking with my folks on the phone, and my mom asked a question: What climate organizations should she give to? She has typically been giving to various animal welfare organizations, but it's really been occurring to her that all that work is for naught if we fail to act on climate.

In the chance anyone else is interested in the answers, here we go. Let's give the simple list, and then why later.

501c4 Lobbying Orgs (non tax deductable): Citizens' Climate Lobby, Sunrise Movement.

501c3 Orgs: 350.org, Environmental Voter Project

Climate Journalism/Media: Drilled News, Heated, Hottake, Our Warm Regards 🔗💀.

501c4 orgs

Many people associate not for profit corporations with tax exempt charity status, but that's not strictly true. To be granted tax exempt status there are a bunch of rules around it. One of it is that you can't spend the majority of your resources on Lobbying elected officials (the official rule is something like 10%, so you'll see lots of charities with a 20 person staff having 1 policy person, that's fine).

The thing about climate change: it's a really big problem. A problem that needs systems change to really solve. And that means policy. Which means you really do need to lobby for things. And a few of these orgs are all in for doing that.

Citizens' Climate Lobby is an organization I've devoted a lot to. At the heart of the organization is a belief that the way forward on climate is by strengthening democracy, and that a big part of that is training volunteers all over the country to go into elected officials offices as citizen lobbyists, and ask for it. We'll never outspend the professionals, but we do outnumber them. In the past 3 years I've now done over 20 lobby sessions, including 7 with my congressman's office (once with him directly). I now feel incredibly empowered to sit down with my elected officials and ask them for things. In many of those meetings I've had break through moments realizing that we were bringing brand new information and perspectives to the table.

Supporting this org means funding the national staff, who manage education, messaging, and materials for the 195,000 volunteers in the group. I've met most of the national staff now, many have become friends. They work on a shoestring budget for what their impact is.

Sunrise Movement is a youth climate organization, founded in 2017, who were thrust onto the national stage through the Green New Deal plan. Sunrise is also one of the organizations most responsible for pushing the Democratic presidential field into being better on climate. They are working off a theory for change from the Civil Rights Movement.

They also only let you join the organization directly if you are under 35. This is a youth centered organization, specifically lifting the voices of millennial and gen z.

So while I can't join, I can support them financially, which again pays for their leaders to be able to build the movement.

501c3 Orgs

350.org - The organization started by Bill McKibben named after the safe atmospheric level of CO2 we need to get to. We're currently at 414 (pre-industrial was 280ish). Their work of late has been focused on divestment, getting organizations to divest their investments from fossil fuels. When they started this work there was a lot of skepticism that it would mean anything, because there was always more money on the table. But, a decade in, it's starting to snowball now. The fossil fuel companies are starting to complain about lack of financing, and it's definitely removing social license from them.

350.org was the first charity I gave to who was working on changing systems, not just relieving suffering. I've been donating to them for over 10 years, and it's really great so see this work coming to fruition.

Environmental Voter Project - I first heard about this org 3 years ago, and went all in this year.

It turns out Environmentalists tend to suck at going to the ballot box. And this is one of the reasons why politicians don't prioritize the issue, because it hasn't won them elections. EVP exists to change this, by building lists of people where Environment and/or Climate are their top issue, but who don't vote regularly. And then, we text them, call them, knock on their doors. Remind them an election is coming up. Remind then that voting is a norm. Ask them to say out load to us that they are going to vote.

Because it turns out if you tell someone you are going to do something out loud, you are far more likely to. EVP doesn't tell anyone how to vote. Just works to make Environmentalists super voters. People that show up to vote for every election, from president, to school board, to dog catcher.

In addition to financial support, I helped organize and run phone banking hours this fall, and activating a lot of CCL volunteers to help make calls. This organization is really running on a shoe string budget, and all money goes into buying the data sets and supporting their very small national staff.

Journalism / Media

One of the dramatic changes that happened on the climate landscape this past couple of years is a whole lot of really talented people (mostly women) ventured out of safer media landscapes and decided there was a lot of climate journalism not being told because of the publishing companies didn't see value in it. Maybe that's because of how much ad revenue they get from fossil fuels? Maybe other reasons.

But, these folks changed the narrative, and also showed the appetite for it all.

Drilled - I personally found my way in here via Amy Westervelt's incredible Drilled podcast (now in season 5). It tells the story of the huge disinformation campaign that's been waged by the fossil fuel industry for decades to block climate action. This is required listening for anyone wanted to make change in the space. It's infuriating at times, but sets up the real stakes going forward. Once she made an option to support the effort, I was all in.

Heated - Just of a year ago Emily Atkins quit her job and started a climate news letter full time for people that were angry about climate change. It was great. The first couple of months she did it for free, but was always up front that she would make it subscription based so she could pay the rent. I'm pretty sure I signed up day one that she did. Her voice is amazing, and she's asking hard questions of powerful people. Her complaints about Twitter's ad policy around climate denial changed policy there. The list of powerful folks that consider Heated required reading is only growing.

Hot Take - Amy Westervelt teamed up with Mary Annaise Heglar to make a podcast (and now news letter) that discussed the best of climate writing. Not just journalism, but all kinds of writing. It's great stuff, and the two of them riffing off each other is always incredible. Again, once they had an option to financially support them, I was all in.

Our Warm Regards 🔗💀 - This has been a years long project by Jacquelyn Gill and Ramesh Laungani. Jacquelyn is one of my favorite climate voices on twitter. This podcast centers some of the science of climate change, but in often unexpected ways. The recent episode on the Tempestries project (making scarves that show the temperatures changes of time), was really remarkable. This year they setup a patreon to help pay for interns to help with the show. Again, I was all in.

Why so many?

We don't yet know what will be the winning solution on climate. Will it be insider policy work? Will it be outside pressure? Will it be social license change? Will it be changing the electorate? Will it require all of the above and more?

I'm privileged to be working in an industry where we're paid quite well. So I feel like I can support a bunch of these efforts both with money and time. I also feel like the journalism side doesn't get enough attention. Climate journalism is critical to connect these impacts with our day to day lives, and exposing some of the history around industry disinformation to block action.

If you are looking for one answer - Citizens' Climate Lobby remains the organization I give the most to, and where I think some of the bigest outcomes are likely to be. Especially given that the Senate is going to be somewhere between 52-48 R/D, to 50-50. How we collectively partnered with EVP this fall and activated a huge number of volunteers and leaders to do that work was amazing.

2hrs and 50 minutes. When I looked at my phone yesterday, that's how much time it said I had left in the audio book of All We Can Save, a remarkable collection of essays and poetry on the climate crisis and solutions. This is just a bit longer than a 30 mile bike ride to New Paltz and back on the rail trail. Having been working since 6am, I decided a long afternoon bike ride was both needed and deserved. I popped on my aftershocks head phones, and off I went.

A bonus of the audio book is that all the poetry is read by the two editors, Dr Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Dr Katharine Wilkinson, while all the essays are read by a collection of equally impressive woman like Jane Fonda, Julia Luis Dreyfuss, America Ferrera, and many more.

This book is remarkable. The wide range of voices, all with important but different insights. It's not a single voice with an overriding thesis that keeps trying to convince you of something, it's a rich chorus of personal experiences. 40 essays and 20 poems, orchestrated in an incredible tempo. There are so many layers in this book, that it will require rereading and relistening, and discussing and absorbing for years to come. And I cherish that idea of coming back to this book time and time again.

It's hard to pick favorite pieces, but a few stand out in this first reading. (Many of the pieces were published in other forms prior to this book, so I'll link to earlier versions where I can.)

Did It Ever Occur to You That Maybe You’re Falling in Love? is an irreverent take on "the problem". It hit really close to home, and I laughed out loud during parts. Dr Ayana Elizabeth Johnson's reading of it was spot on.

Heaven or High Water - Sarah Miller goes "undercover" in Miami pretending to be a Silicon Valley Wife looking for a place in this city under siege. And she keeps asking the realitors about climate change, and how it's impacting them.

Reciprocity - Janine Benyus tells of her experience in forestry and ecology, and how a dominant narrative of individualism shaped forestry science for 5 decades. This prevented us from understanding what was actually happening beneath the soil, and the ways that trees exchange nutrients, and are healthier in a collective with diverse species.

A Field Guide for Transformation - Dr Leah Stokes lays out her journey, from recycling in 5th grade, to coming to really understand the energy system. How our influence, and collective action, works in widening circles, and how we must not demand perfection or purity in ourselves before tackling larger systems change.

This is just a flavor of the many incredible pieces in here, and only scratches the surface. I can't recommend this book enough. Go get yourself a copy, and dive in. You won't regret it.

The news isn't good for 2018. US CO2 emissions are estimated to be up 3.4% from last year, from a new Rhodium report. The details of that report are really interesting.

Unpacking those in order, we're doing a good job at electrifying everything, however where we get that electricity from isn't keeping up with demand. In the past the building of new Natural Gas power generation basically was at the expense of Coal power. But, now we're at the point where the bulk of new demand is being served by Natural Gas, as we can't build zero carbon sources nearly fast enough to keep up with new demand (not even to mention retiring old sites). A carbon price would be really effective at changing this equation.

Transport is really interesting, because buried in the report is this really interesting graph:

Are we at peak car?

Even with all the growth, gas demand was down. This further supports the theory that we're at peak car that's been floated in a few other places. Transportation sector emissions are still growing though because shipping (via trucks) and air transport are still on a growth path.

Buildings were another area where things were problematic, and a big part of it was the polar vortex last winter. We had just converted over to geothermal, and the fleets of oil trucks running all over last winter were notable. The buildings sector really needs more performance standards/building codes, and pushes for enhanced insulation and heat pump conversions. Our conversion from fuel oil to geothermal last year took 7 metric tons of CO2 off the board, which was the single biggest change we could make as a family.

Industry was the last huge add. I do wonder if they will have deeper numbers on what actually was going on here. What gets in this bucket is not always what you'd expect:

What is industry anyway?

Close to 20% of it is petroleum refining, which means that a lot of this could be attributed to increased US exports of fossil fuels, and the push this administration has made there. It is one of those areas where we get a 2 for 1 if we reduce fossil fuel demand other places. A carbon price would help here quite a bit, and help more generally in the rest of the industrial sector as it would let each part of it figure out how to do what they are doing in a more carbon efficient way.

While the report is not good news, it's at least helpful to see what actually was driving it to figure out what kinds of policies would help.

Over the holidays I finally got around to reading/listening to The Sixth Extinction. It was quite good, but the language was at a density level where I found listening to the audio book to be a lot easier than reading on my kindle. Fortunately for me, both copies were in our library, so after my ebook lend expired I switched to e-audiobook lend to finish it off.

The book uses the lens of a number of extinct or endangered species to look at humanity's impact on the world. And each species provides an opportunity to dig into a different part of science or the history of science around them.

The chapter on the Mastadon was fascinating. I never realized that the Mastadon, first discovered not that far from here in the Hudson Valley, was the trigger for the idea of species extinction. Unlike the Mamouth, whose teeth can be confused for that of an elephant's, the Mastadon has cone shaped teeth that can't be. It was odd enough that Thomas Jefferson believed these beasts were roaming the west, and were part of the reason he sent survey teams out. Eventually it would trigger the idea that species could go extinct, and start the process of reconstructing our past. But it's super cool this happened in our back yard.

I learned was that Ocean Acidification was kind of accidentally discovered to be a thing after picking through the remains of the failed Biosphere 2 project. It turns out their biosphere wasn't so good, so CO2 levels got up north of 1000 ppm, which drove the pH of the water quite acidic.

I discovered that I had a closer relationship to bat white-nose syndrome than I realized, as Al Hicks was one of the state ecologists that first found it in NY. I met Al last year through at the regional Citizens' Climate Lobby conference, as he's also the Albany chapter lead.

And I really liked some of the visuals around the idea of a "new pangea". It's interesting to think about how global trade has effectively eliminated all the island barriers that we once had.

Definitely a recommended read. Going to be digesting some of it for a while.

Over the past year and a half I've been volunteering with Citizens' Climate Lobby, a volunteer group with a laser focus on passing federal carbon pricing legislation in a bi-partisan manner. I got involved originally from a Communications perspective (handling monthly emails and social media), but then due to scheduling challenges with existing group leaders, ended up taking on the group leader mantle for our local chapter.

The Investment in Volunteers

Volunteers are being asked to do some pretty amazing things: self organize at a congressional district level; directly lobby their members of congress; reach out to members of the community can grow support; establish deep relationships with local media. How does an enthusiastic volunteer even do any of these things? Well, the national organization will walk you through it, with world class training.

This, hands down, is the thing I find most remarkable about the organization, it's investment in volunteers. Multiple nights a week, every week, there are training sessions running for volunteers. When you join on as a group leader you are signed up for a weekly emerging group leaders program, that's 12 weeks of 1 hour evening sessions going through the whole of the organization, the theory of change, the levers of political will, active listening. All interactive with other new group leaders, all with the ability to ask questions along the way.

After that there are skill building training sessions running at least once a week through Citizens' Climate University. And if you can't make the session live, it's all recorded and made available as a webcast and a podcast to catch up at your leisure.

I've volunteered in other contexts, and not seen this level of support and investment in volunteers elsewhere. The only time I saw this level of investment from a work perspective was when I was part of a Leadership Excellence program at IBM back in 2006.

These skills, like active listening, are not specific to the CCL policy goal. They just make you a more kind and effective human. Understanding where people are really coming from. Focusing on the fact that interactions with others don't need to be high stakes, it's ok to just connect on whatever common ground you can find. And, getting lots of time to practice. I've already noticed this changing, for the better, some long standing relationships.

Engaging in the Community

In the last year working with CCL has given me this nudge and excuse to reach out all over the community in ways I never did before. I sat down with a neighbor of 14 years, that I never knew lived here, who chairs our town's Conservation Advisory Committee. I reconnected with a college friend from 20 years ago who's now a local Rabi. I've got to sit down with members of local city councils, and our county legislature, with some amazing local non-profits and small businesses. I've gotten to know other volunteers in neighboring CCL chapters, and built new friends there. And a few of us are now working on a list of local craft brewers we're going to reach out to, which is going to make for an amazing 2019.

All these people have been here all along, but in circles I wasn't aware of or engaged with. And now, with this excuse to talk about climate change solutions, it was motivation to reach out and find them, and sit down for a chat. And out of it I've already made some amazing new friends with some really incredible people. Those relationships I will value for years to come.

Diving Deep on Climate and Policy

In the past year I've read economic modeling studies, climate assessments, and many a policy paper. I now have a much better understanding of what the Clean Air Act actually does, and how it does it. What the Clean Power Plan really was, and why it could only be so effective. How energy markets work, especially the electricity sector. What NY state's grid looks like, where we actually get our electricity from.

The part of my brain that consumes two books on React.js programming in a week to write a medium complexity application in a new technology, is loving diving in on all this industry specific knowledge. And understanding the complexity in these things also helps me understand what pathways are going to be effective to really decarbonize.

And the Successes

And, after a year that's been amazing and engaging on learning and process, we also had some great successes. The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividends Act was introduced into both the US House and US Senate during then end of the 115th congress. Both with bi-partisan co-sponsors. Both will be back next year.

I have to admit, when I joined the group and really internalized the Carbon Fee & Dividend model, I wasn't really sure it would every happen. This isn't a papering over and declare victory proposal. This is nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy off fossil fuels, with 40% reduction in emissions in 12 years, and 90% reduction from 2015 levels by 2050. It's not just targeting the electricity sector, it's really going to transform the whole economy.

It just seemed too ambitious to make it to the Hill, but it still was the best idea on the table, so I was happy to push on it. And when the bill landed, I was on an Adrenalin rush for a week.

And the best part is how this mechanism is symbiotic to all kinds of other solutions. This accelerates every single solution in Drawdown. It will make a Green New Deal easier to accomplish, and more impactful should it happen. It's in line with the Paris agreement, and leaves the door open for lots more action to meet even more aggressive targets. And, because of the Dividend, it is something that doesn't leave anyone behind.

Next Steps

I'm extremely enthusiastic about CCL's work in 2019. A bill is a long way from a law, but you can't have a law without a bill. My work schedule is going to get a bit busier in the new year, but we've collected such an amazing group of volunteers locally, it's just an excuse to help folks grow more into roles and hand off some responsibilities. Both are good things to do.

If you are looking for a volunteer organization that is going to make a difference on Climate Change, and help you grow to become a better advocate for any issue, CCL is a great organization to be a part of. Introductory calls happen every Wednesday night. Our local chapter meets on the 2nd Thursday of the month at Beahive in Beacon, NY.

Come join us, make a new friend, and help slay the climate dragon.

For thousands of years, people from Sierra Mixe, a mountainous region in southern Mexico, have been cultivating an unusual variety of giant corn. They grow the crop on soils that are poor in nitrogen—an essential nutrient—and they barely use any additional fertilizer. And yet, their corn towers over conventional varieties, reaching heights of more than 16 feet. A team of researchers led by Alan Bennett from UC Davis has shown that the secret of the corn’s success lies in its aerial roots—necklaces of finger-sized, rhubarb-red tubes that encircle the stem. These roots drip with a thick, clear, glistening mucus that’s loaded with bacteria. Thanks to these microbes, the corn can fertilize itself by pulling nitrogen directly from the surrounding air.

Source: The Indigenous Mexican Corn That Uses Air as Fertilizer - The Atlantic

Take 1: Holy crap this is cool. Corn is a huge staple grain, and requires a lot of off farm inputs to grow because it takes a lot of nutrients out of the ground.

Take 2: This maize matures in 8 months instead of 3 months for commercial corn. Interesting. Dr Sarah Taber pointed out on twitter that this is a really critical point. Nitrogen fixation takes a lot of energy, that has to come from somewhere. Modern varieties of maize might have had this bred out of them for a reason, so they put their energy into sugar and maturation instead of the ground. It may not be possible to keep this trait, and have the maize mature any faster.

This is important. Because the headlines for most articles on this make it sound like we've solved a hard problem in farm science and corn won't need fertilizer in the future. That's definitely not what the science says.

Take 3: The science behind verifying this is kind of amazing. You can't tag nitrogen atoms to prove where they are coming from. So they did 5 different independent ways that each provide circumstantial evidence that the maize is actually doing this.

Take 4: The IP generated by this goes into the public trust. This is done under the Nagoya Protocol to address the very real concerns of bio-piracy by indigenous peoples. Good on them!

Take 5: The url of the Altantic piece is https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/amaizeballs/567140/. Yes, they really did go there.

Last summer about this time we made a big decision. We were going to work with Dandelion (a new geothermal company in the area) and replace all our Fuel Oil based forced air heating and hot water system with a Geothermal system. Instead of burning oil to heat our home, we'd use 1000 feet of water pipe, going up and down a  new 500 foot well to extract and compress heat from the earth. How does Geothermal Heating work? Once you get below 10 ft here in our corner of New York State, the ground temperature is about 50 degrees F. This is a giant renewable source where you can either extract heat (in the winter) or dump heat (in the summer), and it really doesn't budge the ground temp. A compressor is used in the furnace to turn this 50 degree ground loop heat into 90 degree air in the winter, or 42 degree air in the summer.

The compressor is where all the energy is consumed. However,  moving heat is much more efficient than creating it, so heat pumps have efficiencies of over 100%. Typically ground source heat pumps will produce 4 - 5 units of heat for every 1 unit of electricity put in. For cooling it's even better. By the numbers In the winter of 2016-2017 we spent about $2000 on fuel oil and service contract for our old system. That was based on a fuel oil price of about $1.90 / gallon as part of a really good group buy. It was also a relatively warm winter.

The new system went into place on Nov 22nd of 2017. Early in the heating season. This heating season included a 14 day cold snap starting at Christmas where it was 20 degrees below averages the whole time. Even with all of that our electricity add from the furnace was around $650 dollars for the winter (the Waterfurnace system we got has really detailed metrics in it that let me see it's energy use). There is a harder to account for hot water heating part of the equation, especially as we also got an Chevy Bolt EV this year. Also the year in oil would have been much more than the year before (both in use and cost). But suffice it to say, we come out way ahead on operating costs no matter how you slice it.

Our June and July bills from Central Hudson are less than last years, even though it's been a hotter summer, and we're also charging an EV. It looks like for the month of July we'll end up spending about $32 in electricity for cooling. Here is a graph of all the current number in kWh used. What else we love about the system There are lots of qualitative things we love about the system as well. First of it so much quieter. It has 2 stages on both heating and cooling, and stage 1 (the more efficient) runs with a low fan speed that means unless you are in the room adjacent to the furnace it's hard to know it's running. This lower fan speed also does a much better job of pushing the heat out to the edges of the house. The whole house got much more consistent.

Getting rid of the fuel oil system means we no longer have a fuel oil tank in our basement of indeterminate age rusting away in the corner. There is no whiff of oil smell at times. The primary risk of carbon monoxide and potential fires in the house is gone. And that 700 gallons of fuel oil we used the last year is no more, which is 3.5 tons of CO2 emissions not taking place (the CO2 from the increased electricity we used in the winter comes to about 0.7 tons).

We installed a whole house humidifier along with it, so now can keep the house comfortable in the winter without filling humidifiers through the house.

And lastly, our screened in porch got so much nicer. The old AC compressor was right outside it, and loud. Now it's in the basement and can't be heard outside. We love it While I knew on paper that a ground source heat pump like this would be great, having never experienced one before I had this niggling concern all the way through the process in the fall. What would it actually be like?

It's been amazing. At least once a week I have a moment about how great this new system is. The quiet, the comfort, the savings are all pretty amazing.

If automakers complied with the rules solely by improving the fuel economy of their engines, new cars and light trucks on the road would average more than 50 miles per gallon by 2025 (the charts here break out standards for cars and light trucks separately). But automakers in the United States have some flexibility in meeting these standards. They can, for instance, get credit for using refrigerants in vehicle air-conditioning units that contribute less to global warming, or get credit for selling more electric vehicles. Once those credits and testing procedures are factored in, analysts expected that new cars and light trucks sold in the United States would have averaged about 36 miles per gallon on the road by 2025 under the Obama-era rules, up from about 24.7 miles per gallon in 2016. Automakers like Tesla that sold electric vehicles also would have benefited from the credit system.

Source: How U.S. Fuel Economy Standards Compare With the Rest of the World’s - The New York Times

This is one of those areas where most reporting on the CAFE standard rollback has been terrible. You tell people the new CAFE standard is 55 mpg, and they look at their SUV, and say, that's impossible. With diesel off the table after the VW standard, only the best hybrids today are in that 55 mpg range. How could that be the average?

But it's not, it's 55 mpg equivalent. You get credit for lots of other things. EVs in the fleet, doing a better job on refrigerant switch over. 2025 would see a real fleet average of around 36 mpg if this was kept in place.

More importantly is that in rolling back this standard it's going to make US car companies less competitive. The rest of the world is going here, and US not just means companies that don't hit these marks have a shrinking global market.

In looking for information related to my ny-power demo (which shows the realtime CO2 intensity on the New York power grid), I discovered Electricity Map. This is doing a similar thing, but at a global scale. It started primarily focused on Europe but is an open source project, and has contributions from all over the world. I helped recently on some accounting and references for the NY ISO region.

You'll notice a lot of the map is grey in the US. That's because while most of the public ISOs publish their real time data on the web, private power entities tend not to. It's a shame, because you can't get a complete picture.

What also is notable is how different the power profile looks like between different regions in the US.

It's also really interesting if you take a look at Europe Germany is quite bad on it's CO2 profile compared to neighboring countries. That's because they've been turning back on coal plants and they shut down their nuclear facilities. Coal makes up a surprisingly high part of their grid now.

The entire map is interactive and a great way to explore how energy systems are working around the world.