Transportation Efficiency

By Erik Ramberg

Energy use in the United States is divided roughly equally among 4 sectors:  transportation, residential, industrial and commercial.  To reduce energy demand, it is crucial to understand what kind of efficiency gains can be made in each sector.  This is the first of a series of short articles to discuss what the important issues are in energy usage. Here we summarize transportation efficiency.

What is the most efficient way to transport a person a given distance?  The unit to compare is the amount of energy (MegaJoules) required per person per kilometer.  The numbers below are fuel efficiencies copied or calculated from information in the Wikipedia entry for "Fuel efficiency in transportation", which contains 40 interesting references.  I've assumed 80% occupancy in each of the multi-passenger cases, including the automobile.  Also, the energy needed to deliver the fuel to the vehicle, and to manufacture the vehicle, is not included in these efficiencies.

 1. Bicycle                        0.12
 2. Train                       0.1-0.3   

 3. Walking                        0.33
 4. Transit bus                    0.38
 5. Automobile (4 people)      0.9
 6. Jet airplane                   1.4
 7. Ocean liner                    7.7

There are many lessons to be learned from this ultra-simple tabulation.  First of all, it is hard to beat a person peddling a bicycle - perhaps the most efficient mode of transportation by any animal on planet Earth.  Secondly, the only thing worse than driving your car with just yourself as a passenger, is if you decided to take an ocean liner to work every day.  Intercity travel can be up to 10 times more efficient by train than by airplane.  Once you are in a city, don't hesitate taking a bus for a few blocks - you expend about the same amount of energy (and carbon dioxide) as walking.

One question for policy makers:  for a city of 1 million people, why don't we just buy 100,000 bicycles for free use by the population?  The expenditure is only on the order of $10 million, and the savings in energy would be incredible.

Climate Change Science and Policy

What does 'sustainable energy' production mean? After all, there are enough coal deposits in the United States to power our society for 245 years:


http://www.teachcoal.org/aboutcoal/articles/fastfacts.html


That can 'sustain' us just fine. Why all the fuss? Well, I think most people would agree that the thing we want to sustain is a healthy environment in which to live. And even though mountain top removal of coal can look pretty horrendous:








the amount of land affected is probably similar to what a wind farm or solar installation of equal energy generation would affect.

But there is one aspect of environmental degradation that has serious global, not just local, consequences and could hamper the progress of hundreds of generations of humans: that is, of course, global warming from increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

I'd like this blog post to be a place where club members can critique various aspects of the argument over environmental science and policy and, in particular, the emotional byplay over AGW (anthropogenic global warming).

Here is an interesting topic to start you off. Please read this interesting contribution from the libertarian (and environmentally contrarian) Cato Institute:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9125

It is called "What to do about Climate Change?" by Indur Goklany. Interestingly enough, it does not try to contradict the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) viewpoint on the future of climate change (like many other anti-enviro blogs). Instead, Goklany analyzes the IPCC's own predictions on water stresses given climate change and comes to the conclusion that global warming actually reduces water stress for more people than increases water stress.

Here is Goklany's statement:

"Halting climate change would reduce cumulative mortality from various
climate-sensitive threats, namely, hunger, malaria, and coastal flooding, by
4–10 percent in 2085, while increasing populations at risk from water stress and
possibly worsening matters for biodiversity. But according to cost information
from the UN Millennium Program and the IPCC, measures focused specifically on
reducing vulnerability to these threats would reduce cumulative mortality from
these risks by 50–75 percent at a fraction of the cost of reducing greenhouse
gases (GHGs). Simultaneously, such measures would reduce major hurdles to the
developing world's sustainable economic development, the lack of which is why it
is most vulnerable to climate change."

I'm basically flabbergasted and don't know how to respond to this. Anyone?