2012 University of Denver Graduate of M.A.S. Degree

2012 M.A.S. Environmental Policy and Management

2012 M.A.S. Environmental Policy and Management - Back of ceremonial gown

Hydrogen - King element in the Universe

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and is virtually inexhaustible. Hydrogen powers the sun that has given the earth its heat energy since the beginning of time.

Hydrogen energy use with the abundance of hydrogen and the ability to produce hydrogen fuel cells for energy consumption:
 
What would it require for Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles to be an accepted mode of transportation in the US?
 
One major issue that the U.S. is facing is changing our existing transportation infrastructure to hydrogen; however, that takes funding. Who will pay for it?
It is a matter of cost, hydrogen vs oil, cost of the vehicle itself, and whether the state will provide hydrogen services. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have been accepted mode of transportation in the U.S. but only in a few states such as California (Consumer Energy Center 2012). From 2000-2005, 95 light-duty fuel cell vehicles were placed in California and traveled more than 220,000 miles on California's roads and highways. These cars are still being tested and are available to a few fleets and consumers. Fuel cell buses are being tested at Sun Line Transit in Thousand Palms, Alameda-Contra Costa Transit (AC Transit), and Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (Santa Clara VTA). The buses began operation in 2005. Buses are being tested at Sacramento Municipal Utility District and the University of California at Davis.

Several companies as AT&T, FedEx, PepsiCO, UPS, and Verizon are teaming up with the Department of Energy (DOE) through the National Clean Fleets Partnership to convert their vehicles from conventional gasoline over to hydrogen (U.S. Chamber of Commerce 2012). Several global automakers are doing their part to assist with the transportation industry by converting vehicles to fuel cell vehicles (FCV) such as Daimler, Ford, GM/Opel, Honda, Hyundai/KIA, Renault/Nissan and Toyota, with a number of FCVs being commercialized by 2015. However, U.S. automakers haven't caught up with hydrogen technology and remains behind countries like Japan and Germany for fuel cell development. The reason for the U.S. antiquated fuel system is due to lack of fueling stations across the country. A mature fleet will require 11,000 stations coast to coast at a cost of $20 billion to $25 billion, according to General Motors. The U.S. is standing up against Washington and oil companies that rival hydrogen (Levine 2012).
 
Fortunately, the oil companies may have to cooperate due to the driving force behind large automobile companies that are producing FCVs especially in the transit bus system. The sales for fuel cell transit buses will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 31.7% by 2015. Fuel cell light vehicles will be commercially launched in 2014 in most regions of the world, and their sales will reach almost 670,000 vehicles per year by 2020. Pike Research forecasts that Western Europe will be the leading region for FCV sales with a 37% share of the world market, followed closely by Asia Pacific with 36%.  FCV sales in North America will represent approximately 25% of global sales during the period from 2014 to 2020.  The cleantech market intelligence firm anticipates that FCV revenues will reach $23.9 billion annually by 2020. This means that oil companies may lose out in the long-run over consumer demands and if/when individual states go ahead with hydrogen and leave the federal government behind (Addison 2011).

Addison, John. 2011. Hyundai making 2,000 hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles. Cleantech. September 13. http://www.cleantechblog.com/2011/09/hyundai-making-2000-hydrogen-fuel-cell-electric-vehicles.html (accessed July 24, 2012).

Consumer Energy Center. 2012. Fuel cell vehicles. California Energy Commsion. http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/transportation/fuelcell/index.html (accessed July 24, 2012).

Levine, Steve. 2012. Giving hydrogen fuel-cells cars another chance. Slate. May 17. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/05/hydrogen_fuel_cell_vehicles_and_the_obama_administration_.2.html (accessed July 24, 2012).

United States (U.S.) Chamber of Commerce. 2012.
National clean fleets partnership announced. http://www.uschamber.com/feed/national-clean-fleets-partnership-announced (accessed July 24, 2012).

Rachel Carson and "Silent Spring"

Rachel Carson's redwood dreams, and 50 years of "Silent Spring."

Nuclear Energy Around the World

Many countries around the world are pursuing nuclear power. Should the US consider increasing it's percentage of electrical energy generation from nuclear power?

The U.S. should increase it's percentage use of nuclear energy because for decades we have overused and abused oil for own use and heavily contributed to greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention created a large global footprint. The U.S. needs to consider future needs and different energy sources instead of focusing on a few past energy sources.

There are 40 reactors now under construction in 11 countries around the world, however, none of them are located in the United States (Miller 2012). There are only two reactors in Western Europe, one in Finland and the other in France, both built by Areva, a French company (Lehr 2010).
 

France gets 80 percent of its power from nuclear, has the cheapest electricity in Europe, and is the second-lowest carbon emissions. France sells $80 billion worth of electricity to the rest of Europe each year. In addition, the country barely felt the recession due to the nuclear power helping to keep their whole economy afloat.
 

Japan has 55 reactors and gets 35 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy, almost double the 19 percent we get here. The Japanese have two reactors under construction and plans for ten more by 2018.

South Korea gets nearly 40 percent of its electricity from nuclear and is planning another eight reactors by 2015. So far they've bought their reactors from the Japanese but now they have their own Korean Next-Generation Reactor, a 1400-megawatt giant evolved from an American design. They plan to bring two of these online by 2016. Taiwan also gets 18 percent of its electricity from nuclear and is building two new reactors (Lehr 2010).

Countries are finding they can build a reactor, start to finish, in less than four years. That's less time than it is taking to get one American reactor through licensing at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Much of China's $586 billion stimulus package is going toward developing nuclear power to focus on environmental issue (Lehr 2010).

India is embracing thorium; a technology a lot of people think may eventually replace uranium as nuclear fuel. Thorium is twice as abundant as uranium and it doesn't produce the plutonium that everybody worries will be used to make a bomb. There's a lot of enthusiasm for thorium among scientists in this country. But it's India that's going ahead, with six reactors under construction and ten more planned (Lehr 2010).

By the reviewing the above information, the U.S. has a lot to learn from what other countries have accomplished.

The U.S. has spent $300 billion a year importing 2/3rds of its oil from other countries (Robinson and Robinson 2008). That is not sustainable, cost-effective, or independent from relying on other country for its energy source. The U.S. is losing its edge on technology. We used to be the major leader for the telephone, the electric light, the automobile, the assembly line, radio, television and the computer.

The U.S. should double its production of nuclear power by building 100 nuclear reactors in 20 years to insure we have enough cheap, clean, reliable electricity in this country to create good high-quality, high-tech jobs.

Today, nuclear provides 70 percent of our carbon free electricity and the plants operate 90 percent of the time. Wind and solar provide 4 percent of electricity and operate about one third of the time.

The Obama Administration's mentions it will require building 186,000 fifty story turbines, enough to cover an area the size of West Virginia, plus 19,000 miles of new transmission lines to carry electricity from remote to populated areas producing 20 percent of electricity from wind. Hundred new nuclear plants could be built mostly on existing sites.

It will cost roughly the same to build 100 new nuclear plants (which will last 60 to 80 years) as it would to build 186,000 wind turbines (lasting 20 to 25 years).

There will be twice as many "green jobs" created building 100 reactors as there would be building 186,000 wind turbines.

According to the introduction and press release from U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander's website (Lemar Alexander 2009), Americans should fear that while the rest of the world, such as Russia and China, are using nuclear energy the U.S. is ignoring it. This will cause a ripple affect for America's history. We won't be able to compete with countries that have cheap, clean, reliable nuclear power while we're stuck with a bunch of wind and solar farms producing expensive, unreliable energy or, worse yet, rely on dirty energy as oil (Miller 2012).

The Chinese sent nuclear scientists to tour the Idaho National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and visited General Electric and Westinghouse back in the mid 2000s trying to decide which technology to choose for their nuclear program, as the U.S. used to be the leader of technology. The Chinese are in the nuclear business and plan to build over 132 reactors.

By 2007, Toshiba bought Westinghouse, which made Westinghouse a Japanese company. In meantime, the Chinese wanted the design specification for the reactors to do 'reverse engineering' and see how the reactors were made. Japan became the leader in steel strong enough to make reactor vessels, instead of the U.S., while China became the new wave of 'Chinese Technology'. This means by the time the U.S. decides to construct nuclear reactors, we will need to rely on Japan for steel because our steel isn't strong enough and we will need to import. Russia, France, Britain, South Korea and India are all following in China's footprint for building nuclear plants.

Since then General Electric, the only American company left on the field, partnered with Hitachi and sold five reactors to American utilities but fared poorly in the competition for federal loan guarantees. Two other utilities have cancelled their projects.

On the positive side of the U.S., we know how to run, protect, and regulate reactors better than any one else in the world (Lehr 2010).


References:

Lehr, Jay. 2010. U.S. sitting on sidelines of global nuclear renaissance. June 5. http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2010/06/05/us-sitting-sidelines-global-nuclear-renaissance (accessed July 18, 2012).

Lemar Alexander. 2009. Alexander on what the U.S. should really fear about nuclear power. http://www.alexander.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=a7f5ad06-f0af-4c37-82f4-b394f3caa98e&ContentType_id=778be7e0-0d5a-42b2-9352-09ed63cc4d66&Group_id=80d87631-7c25-4340-a97a-72cccdd8a658&YearDisplay=2009 (accessed July 17, 2012).

Miller, Mark. 2012. Nuclear power as part of our energy surety. http://www.beyondfossilfools.com/nuclear-power-as-part-of-our-energy-surety.html (accessed July 18, 2012).

Robinson, Arthur, and Noah Robinson. 2008. Energy for America: we can achieve energy independence for the 21st century without destroying the environment. There's no need to deindustrialize or sacrifice our standard of living. The New American. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Energy+for+America%3A+we+can+achieve+energy+independence+for+the+21st...-a0173421365 (accessed July 17, 2012).

Tsunami debris adds to 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch'

The first wave has arrived. And now more and more tsunami debris is washing ashore on West Coast beaches seemingly every day. From large docks, to a motorcycle, to boat buoys, states like Washington and Oregon are seeing most of the debris. But the hunt for larger masses of debris is underway, not on shore but instead deep into the Pacific.