Playing Russian Roulette with the Climate

The news coming in from the southeast is suggesting that Florida dodged yet another bullet with major Hurricane Milton turning south at the last minute and putting Tampa Bay on the north side of the storm.? Instead of a catastrophic 15-foot storm surge up in downtown Tampa and St. Petersburg, the most heavily populated part of the West Florida coast, the storm actually pulled water out of the bay.? If Milton had hit anywhere slightly to the north of Tampa Bay, head-on or even slightly to the north of Sarasota where it made landfall, a distance of less than 25 miles, it was forecasted that the hurricane would have been the most damaging and life threatening storm in over 100 years.

Milton began its journey as a tropical cyclone nearly 1200 miles away.? And for more than half that distance it travelled as a high-end Category 4 or 5.? Also, during that time, it grew to cover the entire peninsula of Florida at landfall a distance of nearly 400 miles across in size.? The distance it missed a catastrophic hit on Tampa Bay is less than 2% of the distance it traveled from the southwestern Gulf of Mexico.? And it narrowly missed the Tampa Bay inlet by less than 6% of its size.

To say that Florida dodged a bullet is an understatement considering how hot the Gulf of Mexico waters have become.? It was just two weeks ago that another major Hurricane, Helene, struck the Florida Gulf coast.? One wonders how many times we can keep playing this game of Russian roulette before a major hurricane finds its purchase on the Tampa St. Petersburg metropolitan area.?

This year has seen a larger number of named major hurricanes than in previous years, and the hurricane season still has over a month and half to go.? As an engineer, I am familiar with statistics enough to say; As we increase the number of major hurricanes we increase the probability of that catastrophic hit to the Tampa area.?

This has all been predicted by scientists familiar with the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere and their impact on the earth’s temperature.? As far back as 45 years ago, Dr. James Hansen was warning Congress that the continued buildup of GHG in the atmosphere would lead to hotter ocean waters, especially in the Gulf of Mexico and an increase in the number of major hurricanes.

And much has been done in the US since that testimony to reduce GHG emissions through a number of areas, including energy efficiency, renewable energy, carbon mitigation projects, fuel switching, alternative vehicles, and carbon capture.? EPA voluntary programs alone, beginning in 1991, have achieved nearly 40 billion tonnes in reduction of GHG emissions from organizations making pledges to improve their operations.? And the more recent move to electric vehicles (EV) has saved another billion tonnes.? Adding in all the emission savings through national DOE and state energy codes and we can show additional 10 billion tonnes of savings.? These represent well over several billion tonnes per year in GHG emission reductions.?

With so many billion tonnes of GHG removed from the atmosphere, why are we still seeing rapid heating in the Gulf of Mexico?

Unfortunately, overall GHG emissions are still going up by 53 billion tonnes every year and that rate is increasing 2% annually.? We are simply not doing nearly enough, by a factor of at least ten.

INCREASED COST OF NOT DOING ENOUGH TO REDUCE GHG EMISSIONS

Now that we can agree these storms, the fires out west, the droughts and the increasing heat waves are a response to increasing GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, we can see the costs of continued increasing GHG concentrations without significant changes are getting much larger. The costs of a major hurricane is now in the 100s of billions of dollars when just 25 years ago, such a storm, such as Hugo, was a $10 billion storm.

The cost to financial institutions is significant as it may seem easier to walk away from a mortgage or auto loan when the personal property has been destroyed.? The cost to insurance companies are higher when insured property is restored through insurance claims.? The cost to utilities are higher due to the ongoing electric grid rebuilding costs.? The cost charged to FEMA for recovery efforts has ballooned ten times to where it was 25 years ago, when, then, there was one major disaster per year compared to the five or more per year we see now.? And who pays for these costs?? We, the mortgagee, the insurance policy holder, the utility customer, and the tax payer.? Those of you who live in Florida now know about the rapid increase in insurance premiums.?

It is in everyone’s best interest, therefore, that we seek to reduce GHG emissions faster than we are achieving now.? But our financial, insurance, utility and government institutions could greatly assist.?

INCREASING OUR GHG EMISSION REDUCTIONS

INSURANCE INCENTIVES FOR EVs AND ZEH

Instead of raising insurance rates on everyone in a region, what about giving a break for those that are utilizing technologies that are reducing emissions, thereby reducing the risk, such as EVs and zero net energy solar homes (ZEH)?? Afterall, insurance companies are in the business of not only insuring against risk but incentivizing behavior that reduces risk.? Like the auto insurance companies provide rate incentives for those that drive safely, should they not also reward those that drive EV’s and live in a ZEH?

BANK INCENTIVES FOR EVs AND ZEH

Of course, banks require homeowner insurance policies on homes.? But what about all those homes in North Carolina where they were wiped out by Hurricane Helene floods and most did not carry flood insurance.? What about all those crushed, flooded or washed away vehicles in both Helene and Milton?? How many were insured with policies not able to cover the replacement costs?? Who is taking the hit here?? Banks are not out of the risk game with storms like Helene.? Would it not be wise that mortgages and auto loans offer a discount incentive for those minimizing the climate risk, such as EVs and ZEH?? A simple ? point interest rate reduction is a significant enough incentive to help people finance a lower GHG risk EV or ZEH.?

UTILITY NET METERING FOR DISTRIBUTED GENERATION ON HOMES (AND BUSINESSES)

Currently most state regulatory policy rewards utilities for infrastructure construction, including power plants, transmission and distribution.? When storms hit, the cost of restoring their system goes right back into the rate base, plus a return on equity for their costs.? But shouldn’t utilities be rewarded by their regulatory overseers for investing in distributed generation, particularly solar at the load, that tends to peak when the utility does?? In this way we would see much less need for new fossil peaking plants as we currently do with utilities in the southeast.? Offering net metering helps customers balance the higher upfront costs of solar with a better long-term return.? And, with more localized solar on the grid with battery backup we will see a more resilient electric grid.?

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD REMOVE ARTIFICIAL BARRIERS TO CONSUMERS

Sometimes utilities, state policy makers and local community leaders cannot get out of their own way when it comes to simple freedoms that should be enjoyed by anyone wishing to take positive responsible steps toward doing the right thing environmentally and by their own pocketbook.? The failure to provide net metering nationally to anyone who wishes to put solar on their roof is one of those simple infringed freedoms.? The forbidding of solar on roofs that many Homeowner Associations (HOA) enforce is another.? In these cases, it is necessary for the federal government to step in to safeguard these freedoms.? Seeing as a national urgency, in the same way that Congress forbade HOAs to deny satellite dishes, it is necessary for Congress to consider again for the sake of resiliency and lowering the GHG risk to require all electric utilities to offer net metering, and make it illegal for HOA’s or other community organizations to infringe on the use of solar for distributed generation.?

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

Perhaps we should change our strategy of focusing on the quantity of emission reductions to a strategy focusing on the quality of emission reductions.? In other words, focus on reducing the more important emissions.? We need to look at reducing those emissions that impact during strategic times of the day and year, or other emissions of GHG that have higher heat trapping properties, such as methane and hydrocarbons.?

FOCUS ON MARGINAL EMISSIONS

For companies that are making commitments for renewable energy, for example, often the emissions savings are simply based on the average system mix.? This can often be misleading and allows for companies to miss the potential target of important emission reductions coming from renewable energy backing down fossil fuel generation on the margin.? Instead of utilitzing system mix for calculating the emission reductions, we should seek to utilize renewable energy that is operating near the generating point of power that is dispatched on the margin and so calculate the emissions savings based on the marginal generation instead.? This is important because on the margin the last dispatched power plants are usually the dirtier ones brought on.? If enough renewable energy is brought on to keep that last dispatched power plant from generating, the emissions saved could be double or triple the average system mix.

FOCUS ON HIGH HEAT CONTENT GHG

Some GHG trap more heat in the atmosphere in the short term than Carbon Dioxide (CO2).? HydroFluoroCarbons (HFCs) and Methane (CH4) for example have much higher heat trapping quotients than CO2.? Methane is up to 25 times more potent in the atmosphere than CO2.? Yet methane is released all around us almost as ubiquitous as CO2.? Think of animal and agricultural waste; methane releases from the tundra; lake beds and ocean sea floor; food waste in food manufacturing (breweries) and preparation (restaurants); waste gas in industrial facilities; and leaks in the natural gas industry, pipeline and point of use, as all forms of fugitive methane.? These could all be collected, as they are in several states, cleaned up to pipeline quality, and piped into the natural gas pipeline and combusted as renewable natural gas.? There is even a developing market for trading the renewable Gas Attributes that should get the same EPA support as Green Power (electricity).

A focus on capturing and combusting fugitive methane has 25 times the global warming reduction than simply reducing CO2 emissions.? Even as combusting it releases CO2, we still get a net 24+ times benefit.

CONCLUSION – WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

If we could amp up our game on reducing GHG emissions by these measures, I have mentioned above, we could increase our impact by four or more times.? We don’t require everyone to comply.? We just ask that those of us who want to be part of the solution be allowed to do so with the economic benefit that should be accorded to those who are lowering the environmental risk.?

Assuming at least 50% of us were to act, we could eliminate up to 10+ billion tonnes per year.? Considering the US represents 12.5% of the world’s emissions, if half of the other countries followed our lead (many already are) means that we would be able to see overall GHG emissions reduce. ?As a result, the Gulf of Mexico would start getting cooler and we could all start breathing a little easier each fall hurricane season.