Energy Scoreboards, Designed for the Home

UTILITIES are gradually installing smart meters that can tell homeowners the price of the electricity they’re using at the time, including discounts for off-peak hours.

But those meters aren’t yet in all that many homes.

There will soon be new options, though, for consumers who want to save money by using energy more efficiently. Companies are coming up with dozens of computer-based devices that monitor electricity costs, outlet by outlet, inside a home.

Intel has created a prototype for a home energy monitor that gathers information beamed to it from the appliances plugged into wall sockets, said Joe Jensen, general manager of Intel’s embedded-computing division in Chandler, Ariz. This sleek touch screen can hang on the kitchen wall or sit on a countertop. It can show, for example, which appliances are on and what they are costing to operate, he said.

The panel communicates wirelessly with the outlets, turning appliances off or on when instructed, or suggesting ways to change energy use in the house, he said.

The Intel display is meant to entertain as well as instruct, Mr. Jensen said. Family members may use its built-in camera to leave video messages for one another. They can also run dozens of applications on the monitor, just as they would on a smartphone, looking up addresses in the Yellow Pages, tracking packages and checking for weather and traffic conditions.

Intel won’t be offering the home monitors directly to consumers. It is working with manufacturers that will use its designs and its processors to run their devices, Mr. Jensen said. A high-end version could cost consumers $400 or more, he said, but the company is working with a high-volume manufacturer on a cheaper version.

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Solar Storms Could Be Earth's Next Katrina

A massive solar storm could leave millions of people around the world without electricity, running water, or phone service, government officials say.

That was their conclusion after participating in a tabletop exercise that looked at what might happen today if the Earth were struck by a solar storm as intense as the huge storms that occurred in 1921 and 1859.

Solar storms happen when an eruption or explosion on the surface of the sun sends radiation or electrically charged particles toward Earth. Minor storms are common and can light up the Earth's Northern skies and interfere with radio signals.

Every few decades, though, the sun experiences a particularly large storm. These can release as much energy as 1 billion hydrogen bombs.

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Lowering Industrial Carbon Emissions: What’s Really Needed

According to many climate scientists, global mean temperatures can only be stabilized at 2.4 °C above current levels—or less—if carbon emissions drop 50% by 2050. A reduction of that magnitude might limit sea level rise to below 1.4 m worldwide, as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. A number of countries have since adopted this target in their climate change policies, but practical ways to achieve it remain elusive.

Now, Julian Allwood and colleagues report that 50% emissions cuts by industry can only be met with dramatic improvements in material efficiency (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2009, DOI 10.1021/es902909k). In other words, they assert, manufacturers must develop less carbon-intensive products; recyclers must avoid reducing materials back to virgin forms; and society should temper its need for new product designs that relegate last year’s model to the trash heap. “One reaction to climate change is for everyone to create smoke screens that confuse the issue, and show the problem is someone else’s responsibility,” says Allwood, a senior lecturer at the University of Cambridge, U.K. “We wanted to get a handle on the reality of meeting the reduction target, assuming it’s applied uniformly across all industry sectors.”

According to Allwood, 56% of industrial carbon emissions are driven by the production of just five materials: steel, cement, plastic, paper, and aluminum. Fueled by population growth, demand for these materials could double by 2050, he adds, such that a 50% reduction below emissions today (which is the aim) translates to a 75% reduction in the future time frame.

For their analysis, Allwood et al. considered five plausible scenarios: an optimistic “business as usual” scenario; another that assumes carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS) for all process emissions associated with material production; another that explores “non-destructive recycling” methods, (which divert materials from being shredded or liquefied, for instance); one that considers sharp reductions in material demand; and the last based on the development of new, radical, low-energy processes for making materials from scrap.

Not surprisingly, their calculations show that business as usual cannot meet emissions targets for any material. CCS, meanwhile, succeeds only for cement. Unlike materials that undergo multistage modifications, cement is ready for use after production, which makes emissions easier to capture. Still, all material industries advocate for CCS over other options because it is the only one that allows them to increase production, Allwood says. The other scenarios can meet reduction targets but also limit production, so they are unlikely to be pursued without external pressure, such as a carbon tax, Allwood adds.

David Dornfeld, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, calls the analysis sobering. “By shining a light on these options, it removes myths surrounding ways to reduce the impact of material use,” he says. “Julian’s work shows that if you recycle something by shredding or melting it you’re really not gaining much in terms of carbon savings. We have to keep recycling processes closer to users instead of going all the way back to primary processing.”

Allwood agrees, adding that melting one ton of steel releases two tons of CO2. “When you dismantle an old building, there’s nothing wrong with the steel,” he says. “It doesn’t decay with time. Right now, we load it into trucks and reprocess it. Instead we should just clean it up and then bolt it straight back into another building.”

Timothy Gutowski, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, MA, says Allwood’s analysis reveals significant challenges ahead. Instead of shifting from high- to low-cost inputs in production, he explains, a low-carbon economy can require more expensive, labor-intensive methods. “Some of what we need to do looks more like what we use to do in the past,” he says. “And this generally isn’t where we’re heading.”

Still, Allwood strikes an optimistic tone, claiming his real aim is to show how low-carbon industries might operate. “And what we’re really looking for are ways that we can still get the benefits of material services, but in ways that require much less primary production,” he says.

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