Blue Planet Summit taps array of experts

Star-Bulletin staff

The Blue Planet Foundation is convening an ambitious conference this week in Ko Olina, bringing together dozens of experts in the field to develop tangible ways to advance the goal of clean energy for Hawaii.

The first Blue Planet Summit, which is closed to the public, runs Thursday through Saturday at the Ihilani Resort. The list of speakers and panelists scheduled includes:

» Gov. Linda Lingle

» Robert F. Kennedy Jr., environmentalist

» David McClain, president, University of Hawaii

» Henk Rogers, entrepreneur, founder of Blue Planet Foundation

» Mark Brownstein, managing director, Environmental Defense Fund

» Puanani Burgess, community building facilitator and trainer

» Dr. Heidi Cullen, the Weather Channel

» Neal DeSnoo, energy officer, City of Berkeley, Calif.

» Christine Ervin, former president and chief executive officer of U.S. Green Building Council

» David Garman, former undersecretary, U.S. Department of Energy

» Denis Hayes, chief executive officer, Bullitt Foundation; national coordinator of first Earth Day; chairman, Earthday Network

» Jeffrey R. Izzo, energy officer, Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs, U.S. State Department

» Elizabeth Kapuuwailani Lindsey, Ph.D., explorer, National Geographic Society

» Theodore E. Liu, director, Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism

» Former U.S. Rep. Pete McCloskey (R, Calif.)

» Jeff Mikulina, director, Sierra Club-Hawaii Chapter

» Hawaii Rep. Hermina Morita (D, Hanalei-Kapaa), chairwoman, Hawaii House Energy and Environmental Protection Committee

» William P. Parks Jr., deputy assistant secretary, Research and Development, U.S. Department of Energy

» Kenneth E. Pringle, mayor of Belmar, N.J.; board of directors, New Jersey Transit

» Stephen Reed, executive director, Blue Planet Foundation

» Richard E. Rocheleau, Ph.D., director, Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, University of Hawaii

» Tony Rogers, Rosebud Sioux Tribe Utility Commission

» Clyde Sakamoto, chancellor, Maui Community College

» Frank Sesno, CNN journalist

» Ramsay Taum, Native Hawaiian Culture and Sustainability, University of Hawaii at Manoa

» Charmaine Tavares, mayor, Maui County

» Hawaii Rep. Cynthia Thielen (R, Kaneohe-Kailua)

» R. James Woolsey, Vantage Point Venture Partners; former director, Central Intelligence Agency; senior executive adviser, Booz Allen Hamilton

UK: What's New from BERR, Nuclear, microgen, stats

31 March 2008: Next step taken towards new nuclear power with start of justification process

The nuclear industry has been invited today to bring forward new reactor designs for a Justification Decision, an important stage in getting the first new nuclear build started in the UK.

• Nuclear Justification process: press release
• Justification of New Nuclear Power Stations webpage

31 March 2008: April overhaul for microgen grant scheme & planning rules

An overhaul of the Government's Low Carbon Building Programme (LCBP) will see more generous grants for schools and public buildings, while the £10 million support still available to householders will be extended until 2010 for new applications.

• Overhaul of Low Carbon Building Programme (LCBP): press release
• Low Carbon Building Programme (LCBP) webpage

27 March 2008: Energy Statistics

Energy Trends and Quarterly Energy Prices publications are published today by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Energy Trends covers statistics on energy production and consumption, in total and by fuel, and provides an analysis of the year on year changes. Quarterly Energy Prices covers prices to domestic and industrial consumers, prices of oil products and comparisons of international fuel prices.

• Energy statistics: press release
• Energy Trends webpage
• Quarterly Energy Prices webpage

27 March 2008: Fuel Poverty Advisory Group Annual Report

The Fuel Poverty Advisory Group (FPAG) today published its Annual Report for 2007. In it, FPAG welcomes the Government’s recent announcements in the Budget about the expansion of the energy suppliers’ social programmes and about prices for prepayment customers.

• Fuel Poverty Advisory Group (for England): sixth annual report 2007  (187KB)
• Fuel Poverty Advisory Group press notice: sixth annual report  (19KB)
• Fuel Poverty webpages

25 March 2008: Bevin Boys to be awarded Badge of Honour by Prime Minister

The Prime Minister will today award the first Bevin Boy Badges to a group of 27 Bevin Boys, invited to Downing Street for a special presentation ceremony.

• Bevin Boys badge of honour: press release
• Bevin Boys webpage

6 March 2008: New nuclear programme - Hutton welcomes next steps for NDA sites

Plans for sites owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to be made available to developers were welcomed today by Business Secretary John Hutton.

• Nuclear Decommissioning Authority sites: press release

The geography of gasoline consumption

Ed: Both this analysis and the Glaser and Kahn paper are missing the gasoline multiplier - the impact of gasoline on general inflation of all goods and services. Logistics of moving goods and services depend on gasoline and other fuels.

Consumption also has a multiplier effect on pollution. 

The geography of gasoline consumption

I've done some more thinking about the Glaser and Kahn paper I bogged about the other day.  Glaser and Kahn examine total energy use among major metropolitan areas in order to compare cities carbon emissions.  But their data also allow us to compare gasoline use city by city.  That's just as interesting a comparison, at least to me.

Glaser and Khan even allow us to make an apples-to-apples comparison because they have constructed a composite "median" household for each city to use as their points of reference.  For example, they don't use per capita gasoline consumption as their point of comparison.  They instead estimate the expected gasoline consumption of a hypothetical $62,000/year household with 2.62 members for each city, using survey data and (I assume) some fancy statistical techniques...

This chart makes the point better:

There is no question that steep gas price hikes would hurt Houston (or Dallas or Austin) households.  At $3/gallon, the Houston household is already spending 5.4% of its gross income on gasoline.  At $4/gallon, it would have to spend 7.2% of gross income on gasoline, assuming no change in gasoline consumption.  But the Sana Francisco household is spending 4.8% of its gross income on gasoline, a figure that would rise to 6.4% with a $1 increase in the price of gasoline.  That 0.8% difference is smaller than I expected.