That’s innovation!
Mankind will figure it out
Farmers in other parts of the world are coping with the very real proposition that they soon might be taxed on the methane gas produced by their livestock. The jokes write themselves. ‘Cept the farmers aren’t laughing.
Governments trying to reduce their carbon footprints might find it easier to pick on a certain set of farmers than other Big Industry. Such notions have yet to wash ashore and take root here, though the thought of a resurrected and self-perpetuating Far Side panel might make them seem almost worthwhile.
Though gassy cows can wreak their own kind of havoc, landfills are the major producers of methane. And that gas is said to be up to 82 times more potent than even carbon dioxide.
At least where landfills are concerned, American ingenuity might make the argument(s) moot.
The Wall Street Journal reports facilities are being developed to turn methane into renewable natural gas (RNG), identical to the gas that heats homes, right down to the molecular level.
This would accomplish three things, write renewable energy entrepreneurs and venture capitalists Nick Stork and Joe Malchow: The process would (1) lower greenhouse-gas emissions, (2) create a new low-carbon energy source, and (3) open up a previously untapped fuel source. After all, mankind has proven itself a trash prodigy. A waste wunderkind. Could an answer to our energy problems be sitting right under our noses?
Earlier this year, two big developments came along that you might not have heard about yet: Waste Management Corp. announced an $825 million investment in RNG and BP agreed to acquire Archaea Energy, which builds and operates RNG plants that convert waste emissions. Archaea’s 13 U.S. plants produce 6,000 oil-equivalent barrels of RNG a day. The company has plans to build 88 more such plants.
Writers Stork and Malchow, the former an Archaea co-founder and the latter an investor, write that rising demand necessitated the growth. And BP is not getting on board to cut back production.
Small breakthroughs enabled Archaea to improve the portion of usable natural gas recovered from landfills to 95 percent, up from an industry standard of 75 percent. That’s innovation!
Stork and Malchow believe the energy future could mirror the computing past:
“Rapid cycles of learning yielded step changes in efficiency. When critical thresholds are passed, trillions of dollars in uncoordinated economic potential are unleashed. It happened with metaloxide semiconductors in the 1990s and is happening with lithium-ion batteries today. But the economy receives this benefit only if a price system untouched by government is allowed to exist.”
Untouched-by-government is a bit of a fairy tale concept these days, something of which future generations will speak like we do of chivalry or balanced budgets.
As for the world’s carbonated cows? We trust such innovation will one day extend to the farm and save the world’s farmers from needless effervescent excises.
THIS ALL reminds us that climate change, or global warming, or whatever it’s called this week, has a challenge awaiting it: mankind.
For all the gnashing of teeth about the abuse mankind heaps upon the world, we’re pretty sure mankind is going to figure out a way to cure his own proliferation. Nobody is talking about a “population bomb” anymore, even though the world just surpassed 8 billion people. Few fear that the poor will starve. (There’s an obesity problem in this country, much of it found among the poor.) And humans have never had to work fewer hours to pay for their evening meals. Even though just a few decades ago, we were all warned of these coming disasters/calamities/doom.
What happened? Innovation happened. With humans to thank.
Remember the boll weevil? About 30 years ago it was the top of agriculture news every year, and the critter would either ruin cotton crops all across the South, or prove diminished one year and farmers could pay their bills. Then the eradication efforts in this country got rid of the bug nearly completely. Innovation happens.
These challenges come to us frequently enough, and frequently enough humans figure them out. Look at the tech available to change dumpster gas into heating fuel.
Something tells us we will figure out this climate change, too. And that something is man’s history of innovation.