By Jess Reilly

Thanks to the recent dedication of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS), the corresponding scathing article in the Wall Street Journal, and Dan Kammen and Tonio Buonassisi’s appearance on NPR’s On Point, Ivanpah and solar energy in general has been back in the news.

Tortoise at Ivanpah (J. Reilly)

ISEGS is a concentrating solar plant (CSP) driven by technology from BrightSource Energy: it uses mirrors to reflect the sun’s light to the top of tower, where the heat turns water to steam. This steam then turns a turbine and generates electricity. CSP has the added benefit of heating a salt medium that can store the heat with minimal losses. Therefore, the plant can provide electricity to the grid not only during the day when the sun is shining, but at night as well. This storage reduces the intermittency of the CSP energy supply and allows the plant to compete with other ‘baseload’ energy supplies like coal and natural gas.

ISEGS happens to be the largest example of concentrating solar in the world, with 360,000 garage-door-sized mirrors and three giant towers sprawled over 5 square miles of Mojave desert. It generates electricity just north of Interstate 5 at the Nevada-California line and transmits to southern California.

Burrow excavation at Ivanpah (J. Reilly)

I walked nearly every inch of those five miles when I worked as a biologist at ISEGS. I was there from the moment the first bulldozer broke ground in the Ivanpah Valley in 2010, under the regal summit of Clark Mountain, until I came to ERG as a graduate student in the fall of 2012.

Ivanpah (J. Reilly)

I returned to graduate school in large part because I could not stand to supervise the destruction of the desert anymore. Having lived and worked in this fragile and biologically diverse desert since 2001, I watched my backyard plowed under for energy that would feed the demand of 140,000 homes hundreds of miles to the west. It did not seem environmentally or socially equitable. After living and working in the Ivanpah valley for two years, I promised this valley I would not let it be further destroyed, and I went back to school to figure out how to protect it.

Here’s what I have discovered:

Solar power protects Ivanpah Valley.

Horned lizard at Ivanpah (J. Reilly)

This is not to say that Ivanpah got it right. I was witness to painful foibles throughout the process as it stumbled forward. It has been a learning experience for everyone involved, from federal agencies to technology innovators.

Yet the very plant that displaced hundreds of tortoises may be the very thing that will save these individuals, their species, and ours.

An energy system built with renewables is necessary if the Mojave desert ecosystem, including the desert tortoise and all its migratory birds, are to survive into the coming generations. Previously, I did not fully understand the implications of a grid that continues to rely on fossil fuels.  But at 400 ppm of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and rising, many habitats and backyards are changing. Global sea level rise is now almost 7 inches higher than pre-industrial times, with the rate of increase today nearly double that of the last century. The extent and thickness of sea ice has dropped dramatically. Glaciers are retreating, and cities that rely on their consistent water supply are looking into a near future where they have no water for their millions of inhabitants.

Kangaroo rat at Ivanpah (J. Reilly)

Therefore, utility-scale CSP is an effective way to bring renewable energy online right now, in tandem with rooftop photovoltaic solar and other renewable technology. In addition, stumbles at Ivanpah have provided the agencies and the industry with the experience for doing things better in the future, and a paper that thoroughly details these possibilities can be found here. In addition to wildlife impacts, solar energy can consume water resources, increase particulate matter in air, and have an unknown impact on soil carbon (sequestration of carbon in soil and rock.)  Yet even this article addresses the cobenefits that the BLM and companies such as BrightSource have learned:

• we can use degraded land and avoid pristine habitat
• we can co-locate energy with agriculture and other renewable technology
• we can carefully address siting with each individual project with thorough consideration given to local environmental, cultural, and social impacts

Dust winds at Ivanpah (J. Reilly)

I am the person who picked up dead lizards, mice, or birds at Ivanpah. I am the person who dug up the tortoise burrows and removed them from their homes. I cried many mornings on my way to work. But I am also the person who, along with the men driving the bulldozers and road blades, stopped equipment to catch and remove lizards, mice, and rattlesnakes. And now, I am a person fighting to preserve the habitat not only in my backyard in the desert, but in rainforests and coral reefs as well, because climate change is insidious: it is often only with extreme events that we are able to take note of changes.

In a sense, I have broadened my backyard: it now includes Los Angeles, the Philippines, and Beijing. And it is only by protecting the environment and fighting climate change in these places that we can hope to preserve a future for the desert tortoise and the peregrine falcon in my desert home.

The views expressed here belong solely to the author of this entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.

By Ben Mandel

Syncrude Aurora tar sands mine in Fort McMurray, Alberta (source: Greenpeace/Jiri Rezac)

[Note: Original post on February 1, 2014.]

On Friday, the U.S. State Department released its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Its central finding—that the project would have little impact on climate change—was a disappointment to many in the environmental community. After all, the project would bring dirty oil from the Alberta tar sands (see above) to the Gulf Coast of the United States and clear the way to an even more carbon-intensive energy future for the U.S. Back in June, President Obama pledged not to green-light the project unless it was found by the State Department not to “significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” Some viewed Obama’s punting of the issue to Kerry as a good sign for pipeline opponents, while others viewed it as shrewd posturing. Now with the cat out of the bag, those who were suspicious of Obama’s stance are looking pretty smart.

But what gives? Isn’t it “bad” to facilitate demand for a dirtier commodity than what we currently use, much less the much cleaner non-fossil transportation fuels of the future? From one perspective, the ability to extract this oil is a marvel of modern technology—engineers wouldn’t have been able to even get at the stuff just a few years ago, before technology enabled its extraction from the thick tar sands. Seen differently, the need for advanced machinery to extract each barrel of crude adds significantly to its life-cycle carbon footprint. The EIS acknowledged the added greenhouse gas (GHG) burden of heavy tar sands crude relative to the lighter crude we generally refine in the U.S. today. In picture form, here’s what the difference looks like:

Incremental life-cycle emissions (middle stack) from comparing tar sands crude (rightmost stack) relative to the crude it would displace (leftmost stack) (source: U.S. Department of State)

In State’s words, here’s an idea of what these extra emissions amount to:

“The range of incremental GHG emissions [...] for crude oil that would be transported by the proposed Project is estimated to be 1.3 to 27.4 MMTCO2e annually. [...] This is equivalent to annual GHG emissions from combusting fuels in approximately 270,833 to 5,708,333 passenger vehicles, the CO2 emissions from combusting fuels used to provide the energy consumed by approximately 64,935 to 1,368,631 homes for 1 year, or the annual CO2 emissions of 0.4 to 7.8 coal fired power plants.”

Make no mistake about it—we’re talking about an especially polluting kind of oil here. State never could have credibly denied that fact. So State’s ultimate intimation that Keystone XL wouldn’t have a significant impact on climate (though the report is pretty careful to avoid making such a definitive statement outright) is therefore a question of what it’s been compared against.

In its analysis, the State Department assumes that if the Keystone XL petition is denied by the President, the tar sands oil—all 830,000 barrels per day of it—will simply find other ways of getting from point A (Alberta, though technically the tippy top of Montana) to point B (the Gulf Coast, though technically Nebraska or Oklahoma, where it can link up with existing pipes for the rest of the journey). In the pipeline’s absence, the report explores several “no-action alternatives” that involve some combination of rail and tanker transport of oil either directly to the Gulf Coast or to the existing pipe beginning in Oklahoma. The emissions from constructing the pipeline are dwarfed by the greater greenhouse gas releases from operation of any of the no-action alternatives, which require lots of fuel to transport the oil. By contrast, Keystone would require comparatively little fuel to operate. Looking at these alternatives, it’s easy to say that a pipeline makes the most climate sense.

But at the end of the day, as with most large-scale analyses, it’s all about assumptions. Embedded in the EIS analysis is the assumption that the Gulf Coast will get all of the oil the tar sands have to offer somehow. The market assessment deems it unlikely that the denial of Keystone’s petition would impede extraction efforts in Alberta. Even if this is true, how likely do we think it is that all 830,000 barrels per day make it to the Gulf Coast without the help of this pipeline? It’s difficult to assign a value here, admittedly, but State really ought to try. Because unless it’s a proven certainty that all the oil makes the trip regardless, the emissions from the no-action alternatives should be scaled by this probability to give us an idea of the expected value of emissions. For what it’s worth, a likelihood below about 80% begins to tilt the scale in favor of alternatives.

Without an extensive and efficient pipeline with pretty low operating costs, it would become pretty costly to get one’s hands on tar sands oil. And the U.S. isn’t short on other options, at least not yet. Why would we still insist on getting our oil fix from Alberta in such a scenario? If the tar sands oil flows without having Keystone as its outlet, I’m guessing it goes to other countries. To me that means that less than 80% of full-scale tar sands production would end up in Gulf Coast refineries without Keystone.

Secretary of State John Kerry now faces the decision of how to interpret this report, and ultimately how to act on it. He could take his chances that tar sands oil production would falter without the pipeline to prop it up, and opt to reject the petition. But now that the EIS has materialized, Kerry can’t take an overly activist stance that would undermine his own department’s credibility. More likely is that Kerry is bound by State’s assumptions regarding ugly no-action alternatives, and approves the petition. And maybe that won’t be the end of the world; some have suggested that Keystone opposition is a costly way to spend scarce political will for the environmental cause anyway.

I’m guessing we’ll get the chance to find out.

Crosspost from The Big Word Blog.


The views expressed here belong solely to the author of this entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.

By Juan Pablo Carvallo

Sustained growth lies at the very heart of the current mainstream economic paradigm. Is that so that it seems almost evident that it will happen naturally because of technological innovation so it’s not questioned nor challenged. Technological advancement, in this context, is the result of the endless entrepreneurial pursuit of profit maximization to provide returns for an equally endless capital accumulation. This pursuit, in turn, is the only path to full employment, wealth, and an ever growing standard of living; in one word to prosperity. Ecological economists[1] have questioned these assumptions by simulating the macroeconomic behavior of low and no-growth scenarios and finding that, at least for Canada, a socially feasible[2] and much more sustainable economy is achievable. If we assumed these results were valid, then one question remains: which economic output level should we aim for?

Allegedly[3], a strong reason behind permanent economic growth is to allow everyone to enjoy a healthy, long, and happy life. However, on one hand, the idea that one is happier by consuming more is ridiculously simplistic and most likely wrong. On the other, it’s also true that very low levels of consumption - which translates to low income - prevents people to cover basic necessities and puts them in permanent anguish and stress to secure their livelihoods. To help find this middle point, I looked into the Happy Planet Index[4] elaborated by New Economics Foundation. The metric is compounded by life satisfaction and expectancy and the ecological footprint of a specific nation. Inhabitants who express satisfaction with life but whose nation’s ecological footprint is unsustainable have their Happy Planet Index cut as they are deemed to provide prosperity at the expense of the planet and other countries.

Economic growth is usually measured by GDP per capita, so what I did for each country was to compare their 2011 value with their happiness index in that year. It’s quite evident that to achieve a sustainable happy livelihood you don’t need a disproportionate amount of GDP per capita. Additionally, it’s also apparent that a really small income[5] will prevent nations’ inhabitants to achieving satisfying lives, even if they do so in an environmentally conscious way. The average GDP per capita for the top 20 countries in the list – out of 143 – is $6,400, whereas the top country, Costa Rica, had a GDP per capita of $10,180. Curiously, the worldwide average GDP per capita in 2011, according to my calculations based on World Bank data, was $ 10,190.

If we stopped growing and stationed at single economic output, then the current world’s one should be enough to secure sustainable happiness for all humans providing that we were able to distribute it evenly throughout the world population. It also suggests that we don’t really need incommensurate technological progress - and therefore permanent growth - and that innovation efforts should rather be put on finding macroeconomic stability mechanisms that omits the latter. Above all, considering that the Happy Planet Index is higher for nations that are environmentally sustainable, it proves that our way out of global warming does not conflict with achieving prosperity and lies mostly in the political will to distribute resources and wealth more evenly.

Image: Polyp.org.uk

The views expressed here belong solely to the author of this entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.

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[1] Victor, P. 2012. Growth, degrowth and climate change: A scenario analysis, Ecological Economics 84 (2012) pp.206-212.

[2] Probably the steady state population requirement would be the hardest to achieve, although Canada’s population is growing quite slowly.

[3]Herman Daly’s essay on the steady state quotes an economist having suggested that permanent growth provides hope to poorer people under an equally permanent unequal distribution of wealth and therefore income scenario.

[4]Abdallah S, Thompson S, Michaelson J, Marks N and Steuer N (2009)  The (un)Happy Planet Index 2.0. Why good lives don't have to cost the Earth (nef: London)

[5] Here I’m simplifying language by assuming that economic output equals income. Even though this is not true, since there’s also government expenditure, import-exports, and capital investments, consumption makes a large portion of the economy in market societies so it’s not a bad assumption anyway for our purposes.

Op-ed by Dan Kammen
Published in Daily Californian

Today, UC Berkeley and most institutions are financially invested in destroying our future.

This may sound a little bit surprising to some — even unfounded. Let me explain. When it comes to climate change, the scientific community has presented a clear, unambiguous message: Human burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas — is putting our world at risk.

And this, in fact, is a needless risk. By immediately reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we can reduce the damages that we are currently on the path to creating. Typhoon Haiyan, Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina and many of the costly recent fires and droughts around the world have been exacerbated — caused, to one degree or another, by the changes in the climate that our reliance on fossil fuels has caused.

Credit: Graham Haught, Daily Californian.

Though UC Berkeley and the UC system are leaders in addressing the climate crisis through groundbreaking research and education, the companies they have invested in continue to leave a significant “carbon signature” on the environment. Many of these investments were made before the full impact of these choices on the climate was clear. Continuing the financial investment in companies like Exxon, Chevron and ConocoPhillips — even though some of these companies have made a start in greening their portfolio — sends the wrong message. These companies, and many more, have the capacity and the opportunity to evolve from stalwarts of the old energy order that must change, into supporters of a new clean-energy system that California and the world desperately need.

The 200 largest fossil fuel companies hold, in the form of projects and assets, about five times the amount of carbon in their reserves that the scientific community has deemed responsible to even consider burning in order to avert runaway climate change. The several thousand researchers on the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change have determined with greater than 95 percent certainty that human activity is currently causing climate change. Researchers from across the entire UC system and our state government are critical leaders in efforts to advance both climate science and climate solutions, as well as the adaptation side of the equation.

The overwhelming majority of major energy companies, however, has shown far too few signs of transitioning to low-carbon projects. The fossil fuel industry collectively spends more than $600 billion per year exploring for new hydrocarbons and, in some cases, very significant amounts of money on climate denial, lobbying Congress to maintain fossil fuel subsidies and other efforts that work against the needed and feasible clean-energy transition. These companies are publicly traded and investor-owned, supported in large part by institutional investors like UC Berkeley and the University of California.

Instead of funding the problem, we should be investing in solutions that at once aid the transition to a low-carbon economy and grow our university’s bottom line. There is no lack of financially and environmentally sustainable reinvestment opportunities; as of yet, there is only a lack of leadership.

UC Berkeley has played a vital role as a leader in financial and social accountability. When other institutions refused, the campus listened to its students and the international calls for divestment from companies tied to grave social harm and injustice. As was similarly expressed during the South Africa, Sudan and tobacco divestment campaigns, students at UC Berkeley believe that their campus’s investments should reflect its values of social responsibility and environmental sustainability.

In the case of fossil fuel investments, divesting is not only the moral thing to do but is also financially prudent. As fossil fuel companies continue expanding their search for more hydrocarbons, the world’s carbon budget is shrinking. From Canadian tar sands to shale oil, the ”bottom of the barrel” is proving to be increasingly dirty. When government regulation aligns with this reality — and it must — the vast majority of reserves will have to stay in the ground unburned, rendering them stranded assets. Remaining invested in fossil fuels is a bad bet all around.

With a new chancellor at UC Berkeley and a new UC president, both of whom are leaders in clean energy and climate protection, divestment at UC Berkeley and across the UC system will send a resounding message that the university takes all facets of its leadership position seriously. It will also encourage other institutions to do the same and build pressure for regional and global climate action.

As a faculty member who understands deeply the challenge climate change poses and the urgency with which action must be taken, I call on my fellow faculty to stand with the students of Fossil Free Cal and Fossil Free UC in calling on Chancellor Dirks, President Napolitano and the president of the Berkeley Foundation to be on the right side of history by moving our endowments away from fossil fuels and reinvesting in a sustainable future. Visit fossilfreecal.org and sign on if you are as concerned as I am.

The views expressed here belong solely to the author of this entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.

By John Romankiewicz

“If it’s wrong to wreck the climate, then it’s wrong to profit from that wreckage,” Bill McKibben

Divestment Rally at UC Berkeley on Halloween 2013 (Photo: Zubair A. Dar)

Though I had been living in Berkeley for two years prior working at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, when I enrolled in the ERG Master’s program this fall, I looked for additional ways to get involved in the Berkeley community as a student, not as a scientist. Fossil Free Cal was one club that immediately caught my attention: a club rooted in climate change science but driven by student activists.

Sparked by Bill McKibben’s widely read expose on the fossil fuel industry “Global Warming’s Terrifying new Math” (which I had read a number of times), a campus-driven divestment campaign has taken root at over 300 colleges and universities across the country. These campuses are asking their institution’s endowment to divest from fossil fuels to show that our higher institutions of learning will not invest in the planet’s destruction. “If it’s wrong to wreck the climate, then it’s wrong to profit from that wreckage,” McKibben said on his latest “Do the Math” tour.

Building on the club’s success last semester in passing an ASUC referendum supporting UC Berkeley divestment (with 73% of student body voting in support), Fossil Free Cal has begun strategizing how to influence the decision makers for divestment, including Chancellor Dirks, Berkeley Foundation president Scott Biddy, and the UC Office of the President.

If you add up the total endowments for all of the UC universities, there is about $7 billion, of which we estimate 5-10% is invested in fossil fuel companies (we don’t know yet for sure, as there is no investment transparency). The UC Berkeley endowment is roughly $3 billion, with 1/3 of that managed by the Berkeley Foundation, and 2/3 managed by the UC Regents.

We have launched an online petition to continue building support on campus among students, faculty, and alumni. We have spoken at UC Regents stakeholder meetings, and had initial meetings with Chancellor Dirks and the UC Office of the President, in which we started these crucial conversations and gained useful feedback.

Please sign our petition if you stand with us. Sign here! We are also working on getting as much faculty support as possible, so please speak with your professors about our campaign.

Lastly, this campaign has given me an opportunity to continue to perform my eco-rap and spoken word in support of good causes. Here I am at our October 31 rally on Sproul Plaza, the “Fossil Fuel Haunting”, in which I perform as a conflicted oil rig and ghost of a fossil fuel future.

Also watch "Sustainable" John's Bike Shop / Climate Awesome eco-rap video.

The views expressed here belong solely to the author of this entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.

By Laura Moreno

I dig through trash. And, I take pictures of trash cans on vacations. Most of my friends learn to appreciate, or rather tolerate, this about me. For all of you thinking “ewwwwww….,” I wash my hands afterwards!

Trash and Recycling Bins from My Vacations

One thing I quickly noticed when digging through trash is that ooey gooey food is a huge component of what we throw away. In fact, it is the number one material reaching landfills in the United States. (1) That is enough to fill the Rose Bowl Stadium each day to the brim! (2)

Why should we care about wasted food?

#1: Of food grown in the United States, 40% never reaches anyone’s plate. (3)

#2: While we are throwing away more food than ever in human history, 14% of Americans are food insecure, meaning they don’t get enough food to live active, healthy lifestyles. (4)

#3: 13% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are associated with the lifecycle of food! (5)

#4: Growing food in the U.S. accounts for 10% of the total energy budget, 50% of land, and 80% of all freshwater consumed3. By throwing away an apple or a piece of pizza, we also waste all of the resources (pesticides, water, fertilizer, etc.) that went into growing, manufacturing, and distributing the food.

#5: Wasted food is estimated to cost the United States $165 billion per year which is equivalent to the GDP of the Ukraine3.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), if wasted food were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of GHGs in the world, behind China and the United States6. And, we aren’t just wasting banana peels and peach pits! Of the 1.6 billion tonnes of food wasted globally each year, 1.3 billion tonnes is edible. (6)

While I worked at the Environmental Protection Agency as a regional food waste expert, I witnessed many things that made me realize now is the time to combat the waste of food.  I saw several tons of untouched canned soup that had been improperly labeled and was destined for the landfill. I saw perfectly edible food in the trash cans of restaurants and grocery stores. And, I saw produce thrown away or left on the farm because it was too small, not round enough, or not expected to last three months in refrigerated trucks. I do not cast blame on any of these actors, but rather call on all of us to make a cultural and policy shift to value food rather than waste it. I do not know the answer, but I do know it will take all of us to fix this global food waste epidemic.

It doesn’t matter if the food we grow is organic, local, non-GMO, or [insert any other adjective] if we waste it. So, next time you take out your trash, think about what is inside your trash bag and ways you can reduce your waste. If you need, I am always around to dig through your trash for you! And remember, food is too good to waste!

Sources: 
(1) U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2013). Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 2011 Facts and Figures (EPA 530-R-13-001). Washington, DC.
(2) Bloom, Jonathan. (2011). American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Half Its Food. 
(3) Gunders, D. (2012). Wasted: How America is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill. Natural Resources Defense Council.  
(4) U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2013). Household Food Security in the United States in 2012. Washington, DC. 
(5) U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2009). Opportunities to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Materials and Land Management Practices (EPA 530-R-09-017). Washington, DC.
(6) Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2013). Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources.

The views expressed here belong solely to the author of this entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.

By Diego Ponce de León Barido
Translation by Tanya Dimitrova

México es un país dotado de magníficos recursos de energía renovable a pesar de lo cual se pronostica  por los expertos  una severa crisis energética en la siguiente década [1].  Ante la constante disminución en la producción de sus pozos petroleros mas importantes, y con el inevitable crecimiento de la demanda energética en el país, se espera que México será un importador neto de energía para el año 2020 [2].  En un análisis reciente  sobre el potencial para el crecimiento de la energía renovable en América Latina y el Caribe, México se situó en el sexto lugar (por debajo de Brasil, Nicaragua, Panamá, Perú y Chile), es decir, es un país con importante potencial pero con significativas barreras para poder explotar, por ejemplo, los 71 GW de potencial eólico que posee (un valor que podría cubrir 3 veces la demanda anual de energía eléctrica del sector residencial en el país) [3,4]. Estas barreras no están solamente ligadas a temas de ingeniería y finanzas, sino también a temas culturales  de igual (o mayor) importancia como lo son las tensiones sociales  y la historia.

A child learning to fish while his father is going out at sea in Oaxaca, Mexico, 2013. Like anywhere in the word, renewable energy in Mexico can only be successful if the needs and desires of the communities with the greatest potential for renewable production are taken into account. Every day large energy projects (both fossil and renewable) meet resistance at the local level.

Un ejemplo es el viento en México, que sopla generosamente en el Istmo de Tehuantepec, una región rica en diversidad cultural y recursos naturales cuyo potencial ha sido recientemente ensombrecido por fuertes tensiones relacionadas al desarrollo de la energía eólica en la región. Solamente incorporando a todas las voces, desde aquellas que brotan del mismo lugar donde nace el recurso energético, hasta aquellas que firman los contratos en los niveles mas altos del gobierno, podrá el país desarrollar un potencial energético y económico que sea justo para todos los mexicanos. La historia de nueva cuenta presenta disyuntivas  y la energía juega nuevamente un rol fundamental – tomemos esta oportunidad, para evitar los errores de nuestro pasado, y para incluir a todos los mexicanos en el futuro sustentable de nuestro país. 

The first wind farm in Mexico was built in 1994 in the community of La Venta (La Venta I), Oaxaca, with an installed capacity of 2 MW. Currently the wind potential in Mexico is valued at 71 GW, a huge energy resource, renewable, for the country.

La Ventosa wind farm in Oaxaca, Mexico 2013: Renewable energy offers a chance to integrate communities that have remained isolated for decades, and an opportunity for energy development that takes into account environmental justice, water energy consumption, and the environment.

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Despite the fact that Mexico is a country with great renewable energy resources, experts predict that it will face a severe energy crisis in the next decade [1]. Given the constant decrease in production of its major oil wells, and the inevitable growth of energy demand in the country, Mexico is expected to be a net importer of energy by 2020 [2]. In a recent analysis of the potential for renewable energy growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, Mexico was sixth following Brazil, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru and Chile [3]. In other words, it is a country with great but hindered potential to exploit, for example, the 71 GW of wind energy it has - an amount that would cover 3 times the annual energy demand of the residential sector in the entire country [4]. These barriers are related not only to engineering and finance, but also to cultural issues such as social tensions and history, which are of equal (or greater) importance.

One example is the wind generously blowing in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a region rich in cultural and natural resources whose potential has recently been overshadowed by tensions related to wind energy development. Only by incorporating all voices, from those of people living in the place of the energy resource, to the people signing government-level contracts, could the country develop energy and economic potential that is fair to all Mexicans. History offers tradeoffs, and energy plays a fundamental role yet again. Let us take this opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the past, and to include all Mexicans in the sustainable future of our country.

[1] José Luis Calva et al. Crisis Energética Mundial y Futuro de la Energía en México. Consejo Nacional de Universitarios.  Juan Pablos Editorial. Coyoacán: México. 2012.
[2] Alma E. Muñoz. ‘Sin cambios de energía, México será importador neto en 2020: Subsecretario’. La Jornada (Sección: Economía).  Jueves 23 de Mayo de 2013.
[3] CLIMASCOPIO 2012: Cambio climático y clima de inversión en América Latina y el Caribe. 2012. Fondo Multilateral de Inversiones y Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Enlace: http://www5.iadb.org/mif/climatescope/2012/
[4] Secretaria de Energía y Comisión par el Uso Eficiente de la Energía: Enlace: http://www.promexico.gob.mx/es_us/promexico/Renewable_Energy

The views expressed here belong solely to the author of this entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.

By Zubair A. Dar 

Last week, I went down the timeline on Facebook to check my first post ever. The three words I wrote to describe my feelings read ‘waiting for azadi’. Freedom in Urdu, azadi has come to signify the sum total of aspirations of millions of people in my homeland, Kashmir, a valley perched up in the western Himalayas near India and Pakistan. In my second post, I spell out some of these aspirations as freedom from ‘curfew, atrocities and gags on freedom of speech’.

I vividly remember the days. It was the summer of 2008. We had been constrained indoors for many days in the capital, Srinagar, placed under strict curfew after widespread protests and mass gatherings. As journalists, my friends and I could do little other than make phone calls and surf the Internet for information. Venturing out to gather eyewitness accounts was synonymous with risking your life. Authorities cancelled and reissued curfew passes to us as restrictions continued for weeks. Every day, we would hear of deaths and damages to property by armed forces. Outside the first floor apartment, we would often see troopers thrashing civilians who left their homes to buy bread, milk and other essentials. The gag was choking life in many different ways – crushing dissent, preventing information exchange and breaking the backs of people by limiting access to food and essential medicine.

It was during these strangulating days that I opened a Facebook account. As New Delhi decided to continue the policy of barring text messages and confiscating newspapers, Facebook became the space to express, to communicate, to show and to expose. It was a space that cut through vertical communication structures and established a horizontal network of the people, by the people and for the people. In conflict zones and occupied territories, it proved to be the carnival where people would act vile for a day to challenge the authority of the ruler. But Facebook has since died a death many will mourn for long time to come.

Ever since I landed in the US this summer, Facebook has come to scare me. My home page looks like a psychoanalysis report. It is a reflection of everything I have looked for in the market, searched in Google or bought from an online store. Be it the furniture I like, the boots I am planning to buy, or books of my favourite genre, all make an appearance here – as if winking at me to tell me ‘we know what you did all summer’. Facebook is no longer the space I once knew it to be. It has changed, and so has every website that once inspired me.

It is sad how a democratising tool like the Internet and social media is continuously becoming a tool for capitalist accumulation. It is painful to accept that we can sometimes be fooled into believing that democracy has breathed a fresh life, for all we witness is a gasp that keeps democracy alive. It can never be confused with the triumph of democracy, with azadi, with freedom.

By Chris Hyun

"People who live in the desert dream about water." That's what my friend said, anyway.

I just got back from a short stay in my friend's small desert village in northern Rajasthan, India. It is a village covered in sand, far from any town--a village so remote that it took three phone calls and three hours to get me a paracetamol (aspirin) for a fever I was having.

One night my friend and I got to talking about dreams. We realized that we had many dreams in common: being able to fly, being chased but you cannot run, being caught without any clothes on in a public place, trying to shout but not being able to.

However, there was one reoccurring dream that he had that I could not relate with: being thirsty but not being able to find water. I have never had a dream like that. He told me that he and his brothers have had this dream many times.

Driving through desert sands near the village

In fact, this is one fear in the desert. They hear news of children dying in their sleep, literally dying of thirst. They believe that the warm winds of the peak hot season sap water straight from their babies in the middle of the night. This is why if they hear even the slightest whimper from their children, mothers wake them up to drink some water.

I was interested in learning how they survive in the desert, so I started by asking about their history, and I was surprised that it started out with violence.

Only a few generations ago, their grandfathers fought for this land. I thought, "This place had no water, no trees, no nothing. Someone actually fought for this portion of desert?" I asked, "Why?"

The reply was that they wanted a place of their own.

Slowly, I put pieces of their history together. I was mainly interested in the development of water. They told me how they had to travel for hours and hours to carry water by camel. Then finally their grandfathers manually dug the well near their home. This seemed sufficient until Germans came and told them that the water has excessive amounts of fluoride, which could lead to fluorosis. A plan was already in place to fit these remote desert villages with toilet and bathing facilities and to pipe in treated drinking water.

One old aunt laughed as she said, "I remember when they put in the tap. We were dancing and had flowers!"

The toilets seem to be doing okay, but the tap has been long dry. They say that it was getting too expensive to maintain. And that's when the canal reached their village. Basically, it changed their lives.

Looking at the canal from the water "lift"

The Indira Gandhi Canal Project in Rajasthan started in 1958--a project started to water the desert. Said to be one of the largest canals of India, it took about 35 years for the canal waters to finally reach my friend's village.

One of the biggest changes that took place is  that they can now have another growing season. In the first season, they use the canal water to grow crops like wheat and chana (chickpeas). Their second growing season, during the monsoon, is now fully taken over by one crop--guar.

Guar does not actually take that much water to maintain. Even when there was a freak rain a couple days before I arrived, guar started to grow wildly in the my friend's family field. Not a day would go by without my friend's father asking me about the market conditions for guar in the US. All I could do was throw up my hands.

The second major impact of the canal water is that they now have a fresh supply of drinking water without excessive fluoride content. However, this is regularly driven in and stored in underground concrete tanks. The nearby well water is now only used for the animals and for other domestic uses.

I had many more questions as I explored the village and the surrounding area.

• How much should the government invest in irrigating the desert?
• How much more should the village develop? When I was there there was a poorly managed health clinic and a very small shop.
• As young people become more and more educated and less inclined to farming, what is the future of such a village in the desert?
• How has watering the desert affected the hydrological dynamics and ecology of downstream communities?
• How "green" should we try to make a desert?

The benefit of greening a desert is that it reclaims land for productive use, pushing against forces of desertification.

Kids playing in the canal near the fields

I explained to my friend that in the US, we have also greened our deserts. In California, canal water from far off states irrigate fields of oranges, rice and almonds. We've been able to build cities with water parks in the desert. But has this been so wise?

People have started to plant trees in my friend's village. I told him, "Once you start planting trees, it's usually easier to plant more trees later. Trees then change the micro-climate of the area." My friend started to think about it, saying that he had not thought of that aspect of the forest--how it affects the hydrologic cycle, how it can bring water to an area.

As things slowly change in my friend's desert village, it is quite possible that they may stop having dreams of thirst and water.

And it's quite possible that they will start dreaming of new things all together.

Cross posted with Chris' blog Earth Stumbling. 

By Andrea Mercado

I always liked math, but I didn’t start to love it until I moved from Mexico to the U.S. at the age of 9. I had been so used to excelling in every subject in Mexico that submerging in a new school with a new language that I was just beginning to understand left me feeling defeated. I clung to the safety of multiplication tables and long division like I would to a flashlight in the dark. Eventually I learned English, and everything went back to normal, but I continued loving math to the point of pursuing a bachelor’s degree in it. Somewhere along the way though, it dawned on me that math was its own language, and while universal, not easily understood by everyone.

Unlike most people, I have the ability to interpret a story from a mathematical equation. Not until very recently did I hear someone validate this recognition of the beauty in numbers; Edward Tufte explained at a seminar in Oakland, “the commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly - to develop strategies of seeing and showing.” My art is a strategy for showing what I see, each bristle delivering a vital piece of information onto the canvas.

I’ll explain the mathematical components of a painting with my own pieces as examples. The mapping from 4D space onto a 2D canvas requires vector calculus to accurately display angle and dimensionality of the space. The thickness of the stroke conveys definition while the curve creates motion. Summed up together, the strokes show the image. The gradient of the color, the third variable, simulates heat, or light reflection. Multiplication of the colors allows greater illumination. While I don’t actively think in terms of calculus when I paint, I do intuitively employ mathematics to interpret between what I see and what I intend to show. All the variables and constraints work together to make up a mathematical model of the physical and emotional aspects of a moment. But art is beautiful because it is a flawed interpretation of the actual space. That flaw is the human factor that allows the spectator to not only see through the eyes of the artist, but to feel through her heart.

Zebra in Dusk, 2007 -- There is a lot of mathematical complexity in this piece. To give the proper dimension to the image, the zebra stripes had to be just right. The width of the stripes has to decrease proportionately to the depth, yet still be randomized as they are in real zebras. The color gradient helps move the light across the curvature of the body.

Cherry-Picking, 2009 -- This painting utilizes dots instead of stripes to deliver information on the image. The concentration of dots is a low-pixelated model of the number of petals in the cherry blossom tree. The background, intentionally out of focus, is a very flawed model of the chaos of a city surrounding the beauty of nature.

Island, 2013 --This painting is the crudest model of a landscape, but the sharpness of the horizontal landscape against the smoothness of the sky and water work together to present a rough idea of the space. I find abstract painting the most challenging because it requires the crudest of models, like trying to reach a port with no paddle, all you can do is hope to drift in the right direction.