burning gas to flush the toilet

There is good news and bad news today. The good news is that wind and solar power generation are growing rapidly. Perhaps more rapidly than first expected. The Southwest states especially, are committed to make green energy work. These are also the states where solar and wind have the best potential. And where good paying jobs are needed. It appears the alternative energy crowd is providing these jobs.

The US wind-power industry grew by 45% last year, adding more than 5,000 megaWatts or 1/3 of all new generating capacity in the country. Solar grew at nearly the same rate, adding more than 300 megaWatts, and perhaps more importantly, making significant headway in commercial projects. In California, commercial installations now exceed home installations. While all these numbers are still ridiculously low, the growth rate is encouraging.

But not all the news is good. And speaking of California, we read that the city of Carlsbad is contemplating adding a desalination plant soon. Poseidon Resources Corporation won a key regulatory approval to build a $300 million water-desalination plant there, the largest in the Western Hemisphere. It would produce 50 million gallons of water per day, enough to supply about 100,000 homes. To do so, the plant will use a lot of electricity, about $1.1 worth of it per 1,000 gallons. At 10c per kWh that means about 11 kWh per 1,000 gallons, or nearly 5,000 pounds of CO2 for every 1,000 gallons of water. Let's do some more math here to see why that is scary.

It is estimated that one person uses about 80,000 gallons of water a year, most of it to flush the toilet, take showers, and water the lawn. If the Carlsbad project goes ahead we will have people producing 400 million pounds of CO2 per year to flush their toilets and sprinkle their patches. Assuming that these frail Californians are not going to take cold showers, more CO2 will be needed to heat their daily splash.

And if that does not worry you, it appears California has as many as 20 proposed sea water projects waiting in the wings. The state is already using more than the output of one nuclear reactor to ship water into the Los Angeles basin. All we need now is to add another 20 or so energy inefficient desalination plants. That will eat up renewable energy additions faster than we can build them.

I am sure it will surprise nobody that the cities of Southern California will do all this without demanding that their customers be more sensible in their water use. Far from it, the Metropolitan Water District plans to subsidize the difference between the cost of desalination -at $950 per acre-foot- and the cost of shipping water -at $700 per acre-foot-. If nothing else, these subsidies will ensure that the water hungry Southerners will not have any excuse to cut back on their excessive demands. Talk about teaching good manners.

The other bad news today is the growth of airline travel. Flying is another one of these things that we better leave to the birds who have developed an environmentally acceptable solution. Our ingenious mimicry, often praised as one of the breakthroughs of the human mind, turns out to be nothing but an excessively wasteful and destructive activity. And like most such activities, a highly addictive one to boot. Just one long distance flight produces as much carbon dioxide per passenger as a 6 month metropolitan commute.

I guess if you don't mind emitting millions of pounds of CO2 to flush your toilet, you won't mind emitting millions more to go see the sights. Sights that your travel habits are in the process of destroying. Bon voyage.