You may have come across this news item a couple of months ago but it is worth taking another look. Although, the study was conducted by a major spam-ware corporation, it is clear that junk e-mails have a huge carbon footprint.

(image: www.fotolia.com)

Anything powered by electricity emits greenhouse gases. Recently research was conducted in the US to find out the amount of energy needed to transmit, process and filter spam globally. The results were startling. According to the ‘Carbon Footprint of Spam’ report the average greenhouse gas emission of a single spam message is 0.3 grams of CO2. Is this a lot? Well, if you multiply this by the number of spam sent annually it translates into a huge figure.

It is estimated that there are 62 trillion junk e-mails sent each year. In terms of energy this equals to the energy needed to drive a car around the planet 1.6 million times. If looking at the electricity needed to power these spam it equals to 33 billion kWh. This amount of electricity could power 2.4 million homes for a year! Spam-related emissions for all e-mail users around the world in 2008 totalled 17 million tons of CO2 or about the same as the emissions produced by 3.1 million passenger cars. That’s 0.2% of the total global emissions.

The report found that about 85 to 91% of all e-mails globally is spam. Nearly 80% of the spam-related GHG emissions came from the energy used by the PC users viewing, deleting and searching for legitimate e-mails amongst the junk e-mails. But spam filtering itself accounts for about 16% of spam-related energy use. To view and trash a piece of spam takes about 3 seconds.

If every inbox were protected by spam filters, organisations and individuals could reduce today’s spam energy by 75% or by 25 billion kWh per year. This would save the same amount of greenhouse emissions as produced by 2.3 million cars. In late 2008 a major source of online spam was taken off line and global spam volumes dropped by 70%. However, there are always new ones to take its place.

Videos of the Better Place project and battery swap.

Project Better Place

Electric car battery switching station

Yesterday Better Place announced that Canberra would be the first site in the national rollout of its electric vehicle recharge network.

Construction of the network will begin in 2011, with services available to electric vehicle owners from 2012.

ActewAGL - the electricity distribution business and retailer in the ACT - responsible for sourcing and distributing the renewable energy that Better Place will use to power electric vehicles within the ACT. “A significant influence on our decision to choose Canberra was the enthusiasm and support we have received from Michael Costello and his team at ActewAGL” said Evan Thornley, Chief Executive Officer of Better Place Australia.

The deployment of the network will include:

• Recyclable lithium-ion batteries that will power the electric vehicles and be provided as part of the service to drivers, reducing the up-front costs of purchasing an electric vehicle;
• Charge spots in homes, offices, shopping centres and other car parks where drivers can plug in to keep their battery fully charged; and
• “Battery Swap Stations” where motorists can drive in and have a depleted battery automatically exchanged for a fresh, fully charged one.

The vision of Shai Agassi, Better Place founder, is for electric vehicles to be cheaper and more convenient than fossil fuel powered cars. Australia is one of three countries where the technology is being rolled out globally. Its great to see this vision now being translated into concrete plans.

Today I had the fortune to see Shai Agassi, founder of Better Place, talk about his vision for the electric car future. Shai calls himself an imaginer – “I imagine the future and engineer towards it”. His vision of an electric car future is elegant, simple, and achievable. Australia is a key part of his strategy to get the world to a tipping point which results in all cars becoming electric.

For electric cars to replace petrol cars they must be cheaper and more convenient. Yet the electric cars available now are more expensive and less convenient because of their short range and limited recharging options.

One of the keys to Shai’s vision is treating the battery – the single most expensive component in an electric vehicle – like gasoline. The battery becomes a consumable, not owned by the car owner. By taking out the battery its possible to make vehicles that are price competitive with gasoline vehicles.

A second key is the electricity grid, which is everywhere, and which he called “the longest extension lead in the world”. By extending the grid to having recharging points where cars are parked, vehicles can be charged whenever they are not in use. Better Place will be buying only wind or solar generated electricity for use in its vehicles.

A third key, for longer trips, is batteries that can be swapped over in a minute. The first prototype has just been built in Japan. So on a long trip (over 200kms) you pull into a battery station, change your battery, then keep going. It will take less time to change your battery than to fill your car for petrol. For a typical suburban vehicle typically there would be around 12 to 15 battery changes per year.

Paying per km you travel – for the electricity and battery amortisation – is still cheaper than the equivalent cost of petrol per km.

The result is:

• Cars that cost less to buy than fossil fuel powered vehicles; and
• Cars that cost less to run than fossil fuel powered vehicles.

Of course a large investment is needed to build the infrastructure – the recharging points and battery change stations. But if cars are cheaper, if they cost less to run, if petrol is only going to keep increasing in price, and if there is going to be continued regulation and incentive to reduce carbon emissions this is not a insurmountable hurdle.

Shai believes that the “tipping point” will be reached once three countries have proven the concept. Then the rest of the world is likely to follow – and follow quickly. The first country is Israel, which first supported the idea. Renault are investing one billion dollars in producing a electric vehicle, which will first be sold in Israel; they are aiming to sell 150,000 vehicles in the next few years. The second country is Denmark. And the third country is Australia, with Looksmart founder and former Victorian parliamentarian Evan Thornley heading up Better Place in Australia.  Australia was chosen for a couple of reasons. First its big, unlike Israel and Denmark, and thus provides a demonstration that the technology is suited to big and small countries. Secondly we have large sprawling cities, involving a long suburb to city commute, not dissimilar to many North American cities. A third reason would be that we have a relatively small population of cars, so the net capital cost is relatively low. Shai also said that Australia has lots of Lithium, iron and phosphate, the components used in electric vehicle batteries.

With a country full of electric cars, each with large storage capacity, the intermittent nature of electricity generation from wind and solar can be overcome. When the wind blows and the sun shines batteries in parked cars everywhere will be charged. When its calm and cloudy cars can then feedback into the network. And we move towards the smart grid or distributed network.

The choice of Evan Thornley as Australian CEO is interesting. Clearly Better Place will need tremendous IT and communication infrastructure to communicate with vehicles and the smart grid and monitor battery condition and charge levels. Its hard to go past one of the people who was involved in driving widescale uptake of the internet as a leader.

This future is not that far away. Various governments around the world are now offering subsidies to those who purchase electric vehicles. And in Beijing gasoline cars will be progressively banned from the streets. By 2014 no fossil fuel powered vehicles will be allowed in Beijing.

Shai believes that within 10 years we could have three to four million drivers using electric vehicles in Australia.

Shai Agassi spoke at the inaugural 2009 Alfred Deakin eco-innovation lecture. These lectures will feature optimistic innovation driving a more sustainable world. Shai’s positive vision is a great inspiration and a fantastic way of kicking off the lectures.

Black Saturday 7 February 2009: Melbourne’s temperature reached 46.4 degrees (116.5 deg F), fanned by strong hot winds 400 bushfires across the state killed over 170 people and destroyed 700 homes. And the dams supplying the state with water are at record lows.

If letters to the editor in the newspaper are any indication, many people are making the link between the terrible events of 7 February and climate change.

Fifteen years ago – on 21 March 1994 in Rio de Janeiro the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) came into existence. This document states that “The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures.”

Australia’s parliament ratified the convention in 1992 – before it came into force. The USA ratified it in 1992. China ratified it in 1993. 192 countries around the world have ratified the UNFCCC.

Yet fifteen years on global carbon emissions have ballooned. Clearly the parties have NOT undertaken precautionary measures to prevent of minimise the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects.

Based on my understanding of climate change science had there been concerted action to take precautionary measures fifteen years ago Victoria may have still experienced Black Saturday, although perhaps it might not have been quite as bad. This is because of the tremendous inertia in climatic systems. I’d be happy to stand corrected on this by someone suitably qualified.

However if we had managed to cut global carbon emissions from 1994 on I believe that the likely 50 degree temperatures that I have a feeling Victoria may be experiencing in the next twenty or thirty years probably could have been avoided. And that we may well have in our vocabulary then a complete set of Black days – a Black Sunday, a Black Monday, a Black Tuesday, a Black Wednesday, a Black Thursday, a Black Saturday and a Black Sunday.

Unfortunately based on what I read of the science of climate change this full suite of Black days could now well be locked in because of the great inertia of our climatic systems. However if we do manage to greatly cut emissions now we may avoid even worse weather.

Why, in 2009, are atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases still on the rise? I believe primarily because of fear of the economic costs that may arise if resources were put into cutting carbon pollution. Fear fanned by fossil fuel dependent industries.

Yet ever since former World Bank chief economist Nicolas Stern published the Stern Review of Climate Change in 2006 its been credibly shown that the future economic consequences of inaction far outweigh the economic costs of acting now to prevent dangerous climate change.

Whoever you are that is reading this – if you are shocked by the events of Black Saturday -  let me put it to you that you should consider cutting your carbon emissions to lessen the number of future black Tuesdays. Don’t just say this is the government’s problem and leave it at that. You see most governments around the world are not doing enough to drive the sorts of carbon cuts we need. The Australian federal government is an example of this – the 5% carbon reduction target by 2020 is laughable given what the science is saying.

So it is up to all of us to do something – both at home and also at work. Don’t just bitch and moan about how the government isn’t doing enough. Do something yourself. Take whatever assistance you can get from your government - but don’t stop at that - go beyond that. People of the world – unite to cut our carbon emissions – hopefully our government’s will one day start to genuinely lead instead of just continuing to play the prisoner’s dilemma.  (That is saying they recognise there is a problem, but aren’t willing to act unless other countries act because acting alone would be bad for the economy and that acting along wouldn’t reduce carbon emissions sufficiently to actually make much of a difference). And if you live in Victoria, make a fire plan.

And let me also suggest that choosing to act may not be of that much economic cost now, that in fact if you are particularly wasteful in your use of fossil fuel sourced energy that you may still be in front financially by cutting your carbon pollution - even after you’ve spend some of your savings to buy 100% greenpower.  And that choosing to act now may well be of great benefit to you and your family in the future.

At home get a smaller car. Then substitute a drive with a phone call, a walk or a cycle. Switch off stuff not in use - at the wall. Insulate. Get rid of those horribly wasteful halogen downlights.

At work do an energy audit, or get one done, and act on it. Delamp. Optimise your cooling and heating. Turn off stuff not in use - at the wall. Get energy efficient computers and equipment.

At home and work buy 100% certified green power, or get solar panels (make sure you aren’t selling the carbon savings in exchange for a discount from the supplier).

Climate change demands a vigorous, positive response - the more of us who do this, the greater the likelihood of climate stability in the future.