Thank Grande It's Thursday

We are not talking about the Rio Grande, but the mid-size coffee serving at Starbucks. Yes, Starbucks has short, tall, grande and venti sizes for their coffee and lattes. The grande is 16 oz. (More on Starbucks lingo is available at Quicksilver.com.)

I was recently in the local Starbucks when I overheard the patron in front of me ask for a "140 degree latte." Being a thermo expert, I had to ask the barista what this meant. The barista replied the milk in the 140 degree is warmed less than the normal 160 degrees. I started doing mental arithmetic to determine how much energy Starbucks could save if all patrons became green and asked for the 140 degree grande non-fat latte (with one Splenda and no foam, single-cupped).

Starbucks has over 15,000 stores and yearly revenues of nearly ten billion dollars. They must sell the equivalent of something like 3 billion grande drinks a year. Twenty degrees difference on a drink that weighs a pound using a specific heat of 1.0 means 60 billion BTUs could be saved. Each of the Starbucks espresso machines is powered by electricity. There are 3412 BTUs in a kilowatt hour. The added warmth of the drinks, therefore, equals 19.096 million kilowatt hours. The average heat rate of a coal fired power plant - the most common form of power plant in the world - is about 10,000 BTUs per kilowatt hour. This means about 1.25 pounds of coal need to be burned to generate a kilowatt hour. The 19 million kilowatt hours needed to heat a year's worth of Starbucks coffee from 140 to 160 degrees, then, required 23.870 million pounds of coal.

Coal is about 50% carbon. (The rest is ash and moisture with a little hydrogen.) Therefore, 11,935,000 pounds - almost 6,000 tons - of carbon are emitted each a year to increase the temperature of the grande cups of Strabucks from 140 degrees to 160 degrees. Expressed as carbon dioxide, we have to multiply the amount of carbon by 3.67, allowing us to find Strabucks is emitting an additional 21,881 tons of carbon dioxide each year simply because its patrons do not request the 140 degree grande non-fat latte (with one Splenda and no foam, single-cupped). This is about the same amount of carbon dioxide emitted by 4,000 cars in a year. Of course, just driving to Starbucks to get the 140 degree grande non-fat latte (with one Splenda and no foam, single-cupped) causes an untold amount of carbon emissions.

There is much debate about whether electricity can be generated from coal without the CO2 emissions. It is beginning to feel like Christmas, and if you believe in Santa you will believe this nonsense of coal gasification and CO2 sequestration.

Now that Vietnam is embracing a market economy and people have more money there to spend on Starbucks, they are also buying lots of motorcycles and having lots of crashes. It was reported this week that Vietnam has instituted a helmet law for motorcyclists. Amazingly, the number of motorcycles in Vietnam has increased from 500,000 in 1990 to over 22 million currently. With this type of statistic, perhaps we can all understand how the earth is headed toward a very warm (140 degree?) future in places like Death Valley.

The good news from Washington is President Bush will sign into law the new higher efficiency standards. To celebrate this momentous event, the eggnog will only be heated to 140 degrees.

This is the last TT for this year, as I will be on vacation through January 7, sipping my morning soy latte from Starbucks (which I must confess will be only heated to 140 degrees because soy milk actually burns if it is heated any higher).

The word of the day is "tocsin," or ringing a bell for the purpose of alarm. Well, I have been a pretty ardent bell ringer that we are simply adding toxins to the environment. With this, let's all sing Jingle Bells and do better next year. Wishing you all season's greeting and a happy, healthy, and energy efficient 2008.

tocsin \TOCK-sin\, noun:
1. An alarm bell, or the ringing of a bell for the purpose of alarm.
2. A warning.

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