Even though the South Dakota Department of Transportation insists that agriculture, tourism, health care, and the whole darned economy will collapse if we make too much of an effort to reduce carbon emissions, the DOT’s draft Carbon Reduction Strategy does propose six ways it can help mitigate the transportation-related activity that’s heating up the planet:
- Embed Energy Efficiency into SDDOT Business Practices
- Reduce Highway Users’ Energy Consumption
- Promote Freight Efficiency
- Encourage Non-Motorized and Multi-Occupant Travel
- Reduce Energy Impact of Infrastructure Projects
- Improve SDDOT Internal Energy Efficiency
The first plank, making DOT operations more energy efficient, is an easy one to slip past Governor Noem’s ideological trip wires because using less energy has a “strong connection to cost containment.” No Republican administration should argue with saving money.
The second plank, reducing how much fuel we drivers use, will not involve any mandates. Instead, DOT proposes a variety of helpful hints and management practices:
- Provide accurate road information to help travelers plan their trips and avoid disruptions and delays.
- Use software, cameras, message boards, variable speed limits on the interstate highways, and adaptive traffic signals in big towns to keep traffic flowing smoothly and safely.
- Train first responders to clear accidents “as safely and quickly as possible” to “minimize delay, congestion, and energy consumption.”
- Hand out $29 million in National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure grants from Uncle Sam to build electric vehicle charging stations.
- “Consider” the use of alternative fuels in DOT vehicles and public transit.
The third plank, promoting freight efficiency, calls for more technology and trains:
- Promote truck platooning and multi-trailer trucks.
- Build more shuttle train facilities to put more truck trailers on more efficient trains (“intermodal freight transfer”).
- Use more electronic screening systems to allow more properly maintained and safe trucks to cruise past weigh stations.
- Study ways to let truckers know where parking is available so they don’t burn fuel hunting for spots to take their 10-hour rest breaks.
The fourth plank, encouraging non-motorized and multi-occupant travel, relies mostly on federal money to build trails, develop more transit options, and maybe build some park-and-ride stations and then hoping people will use them.
The fifth plank, reducing the energy impact of infrastructure projects, involves engineering:
- Calculate project life-cycle costs to consider how long materials will last, with an eye toward reducing the energy DOT would expend repairing and replacing them.
- Incentivize smooth pavement to improve gas mileage.
- Continue recycling asphalt and concrete to reduce the energy expended in producing new materials.
- Specify LED lighting in construction projects and convert existing lights to LED.
- Minimize lane closures in construction zones and minimize detour lengths.
- Reduce the amount of dirt DOT cuts and fills to improve roads (the less those excavators and dump trucks go back and forth, the less fuel they burn).
The sixth and final plank, improving DOT’s own energy efficiency, seems to make the first plank far more concrete and involves a variety of practical strategies for keeping in-office energy use down:
- Continue allowing remote work, which will reduce employees’ driving and fuel use.
- Consider adding electric vehicles, air compressors, mowers, and weed eaters to the DOT fleet.
- Install more efficient lighting and heating in DOT buildings.
- Optimize snowplow routes and optimize locations of sand and de-icer to reduce “deadheading”, the time winter maintenance vehicles are traveling but not moving snow or treating ice.
- Maybe mow the ditches less often.
Expressing the one-party regime’s commitment to business über alles—or perhaps, to keep the metaphor clean, business unter alles—the DOT emphasizes that any successful carbon reduction strategy requires “a foundation of a healthy economy.” Farming and traveling and GDP must come first. The DOT’s carbon reduction plan does not mention climate change, and it only mentions “environmental injustice” as a possible result of not prioritizing economic growth.
But once we get past the GOP-GDP-speak necessary to get an emissions-reduction plan past the Noem censors, the DOT is offering some practical steps it can take to reduce the pollution that results from transportation in South Dakota.
Your Governor Noem impresses as someone who doesn’t turn out the lights when leaving a room.
Use Roman concrete to cut CO2 emiisions.
https://ases.org/roman-concrete-holds-a-secret-to-cutting-carbon-emissions/
Roman concrete roads and structures last a millennium. Portland cement-based roads and structures las maybe 50 years (except in South Dakota where the roads appear to last maybe 5 years).
https://www.science.org/content/article/why-modern-mortar-crumbles-roman-concrete-lasts-millennia
And just where are we to obtain sufficient pozzalanic ash material to meet our nouveau eureka-moment Roman concrete needs?
Barring proximity to volcanic-origin material, there are pozzolans that are industrial by-products including fly ash, silica fume from silicon smelting, metakaolin, and (relatively) silica rich residues in rice husk ash. All of which have significant energy cost when mass produced.
Sorry, John. Back to the drawing board.
I’ll take the $29mill to put up some charging stations. Thanks.
Oh, wait… somebody has already been picked to get the free money? Dang, I’m out of luck again.
Sounds like a good study that $3,000,000 offered could have gone into.
Lower the speed limit and rigorously enforce it. Saves gas and state fines go to the schools. A win-win.
Ah, yes, there is no source for volcanic material . . . ever study earth science?
Volcanoes are erupting 20 miles from Iceland’s capitol. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/11/iceland-volcano-eruption/
(Iceland, especially its capitol, is in North America. Iceland is on both the North American and Northern European tectonic plates – thus it has plentiful volcanic activity and lava flow.)
Too foreign, the Big Island, Hawaii, is home to a millennial-long volcanic vent. The flows readily pass out of the national park, into human developments and into the ocean. Those could be a source for volcanic material.
Closer to home? Inyan Kara, Mount Saint Helens, Craters of the Moon, and many others were created by volcanic activity and could be sources for volcanic material for making Roman Concrete.
The problem with an entrenched status quo – arguing that ‘we can’t do that’ — is that the position dies when new sources and methods and the power of human ingenuity is unleashed. SDSMT folks argued a decade ago that ‘coal was king’. Coal is dead in the UK, dying in Germany, dying in Appalachia, and is dying in Campbell County. Solar is the least expensive power source ever, cheaper including battery storage, than even operating a coal power plant. Need lithium for EV batteries? Norway just discovered a 100 year supply, and other discoveries are bypassing a need for lithium in EV batteries. Resting on a status quo argument is mentally surrendering, ignores exponential systemic phase changes, and appears lazy. Now excuse me while I answer by Blackberry.
Take that, DaveFU. #grins “Resting on a status quo argument is mentally surrendering, ignores exponential systemic phase changes, and appears lazy.” – How old did you say the earth is, KE?
Jutting out of black shale and other local formations I have found outcroppings of primordial natural concrete aggregate that I couldn’t even scuff with my rock hammer. Museum quality, nice stuff.
The mechanics of the good earth work in a smart way that always seems to be producing volcanic ash. Lots.
Contrary to a contrarian is contribution.
Contrarianism towards a contrarian is contribution. – *brilliant 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 😉
John
Time to think inside the box before you presume to think outside it–although your lack of skillset keeps you from doing the former.
Ever hear of shipping costs? A volcano in Hawaii doesn’t deposit pumice in South Dakota for your hare-brained Roman concrete notion any more than an abundance of hydroelectric power in the Ruhr Valley of Germany lowers electricity costs in SD.
The reason South Dakota has little to no manufacturing is owing to the cost of shipping to major markets on the east and west coasts.
But go ahead and manufacture all and anything you want in SD; the transportation costs to markets will get you out of business in no time. Best you and PHL IV run a nail salon in a strip mall.