Green A City

Carbon Reduction? How About Community Enrichment?

With all this talk and action around cutting carbon emissions by cities and states, there is a rare opportunity to impact the other side of the ledger: economic and community enrichment coming from healthier, more vibrant planning and living.

Portland, Oregon, featured in today's New York Times, for instance, was the first U.S. city to develop carbon-reduction goals in 1993. Today, the city has walkable neighborhoods, free public transportation, a booming economy, and one of the hottest local foods scenes outside pricey San Francisco Bay Area.

These strategies were based on the consideration, planning and execution of much more than just carbon reduction. Portland has preserved its open space, so farmland and vineyards are available nearby to supply all those farmers markets (thirteen in a town of 500,000, a significant amount) and trendy restaurants. As the Times article headlined: "Chefs flock to a City Where Food Is The Star, Produce is Stellar and Real Estate is Cheap".

Portland's carefull planning, neighborhood redevelopment and green building strategies are also reaping epic rewards in real estate valuation. The enigmatic Brewery Blocks of the city's Pearl District, only recently a dingy post-industrial  neighborhood, is now the most desired location in the Great Northwest for residents, local businesses owners and anyone who sets foot or rides a rail in town. A developer bought the Brewery Blocks in 1999 for $19.5 million and just sold three of the buildings in the blocks for $291.6 million to JP Morgan Asset Management.

Take a look at Denver, which spearheaded the nation's largest public transit ballot measure a few years back, before cutting carbon was de rigueur.

Now Denver is on the cusp of a jolt from its transit oriented development economic strategy. In the first year of light rail expansion, 2005, public transit ridership rates increased more than 10 percent. Businesses are thrilled to have opportunities to locate in high foot traffic areas with bikeways, walkways and events. Besides creating a more compelling destination for people or businesses that want to relocate, people get healthier walking more.

The city hopes to maintain such excitement over its ten year build out.

During this period, Denver is designing infill mixed-use housing to accompany the business, shopping and entertainment along transit lines. The end result is that the city's non-automotive access will make life more convenient and engaging for residents, businesses and tourists, while reducing local air pollution.

Oh, and the carbon outputs decrease.

Other cities of all sizes are chasing cleantech industry development. In this red-hot business sector, reduction means a very nice gain for regional economies. Unlike old industrial centers, cleantech has smaller scale nimble production; cleantech is built around intellectual capital more than massive production lines. It will also be more distributed to meet the needs of exploding demand in local markets for solar, green building, alternative fuels and advanced transportation.

Cleantech and carbon busting are creating economic development options that must be weighed and capitalized upon as local carbon reduction plans go into effect.

For instance in cleantech industry incubation, Austin and San Jose may have the early-mover advantage for massive scale, but other locales including Troy-Albany, New York (fuel cells); Seattle and Portland (biodiesel) ; Atlanta (green building technologies) are forging vital innovation centers. Other hubs and minihubs serving these massive potential markets will surely emerge. 

Finally, there is the tree planting part of carbon-reduction plans. Should this be part of an international or local program? International efforts will be critical, of course. But even more important to local community development will be deciding strategies for regional wildlife diversity and preservation, including parks and urban canopies. Trees can even be used to reduce heat gain in buildings. Properly placed shade trees can reduce building energy cooling costs by up to 50 percent a year.

As carbon-reduction plans get into the nitty gritty of fleets, energy sources, landfills, and buildings, communities must carefully consider how the very fabric of their lives can be improved through integrated sustainable planning, land use, and economic development. If your eyes glaze at the mention of those words, think instead eating, drinking, enjoying family and friends, recreating, shopping, working, preserving nature and enriching local culture--which of course is defined by local knowledge and ways of life.

Sounds like more a more tangible and interesting future than one guided solely by a carbon-reduction action plan model, doesn't it?   

Pipeline Attacks, Hurricanes And $100 a Barrel Oil

Looks like we're on our way to $100 a barrel oil, as prices hit a record $82 a barrel today. There is fear of hurricanes, energy infrastructure terrorist attacks, and the soon-to-be-perpetual "tight inventories" representing the razor-thin margin between a functioning world economy and something that can be only speculated about.

And that doesn't even take into account economic efforts to mitigate global climate change.

Time to start speculating...

Some nations will be hammered more when we hit $100 a barrel, particularly those that heavily rely on energy imports (the US, China). Also hit will be nations with diminishing energy exports (Mexico) as a main source of income. The UK will become more like the US, a net importer or energy, as it must turn to imports as its North Sea production continues to decline.

Al Queda was responsible for this week's oil pipeline explosion in northern Iraq. A shadowy Mexican leftist group performed the job on natural gas and oil pipelines last week and earlier this summer. I wrote about last week how these acts will become more typical. 

When considering its regular supply, processing and delivery is the the basis for our current economy, oil in is an extremely vulnerable resource.  In remote regions, which is generally where energy is extracted and transported from, it's right out in the open to those that want to do economic damage or create international headlines. And it's in the direct path of increasing climate risks, particularly in the U.S. Gulf Coast--the heart, liver and arteries of national energy metabolism--which tops the list as most likely to receive the brunt of the Atlantic climate's more frequent cycle of hurricanes and tropical storms. 

Finally, whether it's Al Queda trying to inflict damage on US economic strength and its international energy business, or leftists protesting in Mexico, or locals trying to stop oil well open gas flaring and political corruption in Nigeria, energy infrastructure is an easy target, with maximum payback.

In spring 2006 I devised a ranking of US cities most prepared and worst prepared for $100 a barrel oil, which was covered in the New York Times, CNN and other major media. At the top were cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago, with good public transit and well-defined urban centers with public transit-oriented economies.

At the bottom of the list were cities like Oklahoma City and Columbus, Ohio, with their less than 2% public transit use, metro-area sprawl and complete dependence on autos and shipping trucks to keep their economy functional. Not that New York or other cities won't be hard hit by "100b,"  but citizens and businesses in those locations will at least have some options for getting people to work, dining, entertainment and retail, as well as shipping ports.

And of course, there is clean tech development of renewable energy, alternative fuels, energy-conserving green building and other technologies, the tech boom of the next few decades. Currently these businesses or urban centers of innovation aren't on the Gulf Coast, so they may fare better than an offshore rig, in so many ways.

Water on the brain: 4th Annual CA Climate Change Conference

By Ken Ott, Research Associate, SustainLane
Sustainability research, Government Division

I rode Amtrak to the 4th Annual California Climate Change Conference in the state capitol on Tuesday, September 11th. By doing so, I enjoyed nice views of the San Francisco Bay and farmland in between the two cities. I also read more about the event before arriving.

This was my first California Climate Change Conference and it was a nice refresher course, in addition to a source for reams of new information which I still haven't finished reading. The California Energy Commission and California Resources Agency put on this conference and are the state's primary policy and planning agencies for energy and natural resources, respectively.

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I'd like to share what I learned at the morning session on water in this post. Instead of merely reading about climate change issues, in contrast, it was great to speak with panelists and other attendees in person. Although magazines or online articles can be important resources, there is no substitute for conversation and one-to-one dialogue.

The morning panels focused on probable climate change impacts such as: water (flood risk and mitigation) and air quality (soot effects on snow melt rates). I was able to listen to and speak with a great number of people who are experts in their fields.

Some of them included Michael Dettinger, Scripps Institution of Oceanography who works on observing increased flood vulnerability, and Sam Earson, Desert Research Institute, who studies groundwater supply issues, using gas tracers. All of the panelists do good work and contribute to a greater  understanding of climate change issues as they affect the Western US as well as the global community. All of them are supported by state agencies or deparments and in turn report back to these bodies.

Below are synopses of most speakers' presentations with their respective conclusions as well as mine. If you are already knowledgeable in general you can skip my commentary and just read the indented text boxes. These contain much of my verbatim notes. You can also attend the sessions virtually. Sessions are archived in PDF and streaming audio/video for your convenience: Conference Home.

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CLIMATE CHANGE AND WATER RESOURCES IN CALIFORNIA
Session Chair: Jamie Anderson (California Department of Water Resources)

The early morning sessions were well attended and very clear in assigning further certainty to likely extreme weather events in the future. The main culprit in all cases was a human induced warmer biosphere. 

“California Flood Risks in a Changing Climate”
Michael Dettinger of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography presented a model in which a global climate +3 degrees Celsius warmer leads to “flood friendly” conditions in California and along the entire West Coast. These conditions include increased winter snow melting and a stronger phenomenon of “Atmospheric Rivers.”

West coast more likely to get more rain
More rain than snow
Double area of rain --> double flooding
Additional winter melting: much wetter soils in northwest, slightly drier soils in CA --> but doesn't reduce flood risk
"atmospheric rivers" -- the storms to worry about. warm pacific storms.
"pineapple express" -- source of big storms/floods
More flood risk: rain rather than snow; wet snows & soils; more large storms; need to have better flood management through increase observation of snow, weather patterns...

Michael Dettinger gives his presentation. Click for larger photo.

Impact of Mexico Pipeline Terrorism on Energy and Cleantech Sectors

The news report of multiple terrorist attacks on Mexico's oil and natural gas infrastructure today should be watched as a possible precursor to increased terrorist activities on global fossil fuel energy infrastructure.

Mexico produces more than 4 percent (3.7 million barrels per day in 2006) of the world's oil supply, and any actions there could either be part of a larger global effort to disrupt world markets, or it could prompt copycat actions. Either way, oil prices in particular might reach record levels this week.

In early 2006 a terrorist attack on Saudi Arabia's Abquiq oil processing facility was thwarted, preventing the disruption of the 5-7 million barrels a day that is processed at that single location--equal to about 7 percent of the world's daily use.

Hopefully, the Mexico incident, which is the second series of actions by a small terrorist group since July, has occurred in isolation. Mexico's attacks have been also on smaller pipelines that aren't likely by themselves to impact world prices.

But oil infrastructure security risks, whether natural or man-made, and energy price instability will continue to drive interest and applications for alternatives. If such risks play out in the near future to a greater degree, look for an even greater surge of interest in non-fossil fuels such as renewable energy that is distributed and thus far less subject to terrorism, and in alternative fuels produced domestically.

Such growth will continue to capitalize on government or utility-backed contracts that can amortize over a set period the higher upfront costs of renewable technologies and alternative fuel vehicles as a hedge against wildly fluctuating fossil fuel prices.

Jerry Brown to California Cities: Curb Greenhouse Gases or I'll Sue You

California Attorney General Jerry Brown gave members of the California League of Cities convention yesterday in the state capital the threat of lawsuits if the state's 400+ cities don’t account for the greenhouse-gas producing activities related to their planning processes.

The former California governor and mayor of Oakland earlier this year in his new role as self-proclaimed "top cop," sued one hyper-growth California county for not calculating the impact of its extensive development plans on greenhouse gas production.

Brown used the state's groundbreaking 2006 AB 32 global warming mitigation legislation as precedent in a now-settled lawsuit against San Bernardino County. His office is compelling the county to inventory its total greenhouse gas emissions and to come up with a greenhouse gas reduction action plan for reducing emissions tied to new development, through a long-existing regulation known as the California Environmental Quality Act.

"We've got to adopt feasible measures to reduce greenhouse gasses through public processes--every city and county in California can do it," Brown told the gathering of hundreds of mayors and city managers. "I want to join with you to help. If you don't, I'll sue you. You have your roadmap, your threat, and the carrot of good things you'll achieve and bad things you'll avoid, so let's do it!"

The “bad things” he referred to that could be avoided included more smog and forest fires because of higher temperatures and broken levees because of increased flooding risks attributed to global climate change.

Brown, in his gruff San Francisco "Out-the-Mission" accent (which to this native Chicagoan always sounds more Chi-Town than anything), lauded Republican Gov. Schwarzenegger and the state's General Assembly for its far-reaching global climate change emission reduction targets.

"What California has done in adopting AB 32 is more comprehensive than the greenhouse gas reduction goals in any state and in some ways is more complete than anything accomplished by any nation."

Brown alluded to the California Environmental Quality Act being signed back in 1970 by then Governor Ronald Reagan and how last year Gov. Schwarzenegger signed AB 32 into law.

"A Republican signed the most far-reaching, invasive measure to make your life more difficult and now I'm the top cop to chase down people who emit greenhouse gasses," the long-time Democrat said, with a hint of irony.

The crowd of city officials, representing every political stripe, guffawed and cheered the former-seminary-student-turned career politician.

Hurricane Dean May Menace Energy Supply

Hurricane Dean will enter the Gulf of Mexico is some form next week, which doesn't bode well for the nation's energy supply or for Texas Gulf Coast cities bailing out from record rain and flooding.

The now Category 3 storm is likely to be fast-moving, powerful and devastating, especially if it hooks north of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, which the latest tracking estimates forecast. The more the storm remains over the warm open waters of the Gulf, the greater likelihood of continued strength.

For those in the Brownsville-Galveston, Texas region, close attention should be paid to hurricane forecasts. New Orleans, Houston and inland areas should be on alert as well.

Monday futures markets will begin to speculate on Dean's impact on the national energy prices and supply. The true impact not be known mid-week, when Dean comes ashore on the northeast mainland of Mexico or on the the US Gulf Coast. Oil and natural gas production facilities in the Gulf, in refineries lining the coast, or in Houston, where petrochemical centers are based, may suffer damages that would either be difficult to quickly access or assess.

Besides filling up that car this weekend, if you hang your hat with state or local government agencies, consider the impacts of fossil fuel scarcity on the budgets and operations of state and local government agencies.

Hopefully, next week won't prove to be a baseline event akin to Katrina and Rita in 2005, but it may prove to be a very real energy risk model.

Rocky Mountain Institute Turns 25: or The Distributed Generation of Amory Lovins' Brainpower

We repost Warren's August 15th article from WorldChanging this week. -Editor

One of the world's leading energy and environment think (and do) tanks celebrated its 25^th anniversary in characteristic style this past week. With numerous references to the looming risks of global climate change, peak oil and energy disruption, combined with developing nation social-political and national security challenges, the event took on the air of urgent practicality.

 

Besides the Rocky Mountain Institute'€™s stellar staff and its fearless founder/leader, Amory Lovins, the Aspen-based event attracted a jaw-dropping line-up. On stage were former President Bill Clinton, past CIA director R. James Woolsey, former New York Governor George Pataki, Sustainable South Bronx'€™s Majora Carter, Wal-Mart Chairman Rob Walton, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, technology luminary Bill Joy, Patagonia Founder Yvon Chouinard, and British Sky Broadcasting CEO James Murdoch.

 

Off stage things were no less dull, with a brain-pummeling cast of physicists, business leaders, authors and technologists mixing it up in perpetual reminiscing, scheming and celebrating. "€œYou can bet I will be so on your ass,"€ said a longtime corporate dematerialization expert to a clean tech incubation strategist he had just met, after they plotted how the United States can capture various sectors of global innovation markets.

 

What was extraordinary at the two-day session of panels and parties was how much RMI'€™s iconic founder has altered the consciousness of those present. It was as if little bits of his brain were implanted into the words, plans and outlook of those at the dias and congregating in the beaux arts hallways of the venerable Hotel Jerome.

 

Lovins has developed many world-changing concepts over his 35-year career including "negawatts"--€”reducing the need to produce energy through conservation--and its economic cousin, "the soft path."€ An Oxford-educated physicist, Lovins uses hard data as the basis for making the world'€™s economy radically more energy efficient through better planning, design and day-to-day use in both buildings and industry. More recently RMI has presented ideas on leapfrogging comatose American automotive innovation with superlight materials and hyper-efficient engine and drive train functionality.

"The demand side of energy efficiency is not as sexy as solar or wind energy, but it is much more effective,"€ said Joy. Working with venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Joy is working on "€œlooking for something in green technology advances to make a factor-twenty change on a long-term basis."€

Minneapolis Responds Quickly to Bridge Tragedy

Our hearts go out to Minnesotans in wake of the I-35W bridge collapse that occurred yesterday in the city center of Minneapolis.

We received an email this morning from the city describing how it is encouraging people to bike and walk in the downtown area, as many of the major roads in and around the accident site are closed today.

Minneapolis had the second-highest bike-to-work rate in the 2006 SustainLane US city rankings, with 2.3 percent of city residents biking to work. In last night's news coverage of the tragedy, it was apparent how many people used bikes as a way of navigating around the gridlock that seized area roads. 

The city also announced in today's email that "Stone Arch Bridge and Bridge #9 are also closed until further notice.  Bicyclists and pedestrians who need to cross the river must do so at either the Washington Avenue bridge at the University of Minnesota campus or at the 3rd Ave Bridge in Downtown.  Downtown bicycle commuters who regularly use West River Parkway are encouraged to use the LRT trail to and from Downtown."

May Minneapolis, neighboring St. Paul and all those injured have a speedy recovery.

The Impact of "Boomburbs" on Metro Sustainability

The Brookings Institute recently released a new book, Boomburbs: The Rise of America's Accidental Cities, and we were astounded by the hyper growth of many places that few have heard of nationally.

What's troubling is the negative impact these cities will have on the best efforts of urban centers to green their communities.

Located in more than 25 metro areas in the US, so-called boomburbs have doubled, tripled, even quadrupled in size since the 1970s or 1980s, with metros such as Phoenix having as much 42 percent of its total population residing in these new clusters.

Photo source: Wikipedia

While the SustainLane US City Rankings of the largest 50 US cities included only two of these so-called Boomburbs--Mesa, Arizona          and Arlington, Texas--these and other cities such as North Las Vegas, Nevada; Hialeah, Florida; Peoria, Arizona; and Chesapeake, Virginia will be truly pushing the limit in impacting smart growth planning approaches for water, natural resources, air quality and traffic impacts.

The problem is many of these boomburbs lack city planning, and rely instead on housing developers for master plans, which may or may not be cobbled together to form the basis for transportation and resource planning.

Worse,  say authors Robert Lang and Jennifer LeFurgy, boomburbs are quickly leapfrogging into cheaper agricultural land beyond metro cities, with even newer "mini boomburbs" that push into "increasingly remote locations and use legislation intended to promote rural economic growth to steal businesses from older, more developed suburbs."

Examples are provided of cities such as Frisco, Texas, which is outside Dallas-Forth Worth, poaching business from older Texas boomburbs such as Plano and Irvine.

"Boomberbs are truly 'driving cities'," say the authors. "Not only is public transit use low, but also average travel time to work is high." It's not surprising that Arlington, Texas (pop. 360,000), was the only city in the SustainLane US City Rankings to have 0 percent of its population commuting on public transit or biking to work.

The authors report on "freeway exit economies," where a community's economic growth potential is measured by the number of freeway exits and miles of freeway-facing frontage road it has. That's so it can pencil out how much land it can develop with low-slung strip malls, big-box retailers, corporate campuses and massive residential housing projects.

Boomburbs never mentions the environmental impacts boomburbs foist upon neighboring communities, regions and states (the book and supporting study were funded by the Fannie Mae Foundation).

But there is one glimmer of hope: most mayors and city councils of boomburbs are pursuing light rail as a solution to the congestion, air pollution, inconvenience and the resulting lack of prestige these mushrooming "driving cities" and their 10 million inhabitants are experiencing.

World’s Largest Solar Energy Farm to be Built in California to Meet Community Choice Aggregation Demand

As reposted 7/13/07 on WorldChanging -Editor

 

Fresno, California sits at the south end of one of the sunniest and hottest valleys in North America, the San Joaquin. The San Joaquin Air District is also one of the most polluted in the nation, with asthma rates many times higher than the rest of the nation and numerous air quality action days every summer causing significant health and business impacts.

Upon this tableau, the city of about a half million residents along with 11 surrounding communities and two counties announced last week they would together be developing the largest solar facility in the world. It will be more than seven times the size of the earth’s largest solar energy farm, now in Germany.

Map sources: geology.com, WIPP.Energy.gov

The planned 80 PV solar plant, eventually covering one square mile, will be developed by San Francisco-based Cleantech America and managed by the Kings River Conservation District (KRCD), one of the state’s new community choice aggregation districts.

“We’re so excited about what community choice can do for us,” said Dave Orth, Manager of KRCD.

Community choice allows a city, county or group of communities such as the KRCD to band together to build and produce their own energy and then transmit that over lines owned by public or investor-owned utilities. In the case of the KRCD and other California communities following in its path, the goal is to control development of new energy sources, particularly renewables, which can be solar, wind, biomass or other non-polluting technologies.