Green A City

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.

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."€

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. 

Bike Capital of the World?

We repost Warren's June 14th article from WorldChanging this week. -Editor

The Future of Carbon-Free Transport: Groningen, Netherlands

The future of carbon-free transport lives strong in Groningen. This Dutch city of 185,000 proves that bicycle transportation can reign supreme: people there make about 150,000 trips by bicycle every day.

Bicycles and pedestrians entirely rule the medieval-era city hub, cruising along on car-free dedicated pathways and short cuts with no traffic signals in some instances. But people also commute on bikes in large numbers from suburban housing spread out around the city to downtown jobs, via a ring-and-spoke network of paths. Overall, 37 percent of area commutes are made on bikes.

Boasting an official town bicycle planner, Groningen has created an infrastructure it refers to "continuous and integral," which includes massive surface and underground bicycle parking facilities, dedicated bike paths, and two-way bike lanes even on one-way auto streets.

Since the early 1980s, 30 city bicycle parking facilities have been developed, including one underground facility at the central train station that sells bikes, repairs bikes and offers valet and secure parking for more than 4,000 bikes. Parking is financed through a low-cost annual membership program that costs $50 a year, while bike valet positions create significant numbers of jobs at the public parking facilities and also at 15 local schools.

Bike parking and paths, however, are only the physical manifestation of the careful cycling cultural nourishment that has been provided by city leaders collaborating with citizens. In 1986 Groningen developed what is believed to be Europe’s first dedicated bike policy document, which focused on a broad spectrum of bike transportation and awareness programs. Educational programs now include teaching the health and economic benefits of cycling.

"We think we can boost the numbers of cyclists even higher," said bicycle planner Cor van der Klaauw on Josh Hart’s Car Free Blog. "We have programs to introduce new immigrants to cycling. Many of them came from places where the car is the ultimate status symbol. We need to show them that in Holland, they can get around very easily by bicycle, status symbols aside."

Groningen's bicycle planning has not occurred in a vacuum, but rather complements an integrated scheme that includes low-priced parking facilities for cars, strong public transport and careful public transit linkages between car parking areas and centers for employment and education. With these amenities, cars use, especially in the city center, was successfully restricted without impacting local business.

Other so-called northern European "cycling cities" may be more known (Amsterdam; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Ghent, Belgium) but none can match Groningen for its complete vision and high rate of daily velocipedic participation.

The Netherlands averages a 26 percent national cycling rate, Denmark scores just under 20 percent and Germany achieves about 10 percent, according to a report published by Dutch research group Fietsberaad (Number 7).

While bicycles in the US currently comprise only 0.4 percent of all commuter trips, some North American cities are actively promoting bicycle transportation--through planning dedicated mapped routes and facilities--as a way of reducing global climate change-causing carbon emissions. San Francisco, for instance, has announced a goal of having bicycle trips make up 10 percent of all city trips by 2010.

What’s behind the high rates in Europe, besides the history of bicycle use and culture? According to Fietsbaraad: "Accepting the cyclist as a 'normal' traffic participant with equal rights in the '50s and '60s has been a crucial factor; (so has) the realization of a motor car infrastructure (that) is not at the expense of the cyclist….”

Warren Karlenzig is Chief Strategy Officer at SustainLane, where he directs the company’s US city rankings, and SustainLane Government, an open-source best practices sustainability knowledgebase for state and local government officials and their constituents. Warren is lead author of the newly released How Green Is Your City? The SustainLane U.S. City Rankings (New Society Publishers). His blog is www.greenacity.com

San Francisco Moves Toward Renewable Power Majority

A significant step toward having the nation’s first renewable-powered city was taken yesterday by the city and county of San Francisco. Its board of supervisors went forward with a request for the public utility commission to study a plan’s feasibility that would develop more than half the city's total electric power from renewables.

“It’s high time for San Francisco to chart its own energy future,” Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi told the board.

The city’s power currently comes investor-owned utility, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which also owns the transmission lines along with the power-generating facilities. About 12 percent of the city’s PG&E power now comes from renewable sources, with the remainder coming from large-scale hydroelectric dams, natural gas-fired power plants and nuclear facilities.

California requires 20 percent of all its power to come from renewable sources by 2010 and 33 percent by 2020, but San Francisco is attempting to shoot for the moon with its new approach.

The plan, called “community choice aggregation,” would have San Francisco developing and owning its own power-generating facilities, which it proposes consist of 51 percent renewables such as solar, wind, biomass and small-scale hydroelectric by 2017.

San Franciscan residents or businesses then would be able to “opt-out” of the program if they chose to continue to receive power generated by PG&E, otherwise they would automatically receive the new greener energy from the PG&E lines and would be billed by PG&E, just as always.

Community choice was legislated as an option by the state’s General Assembly (AB 117) in 2002 after rolling power blackouts of 2000-2001 and skyrocketing energy prices--now proven to be influenced by Enron and other out-of-state power companies--spooked the state into action for more energy independence. San Francisco voters also approved a $100 million solar bond in 2001 to back development of renewables, though most of that funding has remained untapped.

Aggregating purchases of energy by a city differs from publicly owned utilities that can be found in cities such as Austin, Texas’ Austin Energy. Fresno and a consortium of other adjacent California Central Valley cities are the furthest along in developing consumer choice aggregation.

PG&E, in apparent opposition to the community choice campaign, has been running an aggressive marketing campaign in San Francisco across buses, billboards and media called “Let’s Green This City,” touting the city’s green potential.

One board supervisor, Michela Alioto, cautioned the board that the city would have a big challenge in developing energy generation sources separate from PG&E—renewable or otherwise—on such a massive scale: “I have not had one conversation with anyone from PG&E...(but) I want you to tell me how this will provide better service at a better price.”

Currently San Francisco is the national leader in city-generated solar power, with about 1 megawatt of solar capacity out of the city’s current 900 daily megawatts of total consumption. The new plan scopes out the need for 360 megawatts of renewable energy to replace a big chunk of the non-renewable portion of PG&E's supply.

Race for Solar City Title

It looks like San Francisco and San Diego are off on a race to be the leading cities for generating energy from the sun, after they both announced ambitious programs to increase solar generation by anywhere from 5 to almost 20 times current city levels.

San Diego unveiled in February a 1.135 megawatt solar plant, and the city said it plans to bump that up to 5 megawatts on other city facilities by 2013. The installation, at its Alvarado Water Treatment plant, is owned and operated by Maryland-based SunEdison at no upfront cost to the city.

San Francisco, currently with the largest city-owned single solar site in the nation with 675 kilowatts of solar operating at Moscone Center that was installed by SunPower (then PowerLight), announced it wants to increase its solar output to more than 35 megawatts from its current total of about 2 megawatts.

New legislation now allows the city to more easily tap a 2001 voter-approved $100 million solar bond, that was a direct reaction to the California's horrific 2000-2001 rolling blackouts. Turns out those rolling blackies were not caused by lack of generating capacity--which was the big myth perpetrated by DC and the media--but were the direct result of Enron and other energy trading companies' gaming the power market.

Whatever. There's more than enough sun, even in foggy San Francisco, to produce a great deal of non-polluting electricity while stimulating regional economic development in clean technologies.

Hello, Phoenix? Other Sun Belt cities?

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On Tuesday (11-11:50 a.m.), I'll be presenting an analysis of California city sustainability at the first Green California Summit, being held at the Sacramento Convention Center. Stop on by if you're at the event, which is shaping up to be a Hootenanny for state and local government and business leaders on all things green.

As far as solar goes, Sacramento is no slouch, as it leads the nation in combined individual business and residential solar installations, mostly because of Sacramento Municipal Utility District's (SMUD) efforts.

BP/ Berkeley Biofuel Center Plans Unveiled

Today's San Francisco Chronicle carried as its lead page-one item a story SustainLane Government wrote about on Feb. 16, when we interviewed the new director of Berkeley's Energy Biosciences Institute, Chris Somerville, in our list of leading US cities for cleantech incubation.

Anyway, besides "unveiling" Somerville, who is a visiting scientist from Stanford at Lawrence Berkeley Labs, which is co-managing the new $500 million biofuels institute, the Chronicle also named others involved in the venture.

UC Berkeley professor Daniel Kamman stands out in the role of "Next-Generation Assessment" lead as part of the lab's socio-economic research. Kamman, a renewable energy expert with a strong background in economic impact analysis, has testified throughout California and in Congress about the potential of cleantech to become the lead engine of national, regional, and local economic development.

Our cleantech city ranking has been covered throughout the blogosphere ( Joel Makower, WorldChanging, Wired) and as of this morning has been picked up in print such as The Toronto Star ("Toronto Asleep at the Cleantech Switch"), The San Jose Business Journal, The Boston Business Journal, The Austin Business Journal and the Oakland Tribune.

Mayor Will Wynn of Austin, ranked number one, issued a nice statement for being recognized by SustainLane Government as the best in class. Austin media is also covering our scoop on its Clean Energy Incubator's test-bed work with city-owned Austin Energy as a national first.

Shouts out to Abendigo Reebs and the SL Gov staff of Richard Young, Ken Ott and Ramsay Millie for charting the course!