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August 7th, 2011 | Categories: climate, energy, not sustainable | Earlier this week, I saw a short article about a series of posters designed to convince people that oil from Canada’s tarsands/oilsands (pick your term based on whether you are pro- or anti-oil) is “ethical.” That article has a nice slideshow that displays all of the posters.
The designer, Alykhan Velshi, who at one time worked for the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, was apparently inspired by a book titled “Ethical Oil.” The basic idea is that, instead of buying oil from countries that mistreat women and LGBT people, engage in internal conflict, repress their people, and generally behave in unpleasant ways, we should buy oil from Canada, because Canada is a nice country, and it’s better to support nice countries than abusive ones.
It’s not a terrible argument. I know I’d rather have my money go to support benevolent companies and countries than, say, Saudi Arabia. And unfortunately, we don’t quite have the choice to just not buy oil or petroleum products (oh, plastics), so we might as well buy it from the nicer people, right?
There are three immediately obvious problems with this campaign.
One: the posters. Which present things as Evil versus Good, and do pathetic things like balance the systemic mistreatment of women in “conflict oil” countries against the election of one woman in Canada to the position of Mayor. (It turns out the woman shown is the mayor of Fort McMurray, an oil boomtown in Alberta.)
 I see what you're doing. Two: the positioning of this as the only choice there is – either we buy oil from mean countries, or from nice countries. The posters and associated blog do not address putting our resources into developing alternatives to oil. (I have not read the book; perhaps the author devotes some time to this. Though I am skeptical, given his conservative background, and statement that the “chief criticism of the Alberta oilsands is esthetic.“)
 I -wish- it were only a matter of aesthetics. Further, the posters – and the blog posts on the website – are focused only on the behavior of the governments, not on the behavior of the oil companies. Some of the companies working in Canada work only in Canada, but many of them are large companies that work in many places around the world. Some of them have ceased work in conflict-torn regions, but many of them have not.
 Data came from Wikipedia and the companies' websites. Three: defining use of any fossil fuel as “ethical,” just because the people producing it are less evil than other producers. Can something that causes environmental degradation, kills wildlife, sickens and kills people exposed to polluted air and water, and contributes to climate change, be considered ethical? I would argue that no, it cannot, not unless we find really, really good ways to prevent the problems associated with current oil extraction and consumption. And those solutions seem as far away as an all-renewables world. Some oil companies are working hard to reduce the pollution caused by extracting and refining the stuff, but they’ve got a long way to go before they can call their processes environmentally friendly.
 If only we had decades of data about the impact in other places, we might be able to make some reasonable assumptions.
Going back to the posters, in additional to the offensively simplistic presentation of the argument, there’s a blatant attempt to link this “ethical” oil from Canada to sustainability, by the use of green backgrounds on the “ethical” posters, and a logo shaped like a drop of . . . oil? water?, colored in blue and green.
 It's a good idea, from a marketing perspective. If you assume your audience won't think about it. Maybe the companies operating in Canada are being exceptionally careful to keep pollutants out of the air and water, but the ethical oil campaign isn’t going into much detail about that. And even if they are, petroleum is still not a renewable resource.
Via Twitter, I learned that, not only did the poster’s creator not ask the Mayor whether she was okay with her photo being used in this campaign (she is not, despite being the mayor of the town currently benefiting most from oil extraction), it is unclear whether he got permission to use some of the other images, too.
 A feminist scholar would probably have interesting things to say about the use of a woman's photo without her permission, and how that relates to conservative, pro-business views in general. Canada, much like the US, has experienced an erosion in women’s rights since a more conservative, pro-big business, government got control of things.
I haven’t read very deeply about the business practice of all the companies, or how corrupt the “conflict oil” countries are, but equating Canada’s treatment of its citizens with oil companies’ behavior is ridiculous. Canada may allow same-sex marriage, but ExxonMobil is not LGBT-friendly at all. And Murphy Oil only scored a 15 on the Corporate Equality Index.
 Something I have not researched is the impact of Canadian law on companies' anti-equality policies. It is certainly true that there are places in the world, like Sudan, where certain ethnic groups have been viciously attacked so that one group can gain control of their land in order to control the oil there (note: things don’t get much better when a company leaves, because that company just sells its lease or whatever to . . . another company). In Canada, things aren’t happening quite so violently, but the Alberta and Canadian governments are being sued over developments that would violate treaties regarding First Nations’ rights.
 I'm sure the oil companies will quickly deal with any oil spills on First Nations lands. Right? Right?? Compared to other countries, Canada may have better regulations in place related to environmental protection, but the government is not immune to being influenced by big businesses (more). It makes sense: develop the oilsands more, that creates more jobs, brings in more money, etc.
 It's not just who votes, but who has the money to influence behavior after the election. This is highly relevant to the creation of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will run from Alberta down to Texas, and which has not yet been approved. (Map of existing and projected pipelines, out to 2019.) Already in 2011, there have been pipeline spills in places including the Yellowstone River. I for one can hardly wait until even MORE wild land, farm land, aquifers, etc., etc., can be threatened by leaky pipes!
 Nothing improves nature like the sweet smell of hydrocarbons. For another good reaction to the points raised by the “ethical” oil people, check out “Ethical Oil? Climate Change Is Unethical and Prejudice Is Too”, which covers several things much better than I have.
I don’t have a problem with discussing the merits of buying oil from Canada versus other countries, but that should be done by considering the whole story, not a shallow, simplistic presentation of a tiny handful of facts.
Two items.
First, the concept of natural capital, which seems to finally be getting some serious attention. Putting a price tag on nature. Not because of how much you can earn from harvesting and selling parts of it (extracting oil, cutting down trees, whatever), but how much economic value there is to be gained by leaving it alone.
Historically, this has not been done. The only value in a forest is how much money can be made from logging it. The only value of a wetlands is how much you can sell the land for to build a tract of suburban houses and big box stores.
But this limited view ignores what it costs to lose the natural systems. Remove forests, ruin wetlands, and you lose really great flood control and carbon sequestration. How expensive is it to recover from a flood? How much would it cost to build a flood control system to replace the natural one that is gone? And will the engineered system work as well?
Maybe you’ll come out ahead, economically, by leaving the forest alone – or by managing it in such a way that you replace the trees as you log them.
It seems sometimes like the only way to encourage large corporations and government entities to leave natural systems alone is to focus only on the economic side.
Many hotels put out little cards in the rooms encouraging people to “be green!” by using their towels more than once. Of course, the fewer towels the hotel has to launder, the more money it saves in laundry fees. Maybe the management is doing this purely out of their respect for Mother Nature, but more cynical people see the “be green!” cards as an attempt to guilt trip the guests into doing something for nothing other than the hotel’s financial gain.
And it’s hard to put a numeric value on other aspects of the environment. How much is the beauty of nature worth? Shouldn’t we value it just for itself?
I think the answer to the latter is yes, but I also know that if you can find a way to easily compare two things, it’s easier to make choices about them. And it’s easier to put a dollar sign next to “flood control services” than “it’s nice to look at.” And if the only thing that will force large organizations to do the right thing is to give them an economic incentive, well, so be it. In 100 years, they’ll be speaking glowingly of the forethought of their predecessors, not to mention the love their predecessors have for the earth, and yes of course it was a nice side effect to make a few bucks.
Having said that, here are some striking numbers from a U.N.-sponsored study called TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (source: Cash for corals (or why a piece of pristine coral is like a $20 bill):
- $2 trillion – the minimum amount of natural capital removed from the global budget every year, without recourse, just by the world’s 3,000 largest corporations
- $3.7 trillion – the total value in carbon sequestration that would be provided by the unfelled trees left standing if we merely reduced the global rate of deforestation by 50 percent over the next 20 years
- $45 billion – the estimated investment in preserving biodiversity that would be required to generate $5 trillion every year in “ecosystem services”
Here is another article, from the Boston Globe, with the irritating tagline “A bold new idea for protecting nature: Put a price tag on it.” This is only a “new” idea if you think anything that happened in the last 30 years is new.
Second
Bolivia is poised to pass a law that gives nature the same rights as humans. Ecuador did a similar thing in 2008, in their new constitution.
Bolivia is establishing the Law of Mother Earth during a process of re-shuffling the government following revisions to the constitution in 2009. The Law of Mother Earth will grant the natural environment eleven legally defendable rights. According to the UK Guardian these include the right of other life forms to exist, to continue natural cycles, to be free of pollution, to maintain the integrity of their genetic makeup, and not to be damaged by giant infrastructure projects. The intent of the Law of Mother Earth is to re-define the relationship between humans and nature, and ensure development does not proceed at the expense of natural ecosystems. (source: Bolivia Grants Rights to Nature)
And it is urging the United Nations to adopt a similar convention. Bolivia’s received some angry responses from the United States and the Unites Kingdom during climate talks at the UN, for having the nerve to demand steep carbon emission cuts, so who knows how this will go (Guardian).
Maybe they should put a price tag on it.
The type that is habitable for wildlife, soon to come (I hope) in Portland, Oregon.
Dusty Gedge, president of the European Federation of Green-roof Associations, took a tour of some of Portland’s green roof-tops. Gedge says Portland is internationally known for its traditional eco-roofs which help reduce annual storm runoff by about 70 percent. But he says, with a few modifications, the green roofs also provide a home to wildlife like insects and birds.
“Roofs are a really good place to put these dry riverbed habitats. In summer it’s really dry. In winter its quite wet and there’s an ecology and nature that likes that, and roofs are the perfect place to do that,” said Gedge.
Found via Green ArchiTEXT.
 A black redstart on its preferred type of ground. Photo by Flickr user Arthur Chapman, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Another really neat take on the idea of the green roof as wildlife habitat are projects like the Laban Dance Centre in the UK – actually called a brown roof, because it creates the habitat lost when brownfields are developed – where a roof covered with rubble provides habitat for a bird called the black redstart.
Here are some lovely photos and diagrams showing how a brown roof should be constructed.
I am very enthusiastic about green roofs that are human habitable, instead of being just a layer of sedums or something put up there to deal with storm water (and heat and etc.), but designing them to replace habitat lost by construction is better than that. Architecture meant to improve things, not just have a neutral impact on the world, is a Good Thing; even if, at this point, replacing habitat falls more under “trying to approach neutrality, and a long way from net positive,” it’s moving in the right direction.
Front page news yesterday – the hotly-disputed Cape Wind project has been approved. It will be our first offshore wind farm.
On the other side of the country, an enormous wind project – planned to be the largest in the country – was supposed to break ground in Oregon tomorrow, but the Air Force is holding it up, because there are some antique radar systems that have fits when there are wind turbines in their way.
The project will have over 330 turbines, provide 845 megawatts, and provide over 700 jobs, as well as pay millions of dollars in royalties to farmers and ranchers in the counties that the turbines are built in.
From the Air Force Times (AF: Ore. wind farm would cause radar clutter):
The tall turbines can reflect radar signals, creating a blind spot that can erase airplanes on radar screens. The turbine’s rotating blades can also clutter the screens, creating a radar signature that constantly changes as the blades slow down or speed up in the wind.
Industry officials say they’re working on radar-friendly turbine technologies. And upgrades to radar stations might also help.
From the Oregonian (Air Force concerns about radar stall huge Oregon wind farm):
. . . the Federal Aviation Administration, with backing from the Air Force, issued a “notice of presumed hazard” in March, barring construction of any towers above “0 feet.” The company hasn’t been able to resolve the issue, even with Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley trying to run interference.
The Air Force is doing studies to figure out if there is a way to get their radar needs met without completely blocking the project, but Sen. Wyden is concerned that if the project ends up stalled too long, the investors will walk away. And this could have implications for other proposed wind farms, too; this project is not the only one within range of military radar, not just in Oregon, but across the country.
The company in charge of the project says they notified the Air Force several years ago about the project, but until earlier this year, heard nothing. Now, suddenly, things are on hold while they complete a study. Other wind farm projects proposed in nearby areas are also being looked at askance for their potential to interfere with the radar system, which dates from the 1950s.
Of all the objections the Cape Wind project ran into, I don’t recall military radar being one of the issues.
Every Friday for several weeks, the Worldwatch Insitute has been posting a quick life-cycle study on some common item – topics have included antibiotics, beer, dry cleaning, and toothpaste. They’re entertaining to read, and provide some nice historical background as well as a few paragraphs about the environmental impacts of the production/use/disposal/etc. of the product in question, and what people are doing to improve things.
From Life-Cycle Studies: Concrete (something I already know to have rather large environmental impacts):
Stepped on for more than 2,300 years, concrete rarely gets the respect it deserves. . . Analysts expect greenhouse gas emissions from global concrete production to become a larger contributor to climate change than the European Union in the next 20 years.
. . .
Heating and grinding the cement materials consumes an average of 4-5 gigajoules of energy per cement ton. The industry as a whole uses at least 8 billion gigajoules each year. Cement production. . . accounts for about 6 percent of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, according to a recent WWF report.
In addition to its contribution to climate change, concrete production generates substantial amounts of waste. In China, it is responsible for more than 40 percent of industrial dust emissions.
I periodically see articles talking about ways to improve the production of concrete – reduce energy inputs, reduce greenhouse gases, use fly ash instead of cement, or change the recipe in some way so that the finished concrete can absorb lots of CO2, perhaps even more than was emitted during its production.
I not-so-secretly thought all of the studies were fun to read, because I am a nerd like that, but I will only excerpt from one more, the Life-Cycle Study on Palm Oil, because I’ve read on and off for years about how bad palm oil production has been; it got popular in part due to people thinking it would make a great biodiesel.
Once planted, oil palms can produce fruit for more than 30 years, yielding more oil per hectare than any major oilseed crop. . .
Yet plantations often replace tropical forests, killing endangered species, uprooting indigenous communities, and contributing to the release of climate-warming gases. Due mostly to oil palm production, Indonesia emits more greenhouse gases than any country besides China and the United States.
Palm oil agriculture has also lead to violence between farmers and local residents, and may lead to the extinction of orangutans in some regions of Borneo in a very short time. And as far as the biodiesel goes -
Palm-oil biodiesel, once supported as a low-carbon alternative to gasoline, often contributes far more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than it helps to avoid. When each hectare of carbon-rich tropical peatland is drained for oil palm production, an estimated 3,750-5,400 tons of carbon dioxide are released over 25 years, according to peatland ecologist Jack Rieley.
And this is without considering that it’s kind of a lousy idea from the get go to turn a food crop into a fuel crop.
Due to environmental concerns and (probably the bigger impact) European Union biofuel laws, the palm oil industry created the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil in 2004. They’re planning to create standards for emissions, and will certify palm oil as sustainably produced if it meets certain criteria; this sounds like a bit of an improvement, but I’m a little dubious about how trustworthy a certification is when it is done by the same industry that is creating the product. How about some certification where there isn’t an obvious conflict on interest?
I also really liked reading the study on Post-its, which are much less horrifying than palm oil; you can find the complete list of life-cycle studies here under Trade and Consumption.
The first a deliciously cranky short piece about why cities striving to be “world class” is a rotten idea: “World class” just means banal:
The joy of great cities lies in their differences. What’s special about Stockholm is different from what makes London or Vienna attractive. The “world class city”, and its gormless sibling, the “world class place”, is a political slogan, conjured by globally minded, air-travel addicted wonks, that has been adopted, sadly and dimly, by politicians, quangos and planners around the world. I’ve even heard, much to my disbelief, Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson talking of London’s need to become a “world class city”.
London isn’t already “world class?” I don’t think I understand what that phrase means, in that case.
The author’s best criticism is that “world class” seems to mean “looks like every other major city,” which I agree would be a sad thing, but then when I travel it’s to see and try new things, not go to the same franchise I can find locally.
Helsinki. . . is about to get the “world class” treatment.
This means historic buildings being vandalised to ensure they suit the needs of wilfully vulgar global “brand” shops, the rerouting of trams from the historic centre because these, apparently, aren’t best suited to tourist-oriented “pedestrianisation” schemes . . .
“World class” is sounding more and more like “let’s turn everything into the same mall I mean ‘lifestyle center‘ no wait ‘village center,’ or maybe ‘town square’ those sound nice!” (Here’s more on the lifestyle center phenomena, including a problem with it: it makes you think you’re in a public place, but it’s all private property.)
Moving on to US cities, here is an interesting (and longer) article from the Urbanophile, Thoughts on a Federal Policy for American Cities.
America is a metropolitan nation, as has been tirelessly documented by the Brookings Institution and many others. Two-thirds of Americans live in the top 100 metro areas, which generate 68% of employment and 75% of GDP. You’ve heard the stats before I’m sure.
Yet the federal government has often given cities short shrift, preferring to think instead of the federal-state partnership through our system of federalism. The Obama administration has brought a new focus on cities, creating the first ever White House Office of Urban Affairs, but we are still a long way from having a real 21st century federal policy for America’s cities.
He writes that, because of the great diversity in our cities (whoops I guess we’ll have to pass up on having “world class” cities, then!), such a policy must allow flexibility, rather than a “one size fits all” approach, because in order for a city to do well, it needs to find its niche, its specialty, whatever it is that makes it a distinctive place*.
There are several areas that the policy needs to address: transportation, housing, environmental policy, and immigration reform. As an example of how flexibility in Federal funding could work, take housing:
…[F]or a city like Chicago, the main issue might be affordable housing. That’s less of an issue in smaller cities where housing is virtually free given the levels of abandonment. A city like Cleveland might want to emphasize spending money on demolition of vacant structures. Other cities might want to look at middle class neighborhoods that are declining and try to stabilize them through public investment before they become the next basket case.
Regarding environmental policy, he points out that sometimes, federal policy can have rather bad (unintended?) consequences. The Clean Water Act, which requires the elimination of combined sewer overflows, may have increased sprawl, because it is cheaper to build new developments, including the infrastructure, than to retrofit existing sewer and stormwater systems. Rather than rebuild the entire system, what happens is something called a “deep tunnel”, which means a big hole drilled into bedrock where excess sewage is stored (or, as we saw recently in Boston during an episode of H2OMG, dumping raw sewage into the ocean during unusually heavy rain because your choice is either do that, or let your treatment facility flood with sewage, causing terrible damage, which sewage backs up into homes).
Fortunately, there are plenty of other ways to deal with storm water than to build a completely separate sewer-type system of pipes and culverts, like rain gardens, green roofs, and larger systems like Chicago’s green alleys and Seattle’s SEA Streets, which are slowly starting to become more popular.
But the EPA hasn’t been with the program on this. Cincinnati wanted to do this and got shot down. Philadelphia is trying now and we’ll see where they get. This should be encouraged. We need to stop pursuing 1970’s solutions.
There are two big things the federal government could do here. First, the President could tell the EPA to get serious about green stormwater management and do everything possible to put a halt to any more deep tunnels. Second, the federal government ought to pick up tab for Clean Water Act Compliance.
Now some people say that the federal government is spending too much money. I agree. So let’s stop the endless stream of bailouts for what Reihan Salam called the “McMansion-and-Hummer economy” and start focusing what we do spend on investment in the upgrades of basic urban infrastructure that will actually power our future economy. And in this case the money is being spent one way or the other. The question is whether or not we’ll do it in a way that promotes sprawl or not.
*He points to this interview with Joe Cortright, an economist in Portland, OR, which talks about the need for cities to be distinctive, and also has some commentary on what politicians can do to help cities: “Think about things like Social Security, the way we pay for health insurance and how we fund public transportation.”
One of my favorite sources for news from the sciences is EurekAlert!, which today posted “Perils of plastics: Risks to human health and the environment,” describing the results of a survey of existing literature done by Rolf Halden (an associate professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University and assistant director of Environmental Biotechnology at the Biodesign Institute) on the impact of plastics on human health and the environment.
I’m assuming everyone knows by now that BPA is bad for you (something that was actually known for decades before the FDA officially acknowledged it this year). And phthalates are bad news, too (most of the recent coverage of this was focused on how it is used a lot on soft plastic items given to babies). Who knows how safe all the rest of that stuff is? It turns out that studying the impact of plastics on human health is difficult because it is hard to find good controls, particularly for long-term low exposure. Because there is so much plastic out there, and has been for so long, that it is almost impossible to find anyone who hasn’t been exposed.
Here’s the part I want to highlight in terms of sustainability:
Halden explains that while plastics have legitimate uses of benefit to society, their brazen misuse has led to a radically unsustainable condition. “Today, there’s a complete mismatch between the useful lifespan of the products we consume and their persistence in the environment.” Prominent examples of offending products are the ubiquitous throwaway water bottles, Teflon-coated dental floss and cotton swabs made with plastic PVC sticks. All are typically used for a matter of seconds or minutes, yet are essentially non-biodegradable and will persist in the environment, sometimes for millennia.
Emphasis mine. Plastics are useful! They can do things other materials can’t! But 8% of all petroleum goes into making plastics, so it seems like – if we’re going to use it at all – we ought to use that resource a little more thoughtfully. And non-toxicly.
I heard about this really neat construction system at a meeting recently:
This company, Strata International Group (website navigation requires Flash, so is unnavigable in my current Firefox), has invented a method of making small structures (I believe the height limit is two stories) out of foam and a thin layer of concrete. They sell a polymer that you mix into the concrete before spraying or troweling it onto the foam, which keeps moisture out (concrete normally will let moisture through).
And on their header, which shows on every page, is the phrase “Sustainable Building.”
 House in progress in Arizona; the columns are used only to support the roof during construction; image from Strata's site It’s a really awesome system, but I have a hard time understanding how foam, which is made from fossil fuel, is sustainable. And without knowing what the special polymer is made from, that, too, might not be sustainable. Oh, plus there’s the adhesive used to attach the foam pieces to each other. Probably not made from renewable resources. Can it be recycled? Does it biodegrade? I’m dubious. And what about offgassing of the polymer? Maybe it’s completely inert once it dries/cures.
I know there have been some advances made in the manufacture of plastics, like making plastics than can be truly REcycled, not just downcycled (ignoring for a moment the plant-based, biodegradable plastics), but they have not reached a scale where ENORMOUS BLOCKS OF FOAM are being produced in a sustainable way. Perhaps there is a better recycling method out there for foam than I have heard of; I am not the world’s most expert expert on recycling.
Of course this is better in some ways than making a house entirely out of concrete, which has a significant carbon footprint. And it looks like a pretty fast process, because you’re just gluing big chunks of foam together and then spraying concrete on them, and inexpensive; a 400sf house in Mexico was built for about $2500. Yes, that’s a small house. But that’s a trivial amount of money for a solid structure (the guy at the meeting said the company has tested the system in wind tunnels, and they can definitely stand up to hurricanes, because they survived 400mph winds in the testing).
The pictures of projects in process (also requires Flash) are pretty awesome, even if they look deeply wrong. You can’t build a house out of foam like that! Except yes, yes you can.
But I am deeply bothered by the labeling of this method as sustainable, because it isn’t, and diminishes the meaning of the word.
They can keep you warm at night!
This post has two parts: the part that discusses some very large retrofits going on, and the part that lists a variety of programs designed to help individuals with home energy retrofits, though two of them are still in the “hasn’t passed Congress yet” stage.
Two large retrofit projects going on now are the Empire State Building and the House of Representatives.
I highly recommend reading this article about the Empire State Building in Preservation Magazine, which also gives a nice, brief history of the building. The article describes the energy retrofits being included in a $550 million restoration,which are projected to reduce energy consumption by 38 percent, decrease carbon dioxide emissions by 105,000 metric tons over 15 years, and save $4.4 million every year.
The restoration will include retrofits like removing every. single. window. and replacing them (reusing the existing glass) with a sheet of Mylar and argon-krypton gas filling the space between the panes. The Mylar will reflect heat from the sun, and divide the air gap into two separate insulating pockets; the gas improves the insulation value of the gap. Another, simpler, improvement is to put insulation between the radiators and the walls. So that the heat goes into the room, not the wall. The wall won’t mind. Ventilation and the chiller plant are also going to be improved, and a variety of electronic controls will manage electric lighting, equipment loads, and provide data to the users. There is ample natural light, and the windows are operable. Because when they were designed, operable windows were your air conditioning system. (I would gladly trade most modern a/c systems for an old system with operable windows.)
Retrofitting is important not just to lower operating costs, and improve tenant comfort (and improve the odds that they’ll pay more rent), but to preserve the building and not lose its embodied energy. It’s cheaper to retrofit than to have to replace the whole building.
A little farther south, the House of Representatives has just begun a 30 month project to cut energy use by 23% and water use by 32%. The project will replace light fixtures, install low-flow fixtures in bathrooms, and upgrade the heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems. The article describes other measures being taken as part of Speaker Pelosi’s Green the Capitol Initiative, which has the goal of making the House as close to carbon-neutral as possible.
A private company, NORESCO, is covering the $34 million cost, and will be repaid out of the savings that the upgrades create, expected to be $3.3 million a year, for over $67 million in total. So no taxpayer money is being spent on the project, which is probably the only reason it got going at all (I’m sorry, was that cynical?). It is not clear from the article if all of the savings is going back to NORESCO, or not. I’d rather that taxpayer money was being used, because then we could be benefiting from the payback in ways other than reducing costs to operate the House. I’m sure they could have found a worthy program to spend the $67 million on! Like perhaps even more subsidies for retrofitting the houses of taxpayers.
Home energy retrofits. They sound like a great idea; who wants drafty windows? Lowering heating and electric bills is also really appealing! But the upfront cost of fixing those problems well (plastic sheeting taped over the windows only goes so far), when the payoff may take many years, prevents many people from taking major steps to improve their home’s performance. Putting insulation into the walls of your 100-year-old house may not be a massive expense, but if it’s going to take 10 years to see a return on it, it’s harder to justify the cost. However, there are programs out there that, if passed, would make it much easier to manage the cost:
PACE is an idea that has actually been around for over 2 years, which “allows private property owners to pay for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects through an addition to their property tax bill, overcoming the high upfront costs that prevent most property owners from investing in such retrofits.” It is adopted on a city-by-city basis, and so far, 18 states (Mass. is not among them) have adopted legislation to permit municipalities to do this.
Not yet passed: HOME STAR, aka Cash for Caulkers (and not to be confused with this Homestar), is a Federal program to encourage people to retrofit their homes to save energy, and to simultaneously provide more jobs in the energy retrofit provision field. There are two levels: Silver, which is simpler and acts like a checklist (i.e., “replace inefficient appliances”), and Gold, which involves doing a complete energy audit of your home and then implement a variety of measures that will work together as a system. (via greendesigncollective)
Also hopefully coming soon (the legislation was just introduced yesterday), there’s also a program for rural homeowners, who can’t benefit from a municipality’s participation in the PACE program, and who may not be able to afford the up-front cost required by the Home Star/Cash for Caulkers program. It has bipartisan support (!!! in this day and age! fetch me my smelling salts!), which bodes well.
The Boston Area Social Energy Association had two forum sessions (April and May of the 2008-2009 series) on the topic of energy retrofits; here on their archive page you can find links to the presentations by Paul Eldrenkamp and others. The April forum presentation was focused on what his company does when they do deep energy retrofits, and should give you some idea of what’s involved (a lot of the details – as well as a lot of the Doom and Gloom about the necessity of doing A LOT of this – are not written out in the presentation).
One thing I’m really curious about is whether any of this will have much impact in areas like Boston, where a lot of houses are rental properties. What incentive do the owners have to fix them up? They’re most likely not paying the heat or electric bills, and while everyone who has ever rented is thrilled to find an apartment with lower-than-average heating bills, is “recently retrofitted to lower heating costs” going to be appealing enough to convince someone to pay a higher rent every month?
I’ve heard a lot of renters in the area complain about the cost of heating, about drafts from old windows, and lack of insulation in the walls (I’ve been one of those renters; in one place, I ran packing tape around the bottom of the wall, over the trim, because there were drafts COMING OUT FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE WALL), but if it came to moving to a new apartment that promised insulation and sexy new storm windows, would I pick that over an older place? Heating costs can vary a lot based on so many things besides good construction, like what floor you are on (my semi-basement apartment in one place was toasty all winter). I don’t know. I suspect that the best way for a landlord to really convince tenants that the higher rent was worthwhile would be to get proof of heating costs . . . and that sounds like more work than I expect the majority would be willing to put in. Assuming that tenants would be willing to provide that information to a soon-to-be-former landlord.
The Empire State Building can count on its tenants to pay higher rent for lower operating costs (and snazzy, modernized office spaces), but I’m skeptical that retrofits can scale the same way for individual apartments.
March 11th, 2010 | Categories: climate, government | Tags: feminism Last month, the UN Secretary-General announced a new climate change financing group. Its purpose is to identify short- and long-term financial resources to aid developing countries in dealing with climate change, and is a result of the recent Copenhagen climate talks.
The article on the UN’s site quotes the Secretary-General as saying that, in the group, “There will be an even balance between developing and developed countries,” which is great, but as Elizabeth Becker and Suzanne Ehlers ask at Grist, “Why are women being left out of climate decision-making?”
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced an important new climate change financing group last week, but out of the 19 people named, no women were included. . .
Leaving women out is unfortunate and reflects a persistent bias in climate change decision-making roles. It is also unwise given the ultimate objective of the advisory group. This elite club will frame and shape climate change financial flows to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. We know that women are disproportionately represented among both of these groups and are often on the front lines of climate change. In developing countries, because of their role as primary providers of food, water, and fuel for their families, women are both the most affected by climate change and a pivotal force for building responses to direct climate impacts. We also know that women are frequently the decision-makers about household consumption, and represent an increasing share of wealth around the world.
By leaving their voices out of the critical tasks before this advisory group, the secretary-general is closing out opportunities to explore the widest possible range of creative and innovative sources of revenue on the scale that is needed to address climate change.
The secretary-general himself has noted the need to include women in all aspects of decision-making on climate change.
Emphasis mine. That’s really quite remarkable. By which I mean appalling.
One of the commenters links to the Women’s Environment & Development Organization, which is collecting signatures on a letter to send to the Secretary-General asking him to appoint some women to the group. They have a list of names of women who are qualified to serve, as an example that there are plenty of good candidates who are women.
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Blog contains rambling and ranting regarding sustainable, accessible, socially responsible, architecture, infrastructure, urban design and so on and so forth. Subject to change at any moment. Other pages are generally better thought out.
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