Global Warming Action Conference (morning)
This is an attempt to live-blog the conference, but somehow I (or wordpress) borked the update and I lost the beginning of the document. Sorry about that.
Many towns have built climate action plans, several other towns working on them.
Big problem: government often has problems spending capital to save operating cost, even if the ROI is high. There are solutions (more later in the day) and especially important to get the designs of new buildings to be green. They have lifetimes of 50-100 years — that has a long-term impact. Several examples — Mayor Menino has made a committment to build green.
Renewable energy at the local level is harder to pull off. There are some subsidies available, and some value in simply making a statement.
Probably 30% of the crowd is buying “clean power” voluntarily - some electric companies let you do it on the bill. Others have to buy it as a separate bill.
Residential energy use is about equivalent to automotive use. What can we do about it? Recycling has become a “thing you do” — we need to make the same ethical decisions about home energy use. He’s cut his personal natural gas use by about 50% over the last few years. Others can do the same.
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative — RGGI — first multistate program to address global warming. “Wouldn’t be so important if we had a national government to address this issue, but we don’t.” Would cust power plant emissions by 10% by 2018 (would be 30% below “business as usual”). Mass is NOT in this, because Gov. Romney pulled Massachusetts out, bill to force it did not pass. With newly-elected Gov. Patrick, mass is expected to rejoin.
RGGI — who pays? In past cap & trade programs, generators have gotten permits for free. If all done at expense of consumers and for free for generators, it doesn’t work long term. Generators should pay for permits and MCAN is pushing it hard. Europe did it the other way and is regretting it. Money to be used for energy efficiency studies. If you put all the money into efficiency, you get 12% cost cut despite paying more for alternative energy sources. NY is committed to forcing producers to pay 100% of permit costs.
Transportation — how do we force change? None of them are easy, all new initiatives. Cut CO2 emissions from motor vehicles similar to California regulations — but they’re under danger from lawsuits. We also need less driving. Change auto insurance to be mileage-based. Could be a huge incentive to drive less. Could be equivalent to doubling the price of gas, and would affect some of your driving decisions. Also need to reduce sprawl (”smart growth”).
Bill Moomaw, Tufts University
Cutting Emissions 75% — the 3% solution
Global warming is real. Standard surface temperature anomaly graph. Union of Concerned Scientists made regional impact evaluation on global warming impact in Northeast US. In the higher scenario, we could see 12 degree increase here in Northeast — that puts us in North Carolina.
Top 20 CO2 producers in the world, US #1, China fast catching us, but way behind (almost half our level) and on a per-capita level WAY behind us. Russia, Japan, India, Germany…then Northeast US puts us in 7th place overall. We’re almost all the way to India and it’s just 9 states (including pennsylvania). Impact locally can be huge.
Local emissions: 35% transportation, 30% electric power, residential 14%, industrial 13%, commercial 8%. Commercial building codes are ridiculously bad, but residential is still almost twice commercial.
- International treaties are weak. It’s not happening at that scale.
- National US is nonexistent.
- States: modest for NE and California, other states nonexistent
- Municipalities — some taking strong action. Portland wants to move EVERYTHING to renewable sources.
- Some corporations and universities are taking very strong action.
- Individuals pushing the limits of the possible
How to scale it all up?
Timing: Kyoto only goes to 2012; UK looking for 60% reduction by 2050. NE governors and canadian premiers called for reductions.
What do we need to reduce by 75%? Union of Concerned Scientists working on mitigation strategies. His solution: reduce emissions by 3% a year for the rest of the century. That compounds to 50% in 23 years and 75% in 46 years. Thinking about it this way is much less terrifying than thinking about the 75% all at once. If we don’t do this, we can get the end of the century below 1990 levels and dropping rather than continuing to rise.
What is a 3% reduction?
- Driving 30 miles less per month for a year and you’ve reduced your transportation impact.
- Replacing one bulb a month for a year.
- Eliminating one dorm fridge (really wasteful)
Efficiency is cleanest and cheapest form of energy. Technology gets us there. Policy and knowledge drive us. Individual action is the implementer: “Hell is never going to freeze over.”
Amazing facts: Between 1975 and 2003 efficiency “produced” a 40% reduction in energy services. This is 1.9x the US oil consumption — 3.4x net oil imports were saved by efficiency. Energy per $GDP cut in half during this period.
Relative to other countries: Americans consume twice the per-capita energy as do Germans or Japanese, but we use 2/3 of the energy as the rest of the US, but our incomes are higher. So it’s possible and efficient.
Biofuels are only efficient if we have the land to grow the crops; they use recycled carbon. Corporations and MIT are using CHP (Combined Heat and Power — use waste energy from power plants to provide heat). It’s inexcusable that our energy policy encourages the poor efficiency of power plants (average efficiency is something like 23%).
Big power suppliers won’t use alternative sources — but most states have laws that permit municipalities to do it. Hull, MA for example has two wind turbines and is planning two more. (they look nice!).
Lots of examples.
He’s building a zero net emissions house in MA — lots of cool features, but you have to do it as efficiency first and then renewables. Has R40 walls, R60 ceilings.
Universities doing a lot. Coalition to focus the nation on climate change by Feb 2008 to try to make it into a presidential election issue.
Tufts negotiated purchase of clean power. Future price of new hydro and wind power is fixed at zero for the indefinite future. Capital cost is already in place and got certainty over life of contract.
We need a new building code. Energy Star is 30% more efficient than Mass state building code — and costs NOTHING more. It’s hard to find architects, contractors, subcontractors who know how to do it is hard. They need training. It’s too difficult to do the right thing about combined heat and power.
Engineering schools need to train people better. Nano bio techno micro are all the rage, but we need some macro people too.
Individuals need to take responsibility for our own actions. Reduce carbon footprint; become responsible consumers. Be responsible citizens and push political leaders to take action on climate. Need to convince place of work to make a difference.
There are people proposing pumping sulfur dioxide into atmosphere to block solar energy. Huh?
Need to scale up. Push for changes in policy at all level. But we can’t wait. Why stop at 75%? Act NOW.
Gina McCarthy, Commissioner, CT DEP
Planning for Significant Greenhouse Gas Reductions
Graph entitled “Emissions Paths to Stabilisation”, 450 ppm CO2e, 550 ppm CO2e, Business as Usual
New England Governors Climate Change Action Plan 2001
Short term goal: Reduce GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2010
Midterm: Reduce GHG emissions by 10% below 1990 levels by 2020
Longterm: Reduce GHG emissions “sufficiently to eliminate dangerous threat to the climate”, expected to be 75-85% below 2001 levels.
Great map of moving Massachusetts down the eastern seaboard over time all the way to South Carolina.
Entire economics of the region can change. Not because energy costs are low, or because taxes are low. We like it here! SC is nice, but the skiing is lousy. The natural resources are why we’re here.
Climate change is an economic issue! “It’s the economy, stupid.” Six of the 10 worst national disasters occurred since 2004. Insurance companies are driving the research, and hiring the climate researchers.
Coastal property exposure in Florida is $2 Trillion, Mass is $600 billion, CT is $400 billion.
Sir Nicholas Stern: “Climate change is the greatest market failure the world has ever seen.”
RGGI — welcome Mass back in with the new governor. May not be the best solution, but it puts a price on carbon and that’s what we needed. This is spreading, and all the governors want to do something at the lowest common denominator. Don’t let them aim too low! Don’t let them get away with it! We have the momentum, capture it and challenge the policy to be as strong as it can get.
CT is doing a bunch of things.
You have to say “Climate change is horrible and we’re all going to die…unless you change a light bulb.” Energy efficiency is the pathway to the 75% - as mundane as it seems. We need big changes and we can’t be afraid to say so.
We HAVE TO aim for efficiency rather than building out the infrastructure to support unlimited growth. We have to get the dirty power plants out of the system. There’s a lot of room for small facilities.
Nukes are not the answer. Believes in democracy and believes that people don’t want that solution. How far and how fast can we go? Don’t get discouraged — it’s been decades and there’s a sense of urgency. In a democracy you’re required to bring the people along. Public service attitude can’t be ‘I know the answer and I’ll push ahead to achieve it’. That’s how we get wars we don’t want. We have to bring everyone along. To steal a line from Duval Patrick, “Together We Can.”
Q&A session with previous speakers
Q: What about adaptation? We’re already too late to prevent all effects.
A: There are 3 things: mitigation, adaptation, and cleaning up afterwards. Katrina is an example of the last. We need to deal with all three. Adaptation is an extremely difficult discussion because it’s expensive NOW. It will be hard to get a committment because of that, but Katrina.
Q: No such thing as “clean nuclear” — see www.beyondnuclear.org
Q: What about the Aubrey Meyer document on .
A: False notion that to improve our lives we have to pump carbon into the atmosphere. Why not talk about the positive way to produce the energy people need? Don’t just say “turn off the tap”. Give people the information and they’re likely to do the right thing.
Q: What about the next generation? Do they have a clue?
A: Hell yeah. But we’re working on improving awareness.
Q: Carbon Sequestration — will it work?
A: There’s a lot going on, but we’re way too committed to burning carbon. There’s a level of desperation there. We need to look at efficiency first and I hope we won’t have to do much of it. But it’s probably going to be necessary to do some of it to get over the hump. Faith-based organizations are beginning to recognize that man doesn’t have the ability to control everything and are key to solutions.
Q: We don’t necessarily have to sacrifice — live better. We should discuss waste at every level, especially in areas like the military sector.