South Station Hubway location. Image courtesy of dravium1 @ Flickr.

Yesterday, November 30, 2011, was the last day of operation for the Hubway until March of 2012, as recently reported by Eric Moskowitz at The Boston Globe. That sad occasion spurs me to reflect on what a great thing it is that bike sharing, bike lanes and a general shift in our transportation culture has come to Boston.

For well over a decade, I rode the rails of the MBTA – Boston’s erratic but generally effective public transit system – with the occasional long walk and requisite car commute sprinkled in. There is a long tradition of staff bicycling to work here at the Conservation Law Foundation‘s office in Boston. Not shocking, I know: through their work, my colleagues are acutely aware of the need to reduce fossil fuel use.. I must confess, however, that until this summer I was never one of our bicyclists. Well over 90% of the time my commutes have been on the MBTA.

And then came Hubway. Since July 31, 2011 I have used that system 54 times, mostly to make a commute in during the morning. During a business trip, I also bought and used a one-day guest pass on the slightly older sister program in Washington DC, the Capital Bikeway. In the last four months, I have ridden my bike to work more than I have in my decade of work at CLF. I know I’m not alone, either: Boston magazine’s Bill Janovitz wrote about his bike commuting habits today, while the new Boston edition of the real estate blog Curbed wrote about the effect of Hubway on property values.

That’s not to say Hubway is not without problems. Anyone who follows me on twitter knows that I have on occasion griped about aspects of the program, but the occasional full rack or difficult to return bicycle does not undermine my appreciation of the. Those complaints aside, the Hubway marks a fundamentally important step towards a city that celebrates diverse and non-motorized ways of getting from one place to another.

The deep and growing challenge of global warming, a problem inextricably linked to our fossil fuel dependence (and all the pollution and harm that comes with it), means that we need to deploy a very wide range of tools and efforts to change the way in which we use energy. Our frenzied use of energy to move ourselves around in our cars is a major part of the challenge we face.

Urban bicycling is a really pleasant way to begin that shift in a way that provides a little exercise and a chance to really experience and enjoy the city while reducing fossil fuel use and pollution. It can also be very convenient – for some trips across downtown Boston I am absolutely certain that a bike is the fastest way to get from point A to B as even the safest of riders who obeys all the lights can pass many cars stuck in traffic.

Change can be slow in coming. For example, my own town of Brookline may or may not be ready with its own Hubway stations when the system reopens in March. But the runaway success of the Hubway system, and the successful efforts by the City of Boston and so many others to launch the system shows that rapid change for the better is very possible.

Creating a better city, state, region, nation and world where our electricity comes from clean renewable sources and is used efficiently and we travel in a cleaner and saner way relying on our muscles as much as possible using trains, buses, cars and planes only when truly needed is very possible. It starts with giving people options – and having affordable (and subsidized for low-income residents) and high quality bicycles available for use across cities like Boston is definitely a step (and a pedal) in that direction.

photo credit: flickr/OpenThreads

The Northern Pass transmission project is being pitched by its developers as a clean energy proposal for New Hampshire. As I’ve pointed out before, Northern Pass is a regional proposal with dubious benefits in the Granite State. Unfortunately, the developers’ hollow promises have found an audience further south, in Massachusetts.

From the public discussion as well as the developers’ PR blitz, you might think that the Northern Pass – a high voltage transmission line that would extend 180 miles from the New Hampshire-Canada border, through the White Mountains, to Deerfield, New Hampshire – is just a New Hampshire issue. It’s not: the ramifications of this project extend well beyond New Hampshire.  The implications are both regional and enduring, as they will shape the energy future of New England for decades to come.

Given this context, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) should be leading a pro-active, regional assessment of the options for additional imports of hydroelectric power from Canada. So far, DOE has squandered its opportunity to lead such an assessment while the Northern Pass permitting process remains on indefinite hold. Since April of this year, CLF has been urging the DOE to use this delay to deliver a fair, big picture review of the Northern Pass. It’s what New England deserves, and what DOE owes the public.

Although you wouldn’t know it from the media or the developers’ “MyNewHampshire” advertising campaign, Northern Pass also is a Massachusetts issue. Why? As if hidden in plain view, it’s at the center of Massachusetts’s plan to combat climate change. You might say it’s the elephant in the room.

Massachusetts’s 2010 “Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2020” (the Plan) seeks to reduce Massachusetts’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) 25% below 1990 levels by 2020. CLF has applauded the Plan as an aggressive, nation-leading effort. However, we long have been dubious of the Plan’s reliance on potential imports of Canadian hydropower.

Regrettably, the final Plan (at pp. 45-46) uncritically bought the Northern Pass developers’ line that Northern Pass will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5.1 million metric tons annually by 2020. Where does the Plan get that figure? The figure was never publicly vetted or discussed during the public planning process in which CLF was an active participant. The only citations are to the developers’ website and to a 2010 report by an energy consulting firm hired by the developers. That’s it. Massachusetts is taking the developers’ sales pitch at face value.

The Plan goes on to claim that Massachusetts can take credit for the entire reduction, even though the current Northern Pass proposal, by design, does not guarantee that Massachusetts customers will purchase any hydropower from Hydro-Québec through Northern Pass or otherwise. So, just how much of Massachusetts’s ambitious GHG reduction goal does Northern Pass’s supposed 5 million tons represent? More than 70% of the Plan’s reduction goal for the electric sector and more than 20% of the Plan’s goal overall. Of the Plan’s “portfolio” of initiatives, the Plan credits Northern Pass with achieving the single highest amount of emissions reductions.

Northern Pass is a highly questionable element of the Plan for a number of reasons. First, it’s not clear how much power Massachusetts will actually get from Northern Pass. Second, the project faces myriad permitting hurdles and isn’t anywhere close to a done deal. Third, Massachusetts has no direct role in the project’s development.

But it’s worse than that. The report by the developers’ consultant – and its 5.1 million ton estimate of Northern Pass’s reductions of GHG emissions – is simply wrong. The report’s error is a contagion that directly undermines the Plan’s ambitious GHG reduction goal.

To make a long story short, the report assumes that Canadian hydropower results in no GHG emissions. That assumption is contradicted by Hydro-Québec’s own field research on the GHG emissions from the recently constructed Eastmain reservoir – the very reservoir where, according to testimony by a developer executive, Northern Pass’s power will be generated.  Together with other scientific literature, the research demonstrates that reservoirs have long-term, non-zero net GHG emissions (in part because they permanently eliminate important carbon “sinks” that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, such as boreal forests). That makes the  5 million tons, at a minimum, blatantly inflated.

But even more importantly for Northern Pass and Massachusetts’s GHG reduction goal, the same research suggests that Northern Pass may not reduce GHG emissions at all before 2020, if ever. According to Hydro-Québec, a newly inundated reservoir has GHG emissions comparable to a modern natural gas power plant in the decade following flooding.  This chart from a Hydro-Québec paper, which itself likely underestimates reservoir emissions over time, tells the tale:

Natural gas plant and reservoir (Eastmain 1) emissions are similar in first decade of reservoir operation

And according to the developers’ projections, Northern Pass would overwhelmingly displace natural gas-fired generation (itself a missed opportunity to displace the output of coal-fired power plants).  If Northern Pass relies on new hydroelectric facilities in Canada for its power (as the developers and their consultant are assuming), Northern Pass as proposed will have no net effect on emissions in its early years and may never result in meaningful reductions, let alone 5 million tons per year.

Without the claimed reductions from Northern Pass, the Plan cannot come close to achieving the bold 25% reduction in GHG emissions that made headlines, even if every element of the Plan is implemented. In other words, there is a 5 million ton hole in the Plan that Massachusetts needs to fill with real and verifiable reductions.

CLF has been making this case during Massachusetts regulators’ review of the proposed merger of Northeast Utilities and NSTAR – the same companies behind Northern Pass – that week approval to form the largest electric utility in New England. Piggybacking on the Plan, Northern Pass’s developers are citing the emissions reductions from the project as the premier “climate” benefit that Massachusetts will supposedly get from the merger. That benefit appears right now to be a zero; particularly in light of the merger’s negative impacts, Massachusetts deserves a lot more to satisfy the “net benefit” standard that the merger must achieve to gain approval.

In the months ahead, we also will be pushing back against Hydro-Québec and its corporate allies in Massachusetts, who are now urging radical changes to Massachusetts’s clean energy laws that would subsidize large-scale hydropower imports, at the expense of local renewable energy projects that provide jobs and economic benefits in Massachusetts and throughout New England. The Plan itself explains the reason this is a bad idea – large hydro is a mature technology that is economic and cost-competitive without any additional public support; large hydro also has caused dramatic environmental damage and major disruptions to native communities in Canada. If imports secure little or no reduction in GHG emissions, the case for new subsidies disappears altogether.

Some may be hoping that no one is looking seriously at what Northern Pass would mean for the climate and that the Northern Pass debate will remain within New Hampshire’s borders. CLF, however, is committed to securing real scrutiny of Northern Pass’s misleading claims, ridding Massachusetts’s climate plan of its faulty reliance on Northern Pass, and advancing clean energy solutions that will, in fact, meaningfully reduce our region’s carbon footprint while enabling Massachusetts to achieve its full 25% reduction in GHG emissions by 2020.

We wanted to draw your attention to the below announcement for a free webinar hosted by our friends at New England Wind Energy Education Project (NEWEEP). See below for registration information. If you’re interested, be sure to register. Remember: it’s free!

New England Wind Energy Education Project (NEWEEP) Webinar #6

Title:               “Wind Power as a Neighbor: Experience with Techniques for Mitigating Public Impacts”

Date:               Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Location:        Webinar (Free)

Time:              2:00 – 3:45 PM ET

Registration
Link:                   http://neweepwebinar6.eventbrite.com/

Questions? Email:  info@neweep.com

Key Discussion Topics & Speakers

Speakers:

• Charles Newcomb, Wind Technology Deployment Supervisor, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, will describe the technical mitigation strategies invented and refined by wind manufacturers and developers to minimize or avoid impact to project neighbors, along with the background of how these strategies work and where they have been applied.
• John Knab, Town Supervisor, Sheldon, NY, will discuss the project adjustment and other mitigation techniques used by the Town of Sheldon in the process of allowing the High Sheldon Wind Project to be developed in their town and how these techniques impacted the siting decision-making process.
• Nils Bolgen, Program Director, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, will describe project adjustments and mitigation steps taken by wind project proponents during both the planning and post-operation stages, with outcomes and results where available.

Discussion Topics:

The presentations and discussion will provide webinar participants with an understanding of:

• Technical and non-technical approaches to minimize, eliminate or compensate for direct or indirect impacts during the planning, construction and operation of a wind power project
• Lessons learned on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of available mitigation techniques and how specific techniques helped produce better outcomes
• The process of negotiation to achieve public acceptance, and what concessions communities should (and shouldn’t) expect from project proponents
• The key to successful siting through balancing mitigation of impacts with project economic viability
• Where current strategies fall short and what additional research is needed to fill the gaps

This free event is designed for attendance by the general public, local officials, state regulators, facility siting decision-makers, policy-makers, and others interested in a review of objective information on the impacts of wind energy.

This holiday season, what do many Americans have to be thankful for? In tough times, one answer that will be heard around more holidays tables is: “Jobs. Green Jobs.” At least, that’s my answer.

Yesterday was my first day as Conservation Law Foundation’s Senior Communications Manager. I feel fortunate to work for CLF, not simply due to this organization’s impressive history, or due to the great respect I have for all of my coworkers (pictured above). While unemployment remains stubbornly high, and job-creating clean energy programs are coming under attack, American workers face a difficult road. To have a job now is to be fortunate, to have one that works to build a vibrant future is to be blessed.

And so this Thanksgiving, I plan to give thanks for my job: one I believe in, and one I share with dedicated people. But I wonder: How many Americans can join me in giving such thanks? The answer depends upon how you decide to count.

Take the term “green jobs.” The definition of what precisely constitutes a “green job” can quickly become hard to constrain, as this Time story from 2008 argues. Phil Angelides, then Chair of the Apollo Alliance, defined a green job this way: “It has to pay decent wages and benefits that can support a family. It has to be part of a real career path, with upward mobility. And it needs to reduce waste and pollution and benefit the environment.”

What about the clean economy? According to a recent report by The Brookings Institution, in 2011 the clean economy employs some 2.7 million workers. You’ll also see that these jobs are growing – in some segments, explosively. Sectors such as wind energy, solar PV and smart grid grew at a “torrid pace.” As Bob Deans over on NRDC’s Switchboard said so well, “green jobs are growing strong in a weak economy, supporting nearly 3 million American families in hard times.”

However, if you look at their methodology, you’ll see Brookings is only talking about the “clean production economy.” There are more people working to put America on a path to a thriving, sustainable future than those producing goods and services. There are people – like those of us at CLF – working in environmental advocacy. There are environmental journalists and photographers. There are scientists, consultants, fishermen, and investors. And there are many, many others.

I tried to find an answer, a number, to describe just how many Americans work in green jobs. I wondered: who else depends on a thriving environment for their future livelihood?

The answer is simple: all of us. The environment is not an economic sector any more than air is a private commodity. Those who work in green jobs share a mission to create a more sustainable future — a future that we all share.

And so, this Thanksgiving I plan to give thanks – thanks to my colleagues at CLF, to my friends at organizations like NRDC, Patagonia, BluSkye, and others.  I plan to give thanks to the 2.7 million workers in the clean production economy. May that number continue to rise.

If you can, email me the names of organizations, jobs or people to whom you give thanks to for helping to create a more sustainable future. I’ll compile your answers into a future post.

In the meantime, from both myself and all of us here at CLF, have a happy, sustaining Thanksgiving.

Quick update on subject of a blog post the other day.

Discovery Channel, in an article posted on Treehugger (which discloses it is owned by Discovery Communications, the parent of Discovery Channel) claims that the climate change content in the US version of Frozen Planet will be the same as in the BBC version – that they will simply be re-editing the show to fit into six episodes and with an American accented narrator.  Apparently our ears are not sophisticated enough to appreciate the dulcet tones of Sir David Attenborough.

And as to the climate issue, as Treehugger concludes, the proof will come when the show airs . . .

Protesters against Keystone XL - November 6, 2011 (photo credit: flickr/tarsandsaction)

Last week, a major disaster for our climate and our nation’s clean energy future was averted – at least for now – when the Obama administration announced that it won’t consider approving the Keystone XL pipeline’s border crossing permit before it reconsiders the Keystone XL pipeline’s environmental impacts and the potential alternatives to the proposal on the table.  For all the reasons that my colleague Melissa Hoffer articulated in her post last week, the Keystone XL victory was a resounding, if limited, triumph with important lessons for environmental and climate advocates across the country as we confront, one battle at a time, the seemingly overwhelming challenge of solving the climate crisis.

The Keystone XL decision also hits home in another way. It sends an unmistakable signal that the federal government’s review process for New England’s own international energy proposal – the Northern Pass transmission project – needs the same type of new direction.

The parallels between the State Department’s Keystone XL environmental review and the mishandled first year of the U.S. Department of Energy’s review of Northern Pass are striking. In both cases, we saw:

• Troubling, improperly close relationships between the developer and the supposedly independent contractors conducting the environmental review, with unfair and inappropriate developer influence on the review’s trajectory, undermining the public legitimacy of the review process;
• An extraordinary grassroots uprising against the proposal from diverse groups of residents, landowners, communities, businesses, and conservation and environmental groups;
• Massively expensive lobbying and public relations campaigns by proponents designed to confuse and mislead lawmakers and the public
• Repeated failures by permitting agencies to ensure fair, open, and truly comprehensive review of the full range of impacts, including climate impacts, and the reasonable alternatives for meeting our energy needs in other, less environmentally damaging ways.

With all the legal, procedural, and substantive deficiencies our national advocate colleagues have been pointing out for years, the Keystone XL review (before last week) is a dramatic example of what we can’t allow to happen with Northern Pass. Right now, things don’t look good – it appears that the Department of Energy is engaging in an “applicant-driven,” narrow review of a few potential project routes, not the broad, searching analysis CLF and many others have demanded again and again (and again).  Last week’s decision to conduct a wide-ranging new review of Keystone XL shows that there is still the opportunity (and now a clear precedent) for the Department of Energy to bring the same spirit of renewed scrutiny and public responsiveness to its review of Northern Pass.

New Hampshire and New England deserve an impartial, comprehensive, and rigorous review of the Northern Pass project – and all reasonable alternatives – by the permitting agencies entrusted with protecting the public interest. Indeed, what we need now is a serious regional plan that addresses whether and how best to import more Canadian hydropower into New England and the northeastern U.S. With huge projects like Keystone XL and Northern Pass on the table, our nation’s energy future is at stake, and it has never been more important – for our communities, economy, natural environment, and climate – to get it right.

For more information about Northern Pass, sign-up for our monthly newsletter Northern Pass Wire, visit CLF’s Northern Pass Information Center (http://www.clf.org/northernpass), and take a look at our prior Northern Pass posts on CLF Scoop.

Tricia Jedele, director of  CLF Rhode Island, responded enthusiastically to new climate change adaptation legislation introduced today by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Senator Max Baucus of Montana. The Safeguarding America’s Future and Environment Act (SAFE) Act would require federal natural resource agencies to plan for the projected long-term effects of climate change, and encourage states to prepare natural resources adaptation plans.  The SAFE Act also would create a science advisory board to ensure that the planning uses the best available science.

“CLF supports and endorses this legislation completely,” said Jedele.  “In Rhode Island, we are watching towns like Matunuck struggle with the serious issues posed by sea level rise and just last year we were inundated with rivers rising 15+ feet above flood level.  We need to get serious about planning for the near term effects of a changing climate and warming globe, especially when our nation has not been serious about slashing the pollution that is causing the problem. This legislation will force appropriate planning for managing our natural resources like rivers, bays, oceans, forests and lands in a rapidly changing world.”

The good news: cable TV outlet the Discovery Channel co-produced, with the BBC,  a nature series about the polar regions entitled Frozen Planet working with award winning director David Attenborough.   Discovery has proudly announced their co-ownership of the series, which is airing in Britain now (and apparently is quite hit) and will be shown in the US on Discovery in 2012.

The bad news: Discovery (who I admit has gotten some free publicity from us for their Shark Week) has decided to not show the final episode in the series that presents the threats, particularly in the form of global warming, that man poses to the polar environment. In the words of an incredulous headline of a newspaper article in Britain’s Daily Mail: “Climate change episode of Frozen Planet won’t be shown in the U.S. as viewers don’t believe in global warming.”

Protecting our climate will require systematic action across our society and economy.  As President Obama just noted in remarks in Australia it will be, “a tough slog, particularly at a time  when a lot of economies are struggling.”  But it is a transition that (as he went on to say) can build up jobs and the economy and “that, over the long term, can be beneficial.”

But if we don’t talk about the problem and don’t show the impacts of global warming, let alone the solutions what are the chances of our nation and the world taking on and solving this most fundamental of problems?

Merrimack Station in Bow, NH

In more than 50 pages of filings last Thursday, CLF responded to a pair of motions by Public Service Company of New Hampshire (PSNH) asking for dismissal of our Clean Air Act citizen suit now pending in federal district court in New Hampshire. That same day, CLF’s lawsuit got a major boost when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed a brief of its own, as a friend of the court, to identify the legal errors in PSNH’s key argument.

One PSNH motion challenged CLF’s right to sue PSNH to protect the environmental and public health from Merrimack Station’s illegal pollution. The other motion claimed that PSNH didn’t do anything wrong when it renovated Merrimack Station because EPA regulations allow it to make changes without permits.

In our briefs, CLF vigorously objects to both motions. You can download our briefs in PDF format here and here; our full set of filings, including attachments, is here (7MB .zip file).

PSNH’s illegal projects will increase Merrimack Station’s emissions, which will harm the health and well-being of CLF members. Under federal law, this harm means that CLF has the right to sue PSNH to hold it accountable for violations of the Clean Air Act. Because PSNH failed to get permits for its projects, PSNH violated the law. Those permits would require PSNH to install more stringent and protective pollution controls that all new plants must include, reducing Merrimack Station’s emissions of a wide range of pollutants, beyond the reductions that Merrimack Station’s expensive new scrubber (which is limited to reducing sulfur dioxide and mercury emissions) can achieve.

Incredibly, PSNH’s argument that it is exempt from permitting requirements is entirely based on EPA regulations that do not apply in New Hampshire. It’s not a close call; PSNH’s brief arguing for our lawsuit to be dismissed gets the rules 100% wrong, an astonishing error for a sophisticated company like PSNH, New Hampshire’s biggest utility.

EPA’s filing puts the final nail in the coffin for PSNH’s flawed legal argument. In a 25-page brief, EPA shows how, even if the rules PSNH is citing were the right ones, PSNH got those rules wrong too. As the author of the regulations PSNH cites, EPA explains that those regulations also would require PSNH to obtain permits before undertaking projects that will increase emissions.

It could not be clearer that PSNH’s recent renovation strategy at Merrimack Station — “build first, see what happens later” — violates the Clean Air Act. CLF will continue its fight to hold PSNH accountable for its violations as this case proceeds in the months to come.