The initial short-range solutions are in.  Quick, effective and clean.  Unanimous agreement on a suite of projects to move forward to help people get around in Chittenden County. 

When Vermont’s Governor, Peter Shumlin announced in May that the “Circ Highway” - an expensive, polluting and outdated ring-road around Burlington – would not be built as planned, he set in motion a Task Force to develop short, medium and long range solutions.  Since the summer the Task Force has been meeting and working.  Despite bumps, potholes and diversions in the form of more limited time and money because of the need to address problems that arose from managing the chaos Hurricane Irene left Vermont, the Task Force forged ahead.  

Last week we agreed unanimously on 5 short-term projects to get started in the coming year.  They include some innovative and out-of-the-box projects like expanding park & ride opportunities for commuters by leasing spaces in key locations, as well as more traditional projects of bus shelters and intersection imprrovements.  One very exciting project would re-work the street grid in Essex Junction, turning a parking lot into a downtown street, converting “five corners” into “four corners,” enhancing the streetscape and improving commerce and living opportunities in this New England downtown. 

Conservation Law Foundation is excited to be working with Chittenden County communities, businesses and state officials to get people, goods and ideas moving.  We are off to a great start. 

You can learn more about the Circ Task Force’s work at its website. 

A Public Meeting to discuss and learn more about these projects will be held on Wednesday, December 14, 2011, 7:00 p.m. at the  Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Colchester.

I often say that there are two phrases that a professional climate advocate, whether they like or not, ends up repeating.

The first one, which is not the subject of this post, is “The scary part is . . . “  As in “The scary part is that Daniel Yergin might be right when, in his new book, he suggests that climate science is right and fossil fuels are a systemic problem AND that peak oil/gas theory is wrong and we are not running out of fossil fuels.”  But that is the subject of another and different blog post to be written and just one of millions of examples of sentences beginning “The scary part is . . .” that you can write or utter about global warming.

The second one is “We have to do that too . . . ” As in, “Yes, we need to conserve more and be more efficient but we need to build wind farms, like the one proposed off of Cape Cod, too.”   As so many folks, including the folks at Princeton who are more famous for wedges than dairy farmers in Wisconsin, will tell you big systemic problem like global warming requires a huge range of solutions.  As some like to say, there is no silver bullet, perhaps multiple rounds of silver buckshot.

This last point causes me to do something I am reluctant to do – disagree with a very smart guy who has a record of knowing how to get things built.  In an opinion piece, Jiggar Shah, the founder of the solar development company Sun Edison and CEO of the very laudable Carbon War Room disagrees with the wisdom of the “jumbo” solar projects being undertaken by large energy companies like NRG Energy that are chronicled in a recent New York Times article.

My suggestion is simple: We need to do both.  We need the vast network of distributed solar on millions of rooftops that Mr. Shah envisions.  We need to do smart development of large solar as well.  We also need to be far more efficient in how we light and heat all our buildings and how we use energy to travel.

The array of technologies we will need to address global warming range from new smart heating devices for our homes, sidewalks to allow safe travel on foot in all our communities, shareable bicycles like the one I took to work this morning, electric cars powered by clean renewable energy, trains that connect cities and neighborhoods, and intelligently sited wind farms and solar installations on land and in the water.

We need to be relentless in our search for new solutions, recognizing dead-ends like the old nuclear power plants that have proved to be an expensive dead-end while aggressively evaluating new answers.

The good news about solar electric generation, as a source of new answers, is that the price of this technology continues to descend at a very steep rate.

While this is very bad news for folks trying to build a business that depends on making a profit by selling these modules, it creates many new opportunities to deploy solar electric generation as part of a large scale clean energy solution; and to do so in the form of a whole lot of Small on many rooftops, a fair amount of Medium on large roofs and appropriate locations on the ground, some Large and, where appropriate, even some Extra Large.

The unfortunate news that Beacon Power, an innovative technology company based in Massachusetts,  declared bankruptcy has inspired a bit of a media feeding frenzy centered around analogies to the failed California solar company Solyndra,  because Beacon (like Solyndra) received  a federal loan guarantee.

This analogy simply doesn’t hold up for the following reasons:

• Beacon Power has a fully operational facility in Stephentown New York that is an operating model of their flywheel technology, a innovative technology that provides an essential service to the electricity grid, providing stability to the power system at a very low cost.  This stability will allow smoother operation of the power grid and allow for integration of many more renewable resources like wind and solar smoothly at a reasonable price.
• The Federal loan guarantee is structured in a way that protects the financial interests of the taxpayers – giving them the right to be repaid out of the assets of Beacon before other companies and people that are owed money.
• Unlike Solyndra, which was effectively losing a price competition with Chinese and other US manufacturers, Beacon makes a unique product that is being developed here in the United States.
• The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a mere 11 days ago, issued a detailed rule that requires utilities to compensate companies like Beacon that provide power system stability in a competitive manner.  This sets a clear trajectory for Beacon, and the handful of other companies providing similar services, to be economically successful.

Given the assaults on the environment and climate and continuing economic and social disruptions there is enough bad news out in the world without alarmist voices generating scary stories because of events like the Beacon bankruptcy.   While it is an unfortunate event for some private investors and employees of Beacon it is not a crisis for taxpayers and can and will not stop the development of innovative and important technologies that will be the backbone of a new clean energy economy.

Much of CLF‘s work these days is focused on the challenge of global warming and in particular reducing immediately, structurally and effectively the release into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and the other “greenhouse gases” causing the problem.

This is, of course, not all that we do.  But much of our work on this over-arching problem overlaps with other important work like reducing air pollution that directly harms the health and lives of people or providing good transit access to urban communities, thus providing access to jobs for residents of those communities while reducing automobile trips and emissions. Still other CLF work, like protecting and nurturing our fisheries and forests, ensures that management of those resources is mindful of the changing climate while preserving unique ecosystems both for their own benefit and to ensure that future generations will be able to use and enjoy special places and resources.

When we step up and assert the benefit to the climate of, for example, wind farms in Maine or in Nantucket Sound or energy efficient light bulbs or the need to consider the climate in considering a transmission line across New Hampshire or in a merger proposed between utilities the question comes back to us: is it worth the cost?  Often it is a cost measured in dollars but sometimes it is a “cost” in terms of a view from a house or a beach or a mountain changing.

Responding to this question presents us with two challenges: first we need to show that the result we are advocating in favor of will actually reduce emissions and then we need to show that the need for those emissions reductions outweighs the cost of taking the action we are advocating.

One good example of how we show that an action will actually reduce emissions comes from the world of wind farms.  In those cases we can present expert testimony about how deploying wind resources will reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.  And that analysis isn’t just created by our experts, it draws upon reports done by the planners and operators of New England’s wholesale electricity system – work that is sometimes summed up in official summaries and nice presentations that include informative charts like this one showing how when the system gets 9% of its power from wind that emissions drop by 9% but when it gets 20% of its power from wind the emissions drop by 24% for reasons explained in the report:

And then we turn to the question of showing that this all matters and the cost of taking action outweighs the price of that action.  In our cases, again using the wind farm example, we use expert testimony.

But the bottom line is that we as a society are getting to the point where the cost of global warming is no longer a horrible possibility- it is an immediate reality, all around the world from Russia to Texas and points in between like New England.  And what we are experiencing is only a preview of what is to come and a strong reminder of the need to take action.

Back in 2004 a group of researchers and analysts at Princeton led by Robert Socolow published the “wedge analysis” that captured the problem of greenhouse gas emissions reductions in a pithy way that presented solutions in a manner that a lot of folks found very appealing – they presented their own scenarios but did it in a way that was flexible and allowed readers to dial technologies up and down to reflect their own beliefs and preferences.

Socolow has revisited that work and done some meditating on why in the intervening seven years we have not only failed to start to solve the problem but in fact have been making the hole we are in deeper.

Andrew Revkin (in his continuing capacity as a New York Times blogger, even though he has left the reporting business as a day job at the Times in favor of generally nurturing and studying environmental journalism at Pace University) summarizes and presents that work and reactions to it in a way that really makes for truly required reading.

Employing one of the best things about the blog form Revkin collects in a new post email exchanges he had with Socolow and various academics and experts about the essay and conversations springing from it.

In the course of that conversation Socolow presents a bit of a searing critique of himself and all others who have been trying to provoke action on global warming:

Worldwide, policymakers are scuttling away from commitments to regulations and market mechanisms that are tough enough to produce the necessary streams of investments. Given that delay brings the potential for much additional damage, what is standing in the way of action?

Familiar answers include the recent recession, the political influence of the fossil fuel industries, and economic development imperatives in countries undergoing industrialization. But, I submit, advocates for prompt action, of whom I am one, also bear responsibility for the poor quality of the discussion and the lack of momentum. Over the past seven years, I wish we had been more forthcoming with three messages: We should have conceded, prominently, that the news about climate change is unwelcome, that today’s climate science is incomplete, and that every “solution” carries risk. I don’t know for sure that such candor would have produced a less polarized public discourse. But I bet it would have.

And one of the responding voices, (David Victor, author of “Global Warming Gridlock” and a professor at the University of California, San Diego) agrees with Socolow on substance but disagrees  with Socolow on specific strategy and tactics arguing that the policy advocacy community has actually been doing a pretty good job of broadcasting the messages that Socolow is saying need to be heard but that the problem is much deeper and broader:

Outside of a few hyper green countries—like the EU15—climate change is just one of many issues. Like most environmental issues it comes and goes. You can’t sustain action in these countries without either finding ways to make action costless (or at least invisible) or linking action to other things people care about. The costless/invisibility strategy is a big part of the reason why the world (notably the US) did so well in cutting ozone depleting substances.

But it won’t work on climate—or at least not yet—which means plan B. Talk about how climate links to energy security and such. That’s now happening and it is having an effect (across the board the polling data are much more favorable to regulation on greenhouse gases when the questions focus on other benefits). Obviously we can’t over-sell this approach because it won’t stop warming and it easily leads to mischievous policies that hide true intentions and lard the economy with lots of extra costs. But all else equal, the more “reluctant” a country is to do something on climate itself the more important it is to talk about other goals as well. The community of policy advocates—especially folks drawn from academic science and engineering—is shockingly naïve about politics and the strategy of political action.

Revkin also provides us with a quote from Prof. Victor on the literary and historical metaphor that should be expunged from the climate advocacy vocabulary:

A last word—a plea really. Let’s all stop evoking Galileo. Whenever someone feels under siege they look to Galileo because he was right and persistent and his critics were both wrong and egregious. But the metaphor is hard to use effectively because what really matters is ex ante. For every Galileo there were thousands of others who were hacks. Maybe the one thing that we have learned from Galileo is that it is unwise to punish dissenters, and that’s a good message. But it is interesting to read the Tea Party stuff on climate and see that they use Galileo as well. Everyone is dueling over the same metaphor—they just can’t agree on who is Galileo and who’s the Pope.

(photo credit: USGS)

With summer drawing to a close, it’s now clear that over the next 15 months until the 2012 elections many public figures are going to be existing in a fact-free zone.   Thus, we are beginning to hear again the denials of the fact that our earth is getting warmer as a result primarily of human activity and that the results of that warming will be wide-ranging. We can expect more severe weather events (droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes), rising water temperatures, declining Arctic sea ice, and disappearing glaciers, as well as impacts to a broad range of human and natural systems, including famine, displacement from flooding and desertification, and shrinking supplies of basic commodities.  It’s surprising that some would deny this, because we have been seeing all of these changes for some years now.

Our friends at the Union of Concerned Scientists have compiled a helpful and thoughtful document that brings together the assessment of the National Academy of Sciences and statement of 18 other scientific organizations regarding climate science.  Hopefully these sober and clear analyses from the best scientists in the world can help keep the conversation about climate change based on facts and evidence, not hyperboles and anecdotes.  Climate change is occurring, and we need our leaders to focus on what to do about it, not how to ignore it. In these days of 24/7 exposure, where “fair and balanced” means giving equal weight to opinions that represent less than 1% as to ones that represent 99%, and where it seems that if one shouts something loud enough and often enough it’s eventually accepted as credible, we need to remember not only that there is no substitute for good science but also that there is no excuse for giving a free pass to those in the fact-free zone.

Last night, I sought refuge from the oppressive heat by taking a long swim in the cool, clean water of our local lake.  Families and young children packed the shallows where they found relief from record-breaking temperatures.  Floating along in this happy summer scene, I could not help but think of how fortunate we are to live in a country where our laws recognize that our happiness, our safety, and our economy depend on our ability to keep our water clean.

Thanks to the Clean Water Act, many waters are safe for swimming. Call your Senators to let them know you support this important law and want to ensure that all of our waters are safe for swimming, drinking, and fishing before it's too late.

In many places across the nation, the freedom to swim safely on a hot summer day was only a dream a generation ago when raw sewage and industrial pollution choked our nation’s waters.  Without the pollution controls and infrastructure investments required by the Clean Water Act and the work of groups like CLF to ensure that the law was being followed over the last forty years, water that is “drinkable, fishable, and swimmable” would still be beyond the reach of most Americans. Yet there remain many rivers, lakes, and bays from New England to the Gulf of Mexico and beyond where the Clean Water Act’s promise of water safe for recreation, drinking, and wildlife conservation have yet to be fulfilled.

POLLUTION CAN MAKE YOU “DEATHLY SICK”

Earlier this month, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe–one of the most anti-environmental members of Congress–received a stark reminder of how the dream of a swim on a hot summer day can quickly become a nightmare when we don’t have enough clean water.  Inhofe reported getting “deathly sick” from an upper respiratory illness he contracted when he swam in Oklahoma’s Grand Lake during a recent blue-green algae bloom caused by the combination of excess pollution and extreme heat. Fortunately, his 13 year-old granddaughter had the good sense not to join him in the illness-inducing swim.

Despite searing heat, swimmers stayed out of the slime-coated waters of Lake Champlain's St. Albans Bay most of last summer. Earlier this month, the Vermont Health Department warned swimmers about blue-green algae blooms that have appeared in the Bay again this summer.

From Vermont’s Lake Champlain to Cape Cod to Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay and in many lakes, rivers, and streams along the way, pollution from poorly-treated human waste and dirty runoff from streets, parking lots, and agricultural operations is feeding the growth of harmful blue-green algae of the sort that made Senator Inhofe feel “deathly sick.”  Added runoff from extreme rainfall events and hotter temperatures caused by global warming, will require even stronger clean water restoration and protection measures as we adapt in a changed climate.

THE CLEAN WATER ACT IS UNDER ATTACK

Sadly, some in Congress are attacking the EPA and the Clean Water Act, cynically attempting to free polluters of accountability under the false claim that pollution control is bad for the economy.  Click here to read about some of the “dirty water” bills being pushed through Congress by the Tea Party and some powerful Democrats who are in the pocket of the coal companies.

Twenty-eight years ago, the heavily-polluted Boston Harbor beaches were the poster children for the unfulfilled goals of the Clean Water Act.  Using enforcement tools under the Clean Water Act, CLF and U.S. EPA forced the beginning of a cleanup effort that many an overheated Bostonian can be grateful for as they head to the water this summer. The tremendous economic development that has occurred on the Boston waterfront as the water became cleaner is powerful proof that the Clean Water Act is a responsible and balanced tool for achieving many of society’s goals.  CLF and EPA are continuing the work under the Clean Water Act to ensure that Boston Harbor beaches remain safe for swimming and that citizens in upstream communities along the Charles, Mystic, and Neponset Rivers enjoy the same freedom to boat and swim without fear of becoming sick from pollution.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

As the U.S. Senate starts to consider the “dirty water” bills coming from the House, Senators are faced with a clear choice.  You can make a difference by calling or emailing your Senator and urging them to reject attempts to gut the Clean Water Act and weaken the EPA. Click here to find the phone number or email address for your Senator.  Join CLF in speaking up for clean water before it’s too late. 

As American dependence on foreign oil only grows stronger, high unemployment remains steady, and pollution continues to rise, the current state of domestic affairs seems bleak.  One bright spot, however, aims to address and make a serious dent in these national crises: the electric vehicle (EV).  So bright is the future of EVs that over 180 businesses, municipalities and public interest groups – including the CLF – have signed a statement of support to advance EVs in the U.S.

With the magnitude of national problems and the strong universal support for the EV solution, I set out, as a newbie to EVs, to understand what all the hype is about.

Edison with an electric car in 1913. (Photo credit: americanhistory.si.edu)

While long touted as environmentally friendly and in many aspects superior to fossil fueled vehicles, the EV remains little understood, especially to a novice like myself.  Typically, when I hear EV I think Toyota Prius or Honda Civic Hybrid, but as the name implies, these are hybrids of gasoline engines and rechargeable electric batteries.  An EV is different as it runs on 100% electric power, foregoing the need for gasoline, excessive emissions, and perhaps most importantly, excessive prices at the pump.  In fact, using the national average of $ 0.11/kwh, it costs a mere $ 2.75 to fill up an EV Nissan Leaf to travel 100 miles!  To travel 100 miles in my modest Subaru Impreza at my local gas station’s regular unleaded price of $ 3.72, it costs $ 16.90!

The Tesla Roadster, the industry's fastest production EV at 3.7 0-60 mph and 245 mi. range. (Photo credit: Tesla Motors)

But someone like myself may ask: Where do I charge up?  The answer is simple: At home!  While the infrastructure for public charging terminals is still under development, imagine if you could essentially have a fuel station at your home, open 24/7, and charging next to nothing rates.  Well no need to imagine, as home charging stations for EVs are the mainstay of the current EV fleet, with charging times ranging from 3 to 7 hours to charge a car from empty to full.  With prices ranging from $1000-$2200 installed, home charging stations can appear pricey.  But no need to fear the sticker, as you will easily make that cost back in a year, as my Subaru Impreza has an EPA estimated annual fuel cost of approximately $2,500, compared to the EV Nissan Leaf’s annual fuel cost of around $550!

Finally, for those of us who have a hard time conceptualizing a world where cars run on electricity, Nissan has an interesting ad that flips the perspective to a world where everything runs on gasoline; suffice it to say, you don’t want it.

What can the EV do for American job growth?  For starters, EVs have already been successful in jumpstarting job growth and placing the U.S. in a competitive position in the manufacture of EV components.  Within three years, more than 20 different EVs will be on the market, with EVs and their components being built in at least 20 states.  Furthermore, the future of EV infrastructure will provide countless job opportunities for Americans, which will not only strengthen our economy, but do so in an environmentally and economically sustainable way.

While cost savings and job growth are both attractive benefits to EVs, perhaps the greatest benefit is to environmental and public health.  The transportation sector is a significant cause of both global warming and air pollution, which affects everything from the global climate to those with sensitivity to air pollutants, such as asthmatics.  EVs have little or no tailpipe emissions, and even when power plant emissions are factored in, still have lower overall emissions of CO2 and other harmful pollutants, than traditional fuels.

Finally, where utilities provide clean energy options – natural gas, wind, solar, etc. – EVs could become truly zero emission vehicles, turning one of the America’s biggest environmental and public health problems into a solution for the world to follow.

As America faces some of the most difficult economic and environmental times in our nation’s history, the EV stands as a simple solution to tough problems.  It is not often that a decision can be made that saves you money, creates jobs and improves environmental quality.  The EV does all three.  The only thing standing in the way of success is ultimately the consumer, of which I will happily become one at the next chance I get, knowing that my EV will essentially pay for itself, while creating American jobs and saving the environment.

Editor’s note: Cory McKenna is a Cavers Legal Intern at CLF Maine. He is a student at the University of Maine School of Law.

Photo credit: Beerzle, flickr

In 2007, Congress passed energy efficiency standards for light bulbs that will decrease air pollution, improve public health and decrease household energy bills. A no-brainer, right? Wrong. This week, the House will vote on bills to repeal those standards – and we need your help to make sure that that doesn’t happen.

The standards require new bulbs to use 25 to 30 percent less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs beginning in 2012, and 65 percent less energy by 2020. These standards will not ban the incandescent light bulb, but instead give consumers a wider range of bulbs to choose from, including new and improved incandescent bulbs, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) and light emitting diodes (LEDs) that are far more efficient than required by the 2012 standards. What’s more, several manufacturers, including GE, Philips Lighting and Osram Sylvania, already sell new energy-efficient incandescent bulbs that use halogen technology. These bulbs meet the 2012 standards and are already available for sale. Learn more about light bulb standards here.

By the numbers, these standards will:

• Save American households $100 to $200+ per year
• Reduce U.S. energy bills overall by more than $10 billion per year – energy savings equivalent to 30 large power plants
• Jump-start industry innovation and investment that is creating U.S. jobs
• Avoid 100 million tons of global warming pollution per year – equal to the emissions of more than 17 million cars

But we won’t see any of these benefits if the standards are repealed and we return to using traditional light bulb technology, which has changed very little since Thomas Edison invented the incandescent bulb some 125 years ago. This is a battle that we can’t afford to lose.

Here’s a bright idea. Send a message to your representatives opposing any bills that would weaken or reverse light bulb efficiency standards.