Got Juice?: Choices Loom After Power Project's Demise

A year after the collapse of a plan for new transmission lines to New York City, questions remain. Was the need for new infrastructure a myth? Or are tougher choices ahead for consumers?

http://www.citylimits.org/news/articles/4186/got-juice-choices-loom-after-power-project-s-demise

OR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PR- 401-10
September 21, 2010
MAYOR BLOOMBERG AND TORONTO MAYOR DAVID MILLER ANNOUNCE THAT MAYOR BLOOMBERG HAS BEEN ELECTED CHAIR OF THE C40 CLIMATE LEADERSHIP GROUP 
More Than Half the World's Population Live in Cities;

Cities Consume 75 Percent of the World's Energy and Produce 80 Percent of its Greenhouse Gases 

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Toronto Mayor David Miller today announced that the C40 Steering Committee has elected Mayor Bloomberg to serve as chair of the C40 Climate Leadership Group, an association of major cities around the world committed to reducing carbon emissions and slowing climate change. Mayor Bloomberg will succeed Mayor Miller as C40 Chair in November.  The C40, launched in 2005, provides leadership to communities worldwide to help them accelerate the reductions of carbon emissions. The Chair, along with the eight-member Steering Committee of other C40 mayors, guides the work of C40 by planning and measuring the results of local initiatives that reduce emissions from energy, waste, water supply and transport and increase cities' resilience to climate change. The announcement took place at the New York City Accelerator for a Clean and Renewable Economy, which helps clean technology and renewable energy companies in New York City grow.

"No one has a monopoly on good ideas, and the C40 cities, by working with one another on innovative carbon reduction strategies, have an opportunity to show the world what is possible," said Mayor Bloomberg. "Mayor Miller has led the C40 so capably over the last two years. I'd like to thank all the members of the C40 steering committee for giving me this opportunity, I think it says a lot about the kind of changes we've been able to effect here in New York City. I'd also like to thank President Bill Clinton, Ken Livingstone, and all the other partners who have contributed so much to C40's success thus far."

C40 member cities have pioneered new innovations to reduce carbon emissions including deep water cooling in Toronto, bus rapid transit in Jakarta and Bogotá, car-free days in Seoul, and innovative solid waste policies in Dhaka. PlaNYC, New York City's long-term plan for a greener, greater New York, was launched on Earth Day 2007 and has already resulted in a nine percent reduction in local emissions over 2005 levels while improving New Yorkers' quality of life and infrastructure. By planting trees, improving transit service, and conserving energy, New York City is on track to meet its goal of a 30 percent reduction in citywide greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2030.

To meet this ambitious goal, the City has launched programs that attack the problem from all sides. For example the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan, four landmark pieces of legislation enacted in 2009, will require ongoing energy efficiency in large buildings and result in a 4.75 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions while supporting 17,800 jobs. This program has created a market for many of the businesses housed in the New York City Accelerator for a Clean and Renewable Economy which promotes alternative energy and clean technology development while creating new, local jobs in the green economy. 

"I'm incredibly proud of the tremendous work members of the C40 have already done in meeting our individual climate protection goals," said current chair Mayor David Miller of Toronto. "There remains great potential to refine and coordinate local initiatives in order to show our national governments how it's done. I have great confidence in Mayor Bloomberg and I know he will continue to work closely with his fellow mayors and ensure that cities have a voice in the international conversation on climate protection."

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, will remain honorary Deputy Chair and the C40 Secretariat will continue to be based in London.

"I am delighted my good friend Mayor Bloomberg is taking charge of this significant group," said London Mayor Boris Johnson. "Noble aspirations for the environment are of no use unless accompanied by tangible, practical measures. Mayor Bloomberg in everything he does, combines ambitious goals with effective, determined execution."

According to the World Bank, the C40 cities and their metropolitan areas are home to 393 million people and $8 trillion in economic activity at purchasing power parity, and are responsible for over 2 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually. While C40 mayors generally govern only a portion of their metro area, their leadership can often shape a region's overall approach to climate change.

"Jakarta has greatly benefited from Mayor Miller's C40 chairmanship in pioneering Climate initiatives such as the Connecting Delta Cities for Adaptation  and Carbon Finance Capacity Building for Mitigation," said Fauzie Bowo, Governor of Jakarta. "Though we will continue to expand in these areas, we now also look forward to continued growth in working with Mayor Bloomberg and learning from New York City as well as from the other big cities in such areas as energy efficiency and public transportation towards our shared reduction target of 30% greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2030."

"The environment is a high priority to our city and we are convinced that solutions to this common challenge are best reached through cooperation with other important cities of the world,"  said Mayor Kassab of São Paulo. "We trust Mayor Bloomberg's leadership will help the already successful C40 initiative to move even further in the implementation of public policies aiming at the well being of our peoples and of future generations."

"I extend my warmest congratulations to Mayor Michael Bloomberg on his appointment to the role of Chair of the C40 Large Cities Climate Leadership Group," said Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney, Clover Moore MP. "It was at the invitation of Mayor Bloomberg, along with London's former mayor, Ken Livingstone, that Sydney joined the C40 group in 2007. Mayor Bloomberg has been a leader on tackling global warming and an inspiration on climate change adaptation in cities.  I hope to continue to strengthen Sydney's relationship with New York City, as with all the other C40 members to secure our cities' future."

The C40 Large Cities Climate Leadership Group is comprised of the following cities: Addis Ababa, Athens, Bangkok, Beijing, Berlin, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Caracas, Chicago, Delhi, Dhaka, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Houston, Istanbul, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Karachi, Lagos, Lima, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Melbourne, Mexico City, Moscow, Mumbai, New York City, Paris, Philadelphia, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, São Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Toronto, Tokyo, and Warsaw. The C40 also has 19 affiliate cities selected because of their aggressive or innovative climate policies: Amsterdam, Austin, Barcelona, Basel, Changwon, Copenhagen, Curitiba, Heidelberg, Ho Chi Minh City, Milan, New Orleans, Portland, Rotterdam, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Santiago de Chile, Seattle, Stockholm, and Yokohama. The Clinton Climate Initiative is the implementing partner of C40, which also has initiatives with Arup and the World Bank Institute.

http://www.nyc.gov:80/cgi-bin/misc/pfprinter.cgi?action=print&sitename=OM&p=1285246835000

Power Authority chief predicts state energy crisis

Kessel pushes plans for solar, wind alternatives

BY RACHEL STERN •RSTERN@GANNETT.COM • SEPTEMBER 21, 2010, 8:20 PM

As Richard Kessel, CEO and president of the New York Power Authority, started his lecture Tuesday morning at the Cornell University Africana Center, he reminisced about his college days spent hitchhiking from Colgate University to Cornell, often for music events such as a well-remembered Temptations concert.

But as he continued, he offered a daunting hypothesis: There will be an energy crisis in New York State in a couple of years.

"The one thing you can't do with energy is sit on your butt," Kessel said. "I'm telling you, I think we are going to have some serious problems in the country and this region probably in 2012 or 2013. We have to get ahead of it as fast as we can."

When the economy recovers, Kessel said, growth in electricity will be significant. He does not think this region, or country, is prepared to deal with such a surge.

As a result, Kessel highlighted a few projects the Power Authority has started. The projects have four main priorities: Producing power, sparking economic development, utilizing renewable energy and energy efficiency.

"There is a need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and clean up the environment," Kessel said.

To do so, Kessel discussed a 100-megawatt solar statewide project. The Power Authority asked for bids from companies to do solar installations, primarily on public facilities throughout New York. He hopes to see the projects take shape next year.

"It is not only good for the environment and sustainability, but it creates jobs," Kessel said.

Another project Kessel discussed is an off-shore wind project in the Great Lakes on Lake Erie, Lake Ontario or both. The project will build 120 to 500 megawatts of generation and the Power Authority will select a developer or developers by early next year.

Kessel also highlighted some projects he hopes the Power Authority gets done. He wants to build a transmission line from Canada to New York City and Long Island. It would have the ability to import 2,000 megawatts of wind and hydro power into the state.

In addition to the Great Lakes wind efforts, Kessel hopes for a similar project in the Atlantic Ocean. While most of the opposition is because of the aesthetics, with an energy crisis looming there is a need to act fast, Kessel said.

"You can't wait. You have to do it now," Kessel said, "and hopefully, we are very close to doing that."

http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20100921/NEWS01/9210385/1126/news/Power+Authority+chief+predicts+state+energy+crisis

PRESS RELEASE

Sept. 21, 2010, 5:28 p.m. EDT · 

Con Edison Ranked # 1 as Environmental Leader

NEW YORK, NY, Sep 21, 2010 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Consolidated Edison Inc. (Con Edison) has been ranked #1 among all S&P 500 companies by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) in its Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI), as well as #1 among utilities in the new Carbon Performance Leadership Index (CPLI).

The Performance Index recognizes companies that are taking action to reduce carbon emissions through strategy, governance, stakeholder communications, and action plans. The Leadership Index assesses the quality and totality of companies' carbon reporting.

The Company's listing on both of the Carbon Disclosure Indexes follows its inclusion on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) last week for the second consecutive year.

"Environmental leadership, sustainability and responsibility have been core values for us and should be for everyone," said Kevin Burke, Consolidated Edison's chairman, president, and CEO. "This is a simple, straightforward policy that serves shareholder, employee, and customer interests equally, as well as our national interest."

In its report to the Carbon Disclosure Project, Con Edison reported a 36 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions since 2005. These reductions are driven through the burning of cleaner fuels at steam generation plants, and through improvements in the electric and natural gas distribution systems that help to reduce emissions.

"The Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index recognizes companies that demonstrate good internal data management practices for understanding greenhouse gas emissions, including energy use," said Paul Dickinson, chief executive of the Carbon Disclosure Project. "Companies that make this index have also demonstrated clear consideration of how climate change is and will impact their business. As companies' understanding of climate change issues grows, they are better placed to take positive action to manage and mitigate risk."

Compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on behalf of CDP, the indexes provide an evaluation tool for institutional investors. In 2010, it comprises 53 constituents of the S&P 500 Index based on analysis of the responses to the CDP's 2010 questionnaire, which focused on greenhouse gas emissions, emissions reduction targets, and risks and opportunities associated with climate change.

Consolidated Edison, Inc. (ED 48.67, +0.22, +0.45%) is one of the nation's largest investor-owned, energy-delivery companies, with approximately $13 billion in annual revenues and $34 billion in assets.

The company provides a wide range of energy-related products and services to its customers through the following subsidiaries: Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc., a regulated utility providing electric, gas, and steam service in New York City and Westchester County, New York; Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc., a regulated utility serving customers in a 1,350 square mile area in southeastern New York State and adjacent sections of northern New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania; Con Edison Solutions, a retail energy supply and services company; Con Edison Energy, a wholesale energy supply company; and Con Edison Development, a company that participates in infrastructure projects.

Consolidated Edison is a Dow Jones Sustainability Index company, and also has been recognized for its environmental performance by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy and other organizations.

For additional information, visit us on the Web at www.conEd.com, at our green site,www.conEd.com/thepowerofgreen, or find us on Facebook at Power of Green.

Contact:
Media Relations
212-460-4111

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/con-edison-ranked-1-as-environmental-leader-2010-09-21?reflink=MW_news_stmp

Recurve Nails the Science of Selling Home Energy Retrofits

Wade Roush 9/21/10

For Californians who want to make their houses greener and more energy-efficient, installing solar panels is often the first strategy that comes to mind. And there are many innovative Bay Area companies ready to help people do that, as I’ll describe in a story coming later this week. But Recurve president Matt Golden argues that solar is probably the last energy-related investment most homeowners should be making, not the first

“We are 100 percent pro-renewable energy, but you need to do things in the right order,” says Golden. “Before you install a new furnace, you put in the right insulation. Before you install 6 kilowatts of solar panels, you do efficiency improvements—and then you might need only 3 kilowatts to achieve the same result.”

It’s not very green, in other words, to put solar panels on top of a house that leaks heat all through the winter and cool air all through the summer. San Francisco-based Recurve, which Golden founded in 2004, will help you get your energy-wasting house in order before you think about bigger investments like solar panels.

Recurve is one of hundreds of energy efficiency retrofitters springing up around the country these days. But it’s perhaps one of the most high-tech, relying on software of its own design to systematize the process of home energy auditing.

Recurve’s technicians will go through your house room by room, testing factors that affect energy efficiency, such as airtightness, and feeding the data into laptops that run a physics simulation of the whole house. Once they’ve figured out how much you can save on energy bills by adding more insulation, sealing more ducts, and replacing outdated lighting, heating, and air conditioning equipment, they can do the actual work too—they’re certified builders. They’ll also help you pay for the work through zero-money-down, low-rate home financing packages.

But what really sets Recurve apart is its engineering-driven outlook on what it calls “home performance contracting.” These guys are the Amazon or the McKinsey of the energy retrofitting business, motivated by the conviction that a little data goes a long way, as long as it’s accurate. (Golden says Recurve’s retrofitting cost quotes are binding—if it ends up costing more to reach the promised efficiency improvements, Recurve eats the difference.)

While the company currently serves a relatively small market—just the counties surrounding San Francisco Bay—it’s got big ambitions. With around 65 staffers, Recurve is already the largest retrofitter on the West Coast, “and we intend to keep growing,” says Golden. The company is active on the policy front, pushing for more incentive programs like the $2,000 in efficiency rebates available to each San Francisco homeowner from the city government, the $3,500 newly available from Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), and the Home Star Retrofit Act wending its way through the U.S. Congress. But it’s Golden’s long-term vision for Recurve that’s really audacious.

The company has 10 retrofitting crews out in the field and a bevy of software developers back in its Mission Street offices, and in a way every home retrofitting job they do is a rehearsal. Eventually, Golden thinks, the day will come when Recurve is hired not by individual homeowners, but by utilities. His vision is that utilities will pay contractors to retrofit thousands of homes at a time, bringing about reductions in energy demand that will help them match generating capacity with expected loads for far less money than it would take to build new power plants. And Recurve will be a leading candidate for such jobs, Golden says, because of the accuracy of its software models, which have been tested and refined in hundreds of homes over the last six years. “If we aggregate 20,000 homes using the energy simulation from each one, we can show that these aggregated homes will deliver a certain demand reduction to the provider,” Golden explains.

Homeowners will still have to pay part of the costs of these retrofits, but Golden says their contribution will come in the form of flat monthly payments that will replace—and are guaranteed to be lower than—their monthly utility bills. That way, everyone wins: utilities don’t have to build more costly generating plants, consumers have lower overall bills, less energy gets wasted and less carbon gets emitted into the atmosphere, and Recurve gets to build a handsome business.

It’s only through market-driven mechanisms like this, Golden argues, that the nation’s 70 million single-family, owner-occupied homes will ever get retrofitted, since governments can’t pay for rebates on that scale. “This is not something we [the taxpayers] can afford to subsidize, and we don’t have to,” Golden says.

In regions with deregulated energy markets, utilities will continue to experiment with new ways to meet demand, including both “smart grid” technologies that measure and control energy usage down to the household level and “forward capacity markets” where utilities bid for the lowest-cost capacity. That capacity could come in the form of either megawatts, such as new gas-fired plants or wind farms or solar arrays, or “negawatts,” that is, guaranteed reductions in demand through retrofitting and other mechanisms. (A quick footnote: New England utilities are the world pioneers in building forward capacity markets, and at Xconomy Boston we’ve devoted extensive coverage to another form of negawatts traded in these markets, the “demand response” services offered by companies like Boston-based EnerNOC and Worcester, MA-based World Energy.)

Utility payments for forward negawatt capacity translate, in effect, into private-sector rebates that will cut the cost of home retrofitting, Golden says. And much of Recurve’s work is aimed toward the day when the company will be able to bid on large-scale retrofitting projects in forward-capacity auctions run by utilities in the western United States. “In the near term, the markets aren’t in place yet,” says Golden. “We are a few years away. But what we are investing in now is a foundation for this industry, which in a few years—in conjunction with the smart grid and forward capacity markets—is going more toward efficiency than anyone expects. It’s cheaper, it doesn’t have any fuel-price risk, and it doesn’t have any carbon risk.”

Golden started the company from the back bedroom of his apartment near the Presidio. (It was long known as Sustainable Spaces, but rebranded itself in 2009 “in preparation for national expansion.”) The company has been profitable from the start, Golden says, meeting payroll without any outside investment until 2008, when it picked up $6 million in Series A funding from RockPort Capital Partners and Shasta Ventures. That was followed by an $8 million Series B investment this June from Lowe’s Companies (NYSE: LOW) and existing backers. The company’s most recent news was the addition of a new CEO, Andy Leventhal, a software industry veteran who most recently founded and led Planet Metrics, a carbon emissions modeling company sold this January to Parametric Technology Corporation.

The fact that a home contractor is winning venture investments tells you something about the company’s uniqueness. So does the roster of backers—RockPort is a leading energy, environmental, and materials investor, Shasta’s portfolio is heavy on software companies, and Lowe’s, obviously, is the world’s second-largest home-improvement retail chain. What interests this motley crew is Recurve’s potentially revolutionary business proposition, which I would put this way: 1) Improving home energy efficiency is one of the keys to confronting climate change and volatile energy costs. 2) “Building science” has reached the stage where it’s possible to accurately model the energy flowing into and out of a home. 3) Nobody has yet systematically applied this science through software.

“From an engineering standpoint, we have all the answers,” says Golden. “But they’re stuck in white papers over at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, with no business model. A bunch of scientists running around working with a bunch of greenies in Marin has exactly zero impact if you can’t get this into every home in America.”
If you’ve ever had a utility representative come by your home to do an “energy audit,” you know that the usual procedure is to poke around looking for a few leaky windows or ducts. To understand what Recurve’s technicians do, you have to start by abandoning that picture completely. “These aren’t clipboard audits,” says Golden. “This is performance-testing a building.”

For each room and duct, Recurve hooks up blowers that force air through, and measures where the air is escaping. Auditors walk through the house with wireless tablet PCs running Recurve’s Web-based software and note the thickness and construction type for each wall, floor, and ceiling; the types of insulation, furnace, AC equipment, water heater, and major appliances installed; where moisture and mold might be accumulating and where carbon monoxide might leaking, and the like. All that data generates two products: a physics model of the house and how it processes energy hour by hour, and a set of predictions for energy savings if a number of standard improvements are implemented (better insulation, new ductwork, correctly sized heating and ventilation equipment, high-efficiency lighting, and so forth).

Golden calls Recurve’s energy audits a form of mass customization: adapting known building science to each homeowner’s unique structure. The software’s reports make it easy for auditors to figure out what needs to be done and how much it will cost, and equally easy for clients to decide to pull the trigger.

“When you are moving from a cottage industry to a standardized industry, you need to make sure people are all doing the same thing, and you need data very quickly to help convince the customer,” Golden says. “We found that most people in this industry are spending three or four hours on site and another six or seven hours in the office typing the data back in and doing simulations. We give a sales-ready report to the consumer on site. All the great modeling technology in the world, if nobody actually does the changes, is irrelevant.”

Across six years of testing and iterating—with new releases of the software coming almost every week—the company has also reduced errors in its estimates to a minimum. That’s a necessity when construction crews have a four-day window to complete retrofitting job, or risk upsetting the next month’s schedule. (Each crew is scheduled 10 jobs deep, Golden says.)

And Recurve isn’t keeping its auditing software to itself: home performance contractors in other regions can subscribe to the Web-based system (which also works offline when there’s no Internet connection). Golden says the company plans to focus its own growing auditing and retrofitting operations on California for the time being, where there’s a more predictable set of rebates in place. But it can sell the software nationally, while it waits for utilities and policymakers to set up the mechanisms needed to support forward capacity auctions and other overarching mechanisms for getting more homeowners to retrofit.

“We have lots of different business models open to us,” he says. “The goal has always been, how do we get this into the mass market, so that we can achieve environmental goals. Two or three years ago, before Obama, things were moving a heck of a lot slower. But the reality is that huge players are getting into this industry. And if our goal is to create scale and a return to our investors, we don’t have time to build a huge national footprint. So, to leverage the IP we have most broadly, packaging the software for all players makes a lot of sense.”

Meanwhile, there’s still one energy improvement Recurve can’t help you with: installing solar panels. “It’s the one thing we don’t do,” says Golden. “To be honest, solar is really easy compared to doing this kind of work. There aren’t very many moving parts. And to compete in the solar industry these days, you need to be very, very focused.” Which is one of the points I’ll emphasize in a piece on Oakland, CA-based Sungevity, coming later this week. So stick around, and enjoy the Bay Area’s cool early-autumn weather—no heat or air conditioning required.

http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/09/21/recurve-nails-the-science-of-selling-energy-retrofits/?single_page=true

New Bikeshare program provides wheels to casual cyclists in D.C., Arlington

By Ashley Halsey III

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Like bees tumbling from the nest, scores of riders on identical ruby-red bicycles swarmed from a lot near Nationals Park on Monday, fanning out across the District and Arlington to establish a new bike-sharing network that will grow to a fleet of 1,100.

The dramatic deployment, with D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) on hand, was engineered to draw attention to the new program, which couples modern electronic gadgetry with 19th-century invention to create a system that encourages casual cyclists to pedal around town.
The batch of bikes dispatched on Monday headed for almost 50 bike stations in the District and Arlington, where they will be locked to racks until a Capital Bikeshare member comes along to use one.

Anyone can become a member, for 24 hours ($5); 30 days ($25); or a full year ($75, currently discounted to $50). Members who sign up for longer than a day receive palm-size cards that have bar codes and slip into a slot to release a bike.

The first 30 minutes of each ride are free. Then the meter starts running -- $1.50 for the next 30 minutes; $3 for the third half-hour; and $6 for each 30-minute period after that. The pricing is geared to encourage short hops from place to place rather than leisurely Saturday afternoon cruising on the C&O Canal towpath.

It all gets billed to your credit card, which will take a $1,000 hit if the bike isn't returned within 24 hours, at which time it's considered to have been stolen. The billing system is activated with the insertion of the bar-coded membership card at the bike station, and another insertion when the bike is returned there or elsewhere also is transmitted to Bikeshare headquarters through a wireless, solar-powered communications network.
Each station will begin the day with about 10 bikes and five empty docking spaces. On the Capital Bikeshare Web site, a click of the mouse on each station reveals how many bikes are available at any given moment, and how many docking stations are open for those who want to return a bike. Yes, there will be smartphone apps.

Capital Bikeshare dramatically expands the program known as SmartBike that the District launched two years ago. Once the full fleet is in service, promised by late October, the program will be the largest of its type in the nation, transportation officials said.
Christopher Holben, a bike program specialist with the District Department of Transportation, said the system will grow by four or five new stations each week. The network will eventually include 114 stations.

"The majority of stations right now are in the more densely populated wards: 1, 2 and 6," Holben said. "But they will be in all wards in the city."

They also will be in Arlington. Jay Fisette, chairman of the Arlington County Board, was among those who mounted a new bike Monday and pedaled to a station across the Potomac.
"You see a lot more bikes on the road in Arlington today than you did five years ago," said Fisette, who rode a bike through Europe in 1981. "We're expanding our biking infrastructure as a result of this bike-share system. Having a regional system, instead of two different systems, is huge."

The three-speed bikes are huge, too, the behemoths of the cycling world. But they are designed to adjust easily to fit people of all sizes.

"They're virtually indestructible," Holben said.

Built in Canada for bike-share programs, they have a basket with a bungee cord on the handlebars to accommodate purses, briefcases and a modest bag of groceries. The twin red taillights and strobelike headlights, powered by friction, are on whenever the bike is moving.

The seat and massive frame are built for comfort, not for speed. Pushing these bikes past 15 mph would require a feat of strength and death-defying derring-do.

The District's $6 million share of the cost came in a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Arlington's $835,000 share came from several public sources in Virginia, officials said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/20/AR2010092003815.html?sub=AR

How Should San Francisco Plan for Sea-Level Rise?

A 1,400-acre swath of salt flats along the western edge of San Francisco Bay has become the latest site for a development dispute that promises to become increasingly common in coastal U.S. cities: Whether new waterside growth makes sense when sea levels are rising

By Jennifer Weeks and The Daily Climate  Tuesday, September 21, 2010

BAY CITY: Sea-level rise due to climate change may imperil coastal development.Image: Mila Zinkova, courtesy WikiCommons

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—A 1,400-acre swath of salt flats along the western edge of San Francisco Bay has become the latest site for a development dispute that promises to become increasingly common in coastal U.S. cities: Whether new waterside growth makes sense when sea levels are rising.

Agribusiness giant Cargill, which owns the Redwood City site, has made salt in San Francisco Bay for decades. Cargill has downsized in recent years, selling 16,500 acres of salt ponds in the area–60 percent of its local operations–to the state and federal government in 2002 for $243 million in cash and tax credits. But it held on to the 1,400-acre site near Redwood City that the company believes is suitable for building.

Several years ago Cargill hired Arizona development company DMB to identify future uses for the site, which is separated from downtown Redwood City by busy Highway 101. DMB has proposed Redwood City Saltworks, a planned community with 8,000 to 12,000 low-rise housing units. It includes new schools and retail stores, sports parks and open space along the bay and mass transit links connecting the development with regional bus, train and ferry lines. "This project is the poster child for an integrated, walkable community" said DMB vice president David Smith.

Opponents have other priorities. A long list of conservation groups, neighboring cities, and local government agencies has endorsed restoring the salt flats to their original state: tidal marshes, which filter bay water, provide habitat for fish and birds, and buffer shoreline communities against flooding by soaking up storm surges.

Redwood City is proceeding with a state-mandated environmental impact review, which could produce a decision sometime in 2011. The study will tackle issues including impacts on traffic, air quality, and water supplies. But a longer-term question that will be unavoidable in the official review is whether building the project would reduce climate change impacts or make them worse.

These choices aren't unique to San Francisco. Officials in New York, Boston, Seattle, and other coastal cities are brainstorming ideas for flood-proofing urban areas, from raising roads to building giant sea gates. So far, however, Orrin Pilkey, professor emeritus of geology at Duke University, sees little action to limit new waterside growth.

"Historically coastal states haven't been serious about limiting shoreline development," said Pilkey, a longtime critic of building in flood-prone areas. Given current projections for sea-level rise, he supports barring construction of high-rise buildings and major infrastructure in vulnerable areas.

"Why increase the cost of preserving cities in the future when we know what's going to happen in less than a century? Our barrier islands [in North Carolina] are going to be un-developable within 40 to 60 years, dikes or no dikes," Pilkey argued.

Timothy Beatley, a professor at the University of Virginia's School of Architecture and author of Planning for Coastal Resilience(Island Press, 2009), has identified a few small cities and counties across the country that are actively steering growth out of flood plains, but says that larger cities are just starting to consider that idea.

In San Francisco the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, known as BCDC, regulates dredging and filling in the Bay and all development within 100 feet of the shoreline; BCDC has proposed identifying low-lying areas where abandoning new development may be more cost-effective than protecting it, but doesn't have jurisdiction to enforce such a policy now.

"Building in vulnerable locations will involve significant public costs in the not-too distant future," Beatley said. "It may make sense to protect some places, but we're going to have to gracefully retreat from others."

Making salt is a simple process: Water flows through a series of shallow ponds, thickening into increasingly saline brine, until salt solidifies and falls out of solution. Fully-saturated brine moves from "pickle ponds" to crystallizer beds, where it dries and is scraped up by giant harvesting machines. Other ponds hold bittern, a highly saline waste solution colored red by salt-loving bacteria. Cargill's Redwood City tract includes crystallizer beds, pickle ponds, and bittern storage ponds.

"Salt ponds are not land to be paved – they are part of San Francisco Bay to be restored to tidal marsh for wildlife habitat, natural flood protection for our communities, cleaner water, and recreation areas for everyone to enjoy," argued 92 current and former elected officials in a February letter to the Redwood City council. The San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News have also opposed the project.

Climate change will affect California's Bay Area in many ways, but sea-level rise is an urgent concern: Many homes and businesses in the region sit at or below sea level. The BCDC projects that climate change will raise water levels in the bay 16 inches by 2050 and 55 inches through 2100.
That will put some 270,000 people and $62 billion in economic assets at risk from flooding, including the San Francisco and Oakland airports and major Silicon Valley companies like Google and Intel. Commission maps show that a 16-inch sea-level rise will make all of Redwood City east of Highway 101 vulnerable to flooding.

DMB officials tout the Saltworks as a climate-friendly smart growth project that will provide homes for Silicon Valley workers, thus cutting greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, which generates about half of the Bay area's total emissions. "Right now there's no affordable housing nearby, so everybody moves out to the hinterlands and commutes," says Smith. The region's median home price is $746,800; fewer than 15 percent of homes are affordable for families earning the median income, according to the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a business coalition.

But building thousands of houses at the water's edge contradicts California's climate change adaptation strategy, published in 2009. It urges agencies to "consider prohibiting projects that would place development in undeveloped areas already containing critical habitat, and those containing opportunities for tidal wetland restoration, habitat mitigation, or buffer zones." The plan supports "activities that can increase natural resiliency, such as restoring tidal wetlands, living shoreline, and related habitats."

"California aspires to be a national leader on adapting to climate change, and this approach could be a model for other coastal areas," said David Lewis, executive director of Save San Francisco Bay, which opposes the Saltworks. "But it's still just a strategy–it hasn't been written into regulations yet, so we don't know whether agencies will honor it."

DMB's "50/50 Balanced Plan" for the Saltworks preserves half the site as open space, including 430 acres of restored wetlands. These marshes and a massive bayside levee are designed to protect houses from flooding. The levee would be wider than a football field in some places, with trails and parklands along its top and more plantings along its sloping sides. Because it's so wide, says Smith, the levee could be raised if necessary without building out into the bay. "It's not a mystery—it's a matter of engineering, cost, and land," he contended.

To convert the entire 1,400 acres to salt marsh, Cargill would have to agree to sell its land and someone other than DMB would have to pay for restoring it. (For comparison, a 1,400-acre parcel of former Cargill crystallizer ponds in Napa, north of San Francisco, is being restored now at a projected cost of $134 million.) Save the Bay's Lewis thinks that can happen.

"We've always found public or private funds to buy restorable Bay parcels, and we've proven time and time again that it isn't necessary to destroy part of the Bay to save another part," he said.

This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-should-san-fran-plan