‘Clean Heat’ in Washington Heights Means Better Air, Perhaps Bigger Bills

By Elizabeth Harball on Nov 29th, 2011
The Uptowner

Wood-burning fireplaces have long been obsolete in New York City, but as winter hits in Washington Heights, many chimneys still discharge dark smoke, dotting the skyline with smudgy clouds.

“About once every two hours or so, a great deal of black smoke comes out of a chimney on the roof of a neighboring building,” a resident wrote on Washington Heights and Inwood Online Community Forum. “Does anyone know if this is normal or if it’s something I should report?”

“Is this building near 186th and Bennett? If so, I’ve seen that too,” another member replied. “Huge puff of black smoke.”

Later, a third resident complained about a neighboring building: “They extended their chimney which now pumps black, noxious smoke directly into my apt.”

The smoke in question was likely emitted by boilers burning No. 6 heating oil, used in many Washington Heights and Inwood buildings. New legislation banning its use will make this sight a thing of the past by 2015.

No. 6 heating oil, also known as residual oil, is a byproduct of the distillation of crude oil, and contains high amounts of dirt and sediment.

“I still regularly see black smoke pouring out of apartment buildings in the 160s where I live, and have no doubt that it contributes significantly to poor air quality in the neighborhood,” Washington Heights resident Matthew Gallaway said via email.

Such complaints date back years. In May 2009, Gallaway posted to his blog a video titled “A Note To WaHi Landlords: Fix Your &$! Boilers.” It showed black smoke pouring from a chimney across from his apartment.

In April, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced New York City Clean Heat, a plan to eliminate heavy heating oils in New York City buildings. It’s a response to the 2009 New York City Community Air Survey stating that heating oil emissions account for much of the city’s air pollution. By July 2012, building owners will no longer be able secure a permit to use No. 6 heating oil and must convert their heating systems to use lighter fuels such as No. 4 oil, No. 2 oil or natural gas. By 2015, No. 6 oil will be prohibited.

Among city neighborhoods, Washington Heights has the sixth highest number of buildings using heavy heating oil. About 110 buildings burn No. 6  oil, according to a 2009 report by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Urban Green Council.  These buildings can be identified on an Environmental Defense Fund map, where buildings using No. 6 oil are marked with red dots. Several Washington Heights streets, like Bennett Avenue, Fort Washington Avenue and Cabrini Boulevard, are lined with dots.

The use of heavy heating oil is blamed for much of the air pollution in Inwood and Washington Heights. Eliminating its use is the “single highest impact strategy we can have” to reduce pollution, Steve Caputo of the Mayor’s Office of Long Term Sustainability and Planning said at a September town hall meeting. He referred to No. 6 oil as “really dirty stuff.”

During the winter of 2008 and 2009, the New York City Community Air Survey discovered high levels of pollutants associated with heavy heating oil in Washington Heights and Inwood. The survey detected fine particulate matter, known as PM 2.5, at concentrations 33 percent greater than the citywide average and sulfur dioxide levels 75 percent greater than the citywide average.

The survey will continue monitoring air quality until June 2014, said Professor Holger Eisl of Queens College. Eisl expects to see improvement in air quality after reducing heavy oil use. “How dramatic it will be, I don’t know,” Eisl said, but “air will be cleaner, no question about it.”

Poor air quality has had health consequences in northern Manhattan.  Asthma has been a longstanding concern, although asthma hospitalization rates have decreased in recent years. One in 20 adults in Inwood and Washington Heights has asthma, the New York City Community Health Survey reported in 2002.

Members of the New York City Clean Heat Task Force admit that phasing out No. 6 oil will not be easy for building owners. Owners will have to bear internal conversion costs, and according to this fall’s New York Energy Consumers Council newsletter, they will likely have to replace much of their heating equipment, which could cost more than $1 million in some buildings

New York City Clean Heat is encouraging building owners to convert to natural gas, which is demonstrably cleaner, cheaper and more efficient. In a case study by Cooper Square Realty, a Queens condominium reported annual savings of more than $98,000 after converting to natural gas.

Con Edison, the natural gas provider for Manhattan, is attempting to provide natural gas lines to as many interested building owners as possible. “We’re working with different stakeholders such as the New York City Mayor’s Office, the Real Estate Board of New York and the Environmental Defense Fund,” said Joe McGowan of ConEdison.

However, ConEdison cannot guarantee that all building owners will have access to natural gas by 2015. “What drives the installation of gas is the demand and commitments of customers,” McGowan said. “We don’t do speculative building.” McGowan said that ConEdison is urging building owners to first assess whether they can afford the conversion costs of switching to natural gas. “Gas may have significant up-front costs,” he said. “If it doesn’t make sense to go to gas, that’s OK.”

McGowan explained that ConEdison was encouraging building owners to join forces. If many neighborhood buildings want access to natural gas lines, the company is more likely to consider their application, because it will minimize construction costs and disruptions.

If Con Edison is unable to install natural gas lines for a building before its No. 6 oil permit expires, the building owner must substitute No. 2 or No. 4 heating oil. This transition could cost the owners of 550 Fort Washington Ave. in Washington Heights up to $150,000 up front, said James Maistre of Veritas Property Management. Maistre said the building, an affordable housing co-op, will likely not have natural gas lines by 2015 and is exploring transitioning to No. 2 oil. He says that the board will hire an engineer to evaluate the cheapest way to proceed. “It is a burden,” he said, adding, “It’s been on the wish list to upgrade.”

“It’s very costly,” said another Washington Heights building owner, who declined to be named. “Economically, it’s not convenient for me.”

The Energy Policy Research Foundation estimates No. 4 oil costs 50 cents more per gallon than No. 6 oil, resulting in a 35 percent increase in heating costs. The report goes on to say, “The transition to No. 4 oil will most dramatically affect lower-income residents whose rents could increase by over 10 percent,” though economic conditions and city regulations may prevent some rent hikes.

“There is only so much you can cut back on your heat,” said Ben Montalbano, an analyst at the Energy Policy Research Foundation who contributed to the report.  “How much that will decrease from quality of life, I don’t know.”

Isabelle Silverman, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund who was instrumental in passing the new legislation, readily acknowledges that the cost of converting to cleaner fuels is significant. But building owners could also save money, she says, explaining that boilers using No. 6 oil require extensive maintenance. “There is a lot of opportunity for efficiency measures,” she added, including thermostatic radiator valves, programmable thermostats and systems that prevent overheating and fuel waste. “If you combine the switch to No. 2 oil with efficiency measures, you will see real savings,” Silverman said.

As New York City buildings begin the transition to cleaner fuels, Washington Heights residents speculate about the day when smoke from No. 6 oil no longer rises above their rooftops. “In the future,”one member of Washington Heights and Inwood Online wrote, ”after all the boilers have been converted to burn Number 2 oil, or natural gas, I wonder if the air in Manhattan will become so clean that mosquitoes will become a big problem.”

http://theuptowner.org/2011/11/29/clean-heat-in-washington-heights-means-better-air-perhaps-bigger-bills/

Smith Electric to Build Trucks in the Bronx

November 16, 2011, 12:15 PM

By JIM MOTAVALLI

New York would never be mistaken for the Motor City, but on Tuesday, Smith Electric Vehicles announced that it intended to assemble electric trucks in the South Bronx, adding 100 jobs to the region. A package of more than $6 million in state and city incentives sweetened the deal.

Smith, based in Kansas City, Mo., manufactures battery-powered box trucks suitable for urban deliveries and has already found customers in New York, including the Duane Reade pharmacy chain and Down East Seafood. Coca-Cola and Frito-Lay have also bought trucks.

“Sitting in Kansas City and trying to figure out how to locate a factory in New York City was a little daunting,” said Bryan Hansel, the company’s chairman and chief executive, in an interview. Mr. Hansel said the company had leased a 90,000-square-foot warehouse space near Hunts Point and would begin producing its electric Smith Newton trucks there in the second quarter of 2012. He added that the factory would be set up to assemble 100 trucks a month in a single one-shift line, but the company could add shifts and lines as demand dictated.

A crowd, including many public officials, assembled under historical murals at the Bronx County Courthouse and applauded the job announcement.

“Today is an amazing day in God’s country, the wonderful borough of the Bronx,” said Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. of the Bronx. “This is a huge deal,” he added.

James Vacca, a city councilman and chairman of the transportation committee, said in an interview, “The electric trucks are welcome because they address both environmental and quality-of-life issues. Long-term, this will mean jobs, but also quieter traffic and less pollution.”

The trucks have proven popular with customers. Michael Fowles, director of distribution at Duane Reade, said the company had bought two trucks and had another two on order. Duane Reade’s fleet of 60 delivery vehicles circulates primarily in city limits, making it well-suited for battery power. Mr. Fowles said the fleet could eventually be all electric. Charles Hayward, the pharmacy chain’s fleet manager, echoed Mr. Fowles. “We have 6,000 to 7,000 miles of road time with the electrics, and they perform as well or better than the diesel trucks,” he said.

Truck prices vary depending on battery pack size and other considerations. According an e-mail received from a company representative, the basic cab and chassis, made by Avia and imported from the Czech Republic, costs $75,000, but packs ranging from 40 to 120 kilowatt-hours add another $25,000 to $75,000 The batteries are sourced from A123 Systems and Valence Technology. Final assembly of the trucks will occur in the Bronx.

Working with the bus fabricator Trans Tech, Smith will also be producing electric school buses, a 24-seat example of which was on display at the Bronx courthouse. The buses will be assembled on the same electric Newton chassis as the trucks. Dan Daniels, president of Trans Tech, based in Warwick, N.Y., said in an interview that the company was looking for a suitable location to build the buses, including sites in New York.

According to Smith, New York State is developing an incentive program that would offer vouchers of up to $20,000 to help businesses purchase medium- and heavy-duty all-electric trucks (over 10,000 pounds). Smith would benefit from that program, as would other manufacturers that might want to deliver zero-emission trucks.

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/smith-electric-to-build-trucks-in-the-bronx/

EnergyScoreCards Will Monitor Energy Savings for Bank of America's $55 Million Energy Efficiency Finance Program

NEW YORK, NY, Nov 28, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- EnergyScoreCards(TM), an online software-as-a-service benchmarking tool specifically geared toward multifamily and other multi-tenant properties, was competitively selected to provide data collection and analysis for Bank of America's Energy Efficiency Finance Program. This innovative program will fund energy retrofits of an estimated 15,000 residential units as well as commercial buildings, community facilities and charter schools.

EnergyScoreCards organizes energy and water usage data, supports financial planning for energy improvements, and tracks the progress and success of energy and water-saving efforts.

"EnergyScoreCards provides ongoing analysis of energy retrofit performance that is both accessible to investors, owners and occupants, and benchmarked for accurate comparison to other projects," said Jeff Perlman, president of EnergyScoreCards and Bright Power, Inc. "We look forward to working with Bank of America and the winning CDFIs on their innovative data-driven energy efficiency financing initiatives."

The Energy Efficiency Program will provide nine Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) with $50 million in low-cost, long-term loans to finance upfront costs of retrofits, and $5 million in grants to cover operating costs of green programs. EnergyScoreCards will conduct rigorous energy data collection, monitoring, and reporting to help influence energy usage behaviors and measure program outcomes, including impacts on energy and water usage and associated financial savings. Results are expected to be published in 2015.

The CDFIs selected for the program were announced on November 15, 2011 and include Boston Community Capital (Boston), Community Investment Company (Chicago), Enterprise Cascadia (Seattle and Portland), Enterprise Community Partners (nationwide), Grow America Fund (New York), IFF (Chicago), Low Income Investment Fund (San Francisco and Los Angeles), Self Help (Charlotte), and The Reinvestment Fund (Baltimore and Philadelphia).

About EnergyScoreCards: EnergyScoreCards(TM) grew out of the extensive energy benchmarking, auditing and consulting experience of Bright Power, Inc., an energy consulting firm based in New York. Since 2004, Bright Power has been honing in-house energy analysis tools that provide its consultants with information about a property's energy performance in order to target inefficiencies and estimate realistic savings from efficiency measures. Bright Power founder and president Jeff Perlman saw that these tools could be built into a simple, centralized platform. With the additional functions of utility data aggregation, project management and portfolio analysis, EnergyScoreCards serves as a central destination for those managing energy on a portfolio scale.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/energyscorecards-will-monitor-energy-savings-for-bank-of-americas-55-million-energy-efficiency-finance-program-2011-11-28

by John Cook

GeekWire

EnergySavvy is marching into the Bay Area, inking a deal with the City of San Francisco to help homeowners reduce energy costs through specialized online home audits. The program will allow residents to compare their energy usage to other homes across the city, and receive information on energy rebates and contractors.

It’s also designed to take into account unique San Francisco building structures, such as bay windows, and specific weather patterns, such as fog zones where temperatures might be lower.

“San Francisco has a notoriously mild climate and as such, relative to the rest of the country, is very sensitive to minor changes in heating needs resulting in different levels of energy use,” EnergySavvy CEO Aaron Goldfeder tells GeekWire. “So, we use fog-zone as a proxy for micro-climates which quantitatively amounts to different estimations of Heating Degree Days. HDD is a building science term which roughly indicates how much heat would be needed inside of a building based on applicable weather patterns. That in turn, based on other home characteristics enables us to estimate current energy use, and the potential for energy savings, money savings and sensible upgrades.”

In addition to San Francisco, EnergySavvy also announced a deal with Local Energy Alliance Program, serving the Charlottesville and northern Virginia metropolitan markets. Its other customers include Clean Energy Works Oregon, Community Power Works in Seattle and Utah Home Performance with ENERGY STAR.

EnergySavvy has been growing its team as of late, recently adding 11-year Microsoft veteran Charlie Ellis. The company was founded by former Microsoft employee Aaron Goldfeder, former Amazon.com and Redfin employee Leo Shklovskii and former aQuantive executive Karl Siebrecht.

http://www.geekwire.com/2011/san-francisco-taps-energysavvy-homeowners-cut-fog-energy-bills

Could big cities lead the fight against climate change?

By Eoghan Macguire, for CNN

November 28, 2011 6:33 a.m. EST

(CNN) -- They are the world's cultural capitals, the nerve centers of innovation and the engine rooms of economic growth, but could cities also hold the key to cutting carbon emissions long-term?

A 2010 study from the World Bank found that the 50 largest cities and urban areas on the planet are now home to roughly 500 million people and spew out some 2.6 billion tons of greenhouse gasses every year.

As urban migration continues apace, these figures are only expected to rise in the short term. While this may initially lead to more pollutants being pumped into the earth's atmosphere, some experts believe it could work out better in the long term. They say that the ecological efficiencies cities can offer, aligned with their financial and political influence, could lead to the development of more effective ways to curb carbon emissions.

As the world's leading environmental figures gather in Durban, South Africa for the 2011 United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP17), CNN asked two urban climate change experts to explain the complex role of cities.

Dr Stephen Hammer is co-director of the Urban Climate Change Research Network, a consortium of academics and institutions dedicated to the analysis of climate change mitigation, and an adviser to New York City's Energy Policy Taskforce.

Mike Hodson meanwhile is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures at the University of Salford and co-author of the book, World Cities and Climate Change.

How much do cities contribute to climate change?

Stephen Hammer (SH): Cities are the where the majority of global energy use occurs, by far.

The irony is, however, that the dense nature of cities can actually reduce the level of carbon emissions by introducing different kinds of efficiencies. The sheer number of people, however, just means that you just end up with a large volume of energy use and emissions.

Mike Hodson (MH): Cities are increasingly being characterized as significant producers of climate change.

Just over half the world's population lives in cities, around three-quarters of global energy consumption is linked to cities and around four-fifths of global greenhouse gas emissions are linked to cities.

In what ways can cities help to address the issue of climate change?

SH: Cities are often the laboratories for central government policies. Central governments don't often create these things on their own. They're looking at what others have done including sub-national governments and saying "well if it worked there, we can make it work nationally."

Therefore, in the absence of national-level action, it is possible for cities to take very concrete steps to influence overall emission levels.

MH: The biggest cities are pretty powerful in terms of positions within their national economies.

They've got pretty well-developed government structures; they've got mayors and related agencies. But not only have they got those sorts of resources -- and therefore the ability to lobby and influence central government -- they also encompass quite significant national resources, whether it's financial centers, centers of business and centers of media.

Given that they've got that range of expertise, knowledge, social networks and financial resources ... they can start to paint that picture that they are the places that can actively and effectively start to build (climate change) strategies and deliver on them.

Why is it in cities interest to act in a way that negates the impact of climate change?

SH: I think it's very safe to say that climate change threatens the long-term economic viability of many cities in addition to creating public health risks.

Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans is a great example of that ... although not an event that was necessarily caused by climate change. The city suffered hugely in terms of the economic impact of an extreme weather event ... and these types of events are assumed to become more commonplace as the climate changes.

MH: I think the flipside of this sort of argument about cities being producers of climate change is that they're also increasingly being seen as victims of climate change.

This is particularly the case with rising sea levels, coastal cities and riverside cities that are at risk from rising sea levels but also those susceptible to drought or urban heat islands.

What can cities do to negate or prepare for the impact of climate change?

SH: It becomes particularly important for cities, as they expand rapidly, to make the decisions today that will constrain emissions in the future.

So, again, going back to some of the first things I was talking about, the way the city is designed, having it so that it promotes density that that then supports public transportation ridership; designing the city in a way that makes it bicycle-friendly or eco-friendly or pedestrian friendly, so you're not always forcing people into automobiles.

You must make the right decisions right now and as the city expands going forward you must constantly revisit them to see how can we be changing the old city to be more efficient but also how it can maintain efficiency when we are designing the expanding city or the new city.

MH: One of the things that strikes me is that, whether it's global cities or more ordinary cities, to different degrees they have started to get their strategic act together by developing strategies, setting targets, setting timelines.

But as of yet, they've not managed to translate that into any sort of effective way. They've really got to get to the more practical elements of how to translate that into tangible actions and deliver on them.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/11/25/cities.climate.change/

Consumers paying for cleaner coal; Some utilities passing along costs of tighter environmental regulations

By Julie Wernau, Chicago Tribune reporter

November 27, 2011

MARISSA, Ill.— 

– Some 285 feet underground, miners trudge behind a hulking remote-controlled machine that spins metal spikes into the earth and grinds out 20 tons of coal every 30 seconds.

Within months this mine will disgorge 20,000 tons of coal per day via conveyor belt into the boilers of Prairie State, the largest coal-fired generating plant built in the U.S. in 30 years. The 1,600-megawatt power plant, which will become fully operational in 2012 and produce enough electricity to power 2.5 million homes across eight states, is outfitted with more than $1 billion in environmental controls.

The Prairie State Energy Campus — an hour's drive from St. Louis, with a smokestack 70 feet taller than that city's famous Gateway Arch — likely wouldn't exist had its developers not locked in long-term contracts that pass on construction costs to consumers.

"This is the cleanest coal plant you can get. I don't know how you could make it much cleaner," Tom Foust, reliability manager for Prairie State, recently told visitors. The cost of Prairie State already exceeds $5 billion partly due to the expense of meeting tightening environmental regulations.

In the face of such requirements, some utilities are closing coal-fired plants. Roughly 8,000 megawatts of coal-fired power has gone offline since 2005. An additional 21,000 megawatts is expected to be lost by 2018.

Still, other utilities believe they can meet federal Environmental Protection Agencyregulations through retrofits or utilizing new technologies that lessen costs to comply.

"The impending EPA regulations on fossil-fuel-fired power plants are likely the single most important thing happening to the utility sector over the next five to 10 years," said Michael Lapides, vice president and senior analyst who follows utilities for Goldman Sachs & Co.

Consider Texas-based Dynegy, which is expected to complete by the end of 2012 a host of environmental retrofits at its 1,800-megawatt coal plant in Baldwin, Ill. The company decided that the cost of upgrading at $360 per kilowatt is less expensive than losing revenue by shutting down.

Between 2005 and 2012, Dynegy's environmental upgrades will total nearly $1 billion at its Illinois facilities to comply with a 2006 settlement to clean up those plants. Parties included the U.S. Justice Department and EPA and the state of Illinois.

To meet mercury emission limits imposed by the state, the company is spending millions of dollars annually to purchase a product called activated carbon to absorb mercury before it enters the air.

The upgrades were funded from internal sources, Katy Sullivan, a spokeswoman for Dynegy. "It is more cost-effective to maintain and continue operating safe, reliable and compliant plants like Baldwin rather than retiring them," she said.

The Baldwin plant sits on a 3,000-acre site, allowing room to add environmental control equipment. Just one piece of pollution control equipment at Prairie State, stacked on its end, would exceed the height of the NBC Tower in downtown Chicago.

Some older plants simply do not have room for certain upgrades.

Midwest Generation, for example, operates two plants in Chicago that illustrate that situation.

Its Crawford facility sits on just 72 acres; Fisk on only 50 acres. Those sites essentially rule out adding certain sulfur dioxide scrubbing equipment — which can be as tall as skyscrapers and require a huge swath of land for storing materials that are injected into the scrubbing system — as well as massive cooling towers that could be required under U.S. EPA regulations next year. So far, the company is betting that the cooling towers won't be required. And whether or not electricity markets recover from the recession also figures into the company's decision.

The type of coal a plant burns also plays a major role in how a company responds on environmental controls. Midwest Generation, which burns low sulfur coal, has determined that injecting a mineral called trona into the combustion process cuts lung-damaging sulfur dioxide emissions to meet new federal and state standards, said Douglas McFarlan, a spokesman for Midwest Generation.

Four years ago, Midwest Generation estimated that retrofitting its fleet of six coal plants in Illinois would cost $3.5 billion. With the discovery of trona, that estimate has been trimmed to $1.2 billion because of decreased capital costs. But if the plants burned high sulfur Illinois coal, the technology would not be sufficient to meet those standards.

Previous investments have also worked in favor of keeping the plants open. Midwest Generation reduced nitrogen oxide emissions — a precursor to acid rain and ozone — by about 60 percent at Crawford and Fisk between 2001 and 2002. This year, the company spent $20 million to add additional nitrogen oxide controls.

In 2008 and 2009 Midwest Generation spent about $12 million at both plants to remove about 90 percent of mercury, which is associated with impaired neurological development.

Regardless of whether utilities add more pollution controls, some environmentalists say shutting coal-fired plants makes the most sense because such plants will always produce emissions that are harmful to public health.

While coal has long been one of the cheapest and most reliable sources of power available, other sources of power carry a fraction of the emissions.

"Given the age of these plants and their location, the far more sensible approach is to retire them and replace them with something cleaner instead of continuing to keep these aging dinosaurs alive," said Shannon Fisk, a litigator with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

St. Louis-based Ameren Corp. is doing just that, shuttering by year-end its Hutsonville and Meredosia power plants in Illinois.

The Meredosia plant, about an hour west of Springfield, has two units — one coal and another oil — with a combined capacity of 369 megawatts. The 151-megawatt Hutsonville coal plant sits on the border of Illinois and Indiana.

"These plants were the oldest and smallest in (our) fleet," said Mark Eacret, vice president of business services and controller for Ameren. "Their fuel, other variable costs and fixed costs are high relative to the rest of (Ameren's) coal-fired fleet. At the same time, the prices for the energy that the plants would have produced have been adversely impacted by the current economic climate."

Shutting down the plants will also allow Ameren to retain its emissions allowances for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide for another three years and put off upgrades that would reduce those emissions at its Edwards power plant in Illinois — saving $70 million through 2015.

At Prairie State, a cold rain evaporates to mist above a sky-high mountain of coal. The fuel is moved here along belts and chutes from the mine across the road. The coal deposit took 1 million years to form, but Prairie State's owners expect to consume it within 30 years.

The coal to fuel Prairie State is extremely high in sulfur, which means it requires more cleaning to remove toxic pollutants. And that adds substantially to costs.

To build Prairie State, Peabody Energy, the world's largest private-sector coal company, partnered with eight public power agencies that are bearing 95 percent of the project's cost through their customers: suburbs and municipalities who purchase electricity for their residents. Of those nine owners, three are Illinois-based municipal electricity cooperatives that purchase wholesale electricity on behalf of residents in municipalities across the state.

Bruce Ratain, clean energy associate at Environment Illinois, suggests that plants like Prairie State shouldn't be built because consumers are subsidizing the costs.

"Every year, we've seen plants come to the Illinois Legislature looking for sweetheart deals to build coal plants that weren't viable on the open market," Ratain said. "Often, ratepayers are proposed as those forced to bear the burden of increased rates and cost overruns to subsidize old-fashioned, polluting technology.

"If we are going to use public policy to distort the market and favor a particular source of energy, then logically we should only do so for the best options — those which pollute least (or not at all), create the most jobs, and move our country forward," he said, suggesting wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy.

In Illinois, developers of two coal gasification projects, in Chicago and Jefferson County, persuaded Gov. Pat Quinn and the Legislature this year to force the state's major gas utilities to purchase their gas to heat Illinois homes despite the fact that natural gas prices are expected to remain low for the foreseeable future and a plentiful supply already exists. One utility refused to sign the 10- and 30-year contracts and another has sued.

"No one has been able to build a new plant without significant help — either tax breaks, long-term contracts or multiple ownerships," said Sarah Wochos, a policy advocate with the Environmental Law and Policy Center, a Midwest environmental advocacy organization.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-1127-bf-prairie-state-20111127,0,6641031,full.story

Suburban Chicago races to unplug from ComEd

By: Steve Daniels November 28, 2011

Chicago Business

A wave of Chicago suburbs, including many of the largest, is preparing to bargain for cheaper electricity deals next year with competitors of Commonwealth Edison Co. on behalf of their residents.

City councils from Aurora, the second-largest municipality in the state, to Elgin and Evanston will decide in coming weeks whether to ask voters in March referendums to approve plans to solicit bids from ComEd competitors. As many as 130 cities, villages and towns next year could follow the 19 suburbs that already have left the utility, consultants say.

While the suburban exodus from ComEd should generate double-digit-percentage savings on the electric bills of as many as 2 million households, it's going to lead to unpredictability and volatility for residents and small businesses continuing to buy from the subsidiary of Chicago-based Exelon Corp. That includes residents of Chicago, which has no immediate plans to test the electricity market on behalf of its inhabitants.

Under state law, municipalities can buy power for residents and small businesses, but only if voters back the action in a referendum.

If trends hold, enough households and small businesses could leave for alternative suppliers by the end of 2012 that ComEd could move to have state utility regulators declare the residential market officially competitive. That would mean customers still buying from ComEd could be subject to spot-market electricity prices rather than the negotiated, firm, annual price they currently get. The earliest that could happen would be 2013. The tipping point is the departure of one-third of customers in a specific class.

In Texas, which runs a spot-market system, “the price volatility is huge, and they've had troubles with some of the vendors going under,” says Mark Pruitt, former director of the Illinois Power Agency, which buys electricity on behalf of utility customers statewide. “I don't think this is what people had in mind” when Illinois deregulated its power market 12 years ago.

For its part, ComEd says in a statement that it interprets state law to say that it will be obligated to provide a fixed electricity price to residential and small commercial customers regardless of how many customers it loses. But the Illinois Commerce Commission, which enforces the law, disagrees, saying utilities can move to force residential customers onto the spot market once the 33% threshold is reached.

WILD CARDS

Even if ComEd doesn't move to subject its customers to spot pricing, the IPA probably won't be able to drive the same bargains with power generators that it has in recent years, given the unpredictability in the demand it's trying to fill, Mr. Pruitt says. Under the recently enacted law giving ComEd automatic yearly delivery rate hikes to finance grid 

modernization, the IPA is directed to solicit bids for a four-year power contract. But municipalities that leave the utility can return anytime their contracts expire, making forecasting long-term demand difficult.

One big wild card: Will Chicago opt to leave ComEd for the competitive market? Thus far, the city has made no move to follow Oak Park, its immediate neighbor to the west, which recently won a 25% reduction from ComEd's current energy price for a product made up of renewable power sources. Farther to the west, Oak Brook negotiated a 29% savings with Chicago-based supplier Integrys Energy Services Inc., a sister company of Peoples Gas.

Increasingly, suburbs aren't waiting. Take Elgin, Illinois' eighth-largest municipality, with 108,188 inhabitants. “We believe we have at least a two-year opportunity to save our community 20% to 25% in their electricity prices,” says Colby Basham, public works superintendent. The Elgin City Council will vote on the issue as early as Dec. 7.

In Evanston, city officials are watching other communities that have left ComEd, says Catherine Hurley, sustainable programs coordinator. “We're definitely interested.” The Evanston City Council will discuss the matter on Tuesday.

Municipalities are scrambling to meet a Jan. 3 deadline to put the issue on the March 20 primary ballot.

A spokeswoman for the city of Chicago says it currently has no plans to buy cheaper power on behalf of residents.

Experts say there's a relatively short time frame in which communities can generate the 20%-plus savings they're getting now because ComEd's power prices are expected to more closely mirror the overall market within two years, as high-priced power-supply contracts expire.

“The window of easy headroom is closing,” says David Kolata, executive director of Chicago-based consumer watchdog Citizens Utility Board. “You're not going to see these kinds of deals, say, a year from now.”

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20111126/ISSUE01/311269976/suburban-chicago-races-to-unplug-from-comed#ixzz1ey1bkRa2

From Shore to Forest, Projecting Effects of Climate Change

By LESLIE KAUFMAN

New York Times

Published: November 16, 2011

While the long-term outlook for grape-growers in the Finger Lakes region is favorable, it is less than optimal for skiers and other winter sports enthusiasts in the Adirondacks. Fir and spruce trees are expected to die out in the Catskills, and New York City’s backup drinking water supply may well be contaminated as a result of seawater making its way farther up the Hudson River.

These possibilities — modeled deep into this century — are detailed in a new assessment of the impact that climate change will have in New York State. The 600-page report, published on Wednesday, was commissioned by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, a public-benefit corporation, and is a result of three years of work by scientists at state academic institutions, including Columbia and Cornell Universities and the City University of New York.

Its authors say it is the most detailed study that looks at how changes brought about by a warming Earth — from rising temperatures to more precipitation and global sea level rise — will affect the economy, the ecology and even the social fabric of the state.

Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist at Columbia’s Earth Institute, said the report was much broader in scope than earlier efforts by New York City that tried to evaluate how best to prepare for climate change.

“New York City’s report focuses on how climate change will affect critical structures” like bridges and sewage systems, she said. “This report also looks at public health, agriculture, transportation and economics.”

The authors drew on results from global climate models and then created projections for variables like rainfall and temperatures for seven regions across the state. Then they tried to assess how those alterations would play out in specific terms. They also developed adaptation recommendations for different economic sectors.

If carbon emissions continue to increase at their current pace, for example, temperatures are expected to rise across the state by 3 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2020s and by as much as 9 degrees by the 2080s. That would have profound effects on agriculture across the state, the report found. For example, none of the varieties of apples currently grown in New York orchards would be viable. Dairy farms would be less productive as cows faced heat stress. And the state’s forests would be transformed; spruce-fir forests and alpine tundra would disappear as invasive species like kudzu, an aggressive weed, gained more ground.

If the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melt, as the report says could happen, the sea level could rise by as much as 55 inches, which means that beach communities would frequently be inundated by flooding.

“In 2020, nearly 96,000 people in the Long Beach area alone may be at risk from sea-level rise,” the report said, referring to just one oceanfront community on the South Shore of Long Island. “By 2080, that number may rise to more than 114,500 people. The value of property at risk in the Long Beach area under this scenario ranges from about $6.4 billion in 2020 to about $7.2 billion in 2080.”

The report found that the effects of climate change would fall disproportionately on the poor and the disabled.

In coastal areas in New York City and along rivers in upstate New York, it said, there is a high amount of low-income housing that would be in the path of flooding.

Art DeGaetano, a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell, said that its findings need not be interpreted as totally devastating.

“It would be all bad if you wanted a static New York, with the same species of bird and the same crops,” he said, “but there will be opportunities as well. We expect, for example, that New York State will remain water-rich and we may be able to capitalize when other parts of the country are having severe drought.”

The next step, the authors said, is for them to meet with state agencies and try to work with them to carry out some of the report’s recommendations of ways to cope with climate change

One would be to get the state to routinely incorporate projections of increased sea levels and heavy downpours when building big infrastructure projects. They also suggested protecting and nursing natural barriers to sea-level rise, like coastal wetlands, and changing building codes in certain area for things like roof strength and foundation depth in areas that would be hit hardest by storms.

“If there is one thing we learned from Hurricane Irene,” Dr. Rosenzweig said referring to the tropical storm that pummeled the state this past summer, “we have a lot more we could be doing to prepare.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/nyregion/climate-change-to-affect-new-york-state-in-many-ways-study-says.html?ref=nyregion

PG&E to end carbon offset plan after few sign on

David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, November 11, 2011

Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s ClimateSmart program, which lets the utility's customers go "carbon neutral" for a price, will close at the end of the year after signing up far fewer people than expected.

Begun in 2007, ClimateSmart gives participants a way to offset greenhouse gas emissions from the power plants that supply their electricity.

PG&E customers who joined the program pay a little extra on their monthly bills - about $3.30 for a typical homeowner. PG&E uses the money to fund projects that fight the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as preserving forests from logging or capturing methane from cow manure.

But the program attracted just a fraction of the roughly 168,000 customers that PG&E predicted. Enrollment peaked in 2008 at just under 31,000. By the end of last year, it had slipped to 29,623.

ClimateSmart was created as a three-year experiment, and California energy regulators extended it until the end of this year despite concerns about weak participation. PG&E did not seek a second extension, said company spokeswoman Katie Romans.

The program, she said, accomplished its most important goal, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 1.3 million metric tons. Participants contributed a total of about $10 million over four years, she said.

"It was a demonstration program, and it's successfully concluding after meeting its goals," Romans said. "Certainly we would have loved for more customers to have participated."
Those who did will receive a notice in their November utility bills thanking them for joining the program. The company also posted a notice on its website last week saying the program will end this year.

For much of its brief history, ClimateSmart was dogged by criticism that it wasted PG&E customers' money. Although participation in the program was voluntary, all of the utility's customers paid for its administrative and marketing costs, which totaled $16.3 million for the entire four-year run.

Critics also questioned whether the money coming from participants actually made a difference.

A report this year by the nonprofit news organization California Watch argued that some of the forest projects funded by ClimateSmart had already received taxpayer money from the state government, meaning PG&E customers paid twice for the same forests. PG&E insisted that the money from ClimateSmart helped save more trees and sequester more carbon dioxide than would the state funding alone.

In addition, under rules imposed by the California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E was obliged to hit the program's target of cutting greenhouse gases by 1.3 million metric tons even if the money collected from participants wasn't enough to reach that goal. Any shortfall would have to be covered by PG&E shareholders, said Matt Freedman, staff attorney for The Utility Reform Network. So contributions from ClimateSmart participants merely reduced the amount of money PG&E itself would have to spend on greenhouse gas reductions, he said.

"We're not opposed to giving customers choices that will improve their environmental footprint," Freedman said. "But you have to look very carefully at what's being offered to see if it will make a meaningful difference."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/11/BUPR1LTB45.DTL

The Dark Side of the ‘Green’ City

By ANDREW ROSS

New York Times

THE struggle to slow global warming will be won or lost in cities, which emit 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. So “greening” the city is all the rage now. But if policy makers end up focusing only on those who can afford the low-carbon technologies associated with the new environmental conscientiousness, the movement for sustainability may end up exacerbating climate change rather than ameliorating it.

While cities like Portland, Seattle and San Francisco are lauded for sustainability, the challenges faced by Phoenix, a poster child of Sunbelt sprawl, are more typical and more revealing. In 2009, Mayor Phil Gordon announced plans to make Phoenix the “greenest city” in the United States. Eyebrows were raised, and rightly so. According to the state’s leading climatologist, central Arizona is in the “bull’s eye” of climate change, warming up and drying out faster than any other region in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southwest has been on a drought watch 12 years and counting, despite outsized runoff last winter to the upper Colorado River, a major water supply for the subdivisions of the Valley of the Sun.

Across that valley lies 1,000 square miles of low-density tract housing, where few signs of greening are evident. That’s no surprise, given the economic free fall of a region that had been wholly dependent on the homebuilding industry. Property values in parts of metro Phoenix have dropped by 80 percent, and some neighborhoods are close to being declared “beyond recovery.”

In the Arizona Legislature, talk of global warming is verboten and Republican lawmakers can be heard arguing for the positive qualities of greenhouse gases. Most politicians are still praying for another housing boom on the urban fringe; they have no Plan B, least of all a low-carbon one. Mr. Gordon, a Democrat who took office in 2004, has risen to the challenge. But the vast inequalities of the metro area could blunt the impact of his sustainability plans.

Those looking for ecotopia can find pockets of it in the prosperous upland enclaves of Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and North Phoenix. Hybrid vehicles, LEED-certified custom homes with solar roofs and xeriscaped yards, which do not require irrigation, are popular here, and voter support for the preservation of open space runs high. By contrast, South Phoenix is home to 40 percent of the city’s hazardous industrial emissions and America’s dirtiest ZIP code, while the inner-ring Phoenix suburbs, as a legacy of cold-war era industries, suffer from some of the worst groundwater contamination in the nation.

Whereas uptown populations are increasingly sequestered in green showpiece zones, residents in low-lying areas who cannot afford the low-carbon lifestyle are struggling to breathe fresh air or are even trapped in cancer clusters. You can find this pattern in many American cities. The problem is that the carbon savings to be gotten out of this upscale demographic — which represents one in five American adults and is known as Lohas, an acronym for “lifestyles of health and sustainability” — can’t outweigh the commercial neglect of the other 80 percent. If we are to moderate climate change, the green wave has to lift all vessels.

Solar chargers and energy-efficient appliances are fine, but unless technological fixes take into account the needs of low-income residents, they will end up as lifestyle add-ons for the affluent. Phoenix’s fledgling light-rail system should be expanded to serve more diverse neighborhoods, and green jobs should be created in the central city, not the sprawling suburbs. Arizona has some of the best solar exposure in the world, but it allows monopolistic utilities to impose a regressive surcharge on all customers to subsidize roof-panel installation by the well-heeled ones. Instead of green modifications to master-planned communities at the urban fringe, there should be concerted “infill” investment in central city areas now dotted with vacant lots.

In a desert metropolis, the choice between hoarding and sharing has consequences for all residents. Their predecessors — the Hohokam people, irrigation farmers who subsisted for over a thousand years around a vast canal network in the Phoenix Basin — faced a similar test, and ultimately failed. The remnants of Hohokam canals and pit houses are a potent reminder of ecological collapse; no other American city sits atop such an eloquent allegory.

Andrew Ross is a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University and author of “Bird on Fire: Lessons From the World’s Least Sustainable City.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/opinion/in-phoenix-the-dark-side-of-green.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

Alternative energy companies form united front

David R. Baker

San Francisco Chronicle

Monday, November 7, 2011

In the debate over our energy future, solar, wind and electric car companies don't speak in a single, unified voice. Tom Steyer and Hemant Taneja want to change that.

They have formed an organization, called Advanced Energy Economy, that the two hope will grow into a nationwide chamber of commerce for alternative energy companies. The organization, which they will formally announce today, already has state and regional chapters representing 700 companies.

"There is no business voice for advanced energy, and there has to be," said Steyer, founder of the Farallon Capital Management hedge fund in San Francisco. "There has to be on a local level, and there has to be on a national level."

The organization will promote the growth of American alternative energy companies and technologies at a time of intense global competition to dominate this young industry. For membership, Advanced Energy Economy will cast a wide net, including nuclear power companies as well as businesses that create energy-efficient buildings.

A crowded field

Several national groups, such as Environmental Entrepreneurs and the American Sustainable Business Council, already pursue similar missions. Wind power has its own nationwide trade association, as does solar. Northern California, the nation's premier clean-tech hub, boasts business organizations such as the San Francisco Bay Area Green Chamber of Commerce.

In other words, the field is already crowded.

Steyer and Taneja say Advanced Energy Economy will try to forge alliances with many of those groups. One of them - the Clean Economy Network, a national advocacy group based in Washington - will merge with Advanced Energy Economy. Others, such as the New England Clean Energy Council, will become chapters of the new organization.

"Fragmentation is exactly the problem we're trying to solve," said Taneja, a venture capitalist who founded the New England Clean Energy Council. "There are issues that require the industry to come together in an organized fashion, and that just doesn't happen today."

Steyer and Taneja bring a degree of star power to the project.

Steyer is a noted Democratic political donor who also led the fight against a 2010 California ballot measure that would have suspended the state's milestone global warming law. Taneja is a managing director of General Catalyst Partners and a noted clean-tech investor. Together, the two men have recruited a board of directors for Advanced Energy Economy that includes former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Colorado Gov. William Ritter.

State chapter in works

Given the current gridlock in Washington, Advanced Energy Economy will concentrate much of its initial effort on state and regional issues, pushing for policies that help the industry. The organization already has chapters representing nine states, although not yet California. (That's in the works, Steyer and Taneja said.)

Advanced Energy Economy also will become a clearinghouse for information on the costs, benefits and potential of different kinds of energy production, with data drawn from universities and think tanks. The size of government subsidies, the impacts on air quality and human health - all of those details need to be considered, Steyer and Taneja said.

"What we need is an open conversation," Steyer said. "It's important to bring all the hidden costs to the surface."

Both men will provide seed money for the organization, although they have not announced the exact amounts. The bulk of Advanced Energy Economy's funding will come from dues paid by its members.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/06/BUTK1LQQ5Q.DTL#ixzz1d3DSnzHL