Reactions to the Stalled U.S. Climate Bill

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by energy, links • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

This edition of Friday links is dedicated to headlines about the stalling of Senate passage of a comprehensive U.S. climate bill.

The Economist provides a thorough overview of the situation and its implications for legislation, industry and legal tussles for years to come, here.

An article in Reuters puts the issue into its global context, here.

From the U.K. Guardian, Eric Pooley asks Where next for the wrecked U.S. climate bill?

And finally, the Huffington Post has a page dedicated to the climate bill, related photos and breaking coverage.

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New Water Magazine from Johns Hopkins

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Johns Hopkins University’s Global Water Program has published its first issue of Global Water Magazine, which is available online here.

The magazine will focus the editorial pieces around six main themes: Water & Energy, Water & Food, Water & Health, Water in the Environment, Water Infrastructure, and Water Policy.

In the first issue, there are several articles that I think would be of interest to readers of this blog, listed below.

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Imperatives for Urban Water Professionals on the Pathway to 2050 by Paul Reiter

Abstract: Looking forward to 2050, the challenges of adding 2 billion more people to an already resource-constrained planet will require major changes in the resources efficiency, energy efficiency and cost of urban water systems of the future. A step change including the integration of city planning and urban water system design will be required to optimize the efficiency and resilience of urban water systems in addition to the development of physical and institutional linkages between agricultural, energy and urban water uses.

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The First Stop on the Road to Corporate Water Reporting: Measurement by Eva Zabey

Abstract: External demands on companies to report on their water use and impacts are intensifying. But before reporting, business needs to measure, and many groups are developing approaches to do just that.

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The Energy-Water Nexus: Finding Solutions in the Balance by Jan Dell and Kathy Freas

Abstract: With uncertainties associated to climate change projections, companies and public utilities face a convergence of energy, water and carbon issues that are impacting their operations and planned projects in sectors and geographical regions.

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As Climate Bill Falters, California is Crucial

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by energy, transportation • Tags: , , , , ,

AB32? Prop. 23? National climate bill? Keep it straight.

It seems that California is going to lead by example when it comes to climate change legislation in more ways than one. In 2006, California passed the historic Assembly Bill 32 (AB32), becoming the first state in the nation to address climate change broadly through a suite of emissions reductions and land use  regulation. Leading the charge, California’s legislation helped pave the way for the national climate bill. While the climate bill squeaked through the House of Representatives in the summer of 2009, the full bill was abandoned in the Senate this week, indefinitely. Because of an obvious lack of  Republican support to get the full bill through, Democrats offered a pared-down proposal on Tuesday. The new proposal has taken several distancing steps from a comprehensive “global warming bill”, and has the significant raising of a $75 million liability cap on oil spill damages as its focal point. With the aim of ushering the slimmed-down bill through before the August recess, its passage appears tenuous.

Meanwhile, California’s climate legislation, AB32 is meeting with similar opposition that will come to a head in the form of Proposition 23 on the November ballot that would effectively halt the implementation of AB32. How California reacts to the challenge will likely prove to the testing ground for climate change policy nationwide, for years to come.

We will be following this issue very closely, as well as the progress of local Bay Area implementation of AB32.

NRDC Report on Climate Change, Water and Risk

by data sources, water • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Image: NRDC

The Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) has released a study, conducted on their behalf by Tetra Tech, which examined the effects of climate change on probable future water supply and demand in the United States. One of the main findings of the study is that one-third of the U.S. counties (> 1,100 counties) will likely face water shortages by 2050.

The full report is available as a PDF here.

The Water Supply Sustainbility Index developed by Tetra Tech for the report can be viewed interactively in Google Earth – a link to the data can be found on the NRDC’s website here. You can also turn on and off markers for which counties are top producers of different crops to get a sense of the potential impact of the water shortages. It looks like this (the green dots indicate that the county is one of the top 100 counties for producing vegetables):

The NRDC also released a one-page overview of water shortage risk and crop value in at-risk counties by state (as a PDF here). According to the overview of California’s risk due to climate change:

Percent of CA counties at risk of water shortages: 83%

Total number of CA counties at risk: 48

Total number of CA counties at extreme risk: 19

Total number of CA counties at high risk: 17

Total number of CA counties at moderate risk: 12

The value of all the crops being producing in at-risk CA counties (in $1,000s): $21,585,354

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Resilience vs. Sustainability

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by editorials, terms • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

This post is part of our definitions series on “eco-lingo” and technical terms.

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photo by Derek Jensen

Is the glass half-sustainable or half-resilient?

Have you noticed the word ‘resilience’ cropping up in places where you might expect to see the word ‘sustainable’? Are the speakers making a real distinction here, or are they just moving on from yesterday’s buzz word? Let’s find out.

First, Merriam Webster defines the two words as follows:

resilience:

1. the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress

2. an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change

sustainability:

1. capable of being sustained

2a. of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged <sustainable techniques> <sustainable agriculture> 2b. of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods<sustainable society>

Wow. Does the increased use of ‘resilience’ mean planners and policy makers are becoming more pessimistic? Are they already assuming the worst and now aiming for damage control instead of wise action? Well, maybe. But in all honesty, there is a difference, and it is important to make the distinction. This is not an either/or occasion, but more of a both/and.

Perhaps it seems obvious, but it is crucial to use the right words in order to come as close to the precise meaning as possible. ‘Sustainable’ is a very pro-active word, but it says nothing about the context in which it operates. The word ‘resilience’ by contrast implies a built in complexity; it is a word of reaction, and of endurance. The terms converge, but they are on separate tracks. My point is this – not only do the right words communicate to others better, but the right words can also re-frame the ‘same old thing’  in a beneficial and insightful way. In other words, if sustainability starts at home, maybe spin should too.

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What exactly does “sustainability” mean? How about “green”, “eco” or “environmentally friendly”? The truth is that these terms are just vague enough to mean many different things to many different people. With the staggering array of “green” products, ‘lifestyles’ and concepts being promoted by marketers and environmentalists alike (as well as the necessary coining of new terms to match new ideas) our definition series aims to make sense of the rising tide of “eco-lingo” and technical terms.

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Lots of Bay Area News

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U.S. Representative and  House Appropriator Mike Honda secured funding to the tune of $2 million towards extension of the BART system to Silicon Valley as part of the FY 2011 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development spending bill. What is the “BART to Silicon Valley” project? It’s an extension of the existing BART system to Milpitas, San Jose, and Santa Clara starting from the future Warm Springs station in Fremont (along the eastern side of the South Bay).

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Google Energy has signed its first contract, a 20-year wind power contract in Iowa. Google will sell the electricity on the spot market and retire the associated renewable energy credits (RECs) – via TechCrunch.

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More people are freaking out about smart meters, but this time not in the Central Valley…

The Fairfax Town Council gave the nod to the creation of an ordinance that, if passed, would try to prevent PG&E from installing smart meters in Fairfax –  via the Marin Independent Journal.

The Marin Association of Realtors has issued a statement calling for a moratorium on its SmartMeter program due to concerns in three areas: concerns about overcharging, concerns about health effects from the radio waves, and concerns about PG&E imposing meters on folks that don’t want them – via the Marin Independent Journal.

The Marin Independent Journal also reports that the Marin supervisors have sent a letter to Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), asking the CPUC to suspend PG&E’s SmartMeter rollout until a commission has reviewed the funtion of the meters and until the health implications of the electronic emissions from the wireless devices has been addressed…

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The Department of Energy announced yesterday that $122 million has been awarded to a team of scientists from California (including Lawrence Berkley National Lab) to establish an Energy Innovation Hub that will be focused on converting sunlight into liquid fuel.

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They Don’t Have Water Meters?!

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by water • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

photo credit: freefoto.com

Many residents of California don’t have water meters. According to a recent column in the San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Gleick, the recent legislation mandating water meters is needed, as the many residents of California that don’t have meters are very reluctant to install them.

But everyone should have meters. According to Ellen Hanak, a water researcher with the Public Policy Institute on California, metered cities use about 15 percent less water than unmetered cities, and cities with a tiered rate system use an additional 10 percent less (via KQED).

A few statistics from Gleick’s column:

— Sacramento only has meters in 25 percent of residences, and has no plans to meter everyone else anytime soon.

— In the San Joaquin Valley, more than half of all residents don’t have water meters.

— The city of Fresno charges all single-family households a flat rate, no matter how much water is used.

Fresno’s water rates are some of the lowest in California, and it has some of the highest water use (3 times as high as Los Angeles residents, and 5 times as high as San Francisco residents, via The California Report). There is an interesting study comparing water rates – when the study was conducted (2006), the average monthly charge was $18.52 in Fresno County, $37.55 in Alameda County, and $57.25 in Santa Cruz County.

The meters are coming. There are several laws that will require the installation of meters for all Californians (via KQED).

— All homes built after 1992 must have meters.

— Cities that receive federal water have to install meters by 2013.

— All California cities have to install meters by 2025.

Seriously, though, 2025 is a long time for a state that has major water management issues.

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Last year, there was a story from The California Report that covers the struggle to meter reluctant Fresno residents (listen to the story here).

Visualizing the U.S. Power Grid

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by energy • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Source: NPR’s Power Hungry: Reinventing the U.S. Electric Grid series

National Public Radio produced an intriguing series in April and May of 2009 called “Power Hungry: Reinventing the U.S. Electric Grid“.  The series looked at the structural make-up of power conveyance in the U.S.-and the need for it to get ‘smarter’ about controlling and tracking consumption patterns- and, at the growing pains of the newer energy industries such as wind and solar, and how to get them online to more Americans.

But the real star of the show for us map fans is the great interactive map, pictured above. The map illustrates the three discrete “grids” that make up the U.S. power network: Western, Eastern and Texas. The map also includes existing and proposed lines,power source ratios for each state (coal, hydro, etc.) and the distribution of wind and solar plants. See the full interactive map here.

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Greenwashing

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by terms • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

This post is part of our definitions series on “eco-lingo” and technical terms.

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The term greenwashing is generally heard when one person or organizations accuses another of greenwashing a product or practice.

Greenwashing is when a company disingenuously promotes a product as “green” or as an more environmentally-friendly option.

The Wikipedia entry on greenwashing gives the following origin story for the term:

“Greenwashing was coined by New York environmentalist Jay Westerveld in a 1986 essay reagrdign the hotel industry’s practice of placing green placards in each room, promoting the reuse of guest towels, ostensibly to ‘save the environment’. Westerveld noted that, in most cases, little or no effort toward waste recycling was being implemented by these institutions…Westerveld opined that the actual objective of this ‘green campaign’ on the part of many hoteliers was, in fact, increased profit.”

Generally, a product, practice, or promotion is labeled as “greenwashing” when it seems that there has been significant effort or resources devoted to labeling something green, and much less effort devoted to looking at the underlying metrics in terms of environmental impact and actually improving environmental performance.

As an example, yesterday I passed a sign outside the local Walgreens advocating that I “save a tree by signing up for online promotions”. Another example is that many aerosol product labels still say “CFC-free” even though CFCs have been banned since before I was born.

Several years ago, TerraChoice Environmental Marketing put out a list of “Six Sins of Greenwashing”, which has now been expanded to seven.

The seven sins of greenwashing are:

1 – Sin of the hidden trade-off

2 – Sin of no proof

3 – Sin of vagueness

4 – Sin of worshipping false labels

5 – Sin of irrelevance

6 – Sin of lesser of two evils

7 – Sin of fibbing

TerraChoice has a comprehensive (and fun!) site covering the sins. The site also includes links to recent TerraChoice reports on greenwashing.

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From my latest visit to the store (one of the MANY examples of greenwashing on the shelf):

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What exactly does “sustainability” mean? How about “green”, “eco” or “environmentally friendly”? The truth is that these terms are just vague enough to mean many different things to many different people. With the staggering array of “green” products, ‘lifestyles’ and concepts being promoted by marketers and environmentalists alike (as well as the necessary coining of new terms to match new ideas) our definition series aims to make sense of the rising tide of “eco-lingo” and technical terms.

Bay Area Public Meeting to Set SB375 Targets

by current events, energy, transportation • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Photographer: Manfred Werner Tsui at de.wikipedia.org

Passed in 2008, SB 375 is the nation’s first law to link greenhouse gas emissions with urban sprawl.  The thrust of AB 375 is to require not only emissions reduction targets, but also to require land use planning strategies and interagency collaboration in the process. In practice, this requires each region in the state to adopt a Sustainable Communities Strategy, or SCS, that is in line with regional emissions targets set by regional Air Resource Boards.

As SB 375 moves foward in its implementation, the time has come this August for the ARBs to annouce their emissions targets.

The California Air Resources Board has been holding workshops throughout California this month to accept public comment on the draft regional targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from cars and light trucks.  The public comments will be taken into consideration before the Metro Planning Organizations (MPOs) announce their proposed targets in August. On Wednesday, July 21, the Bay Area gets to put in its two cents. The meeting information is as follows:

July 21, 2010     10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m

Caltrans Oakland Building, Auditorium, 111 Grand Ave, Oakland, CA 94612

For those unable to attend, the meeting will be webcast.

For more information on Senate Bill 375, see Urban Land Institute’s Summary and Key Findings report here, and the Governor’s Office factsheet here.

A list of all of the California ARB meetings in July can be found here.

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