The San Francisco Federal Building, By Thom Mayne, Morphosis

by Maggie Fitzgerald

We’ve all seen buildings with huge metallic plaques near the door boasting an environmental performance award of some kind. But to the average person, these awards mean little when we do not know what they represent and what standards were met to achieve them. Here, I will provide you the basic facts of the major certifications so you can know just what it takes to get that shiny plaque.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)

LEED is the longest-running and one of the most recognizable certifications. Started by the U.S. Green Building Council in 1992, LEED uses a point scale to assess a building’s greenness. Based on the points achieved through the six main credit categories for evaluation (sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation and design) an approved building can be either simply certified, or receive a Silver, Gold, or the coveted Platinum certification level.

While LEED is an internationally recognized and respected certification, the high cost of certification is a deterrent to many builders and building owners (numbers vary, but estimates range from $2,500 to $25,000 for registration and assessment) as is the amount of paperwork involved. So why do it? Being LEED certified is a significant honor achievement that will draw attention (and perhaps esteemed higher-paying tenants) to a building. It is an expensive investment, but one that many owners feel will pay off in the long run due to improved recognition and overall cost savings from environmental efficiency, specifically energy savings.

Energy Star

Most people recognize the blue Energy Star label, which began with the Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 as a voluntary labeling program for energy-efficient products. A few years later Energy Star certification became available for new homes, and in the years since it has expanded to include commercial buildings as well. As one may gather from the initial use of the Energy Star label, the main qualification as applied to buildings is energy savings; a building must be in the top 25% for energy efficiency nationally among similar buildings in order to qualify. This energy-only based approach not only makes Energy Star unique, but also compatible with other certifications. It is not uncommon to see a building boasting both an Energy Star and a LEED certification.

Green Globes

Green Globes, a relative newcomer into the U.S. building certification market, was launched in Canada and came to the US in 2004. Green Globes rates buildings on a 1,000-point scale in the areas of energy, indoor environment, site, water, resources, emissions, and project/environmental management. In order to be qualified, a building must achieve at least 35% of a possible 1,000 points, and from there will receive a rating from one to four globes. While Green Globes has not reached the popularity and recognition that LEED and Energy Star enjoy in the US, it is becoming more popular due to its affordable price—$500 for a 5-year subscription per building.

As you can see, the major certification programs have the same goal: recognize buildings that go above and beyond to reduce their environmental impact. Though there are perks and downfalls to each, these programs deserve applause for drawing attention and bringing prestige to green buildings.

Maggie Fitzgerald is a volunteer with Green-e Marketplace researching green building certifications. She graduated from Santa Clara University in 2010 and can be reached at maggie [at] resource-solutions.org.

Forest conversion and loss hasn’t rated very high on the U.S. political agenda since federal climate legislation stalled in 2010. But that doesn’t mean deforestation—nor its climate damage—has stopped.

We’re still losing about 90,000 acres of forestland, along with its capacity to safely absorb and store greenhouse gases, every day around the world (Source: FAO). Here at home, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates more than 57 million acres of U.S. forests will be converted to other uses by 2030 (Source: USDA).

Which is why it’s encouraging to see that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released a report detailing the potential of forests to combat global climate change.

Entitled Deforestation and Greenhouse Gases, the report assesses the climate role of forests and identifies the challenges facing policymakers in more fully harnessing forests in the fight against global climate change.

The report was compiled at the request of Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a co-author of the last attempt at a federal climate bill in 2010. He should be applauded for his commitment to this issue, says Pacific Forest Trust Board Secretary Andrea Tuttle, Ph.D., the former director of the California Department of Forestry. A global forest and climate consultant, Tuttle attends the negotiating sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as an observer for PFT.

“It’s great to see this issue back in the Congressional spotlight,” Tuttle said. “One of the bright spots in the UN climate negotiations has been the progress in setting the standards for measuring and slowing the global rate of deforestation. There’s a key role for the U.S. and other developed countries to play by incentivizing forest protection through well-designed markets for the climate benefits of forests.”

Unlike most other sectors, forests are unique in their capacity to act as either a net source of carbon sequestration OR a net source of the carbon emissions fueling climate change. When conserved and healthy, forests are a climate defense, absorbing and storing far more carbon dioxide than they emit. When cleared or degraded, forests become net emitters of greenhouse gases. Currently, forests hold about 760 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide globally—or more than 100 times all U.S. emissions in 2009. Despite the impressive magnitude of this carbon storage, however, deforestation and degradation continue to undermine global forest carbon sinks at an alarming rate. During the 1990s, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that forest loss was responsible for 20% of global GHG emissions in terms of warming impact. While this number fell to about 12% during 2000 to 2005, this decline was due to drastic increases in fossil fuel consumption—not any great reductions in deforestation.

The considerable carbon storage capacity of forests and the emissions associated with their loss make forests a central concern in addressing global climate change. In its assessment, the CBO recognizes the great potential of forests in climate change, but identifies several challenges that first must be overcome before this potential can be more fully realized. For instance, unlike many other emissions sources—where GHGs can be tracked at the end of a smokestack—quantifying emissions and sequestration from forests is much more challenging.

Generally, this requires monitoring changes in forest carbon storage from year to year, and converting gains and losses in wood volumes to GHG equivalents. However, with 95% of forest-based emissions arising from only 25 countries, most of which are developing nations in the tropics, existing forest inventory data are often inaccurate at best—or nonexistent at worst.

Further, the CBO notes that designing policies to reduce emissions through avoided deforestation can pose substantial challenges. For instance, when deforestation is halted in one location, demand for the goods that would have been produced may simply displace deforestation to another location. As a result, unless policies can find ways to prevent this demand-driven “leakage,” avoiding deforestation in one location may, in actuality, do little to reduce atmospheric GHG concentrations. Finally, even if these challenges can be overcome, governance issues in developing countries may complicate the implementation of policies to reduce forest loss.

Although attempting to address governance issues in developing nations may be challenging, the CBO notes that cultivating technical expertise, policy solutions, and strong markets for emissions reductions are all important ways in which developed nations can work toward reducing global deforestation.

California’s climate program, along with the development of other state and regional climate programs, also are important steps to addressing deforestation abroad, Tuttle notes.”Many states and provinces already offer examples of pro-climate forest policies. Certainly California is known for its programs, but forest landowners in New England, the Southeast and Northwest are also taking advantage of forest carbon protocols and markets.”

Low-density housing developments like this one in Maryland account for much of the 1.7 million acres of U.S. forestland that are converted each year.

While the challenges of reducing global deforestation may be considerable, the actions developed nations have taken to confront these issues internally are important first steps to addressing them internationally. Though deforestation in the U.S. pales in magnitude when compared to losses in the tropics, the technical expertise, markets, and policy approaches being developed here at home can have great applicability abroad. The CBO’s Deforestation and Greenhouse Gases report is an important reminder that the development of policies to address deforestation and emissions at home is a critical part of also doing so abroad.

Learn more about the Pacific Forest Trust’s work to pioneer forest and climate policy solutions here at home on their Working Forests, Winning Climate page.

You can read Andrea Tuttle’s analysis of the forest and climate progress made at international negotiations in Durban, South Africa, on the PFT blog.

This post is a re-post from the Pacific Forest Trust blog entry from January 18, 2012. Read the original here.

Anton Chiono is a policy Analyst at Pacific Forest Trust

by Ada Torres-Ramírez

The cost of electricity for most of the island nations along the arc of the Caribbean is triple what the average customer pays in the US (around 38 cents per kilowatt). Almost all of the electricity distributed comes from burning of imported fossil fuel. An oil based economy is a sad reality, in spite of the fact that there’s potential for renewable energy generation. Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and ocean kinetic capacity is spread throughout the region. However, because islands are tiny, there’s not enough opportunity to have a return on investment for energy production. Since market scale is the obstacle, one way to go around it is to interconnect. The benefits that a green energy grid could have are worth the effort. In fact, a regional energy market for the Caribbean may already be brewing.

Establishing interconnection between islands through submarine cables can make investment more attractive through economies of scale. Electrical interconnection will facilitate the Caribbean Region’s economic development through access to affordable electricity and the establishment of an energy-trading industry.

Other regions have already taken bold measures to advance their infrastructure planning towards a Green Energy Grid. In the European Union, there is already a formal collaboration between regulatory agencies, transmission system operators, private entrepreneurs, and other groups that are involved in a progressive process of strategic planning. This includes zoning criteria and pre-permitting for project sites for different renewable energy sources. One of the valuable contributions of this meticulous planning process is that, in addition to enabling operational integration, it also facilitates financing for projects. As more efficient use of funding is made possible through the creation of energy markets, these markets will lower the costs of achieving renewable energy portfolio targets. The stability that a regional framework provides is a valuation criterion for investment purposes.

In the Caribbean, the business case for a similar undertaking is becoming clearer. This region’s natural assets make it an attractive tourism destination. Tourism accounts for up to 70% of Gross Domestic Product in some islands, and tourism is an energy-intensive industry. Any effort to secure access to renewable energy for the long term is welcome, as is the fact that the region will become an environmentally friendlier destination. Construction of renewable energy projects is at a very early stage. The capital investments required are huge, which makes any mechanism that will make the projects viable worth considering. Puerto Rico recently enacted its Renewable Portfolio Standard, allowing developers to sell renewable energy credits as part of their financing structure. Other Caribbean countries, like the Dominican Republic, use the Clean Development Mechanism to incentivize mitigation projects.

The establishment of a regional transmission energy grid and market for the Caribbean has many challenges. But the potential arising from it is also exciting. Notice has been taken by savvy international investors, and several projects in the Caribbean have already received funding from investors from as far away as the Middle East. The potential for wind, solar and geothermal energy is there, and the region does not intend on wasting it.

Ada Torres-Ramírez is the owner of BusinessWise, a Puerto Rico-based sustainable management and environmental marketing firm. She can be reached at adatorres [at] getbusinesswise.com.

by Rick Umoff

Even if you don’t pay close attention to the state of renewable energy financing, you’ve likely heard of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) loan programs for renewable energy projects[i]. The DOE’s programs were made famous in 2011 by the bankruptcy of Solyndra, a California solar panel manufacturer that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the DOE[ii].

The Solyndra bankruptcy has whipped up a swarm of political controversy around the DOE’s loan programs. As someone who is both interested in renewable energy development and a U.S. taxpayer, I thought it appropriate to take a closer look at these programs and get some perspective on Solyndra independent of the political commentary.

So, What Are These Programs?

The DOE’s Loan Guarantee Program (LGP) is designed to fund clean energy projects that cannot otherwise get funding from the private sector[iii]. LGP loans are guaranteed by the federal government, meaning that if a loan recipient defaults, the federal government foots the bill.  The technology funded under this program must avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic (man-made) emissions of greenhouse gases.  This program was first put into place by Section 1703 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and extended by amendment in section 1705 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Some examples of companies funded by this program include[iv]:

• BrightSource Energy, Inc. (Solar Generation) – $1.6 billion
• US Geothermal, Inc. (Geothermal Generation) – $97 million
• Red River Environmental Products, LLC (Energy Efficiency) – $245 million

The Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program[v] consists of direct loans (i.e. non-guaranteed loans) to support the development of advanced technology vehicles in the U.S. The main focus here is increased fuel efficiency. This program provides loans to car makers for the cost of re-equipping, expanding, or establishing manufacturing facilities. Some examples of companies funded by the ATVM program include[vi]:

• Ford Motor Company – $5.907 billion
• Nissan North America, Inc. – $1.448 billion
• Tesla Motors – $465 million

 Where Solyndra Fits In

Solyndra was a recipient of a $535 million loan guarantee under the LGP[vii]. This means that when Solyndra failed, the federal government backed the loan and took the loss—a huge hit to the taxpayer right? Well, yes. But to put things in perspective, the entire value of the LGP and ATVM loan programs combined is $35.9 billion[viii]. This means that Solyndra’s loan was about 1.5% of the DOE’s entire loan portfolio. And, although Solyndra borrowed a large chunk of change, it is not even close to the largest projects funded by the LGP. For example, both AREVA and Georgia Power Company are nuclear projects that received $2 billion and $8.33 billion respectively[ix].

In addition, the bankruptcy of Solyndra resulted in the loss of about 1,100 jobs[x]. That is a lot of jobs to lose during tough economic times. However, the DOE claims to have created 64,776 jobs through its loan programs[xi]. In other words, Solyndra resulted in the loss of roughly 1.7% of all the jobs created thus far under the DOE loan programs.

The failure of Solyndra is disappointing and deserves inquiry. However, stepping back to view the DOE loan programs in their entirety provides valuable perspective that is often lost in the political crossfire.

Rick Umoff is a legal intern at CRS and a third-year law student at the University of San Francisco. He can be reached at rick [at] resource-solutions.org.

by Andreas Karelas

On Wednesday October 19th, a group of seven U.S. solar manufacturers filed a formal complaint with the Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission against China for illegally dumping inexpensive solar panels in the United States. The group is known as the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing, and is led by SolarWorld, a U.S.-based solar manufacturer. The other six members are choosing to remain anonymous.

The Coalition claims that Chinese manufacturers have been receiving unfair subsidies from their government allowing them to provide solar at prices drastically lower than U.S. manufacturers with “dumping margins well in excess of 100 percent.”1

Supporters are arguing for heavy tariffs on Chinese solar panels coming into the U.S. in order to make “an even playing field” according to Kevin Kikelly, President of SolarWorld Americas. 2

Chinese government officials have responded to the claim strongly, accusing the American solar industry of protectionism. They also suggested that imposing tariffs could have dire consequences for American companies that do business with Chinese panel makers. 3

This move has stirred up controversy in the solar industry.

Renewable energy professionals are pointing out the potential implications of such measures for the burgeoning solar industry in the U.S.

Steve Leone of Renewable Energy World reported on October 20: “If a final determination is made in favor of the American companies, it could mean a doubling in the price of panels coming into the U.S. market.” 4

While the verdict on the legality of the Chinese solar subsidies is still out, the recent decrease in solar prices has created a massive boom for solar in the U.S. According to the Solar Electric Industries Association, “More than 100,000 Americans work in the solar industry, double the number since 2009. In the last year, solar grew by 69 percent, making it one of the fastest growing sectors in the economy.” In combination with increasingly popular solar finance mechanisms such as the solar lease and power purchase agreement, the falling prices are making solar economically viable for Americans.

The 1603 Cash Grant also played a huge role in the recent solar boom, although it is set to expire at the end of this year. The Cash Grant offers a cash rebate to renewable energy project developers in lieu of a 30% Federal investment tax credit. Without it, developers will have to look for tax equity in an investment climate where the demand far exceeds supply. Recurrent Energy CEO Arno Harris points out that “there’s $10 billion worth of need for tax equity, probably $3 billion of supply, and with the expiration of the grant coming up, we face a tremendous challenge.” 5

Losing the cash grant alone will put the solar industry in a very precarious position. If the U.S. puts heavy tariffs on solar photovoltaic panels imported from China, as the SolarWorld coalition requests, this could put a halt to the rapid growth of the U.S. solar industry seen in recent years.

Barry Cinnamon, CEO of Westinghouse Solar, had this to say: “The market’s growing up. And especially what that means for our industry, is there’s a lot more installation jobs out there. I cringe when I think about the number of installation jobs and projects that would get canceled around the country if the price of panels were to double overnight.” 6

Julie Blunden, executive vice president of solar manufacturer Sunpower and CRS Board member said: “We don’t plan to join” [SolarWorld’s petition]. The petition, she said, is “an unfortunate distraction from the efforts to work together to expand the opportunity for solar.” 7

The U.S. has already delayed global climate negotiations by not signing the Kyoto Protocol or agreeing to mandatory emissions reductions. If the U.S. attacks the Chinese for investing in its solar industry, it will create even more roadblocks to climate solutions.

A handful of U.S. solar manufacturing companies, like Solyndra and others, are failing in part because of weak federal policy support for renewable energy in an ever-competitive global market. Rather than trying to lock the Chinese out of the U.S. market, the U.S. should be trying to compete. The U.S. would be wise to strengthen its support for American solar rather than try to diminish Chinese support for Chinese solar.

Meanwhile, House and Senate Democrats are advocating the elimination of over $20 billion in subsidies for oil companies in an effort to reduce the federal deficit. If the U.S. government can start to shift subsidies away from the fossil fuel industry and apply them towards renewable energy, it would be taking the right steps towards remaining competitive in the growing global clean-tech industry, as well as lowering greenhouse-gas emissions. 8

In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite into the Earth’s Orbit, and the Space Race began. Determined to be the leader in space exploration, the United States competed with the Soviet Union tirelessly for decades. As history would show, those investments made during the Space Race would later lead to new technologies that transformed the economy, created countless jobs, and changed the way the world operates.

Now we see that the Solar Race is on. As a nation and an industry, we can choose to call foul on the play, and hope that the referees will stop the game; or we can tighten our laces, keep running, and hope to catch up.

Andreas Karelas is the founder and Executive Director of RE-volv (www.re-volv.org), a nonprofit organization that raises money through donations to finance community solar energy projects. He can be reached at andreas [at] re-volv.org.

by Brendan Cook

Did you know that just about everything is bringing about the end of the world? That really is a shame. We’ve all heard it, and from just about every angle, calls to action (or non-action) are loaded with despair. I’ll assume that our CRS Blog followers are up to speed with the state of our global environment, so no need to list our challenges. To make strides, creativity is needed to bring about more sustainable behavior and to truly understand our world. If one lesson is to be learned, scare tactics are not necessarily bringing about creative change. Beneath all that doom and gloom, however, lie innovation, opportunity, and whole host of people who are passionate about changing things for the better.

Great! Now, where to find all of this inspiration?

TED
If you’ve been online for more than a few months, chances are a TED video has shown up in a social media feed. What is TED? TED simply provides “ideas worth spreading.” It’s exactly that, a wide range of inspiring ideas all delivered through the accessible way of storytelling. TED has an annual (and very expensive) conference, but has conveniently moved more local, with chapters known as TEDx springing up around the globe. Can’t make it? Not to worry, you’ll find most of the talks online and the annual conference is streamed live. The topics are as diverse as the speakers and I suggest starting with a subject you would normally deem boring; one might become suddenly entranced by ant communication or building a toaster from scratch. www.ted.com

Pecha Kucha
The name may sound strange, but Pecha Kucha fits the modern, focused attention span. PK’s story begins in Tokyo, and taking its name from the “sound of conversation,” provides a quick forum for designers to talk about their work. Presenters show 20 slides, each for 20 seconds. Even if PowerPoint puts you in a sleepy daze, Pecha Kucha keeps it simple, fun, and the speakers regularly incorporate sustainability into their designs. Pecha Kucha may not have all their videos online, so what better excuse to experience the talks in person. Lucky for you, Pecha Kucha boasts events in 445 cities around the globe. Watch out, Tampere, Finland. www.pecha-kucha.org

PopTech
For those techno-centric thinkers who can’t get enough of the TED style format and the content of Wired magazine, there’s PopTech, which focuses on the social innovations happening with new technologies. PopTech has an accelerator foundation, a fellows program and plenty of online videos to get your brain moving. They’re not as local as some of the others, but if you find yourself in Maine, they hold their annual conference each October. www.poptech.org

Your City
Do your research, online and in person; chances are your community has a similar forum for better and even improbable ideas. If not, start one! Whether you attend the Aspen Ideas Festival or set up a blog about local issues, find a good fit to help you carve out your niche of change.

Brendan Cook is an analyst with Green-e Marketplace and an unabashed optimist. He can be reached at brendan [at] resource-solutions.org

by Todd Jones

I’ve always been interested in land use planning and transportation as an environmental sub-discipline. So when I heard Peter Calthorpe on National Public Radio talking about his new book, Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change, I went straight online and ordered a copy. Well, not straight. First, I went into a bookstore (a what?) and asked for it. They told me it was categorized as a textbook and I had to order it online. I would not be deterred however, not even by the $35.00 price tag.

I beamed when it finally arrived. I ran it into the house and destroyed the packaging. “It’s…it’s really thin,” I said out loud. That $35.00 price tag was starting to smart a little. 130 pages soaking wet. Given the complexity of both urbanism and climate change, I was disappointed before even opening it.

I had taken a couple classes on urban land use planning and transportation in grad school, and even written a couple papers of my own on the subject (one that was upwards of 50 pages long, which I thought must rival Calthorpe’s book in terms of sheer length). I looked over at my copy of The Reluctant Metropolis on the bookshelf, easily my favorite of the books I’ve read on the subject—400+ pages. I’m no expert, but I knew enough to know something had to be missing from Calthorpe’s book.

Still, I thought, he sounded great on NPR, and he’s a big deal. I looked back at my bookshelf and saw the battered spine of Blaikie’s The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries, a book scarcely 200 pages long that absolutely transformed my view of environmental science and policy once upon a time. Reinvigorated, I sat with my new book and prepared myself for another Blaikie moment.

In spite of infographics that are distracting at best and confusing at worst, this book is an accessible outline of how climate and land use are related, and a vivid vision for sustainable, climate-smart growth. Calthorpe presents urbanism (and in its most advanced form, green urbanism) as a critical solution to rising greenhouse gas emissions and other resource issues, but also as the most suitable and modern design approach, which brings various other social and economic benefits.

He lays out the various elements of urbanism and presents important ideas like regional planning, mixed-use zoning, and the urban transit network. He makes thoughtful arguments for design over engineering, place-based design approaches, improving accessibility over transportation, integration of planning professions over specialization and departmentalization, and human-scale development with community-scale services. He explains important concepts like transit-oriented development (TOD), systems efficiency, walkability, human scale, community, diversity, conservation, and connectivity. He also provides a useful new lexicon of zoning and planning terms as a part of a new planning tool, The Urban Footprint.

Alas however, no Blaikie moment. It’s all just a successful introduction to what should be a much heftier work. Though Calthorpe occasionally uses examples to illustrate these concepts, he fails to adequately put them to use for the reader. He never unpacks them or contextualizes them in the political, social, and historical ecology of any place in particular. He never situates his vision amidst the power relations that constrain all resource use, especially land. We are denied the gritty reality of what it takes to achieve the political and social change needed to achieve changes to the physical environment.

It is case studies that are missing. Case studies are different than examples. They don’t just explain the “what,” but the “how” as well. “How” is the question that’s really begged by this book. The “what” (urbanism) and the “why” (climate change) are well covered. “Where” is tackled in general but not specific terms. “Who” is also conspicuously muted. But the absence of “how” leaves the whole story feeling hypothetical. How can we implement all of this? Not in general, but in particular. How has it happened before? How has it failed before and why? Who wins and who loses?

Fulton’s The Reluctant Metropolis is chock-full of horror stories, ways that entrenched political interests and historical processes in land use decisionmaking can prescribe the type of development that occurs, regardless of community involvement or individual effort. This helps explain why Los Angeles looks and works the auto-centric way it does. Calthorpe gives us a brief history of land use development in America in his second chapter, but it’s depoliticized and so it stops well short at: the auto suburb was once suited to our lifestyles and now it is not. Sprawl is still a black box. This depoliticized history yields a depoliticized prescription. But regional planning, for example, involves questions of municipal autonomy for crying out loud. This can’t work the same everywhere. Calthorpe essentially offers up a toolkit but without any information about the worksite or conditions. As a result, many or all of the tools may be completely unsuitable for the work, or worse yet, may yield an entirely unintended product.

My second chief complaint with Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change is that it is focused squarely on the next wave of growth, not existing sprawl. Perhaps that is not the aim of the book, in which case it’s hardly a fair criticism, but I am curious how we get from sprawl to green urbanism. And how do we break the cycle of sprawl once it’s in place, since existing sprawl will demand auto-centric development suited to sprawl. In so many areas, we are not starting from scratch. How would walkable, mixed-use development work when it’s surrounded by sprawl? Would it work at all? Perhaps it all goes back to regional planning, which needs to account for integration of existing outlying low-density areas with new urbanism. There is some discussion of urban infill, redevelopment, and retrofit in the book, but Calthorpe’s examples are limited to either redevelopment of individual lots in an already dense downtown or new urban designs for undeveloped swaths.

Both of my chief complaints illustrate a crisis of context for the book: the sociopolitical and historical context as well as the existing physical built environment.

I realize I’ve been heavy with the Tabasco in this review, so let me emphasize that this book is worth reading (though perhaps not buying in hardback), especially if you’re new to the subject. It’s certainly not that Calthorpe has nothing new to say. He clearly has a great deal of experience and I hope that in future volumes he decides to ground the work in these experiences and paint a decidedly less apolitical picture…with fewer infographics.

Todd Jones is manager of Green-e Climate, and lives in a neighborhood he can afford with a walk score of 65. He can be reached at todd [at] resource-solutions.org

by Orrin Cook

With the celebration of Labor Day in early September came a report of Americans having the highest rating of dissatisfaction with their job in modern history. Given the muddled state of our national economy, maybe it’s not such a surprise. And it’s certainly not hard to imagine jobs in which the hours of 9–5 are a grind, where you might feel disconnected from your values and not “fully present” in your position—I’ve certainly been there before! If you’re running a business, there are myriad reasons you want your employees to be as happy as possible: greater productivity, higher creativity, increased loyalty, better recruitment, and improved resiliency. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index suggests that this disengagement is a crisis costing America $300 billion in lost productivity annually. But what are the paths to managing greater job satisfaction? There are many contributions to greater workplace well-being, but I’d like to focus on one: employee engagement.

Much of the literature today suggests that those employees who perceive their company to be good corporate citizens will bring a greater part of their “true self” to work, because the company reflects more of their own value set. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, a long-time buyer of renewable energy, puts this into practice. President Bob Stiller has talked openly about how their meaningful workplace gives the company a competitive edge in attracting and retaining employees:

I’ve learned that people are motivated and more willing to go the extra mile to make the company successful when there’s a higher good associated with it. It’s no longer just a job. Work becomes meaningful and this makes us more competitive. (see Glavas and Piderit 2009).

If we’re looking to create programs, benefits, or incentives to address a common set of values that speak to employees, then why not focus on renewable energy? Over 80% of Americans are supportive of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar. In a divisive age, with entrenched views expressed through sharp tongues, the value of renewable energy rises neatly above the political spectrum because of its numerous and often universal appeals: energy independence, clean air, economic growth opportunities, and generational responsibility.

Marty Sedler, Intel’s Director of Global Utilities and Infrastructure, provided insightful discussion in a recent Green-e webinar “Engaging Employees in Sustainability: Insights from the Field.” While Intel is long known as the top U.S. purchaser of renewable energy, Sedler outlined the company’s recent work on many new initiatives, including installing solar panels on covered parking for employees and negotiating group discounts with a solar panel manufacturer for employees who were looking to install solar panels on their own homes. He talked of having workers so engaged and creating so many new sustainability ideas that Intel is now looking to set up management systems just to harness this burst of employee-led innovation.

The workplace is the location where we spend the single most amount of time in our waking life, so job satisfaction is critically linked to life satisfaction. If organizations want to create environments that help reflect employee’s personal values and bring bottom line benefits, then there certainly is an opportunity for engagement around renewable energy.

Orrin Cook is manager of Green-e Marketplace and works with businesses that improve their sustainability through renewable energy commitments. Contact him at orrin [at] resource-solutions.org.

by Robin Quarrier

This post is not about social networking. Or, let me correct that, it’s not about online networking, but rather the socializing related to networking. In particular, green or environmental networking in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Along with renewable energy claims, the FTC’s Green Guides, certification marks, and baking the perfect oatmeal cookies, I consider green networking in the bay area one of my areas of expertise (though I’ve spent far more time on the latter two).

First, a little background in why I spend so much time networking. I’m from the East Coast, went to college back east, did a two-year stint in Boston as a utility consultant, then to University of Arizona for law school. After law school I went straight to the bay area, and to Center for Resource Solutions (CRS). As my geographic history would suggest, I came to my role at CRS with few bay area connections, and even fewer attorneys to call upon when questions outside of my experience popped up. I knew early on that I would have to build a network when I found myself dealing with questions as in-house counsel that I believe associates in big law firms can only dream of, in such cutting-edge areas of the law as certification marks, renewable energy and carbon offset transactions. Being on my own, however, meant risking thousands of dollars in outside counsel fees or, alternatively, jumping in solo as a fresh attorney and risk ethical violations for working so far outside of my realm of expertise.

Building a network of resources I could call on when I needed them turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected, and I’ve met many people in related industries that I turn to frequently for help and advice. Here are a few organizations that I highly recommend:

1. The Women of Wind Energy (WoWE)

The first group I joined was the Women of Wind Energy. The group is part of a national organization that is affiliated with the American Wind Energy Association, and has chapters all around the country. This group of women is warm and friendly, organizing educational and networking events. Many of the women are engineers, transmission and permitting consultants, and developers, and members work at large companies and small start-ups (sometimes founded by the women themselves). The group has an intimate and relaxed feel. All events are open to men and women. The Bay Area chapter is organized by Andrea Tabor.

Next Event: Women in Renewable Energy Career Panel
Thursday, October 13, 2011, 6:30 PM-8:30 PM
HubSoMA, 901 Mission Street, San Francisco
Notable female industry leaders including Jan Blittersdorf-CEO of NRG Systems, Daphne Li- Former COO of Sungevity, Sonita Lontoh- Head of Corporate Marketing at Trilliant, and Stephanie Wang-Director of Programs and Campaigns for the Clean Coalition, will discuss their professional and personal development in the renewables field and how they are individually paving the way to a clean energy future.

2. The Women’s Environmental Network (WEN)
I attended a couple of WEN events, and knew that this was a group I would like to be a part of. I have been on the WEN board for over a year now and consider the women to be great friends. As a WEN member you receive a monthly newsletter with events, job postings, and spotlights. They host a diversity of events and all events are open to men and women.

Next Event: Happy Hour at Jupiter
Tuesday, September 13 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Jupiter,  2181 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, California

3. Green Drinks
These events are crowded. It is more bar scene than networking. I did meet some interesting women there, and reconnected with folks I had met elsewhere—that said, I was surprised by the number of men I met who were not working in the environmental fields at all. I have my guesses as to why they were there, but it’s not just the men who are looking for women in green. Likewise, one of my male friends who works in environmental law said that he is always surprised how many women he meets who do not have a demonstrated interest in the environment. These events take place once a month. There is also Green Business Drinks, which is focused on sustainable business and meets on the 2nd Thursdays of the month at Elixir on 16th and Guerrero from 6:00–8:00PM.

This event reoccurs on the first Tuesday of the month
Time: 5:30-8:30 p.m.
Location: 111 Minna Art Gallery, @ 2nd Street

4. Eco Tuesday
EcoTuesday is a structured networking event for sustainable business leaders. This organization is an answer to my qualms with Green Drinks. The events attract people of specific interests by organizing around a speaker. At the start of the event everyone stands around in a large circle and introduces themselves. This may sound like a waste of time, but it makes networking later far more effective an amounts to communal speed networking. Nearly everyone I meet has some interest or skill to contribute. Event locations vary. You may want to snack before hand, as drinks are available for purchase, but food is notably absent. Also, these events are so good that you will want to stay until the very end, which may be as late as 9pm.This event reoccurs on the fourth Tuesday of each month in cities across the country.

5. Women in Cleantech & Sustainability

If you are in the South Bay, I highly recommend this organization, and I hear that they are expanding to host more San Francisco events. Lisa Ann Pinkerton, President of Technica Communications started this meetup to support the careers of women in the fields of cleantech and sustainability, from student and entry level all the way to the executive level.They have interesting topics, great food and drinks. The group has an intimate feel and you will have the opportunity to speak with industry leaders.

Next event: Living a Sustainable Life, Inside and Out
Sept 15 6pm-9pm at Silicon Valley Pad 1370 Willow Rd  in Menlo Park.
This event will cover maintaining balance on all levels of life including natural health remedies, limiting exposure to toxins, and simple ways to handle emotions and stress. Special guests include, Dr. Daniel Auer DC, Integrative Health Physician, Julien Adler, Executive Business Coach, Master Hypnotherapist and Neuro-Linguistic Programmer, Lauren Shroyer, MS, & ATC Personal Trainer and Lifestyle Coach, Susan Cann, NYR (Neal’s Yard Remedies) Organic Skin Care, Independent Consultant. [See the Meetup Page]

6. Climate One at the Commonwealth Club
Hugely informational discussions draw in both quality speakers and informed audiences. There are networking opportunities before and after the events—however in my experience everyone is so focused on the speakers that attendees often forget or are too distracted to start up conversations. Don’t forget to carry your business cards everywhere you go. Hope to see you out there!

Robin Quarrier is Chief Networker and in-house counsel at CRS. She can be reached at robin [at] resource-solutions.org.

How you can explore California by bike while supporting CRS in Climate Ride California 2011

by Anne-Franziska Sinner

“Wind is blowing into my face. It is a strong cool breeze, almost pushing me backwards. At least that’s what it feels like. I see a steep hill in front of me with the top approaching very slowly. I can smell the trees which inch towards me in slow motion. Birds are singing and in the background I hear the sound of the ocean rushing. I am exhausted. Sweat is running down my face, my legs are burning and my hands heart from clutching the handlebar. But I do not want to give up and stop before I have reached the top of the hill. I let my mind wander away, thinking about how beautiful and undisturbed it seems, the nature around me … and how lucky I am that I get the chance to breeze the salty air, hear the natural sounds of the environment, being able to stop whenever and wherever I want, feeling the freedom without rushing, being away from my daily work and the stressful city life…

…And suddenly, I have reached the top of the hill. My hard work is rewarded with a view which almost takes my breath away: A long beautiful beach with colorful dunes to the fore and the blue endless ocean disappearing in the thin haze. My pain from cresting the hill is already forgotten. And after a long break, I am ready to fly down the hill again. The speed and the energy will help me to climb the next hill where another breathtaking view is waiting for me. And that excitement is motivating me to go on and on.”

I wrote this last year, as part of my travel diary when biking along the Californian Coast, from San Francisco northwards.

You might think “why”? Why bike if you can take the car? By car, it would be much more relaxing, not as exhausting to go the same route, you can go even further and get to see even more.

Indeed, biking is slow and I obviously did not get as far as I would by car. But biking is about the details. The much slower travel offers you experiences you would never have sitting or passing by in a car. On a bike, I get much closer to my environment. I feel it, I smell it, I hear it. Also, travelling seems less rushed and more relaxed when you have the excuse to take a lot of breaks.

Of course, biking is exhausting. But it is also a very satisfying feeling, to be totally tired when going to bed knowing that you have biked 60 or more miles. And what I enjoy most is reaching my final destination. When biking, this makes me happy and fulfilled. I like the concept of approaching something step by step when it actually seems really far away. And because travelling by bike is so strenuous and everything seems pretty far, milestones get really important. These can mean anything small to look forward to, anything that takes me a little bit closer to my destination. Usually I use a map to determine good stopovers, but sometimes other milestones come up, like the top of the hill with the ocean view.

I really like this kind of step-by-step concept. It is a very nice approach that can be applied in any other context as well. At CRS we identify best practices and create implementation tools that promote renewable power generation. We work a lot with environmental policy regarding renewable energy. Here too it is important to have a roadmap: a detailed plan to guide us in setting standards and determining a course of action to develop a sustainable energy system in the future. We need milestones, a series of steps to be carried out to accomplish our goals and develop an energy supply system that does not contribute to climate change.

One step could be something very easy like a switch to a more sustainable transportation mode, like moving from cars to bikes whenever possible.

This idea has been taken up by Climate Ride California 2011, a charitable bike ride to support sustainable solutions, bike advocacy, and environmental causes. Climate Ride California is a 5-day bicycle ride in Northern California. CRS is a beneficiary for this year’s California Climate Ride, which runs from October 2–6 and travels from Eureka to San Francisco. Anyone who signs up for the ride is able to choose to raise money for CRS and support our work to advance sustainable energy. CRS has chosen to represent a “Team Buy Clean Energy,” named after our ongoing campaign to promote clean energy purchases among individuals and businesses at www.buycleanenergy.org.

This brings me back to the point of my small story: when you’re sitting on your bike, wind blowing in your hair, you are escaping civilization, and absorbing the gorgeous California landscape while passing beautiful beaches, redwood trees, and vineyards—all by following the road map to finally cross the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. This is something so amazing, you have to try it! And the Climate Ride is a perfect opportunity.

To learn more about Climate Ride California 2011 and sign up, see the announcement on the CRS site.

Anne-Franziska Sinner is a Green-e Energy Analyst and avid cyclist. She can be reached at afsinner [at] resource-solutions.org.

by Jeff Swenerton

Environmentalists spend a lot of time discussing the best way to change the minds of the 82% of Americans who do not consider themselves green. The most-discussed techniques are those that focus on adapting the language and arguments to what the audience cares about the most. If you start with the Dark Green environmentalists and gradually fade to the light greens, the messaging shifts from treehugging to babyhugging, though the takeaway is the same—make lifestyle changes that reduce your use of fossil fuels, or else.

We learned years ago not to use the words “global warming” because a warming planet is a far-off concern for most people, whose interests radiate outward from the hot center like concentric circles, starting with themselves in the middle and growing outward to encompass family, job, house, neighborhood, extended family, “future generations,” others in their socioeconomic cohort, gas prices, retail prices, national security, interest rates, when Mad Men is going to start again, and then, possibly, the environment—but only if environmental action doesn’t cost more or require a separate trip. In fact, while nearly a third of people say environmental factors are important when weighing which products to buy, retailers and marketing execs have long known that people will choose green products only if they cost exactly the same and don’t require bending over to find them. And even then, green products account for a slimming sliver of sales.

Communications people, and to a lesser extent journalists, are always talking about ways of making environmentalism sexy to an increasingly bored and skeptical public. Despite our increasing efforts, the number of people who believe that climate change is happening has actually dropped over the last few years, from 72% in 2008 to 58% in 2010. So what has changed? Countless studies have been released that enumerate in grim detail our morphing planet, and first-time-in-recorded-history weather patterns would seem to reinforce this longstanding consensus in the scientific community. And yet, the ranks of skeptics has bloomed. (They’re especially skeptical of climate change during cold weather—recent record snowstorms caused respondents in a Yale survey to question the reality of climate change based on what they saw out their window.)

But do we need these climate-change deniers on our side at all? If you place a red apple in a man’s hand, and he continues to insist his hand is empty, how much effort do you expend convincing him? In my line of work, we appeal to facts. But I am told that a reliance on facts to form opinions is not the way many people think, and those who live comfortably with their beliefs do not feel the logical strain of placing their full faith in science on the one hand (pharmaceuticals, GPS, voyages to the moon, iPads) while deftly excising the inconvenient parts (climate change, dwindling fossil fuels, toxic pollution) from their belief system. Decision-making isn’t about weighing the facts to find truth or trusting the experts—instead truth is “truth,” a complex amalgam of cultural biases, linguistic differences, swooning narratives, and frames of reference.

As non-scientists, we can be much more confident in our beliefs in part because they are so rarely challenged. We listen to talk radio that we agree with, watch TV shows that reinforce our beliefs, and have friends that share our interests, background, and rough socioeconomic level. The advantage of having a thousand channels at our fingertips is that we can avoid alternate perspectives so completely that eventually, like the tree falling in the forest, we may forget they exist. And so we speak often of certainties and absolutes, something scientists do not. This is where we run into trouble. I am as certain of climate change as I am of evolution or gravity, and yet both are referred to as theories by scientists. Maddeningly, scientists continue to speak of likelihoods, not certainties. Ranges of probabilities, not absolutes. Because of this perceived uncertainty, laypeople act like terminal patients who have just been given a month to live, wildly overestimating the margin of error and grasping at small discrepancies in the data that scientists freely admit to and refuse to completely discount. We cling to this rounding error and declare the issue still debatable. When the scientists have gone back to work, we are left with our own interpretations and “points of view.”

But my point of view is irrelevant. I have absolutely no scientific background or training, so I bristle a bit when asked to make up my own mind about climate change. I am not a scientist, which is why I defer to experts on matters of science. I will gladly offer my opinion about chocolate vs. vanilla, but since I have never taken a core sample of paleolithic ice in Antarctica or measured albedo in higher-latitude forests myself, I defer to the scientific establishment, which, say what you will about the practical drawbacks of peer review, does not suffer from a lack of rigor. Incorrect conclusions don’t stay uncorrected for long. Scientists tend to keep each other accurate and apolitical.

Who’s to blame? Ourselves first, for choosing to bury ourselves in a warm cocoon of ideology that acts as a kind of sensory-deprivation chamber, insulating us from the harsh and ever-shifting winds of data whistling ominously around and under us. But the press must also assume some responsibility, for reporting loudly on minor, and often routine, disagreements among scientists in an effort to appear balanced. The result is a windfall for marginal views trying to be heard. If three percent of researchers disagree with the other ninety-seven percent (as is the case in climate science), they often get the headline and half the coverage—an arrangement that draws eyeballs, perhaps, but is ultimately dishonest. Journalism is hard, but the profession has no licensing program. And with no way left to pay for itself, we are left with decimated newsrooms emptied of reporters who once successfully navigated ethical minefields, and thousands of allaboutme.blogspot.commers who show up routinely in news aggregators, much to their own delight. (And yet the vast majority of twittered links [requisite mention of social media, check] are to traditional media.)

And so I ask, should we keep trying to convince the unbelievers? A survey from Public Agenda found that over half of Americans couldn’t correctly identify a renewable energy source like wind or solar and 39 percent couldn’t name a fossil fuel. Never mind the renewable energy—over a third of Americans scratched their heads, thought for a moment, and still couldn’t answer “gas”? If so many Americans are unaware that petroleum products power their lives and bring them every single object they eat, sit on, wear, drive, or watch, it might be too much to teach them why we need alternatives to this magical mystery fuel. I am fully committed to abandoning the losing fight of trying to “re-frame the science” or “tell the story” in a way that appeals to this unreachable minority. Imagine all the time we’ll save if we can stop spinning the importance of clean energy and reduced fossil fuel use into personalized just-for-you narratives that resemble nothing more than patronizing versions of Mad Libs: “If you care about your family and its health, you should buy renewable energy and ride a bike because your neighbor is doing it too!” Focusing on solving problems is a much better use of our time, and it will eliminate the scattershot and ultimately futile approach to finding Messaging That Works.

This does not mean we stop educating people about the importance of environmental action—in fact we have barely begun that task. I’m proposing instead abandoning those who have seen the evidence, know the issues exist, but still deny that climate change is happening and that we are the cause. Those without a scientific background who say they do not “believe” in something accepted as fact in the scientific community deserve to be left at a windswept crossroads with their hunched forebears still carrying on about geocentrism, phrenology, astrology, and the flat earth. I imagine it is a lonely place, and am amazed that each generation produces willing representatives of the pseudoscientific fringe to send there, but once again, here we are. They may say whatever they wish, but science is always right in the end. And it brings pictures.

There will always be those with entrenched views, who through ideology or inertia can’t or won’t see the story in the numbers. Instead of expending our energy trying to get them to see the apple in their hand, I propose we abandon them to their beliefs, and instead focus on advancing the science about our effect on the planet, and the technological and policy solutions that can bring us back into alignment. It’s important not just for the planet, after all, but for the health and financial well-being of you, your family, and future generations.

Jeff Swenerton is the communications director at CRS, and has flown 11,457 miles so far in 2011, effectively negating all the commuting to work by bicycle he has done since 1997.

by Robin Quarrier

Urban beekeeping is part of a larger urban back-to-the-land movement that also includes raising chickens and gardening on a larger scale, and is at least in part a response to the environmental costs of factory farming and transporting produce over long distances. San Francisco has many such urban farms, and some of these farms are expanding operations into beekeeping to aid in the pollination of the crops, including Hayes Valley Farm, Finny Farm, and Alemany Farm.

Bees love San Francisco almost as much as I do. There are a number of reasons why San Francisco is ideal for urban beekeeping. San Francisco has a mild climate, and bees can be kept without migration of hives, resulting in less stress on the bees. Tees, shrubs, and many plants flower ten months of the year reducing the need for the bees to stock honey for the winter. Environmental policies and community organizations help also by supporting a healthy environment for bees.[1]

All that said, honeybees are up against strong forces. There is even a bee saboteur in San Francisco. In July 2010, someone intentionally sprayed pesticide at the entrance to three urban hives located at Hayes Valley Farm, two acres of community farm land in what was formerly the central freeway. The saboteur killed about 300,000 bees, costing Hayes Valley Farm roughly $2,000.[2]

Even if you get the consent of your neighbors, sometimes the bees simply fly away. At an urban beehive in Seattle, the bees decided to upgrade to a sweet gum maple tree in the next-door neighbor’s yard and the local Master Beekeeper had to be called to bring the bees home. First he took one of the racks out of the original hive and brought it over to the new congregation, in hopes that the bees would be reminded of home sweet home and would miss the smell of familiar wax. Ideally, some bees would either remember the hive, or see it as a new and better option than the fixer-upper sweet gum tree. These bees would perform the waggle dance[3] and lure the rest of the hive to repopulate the hive in a couple of days. In this case the bees did not want to go home, or alternatively, the bees that rediscovered the old hive were not particularly good at the waggle dance.

Even the hives that are not tormented by vandals, or tempted away from their hives by sweet gum maples are at risk. My uncle had a hive on his farm in Acworth, New Hampshire. Eight years ago, many of the nearby hives collapsed and he began taking preventative steps to protect his hive from parasitic bee mites. He had success for many years leaving menthol cough drops around the hive (though the bees might have preferred honey lemon flavor).

Cough drops alone might not suffice to save the bees. In 2007, 30–70 percent of the hives of the European honeybee (the primary bee kept by humans, used for pollination and honey purposes) died off, a phenomena called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Most of the current research indicates that there are combinations of factors that cause CCD, including weather conditions and parasitic bee mites. In the 1980s, two non-native species of parasitic mite infested North American honeybees. One of the species, Varroa destructor, has proven especially fatal. Another prominent factor is Israel acute paralysis virus, which impacts protein production within the cells.[4][5][6]

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), there are a number of crops that won’t grow without the help of honey bees, including apples, cucumbers, broccoli, onions, pumpkins, carrots, avocados, and almonds. NRDC estimates a potential loss of $15 billion worth of crops if honeybees were to become extinct.[7]

What can we do to help the bees? One idea is to get involved with ecosystem rehabilitation and development projects. These projects can provide pollen and nectar sources needed to sustain healthy populations of bees. Backyard gardens including a diversity of densely packed bee-friendly flowers are helpful in providing nectar and pollen for urban foragers. Purchasing pesticide-free produce can also help incentivize bee-friendly growing practices. Or, if you really want to get involved you can don a beekeepers suit and start a backyard hive yourself.

Robin Quarrier is in-house counsel at CRS and an avid backyardist. She can be reached at robin [at] resource-solutions.org.

by J.P. Rose

While most Americans have heard of climate change and choose to either accept or reject the scientific consensus that it is occurring, pollution from carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gases contributing to climate change, also contributes to a lesser known but similarly serious problem. That problem is ocean acidification, and it threatens not only the vibrant beauty and biodiversity of Earth’s coral reefs, but also the livelihoods of millions of people. A new report by an international panel of scientists warns that the health of the oceans—and particularly of corals—is slipping faster than even pessimists had earlier predicted, and that mass extinctions of fish and coral may occur unless humans take action.[1]

I first became aware of the threats facing coral reefs after discovering the addictive sport of snorkeling. Over the past five years, I have found opportunities to snorkel in the Bahamas, Caribbean, and Mediterranean. During my underwater adventures, I have witnessed some colorful coral reefs that are bursting with hundreds of different fish species, and other less fortunate reefs that are grayish white and home to only a few species.

The grayish white of these less fortunate reefs reflects bleaching, which is caused by ocean acidification and increased water temperatures from climate change. Ocean acidification is the term used for declining levels of pH in the upper layers of the ocean due to the absorption of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.[2] The oceans are actually a huge carbon “sink” that absorb about forty percent of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities.[3] Yet, allowing the oceans to continue to act as a huge sponge for human-caused carbon dioxide emissions is unsustainable. When carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean, it changes into carbonic acid, which lowers the pH and increases the acidity of the ocean.[4] Heightened ocean acidity dissolves carbonate minerals such as aragonite that are essential to the growth of coral skeletons, a process known as calcification.[5][2]

Scientists at the Carnegie Institute for Science predict that this process will make 98% percent of present-day reefs unable to grow by 2050, if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue.[5] Unlike climate change forecasts, which do involve some degree of uncertainty, researchers have already verified and documented the process of ocean acidification due to absorption of anthropogenic (human-caused) carbon dioxide.[6] Unless humans substantially curb their carbon dioxide emissions, entire ecosystems including coral reefs may be gone within a generation.[1]

The decline of coral reefs profoundly impacts ocean ecosystems and the people who depend upon them.[7] Known as the “rainforests of the sea,” coral reefs are home to thousands of fish species, and act as a nursery for juveniles.[8] Areas with degrading coral are already experiencing reduced numbers of fish as well as reduced biodiversity, such as in Papua New Guinea, where approximately half of all fish species studied declined by over fifty percent.[9] Moreover, half a billion people depend on coral reefs to some degree for their food, income, or coastal protection while thirty million people are entirely dependent upon coral reefs for their livelihood.[10] In addition, the natural beauty of coral reefs and their colorful inhabitants lures many people (myself included) to countries surrounded by coral reefs, which these countries’ economies rely upon for tourism.

Notwithstanding the protestations of a few organizations funded by the oil industry [11] and the slanted reporting by some media sources [12], there is scientific consensus that atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing ocean acidification [13] as well as climate change.[14]  Even though predicting the exact amount of damage to reef ecosystems and the broader ocean is impossible, the weight of the evidence indicates we should utilize the precautionary principle and work together to reduce carbon dioxide emissions (for example, through switching to clean energy sources as a nation and individually). As the richest and most powerful nation on Earth, the United States has a moral imperative to take the lead in preserving the natural resources and technicolor biodiversity of the oceans.

J.P. Rose is a legal intern at CRS and a rising third-year student at Santa Clara University School of Law.

________________________

[1] Michael McCarthy, “Oceans on brink of catastrophe.” The Independent, 20 June 2011, available at http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/oceans-on-brink-of-catastrophe-2300272.html.

[2] Glenn De’ath, et al. “Declining Coral Calcification on the Great Barrier Reef.” Science Magazine, 2 Jan. 2009, available with free sign up at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5910/116.abstract.

[3] Yale University. “Oceans absorbing carbon dioxide more slowly, scientist finds.” ScienceDaily, 27 Nov. 2009, available at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091124140957.htm.

[4] University of California/San Diego. “Global Scientists Draw Attention To Threat Of Ocean Acidification.” ScienceDaily, 5 Feb. 2009, available at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090201124553.htm.

[5]Carnegie Institute for Science, “Coral Reefs Unlikely to Survive in Acid Oceans.” Physorg.com, 13 Dec. 2007, available at http://www.physorg.com/news116782258.html.

[6] Scott C. Doney, et al., “Ocean Acidification: The Other CO2 Problem.” Annual Review of American Science, 2009. 1:169–92, 170, available at http://www.psp.wa.gov/downloads/SP2009/0509/12b_doney_ann_rev_proof.pdf.

[7] “Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs.” Physorg.com, 2 June 2001, available at http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-ocean-acidification-coral-reefs.html.

[8] Shaun Wilson, “Climate change and coral reef habitat: implications for fish.” A Changing Climate: Western Australia in Focus, 27 March 2009, available at http://sponsored.uwa.edu.au/wamsi/__data/page/3811/A_Changing_Climate_abstrac_papers_.pdf.

[9] Geoffrey P. Jones, “Coral decline threatens fish biodiversity in marine reserves.” 25 May 2004, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of American, available at http://www.pnas.org/content/101/21/8251.long.

[10] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “How many people are dependent upon coral reefs?,” available at http://coralreef.noaa.gov/aboutcorals/facts/coral_dependence.html.

[11] Union of Concerned Scientists, “Scientists’ Report Documents ExxonMobil’s Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming Science.” http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWarming-tobacco.html

[12] Media Matters, “Climate Science Takes Another Spin Through The Fox Cycle.” 21 June 2011, available at http://mediamatters.org/blog/201106210009.

[13] Ocean, Carbon and Biochemistry, “A special introductory guide for policy advisers and decision makers.” Available at http://www.us-ocb.org/publications/oa_guide_english.pdf.

[14] Union of Concerned Scientists, “Scientific Consensus on Global Warming.” 7 March 2011, available at http://www.ucsusa.org/ssi/climate-change/scientific-consensus-on.html.

An interesting shift happened in 2010: consumer awareness of the term “carbon footprint” surpassed that of “renewable power” (according to Natural Marketing Institute (NMI)’s 2010 LOHAS Consumer Trends Database, and based on a nationally representative survey of 4,000 U.S. general population adults). We think this is significant because renewable power has been talked about for decades. Perhaps this is just the reason that consumers have latched onto the new kid in town.

As the graph below shows, “carbon footprint” awareness grew very rapidly up through 2009, up 24% annually since 2007, with most of the growth between 2007 and 2008, when media coverage of this issue was more prevalent. It now shows some signs of leveling off around the 70% mark, just ahead of renewable power. Of course, this is not the same as understanding these concepts, but awareness is an important first step.

Notably, the term “carbon offset” has not seen the same dramatic increase in awareness as carbon footprint and is still below its 2007 awareness level. While the two terms may be clearly linked within the business community, the same cannot be said of consumers. Carbon footprints are commonly discussed in consumer media, specifically when talking about how to reduce a carbon footprint, reports often refer to energy efficiency and conservation, use of renewable energy, and carbon offsets, among other approaches. Since carbon offsets are just one of the approaches to manage a carbon footprint, it could explain why awareness of this term is lower.

What does this mean and why is it significant?

• Consumers can pick up new language quickly: The growth in this term’s awareness is significant, and is a credit to mainstream media’s impact. While information overload is certainly an issue, in some cases it is worthwhile and important to introduce new concepts.
• Change can be a good thing: When words become familiar, consumers have a tendency to tune them out. Renewable power has been discussed for years and years, and doesn’t sound new, interesting, or differentiated. Many consumers are familiar with the promise of renewable power, but have yet to see it come to fruition given the price premium they are also familiar with. Carbon footprint, while related, gives you something new to talk about.
• Being concrete helps: A carbon footprint, though a bit nebulous to consumers in its calculation, is a discrete number that consumers can understand. What gets measured gets managed.
• Being personal also helps: For those concerned about their carbon footprint, it is like their weight—people know what it is, it’s personal, and it’s probably something most people want to reduce.

Language matters, as does being fresh, concrete, and personal. Perhaps consumers’ newfound familiarity with carbon footprints will help revitalize attention on the renewable power market. At a minimum, knowing the language consumers are using will aid marketers in breaking through the clutter and speak in terms consumers are perking up to.

Gwynne Rogers is LOHAS Business Director at Natural Marketing Institute (www.NMIsolutions.com), an international strategic consulting, market research, and business development company specializing in the health, wellness, and sustainable marketplace. She can be reached at gwynne.rogers@NMIsolutions.com.

by Anne-Franziska Sinner

As a European with professional experience in carbon market consulting, I nearly feel obligated to share some of my thoughts on carbon emission trading, especially since California is getting serious with the introduction of its own cap and trade scheme that will most likely take effect next year. Therefore, I will share some experiences and lessons learned from European emission trading in this post, and conclude with some remarks on expectations for California’s cap and trade scheme.

The European Union (EU) has committed to an overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction target of 20% of 1990 levels by 2020. The commitment would rise to 30% if other industrialized countries agree to do the same. The main market-based instrument to achieve this commitment is the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), introduced in 2005. Large emitters have the option to either reduce emissions internally at the source (for example, by investing in energy efficiency measures), or purchase emission reductions from companies that have undertaken similar activities, if this is a cheaper option. In this way, the market helps discover the most cost-effective emission reductions. This is environmentally acceptable because of the principal nature of global climate change: it doesn’t really matter where GHG reductions take place, as long as fewer emissions enter the atmosphere.

In theory, this sounds very reasonable and somehow efficient (something I can appreciate, as a German). Emission trading is just a tool, a market-based instrument to reach a defined environmental target of emission reductions (the cap). But in practice, you wonder if this really works. Do we achieve actual environmental improvements? Can we rely on trading as an effective way to reduce emission levels?

Since its start, the EU ETS has been proven to be a rather unstable and very complex market. Prices have ranged from more than €30/ton in 2006 to nearly zero in 2007 and 2008. The reasons for the strong price volatility and unstable market conditions have been shifting market regulations, political uncertainty, and insufficient availability of emission data. Nevertheless, market price developments indicated that the market somehow still functioned. It followed the theoretical idea that prices would reflect any over-supply or shortness of the market. And the political goal—the actual emission cap—besides being the major determining factor for the market’s over- or under-supply of credits, it has always been reached. So, yes, the EU ETS emission reduction goals have been achieved.

Today, European Union Allowances can be bought for around €16/ton which is generally considered as being too low to trigger strong carbon emission reductions in Europe. Consequently, one main conclusion could be, the cap is still too loose and not ambitious enough.

The main purpose of emission trading is to create an economic incentive to restructure energy production and shift consumption away from carbon-intensive products. A cap and trade scheme achieves this effect by putting a cost on emissions which means that the products of industries that emit GHG become more expensive and products with low or no associated GHG emissions become relatively cheaper. This is believed to be beneficial for society and the environment since emissions would be reduced, but through the lowest-cost mechanism. Therefore, a cap and trade scheme only works if the cost of carbon is high enough to promote investments into low- and no-carbon technologies. And once again, policy plays the most important role in a carbon market’s price structure.

Leaving aside the significant question marks over whether California’s cap and trade scheme and other proposed measures under AB 32 will work or not, transparency and predictability with regard to policy, regulations, and market information will be the key. It is the market fundamentals underlying the trading scheme that are the issue, and not the market mechanism itself. And in markets created by regulation—as emissions markets are—the problem lies in the target set by the government and how its regulators manage the market’s adherence to that target.

And one last thing I have learned in Europe: we should not expect miracles. It will take time for the market participants, as well as the market regulators, to adjust. Emission trading simply is a kind of compromise about environmental targets and economic principles. And compromises are never easy.

Anne-Franziska Sinner is a Green-e Energy volunteer. She can be reached at afsinner [at] resource-solutions.org.

by Dr. Jan Hamrin

It’s a sexy idea with an unsexy name – “Community Choice Aggregation” or CCA.

A California law passed in 2002 allows communities served by private utilities to aggregate citizens who choose to participate and procure electricity for them without having to buy the poles and wires, as would be required for municipalization. And if a community wants to get more renewables than is required by law and maybe quit supporting nuclear, this is one way of doing it. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is responsible for laying out the rules for cooperation between the community providing the power and the private utility delivering it. Transmission of the power and maintenance and safety of the lines remains with the incumbent electric utility. The rates charged for the electricity purchased by the CCA, which accounts for about half the electric bill, is set by the community power authority. The local authority is governed by the local elected officials (in the case of a single city or county) or representatives from the elected body of each community in the case of multiple jurisdictions banding together. Customers have the right to opt out of participation in the program at any time, so it is in the best interest of the CCA to stay competitive with the incumbent utility while providing the services desired by the community, such as more renewable energy.

That’s what motivated Marin County, which lies just north of San Francisco, CA, and seven of its cities to start the first CCA implemented in the state, the Marin Energy Authority (MEA). Marin officials realized that the single greatest action they could take to reduce greenhouse gasses was to move the county’s homes, businesses, and public institutions more quickly to renewable power than was happening through their utility, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). As a public authority, the MEA can purchase power from any providers and ultimately build its own power plants. The MEA is still in the early stages of implementation. It started serving commercial and industrial customers last year and will roll out to residential customers later in 2011. The MEA includes two electricity options: a “Light Green Option” that delivers as much green power as possible (currently about 26% compared to PG&E’s 16%) for no more cost to residents than they are currently paying; or a “Deep Green” option that delivers 100% renewable energy at the lowest cost available, which is currently only a penny per kilowatt-hour more than the Light Green option. The MEA recently requested bids for 40 megawatts of new renewable generation and received bids for over 600 megawatts.

The MEA has not had an easy time of it. PG&E opposed the program from the start with tactics that earned it sanctions from the CPUC. In addition, the concept of purchasing green power is not always easy for folks to understand. Some critics have said that it is impossible to deliver green electricity. That is true, but electricity is no different than other products we might choose to buy labeled “fair trade,” “FSC certified,” or “union made,” qualities linked to the production of products but not physically measurable in them. When we as consumers increase the demand for Fair Trade coffee, suppliers are moved to increase production. The same is true for electricity. When we demand more green power with our purchasing dollars than is required by law, suppliers are moved to develop more renewable generation. Since power flows into the grid wherever generators are located and flows out of the grid wherever there is demand, verification is about following the money so what consumers buy at one point is verified as supplied at another. Third-party certification, like the nonprofit Green-e Energy program, verifies that the money was spent as directed and that customers are getting what they paid for.

We will have to see how well the MEA is able to deliver on its promise of supplying a greener power mix at competitive prices, but so far they are off to a good start. San Francisco is also pursuing a CCA and Sonoma County recently decided to follow in Marin’s footsteps as well. So who would like to be next, maybe your community?

Jan Hamrin, Ph.D. is the founder of CRS and an energy policy expert. She can be reached janhamrin@HMWInternational.com.

by Jennifer Martin

With the lack of progress of a comprehensive federal renewable energy policy at the U.S. Capitol, it was heartening to hear about real progress being made in Europe during my recent trip to Brussels at the end of March. As a speaker at the RECS International Market Meeting, I had the opportunity to interact with companies, organizations, and government representatives who gathered together to discuss the state of European renewable energy policies and markets.
The European Union (E.U.) has adopted aggressive climate and energy goals—the “20-20-20” targets—which aim by 2020 to:

• Reduce EU greenhouse gas emissions at least 20% below 1990 levels
• Derive 20% of EU energy consumption from renewable resources
• Create a 20% reduction in primary energy use compared with projected levels through improving energy efficiency

The second bullet, the renewable energy target, applies to all energy use including transportation and heating fuels, not just electricity. If targets are met, renewable electricity will supply over 30% of Europe’s electricity by 2020. Although more than half of U.S. states have adopted renewable portfolio standards, currently California is the only state that comes close to reaching this level of increased renewable electricity generation by 2020 (see dsireusa.org for a state-by-state breakdown of these standards).

While the E.U. will derive an impressive level of its electricity supply from renewable energy in 2020 because of these government mandates, it is struggling with developing an effective voluntary market for renewable energy to complement these government efforts. There are several challenges facing the development of a vibrant voluntary market in the E.U—the region lacks a single, uniform approach to documenting and tracking renewable environmental benefits, and purchasing renewable energy comes without the ability to make greenhouse gas emission reduction claims. In some E.U. countries there is more than one system by which to document renewable energy ownership, making it difficult to ensure no double counting.

Despite the U.S.’s lack of progress on a national renewable energy policy, the U.S. has succeeded organizing a well-functioning voluntary market. Each consumer and organization in the US has the option to push overall renewable energy use beyond what is required by state (or future federal) renewable mandates by participating in the voluntary renewable energy market. Since 2004 more renewable electricity from new facilities has been purchased by voluntary purchasers than contributed to all state-level RPS programs combined (see Green Power Marketing in the United States: A Status Report, p.10).

Why has the U.S. voluntary market been so successful compared to Europe? There are a few reasons, but top among them is that we have developed a national framework for claims and ownership of renewable energy attributes that allows a voluntary purchaser to be assured that their purchased is not also being double claimed by a government program or any other party, and that the renewable energy is above and beyond that required for any government mandate. Many individuals and businesses in Europe are interested in supporting renewable energy if programs are available that support strong environmental claims. While there are a variety of country-specific programs and labels across Europe aimed at driving new renewables, there is yet to develop an E.U.-wide market for voluntary purchasers that offers the same guarantees of environmental benefits and no double claims that has developed in the U.S. Ongoing work by many of the organizations at the meeting in Brussels, and cooperation with green power programs, including those in the U.S., may lead to increased clarity and options for European renewable energy purchasers.

Jennifer Martin is executive director of Center for Resource Solutions. Contact her at jennifer@resource-solutions.org.

Photo Courtesy The Wind Ninja

by Alex Pennock

Center for Resource Solutions (CRS) may be most recognized for its Green-e programs, but it works to promote renewable energy in many more ways. Since 1999, CRS has been involved with the Energy Foundation’s China Sustainable Energy Program (CSEP), which aims to build capacity within China to expand energy efficiency and renewable energy policy and link Chinese and international experts in these areas.

CRS currently oversees the work of a team of such experts focusing on technical barriers to widespread renewable energy development in China, including barriers to implementation of the national renewable energy law (CRS provided some input to its development), provincial renewable energy planning, data collection on wind performance, and integration of large amounts of renewables onto the electric grid. This team is made up of consultants as well as experts from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Georgetown University, Black and Veatch, Fichtner Consulting, and Exeter Associates. More background is available on the CRS website.

One of the team’s major accomplishments in 2010 was conducting a series of workshops and trainings around the issue of wind integration. As significant numbers of wind facilities are integrated into the electric grid, a number of issues can arise, largely because wind turbines turn only as the wind blows, making predicting wind output difficult and keeping a consistent amount of generation happening over the grid an even more complicated balancing act. How the U.S., China, and the rest of the world deal with this varies, and addressing this issue will have major benefits for China’s electricity emissions.

Over the course of three visits to China, the project team held workshops to identify integration-related issues in China, train Chinese energy officials and others on wind integration studies, and finally to discuss the analysis, results, and next steps at the China-U.S. Renewable Energy Grid Integration Workshop. Held December 7–8, 2010 in Beijing, this final workshop was co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and Energy Foundation, and was organized by the China Electric Power Research Institute (CEPRI) and the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Among the roughly 200 participants were many other major Chinese governmental departments, academics, non-profits, experts, industry representatives, and electric companies.

While a wide range of topics and issues was discussed, a number of key areas for further work were identified. These included:

• Grid Codes. The requirements that generators have to meet in order to connect to and operate on the grid in China has allowed wind generation to drop off all at once in the event of certain grid disturbances, increasing the impact of sudden loss of their generation as overall wind capacity rises. Revisions to these codes to require wind to continue to operate during these disturbances could mitigate their impact and allow more wind generation to be safely integrated.
• Wind Forecasting. China tends to forecast wind availability, and storms and their impact on wind generation, less accurately than most areas of the U.S. Increasing the detail of wind forecasting would allow for wind generation to be predicted better and for other generation on the grid to be planned better to support the resulting wind generation.
• Balancing Areas. The larger a geographic area you have to work with when balancing the generation of renewables with baseload generation, the easier it is to have a higher proportion of renewables. In the U.S., this balancing occurs over large regions encompassing many states, whereas in China balancing tends to happen at the provincial level. As more new transmission is built in China, increasing the size of balancing areas could allow for more renewable energy.
• Grid and Generator Flexibility. How quickly other grid-connected facilities can start or stop producing electricity to accommodate fluctuations in wind generation differs in the U.S. and China for a few reasons. Natural gas–fired generators can ramp up and down quickly, making the U.S. grid flexible enough for more wind than China’s, since coal generators tend to be slower to respond, and China’s generation comprises more than 70% coal. Also, especially in northern China, coal generators produce both electricity and heating used in buildings, meaning that taking coal offline when the wind blows (which is often at night, when heating is most needed) has an impact beyond the electric grid. And since coal facilities are often located in less urban, less affluent areas, towns rely more heavily on the revenue generated by high amounts of coal generation, and aren’t provided any special payment when coal ramps down to allow renewables to generate instead.

Presentations on these and other topics from the second and third workshop are available on the Energy Foundation website, as are many other reports and presentations on renewable energy in China.

Further work will be done by the CRS team and workshop attendees to research and address these and other issues. Following on the workshops, a delegation of attendees will attend Utility Wind Integration Group meetings in Kansas City in the next few weeks in order to collaborate with and learn from U.S. entities that work directly with these issues. As the U.S. and China continue to make broad announcements and agreements about the importance of clean technology and renewables, the sort of work on the technical details behind the agreements undertaken by the CRS team, and by many others involved in both countries, becomes even more essential.

Alex Pennock is manager of Green-e Energy. He can be reached at alex [at] resource-solutions.org.

by Jay Carlis

I spent some time last week in Washington D.C. meeting with staff in a number of Senate offices. I was there representing the Renewable Energy Markets Association (REMA), a trade association for renewable energy marketers, developers and suppliers focused on building and maintaining robust markets for renewable energy in the U.S. As reports of early-stage discussions regarding possible Clean Energy Standard (CES) legislation at the federal level have emerged, REMA wants to make sure that lawmakers understand the value and importance of the voluntary market for renewable energy.

A CES, as some have proposed, looks like it may be more widely politically palatable than the Renewable Energy Standard (RES) that had been discussed in the last Congress. The idea behind an RES is that it would require electric utilities in the U.S. to obtain a meaningful portion of their electricity from renewable resources, like wind, solar, biomass, etc. A CES, as preliminary public statements from the Obama administration and other lawmakers indicate, would focus less on the renewable nature of the energy source and more on its emissions profile. So low emissions energy sources like nuclear and even natural gas could be big components of a CES. Of course, renewables could still play in a CES due to their emissions profile (or lack thereof). At this point, it is so early in the conversation that trying to read the tea leaves is probably not a great use of time.

Making sure that lawmakers preserve and protect the voluntary market is a worthwhile exercise, however, even this early. Because either a CES or RES is focused on creating a mandate, it is easy to overlook the voluntary activity of hundreds of thousands of residential and business customers who are making a choice to purchase renewable energy through their utility, electric supplier or an independent marketer. After all, policymakers make policy, set laws, create requirements and mandates. It is business and entrepreneurs who have created the voluntary market to meet the demands of customers who don’t believe that the policy, either at the state or federal level, goes far enough toward building a clean energy future for the nation.

There are always going to be citizens (myself included) who don’t believe that something like 20% renewable by 2020 is enough. I think we have the technology and know-how to go much bigger, 50% by 2020, 80% by 2030 are well within the realm of possibility, I believe. And I think we should be willing to invest in it. Of course, there are those who disagree pretty emphatically these days. The nature of our democracy usually means that a policy approach that embraces compromise is the one that succeeds. And that’s probably a good thing.

The profoundly impactful story of the voluntary market for renewable energy is that it allows people like me to put my own dollars to work toward building that future that I want to see. There’s no mandate or requirement for me to do so. I just make the choice. I always say that when 100% of Americans choose renewable energy, we’ll be at 100% renewable energy. Nobody wants the voluntary market to go away. It is a great free market, private enterprise story that we all can agree on regardless of political inclination. We just need to make sure that future policy doesn’t have unintended consequences that limit the ability of Americans to freely choose their source of electricity and invest their own income in creating the outcome they want to see: more clean, renewable energy powering our nation.

Jay Carlis is President of the Renewable Energy Markets Association and Vice President, Retail Division, of Community Energy, Inc.

by Tomo Sandeman

Becoming an environmentally conscientious person is a slippery slope of guilt and anxiety: each time I have taken a step towards trimming my carbon footprint I find that it never seems to be enough. When turning off lights and recycling cans was no longer enough I switched to vegetarianism, and once there I next had to start worrying about how much I fly. Now I am ashamed even just thinking about my food miles and water footprint, and I feel a pang of guilt every time I buy exotic fruit. And for each minor victory I am faced with the prospect of just how much more I could be doing, and just how staggeringly small my positive contribution is.

A central issue that we seem to struggle with in the fight against climate change is the divide between personal and system-wide causation and responsibility. In 2004 the average American’s carbon footprint was 19.84 tons of CO₂ equivalent[1]. By global standards this is a hefty amount, nearly 5 times greater than the world average of 4.25 tons. But these figures are almost meaningless when compared to emissions from the power plants that supply us with electricity. America’s dirtiest coal plant, Plant Scherer in Georgia, emitted 27.2 million tones of CO₂ in 2007[2]—one plant alone, and only a moderate sized plant at that, with a generating capacity of 880MW. In the face of such figures, it can be hard to see how our individual actions are important. This is particularly the case since not all of the electricity produced (and any associated CO₂ emissions) is destined for our electrical sockets, but rather a good proportion of it is wasted in inefficient transmission systems.

So should we as individuals be concerned with reducing our footprint? Or should we just sit back and let regulation and market pressure force electricity production and other aspects of our carbon-intensive lives towards better solutions? The uncomfortable reality is that those 60g of CO₂ that are saved when I gnaw on celery instead of a hearty steak are still important, even if the contribution is so small it hardly makes a difference. One way of overcoming apathy in the face of the enormous difference between individual vs. collective responsibility is to use a moral argument. James Garvey’s short and hard-hitting book, The Ethics of Climate Change provides powerful alternatives to more traditional approaches that try to make us live more sustainably. Rather than attempting to scare us into action—polar bears and so forth—Garvey demonstrates that we have a moral mandate to stop behaving in ways that we know will harm other people and organisms, regardless of how (in)effective our individual actions are.

While efficiency-seeking energy companies and target-setting governments are more likely to respond to economics and politics, it is through appeal to our sense of morals that we as individuals can be influenced to change. Shifts in societal moral norms are already being seen, albeit on a limited scale, through the rise of green certification and grassroots sustainability movements. The good news is that since both top-down and bottom-up changes will be needed to make society more sustainable, this is a fundamental component of a better future. The bad news is that we will never, and indeed should never, be able to eat a steak or take a weekend mini-break to the Caribbean without feeling guilty that we are doing something deeply immoral. It’s a slippery slope towards sustainable eco-guilt, and the only way forward is down.

Tomo Sandeman is a research volunteer at CRS and a recent graduate from Oxford University’s Environmental Policy Master’s course. He can be reached at tomo [at] resource-solutions.org.

[1] http://timetric.com/index/hCfoSSD9R36XwNfBC4osbQ/

[2] http://www.environmentoregon.org/uploads/3c/22/3c22bfda9778f49da4787cbd9f4c9964/Americas-Biggest-Polluters-Report-Web.pdf

by Anne-Franziska Sinner

The last blog entry talked about the UN Climate Change conference in Cancun and the actual limitations of international policy negotiations. The main conclusion of Todd Jones, the author, was that the high-level policy negotiations are unlikely to yield the results needed to address climate change. Any international agreement, he wrote, would be based on assumptions far from reality, “a plane separated from any real time or place”.

I basically agree but just wonder, besides global policy agreements, what other means are there to trigger local action? How can we initiate local activities and initiatives to actually address climate change? How can people be motivated to reduce their footprint? And is there reasoning behind people’s “do-nothing” attitude, other than convenience?

Recently, I went to a public talk actually addressing the same kind of questions. It was arranged as a panel discussion by NetImpact.org [1] and announced with the title “Climate Change Policy Update— Looking Forward to the Next Decade Locally and Globally.” The panel, consisting of different climate policy experts and stakeholders, was supposed to stimulate ideas for local initiatives addressing climate change. The aim of the discussion, announced in the introduction was to give the audience ideas, for “how to make a difference, as an individual or/and a business.” During the discussion, Stacy Jackson, one of the panelists and a Ph.D. student at U.C. Berkeley, cited a survey by Yale University were they interviewed people about their knowledge on climate change. More than 60% admitted that they do not know enough about climate change. The discussion went on and Jackson concluded that there is a definite need for more education on the scientific background of climate change and the greenhouse effect. Moreover, speakers from the audience argued that education is a challenge, because the science behind climate change is too difficult. And this might be the main reason why people do not get active, because they simply do not understand.

Thinking about these arguments, I actually do not fully agree. Of course, education in general is one of the most important approaches to address climate change. And of course I support the idea to put effort into this. However, I do not agree that the science behind climate change is so difficult that people would be hindered in actually getting active.

As an Environmental Volunteer[2] I sometimes teach environmental science in primary schools, including climate change and the greenhouse gas effect. The kids from age 7–10 perfectly understand the basics and problems behind climate change. And it is actually not that difficult to understand that we produce greenhouse gases at a higher rate than the natural absorption rate of the planet.

Definitely, the school kids understand this and they usually have plenty of good ideas on what they can do against global warming, namely reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, they come up with ideas on how to do so, by reducing the use of fossil fuels, for example. Indeed, the kids are very smart and already know a lot. Likewise, I do believe this applies to adults as well.

Hence, the lack of scientific knowledge I do not really accept as a reason for the lack of local initiatives addressing global warming.

Of course, I concede a point to Stacy Jackson, that more education is necessary. However, I think education should focus on real practical mitigation measures and opportunities to reduce emissions rather than on the scientific facts about climate change. People need to know, how they can easiest adjust their way of living in order to lower their carbon footprint.

People need to see alternatives to their prevailing, comfortable, status-quo life. They need to see opportunities and reasons for making a change. And there need to be incentives to actually lower their carbon footprint. It might be financial incentives, which usually work best with human beings, but it might also be incentives related to health, the natural environment or lifestyle—essentially more short term incentives.

But, if people do not know about the benefits or advantages of a change, they will probably not do it, because it’s inconvenient.

In fact, there are plenty of advantages, opportunities, incentives, in the small things people can do individually. But these positive benefits need to be better communicated. Here, I see the role of education, a channel to effectively communicate opportunities and practical measures to address climate change.

Additionally, I wish that the media would take its role in communicating more effectively. Instead of mostly reporting on high-level policy negotiations, it should focus on local initiatives. Because that is what people can refer to and where they learn from.

And mentioning the UN climate change policy negotiations again, through the conference agreements have to be made in consensus, which calls for the countries’ willingness to a compromise solution. In fact, since we expect politicians to compromise to find a global agreement and define effective mitigation measures which could be broken down to local activities and incentives, shouldn’t we do the same? Shouldn’t we compromise and change our individual behavior to a more environment- friendly and lower carbon-intensive way of living?

It is always easier to start small. Starting locally, we could indirectly communicate to others, our neighbors or friends. A bit like “learning by doing or watching.” People would learn from each other, educate one another, and probably get a better understanding of what climate change really is about.

Wouldn’t this make a difference?

Hopefully!

Anne-Franziska Sinner is a volunteer at CRS researching the European renewable energy market.

[1] http://www.netimpactsf.org/2010/11/04/monthly-gathering-climate-change-policy-update/

[2] Environmental Volunteers is a non-profit organization teaching environmental science in schools. http://www.evols.org/

The author with former U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer in Bonn, Germany.

by Todd Jones

Hey, guess what? “The beacon of hope has been reignited and faith in the multilateral climate change process has been restored?” I bet you didn’t know that. In fact, I bet that even if you had heard that the 16^th Conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations ended on December 10 (or even began in the first place the week before) this wouldn’t have been your conclusion.

The meetings in Cancún produced the “Cancún Agreements,” the legal status of which is yet to be determined, and the broad effect of which is merely to “bring the main Copenhagen outcomes formally under the UNFCCC.”[1] The two-track negotiating process which began in Bali and which was supposed to finish up in Copenhagen last year was extended again. There was no clear signal on whether or not the Kyoto Protocol will continue into a second commitment period, and there is no new agreement with mitigation obligations to replace it. We do now have a shared vision for long-term cooperative action, which can “guide the policies and actions of all Parties,” and agrees to “work towards identifying a global goal for substantially reducing global emissions by 2050,” as well as the formal recognition of mitigation pledges of several developed and developing countries (which unfortunately, even if they are met, will not alone bring about the shared vision). There were other concrete outcomes as well: a NAMAs registry, a Green Climate Fund, a Technology Mechanism, a Cancún Adaptation Framework, and a clear signal on REDD+.

Still, Cancún’s greatest success is that negotiations didn’t disintegrate completely—that any agreement was reached at all through the existing procedural infrastructure. Cancún represents a middle ground between the high of Bali and the low of Copenhagen. This doesn’t sound like the “beacon of hope” that UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christina Figueres describes. So why would she make such a declaration?

For an answer, I reference my own experiences at these negotiations. In 2008, I attended two weeks of intercessional meetings of subsidiary bodies in Bonn, Germany, as well as the COP 14 meetings in Poznan, Poland as a member of “civil society,” a representative of my school’s own NGO.

Of the many things I learned, I consider the most important to be this: even the most distinguished, high-level representative from the most powerful Party or Group will literally run you down to get to free food.

But the second most important thing I learned is more relevant here, and it is this: semantics are everything. On first thought, I was frustrated by this. These negotiations did not appear to be about climate change mitigation and adaptation at all; they appeared to be about the Parties, and power. The Parties simply didn’t want to agree, and the extent to which going through the motions of these meetings was helping in that respect seemed insignificant.

On second thought, however, the importance of semantics in international negotiations on climate change seems to represent something more complicated. Semantics reveal, instead of obfuscate, the character of international climate change mitigation and adaptation. Annelise Riles, though she wrote 10 years earlier, shared many of my observations on international meetings on global issues. In her fantastic 1998 article entitled “Infinity Within the Brackets,”[2] she suggests that the “meaning” in international meetings is only revealed as patterns, when the entire body of work is assembled and can be considered at once, and that this is the unavoidable result of attempts in international negotiations and documents to “make visible” a vast heterogeneity of perspectives and localities. She interpreted the singular focus on semantics and technicality as an implicit practice, as an abstraction from reality that mirrors the abstraction embodied by a “global” negotiation or document. The “matter of concern,” climate change, is not lost as I first thought, rather it is distinct from individual meetings and documents; it doesn’t exist as a whole.

In other words, in international negotiations, the point is not to find an effective solution to climate change, but to find a solution in which everyone is ‘visible.’ This explains the tedious technicality of these meetings; it is the result of serving the vast heterogeneity of perspectives with a single solution. Though climate change is often described as a global problem, the issue of climate change cannot be accessed at the global level, and therefore progress or action on climate change cannot be the purpose of these meetings. As Ms. Riles suggests, it is the purpose of these meetings to build something (internationally) that can be taken apart later (locally), and it is only at this point that progress or meaning becomes concrete. This “progress” or level of action on the issue was implicit from the start. As a result, the lack of progress is often blamed on localities, on implementation, rather than the international process itself.

This also might explain why Figueres regarded these negotiations to be such a success.

Though this understanding of the international process perhaps helps us to appreciate the importance of semantics, it nevertheless leads to a similar conclusion regarding the matter of concern—the international process is unlikely to yield the results needed to address climate change and other “global” problems. This is precisely because it establishes ideals of “local,” “national,” and “global,” which are all constructed based on assumptions made at a self-contained international level, a plane separated from any real time or place. This is evidenced, for example, in the distinction made between developed (Annex I) and developing nations (non-Annex I), and the ongoing challenges surrounding this distinction. Perhaps these assumptions demand criticism along with the negotiations necessitated by them.

Bottom line? Both the frustrated citizen that can only see semantics and the thoughtful student of Annelise Riles can agree that the international level is not the level for action, and the distance between these negotiations and action on climate change is implicit and permanent.

Todd Jones is the manager of Green-e Climate, a certification program for carbon offset products. He can be reached at todd [at] resource-solutions [dot] org.

[1] Akanle, T. et al. (2010). “Summary of the Cancún Climate Change Conference: 29 November – 11 December 2010.” Earth Negotiations Bulletin, COP 16 Final, Vol. 12, No. 498, 13 December 2010. Published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). Pp.29.

[2] Riles, Annelise. (1998). “Infinity within the Brackets.” American Ethnologist 25(3): 378-398

by Allison Ford

Of all the environmental issues I have worked on energy has always seemed the most abstract. It isn’t cute and fuzzy and we don’t eat it. It’s the kind of thing we only notice when it’s gone. We know that our activities to source the majority of our energy are questionable (and getting more so), but the specifics easily get lost in the massive grid that separates the reality of energy generation from the light that floods the room when we hit the switch.

It wasn’t until this summer, when I was called out to work as an oil spill responder for BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig blowout that the importance of thinking about where our energy comes from took on a very tangible form. The form was hundreds of terrified, oiled pelicans that I was tasked with keeping alive.

I come by environmentalism as an animal lover. Saving the whales sold me as a kid, and although I’d like to think my understanding of the situation is a little more nuanced by now, my love of animals remains a driving force in my desire to shape a more sustainable world. I have worked with animals for years, and when I became the director of a small non-profit dedicated to saving sea otters, it came with the opportunity to train for oil spill response. I had just completed this training when Deepwater Horizon hit. Within weeks I got called out.

During my work with sea otters I had advocated against offshore oil drilling, for proper agency oversight of such activities when they did occur, and for solid environmental review of oil activity. Overnight I went from trying to prevent an environmental disaster to putting on hazmat gear, and cleaning one up.

I don’t have to tell you that the spill was devastating. You’ve seen the pictures, no doubt. You may have stopped looking at some point when it got to be too much, but I’ll bet that image of an oil soaked pelican is still in your head. Mine too. Pelicans so covered in sticky oil that tar balls formed inside their bills from trying to preen it out. A gull coated in thick, liquid goo. Majestic, obstinate gannets, slowly fading away. More than 2,000 live, oiled birds were brought to one of the wildlife rehabilitation centers set up in the Gulf. Of those, just over 1,200 have been released. Those are big numbers, but to me each individual bird in itself is a story about the tragedy of the spill.

The story of rescuing oiled wildlife is often painted as the single story of hope in a tragic situation—these birds are being given a second chance. In some ways this is true, but it’s a costly second chance. Working with wild animals isn’t like taking care of a cat or a dog. Wild animals are, well, wild. As far as they are concerned, we are predators who have them trapped in an inescapable situation. The stress of handling, on top of the physiological impacts of oiling, can be fatal.

Never had I had such a tangible understanding of the importance of environmental policy, management, and alternative solutions to fossil fuels. Each pelican I washed was a reminder of what I needed to focus on when I left the spill. That didn’t happen until September, but when it did, I set out to learn more about renewable energy and the path ahead.

It’s been a few months since I left the spill, but I still get a disproportionate thrill when I see a pelican fly by. I think back to the oiled birds whose feathers were too soiled to take flight, and I hope that the bird I am watching soar never has to go through that. Holding oil companies accountable, and asking government agencies to follow proper oversight is a step towards that, but so is promoting alternative sources of energy that we don’t have to pay for in pelicans.

There are a million reasons to rethink energy—climate change is probably the biggest. I know more than 1,200 smaller ones, flying around on a second chance.

Allison Ford is a research volunteer at CRS working with Green-e Energy. She can be reached at aford [at] resource-solutions.org.

Notes

1. I was trained to be a member of the Oil Spill Response Team by the International Bird Rescue and Research Center, based in Fairfield, California (www.ibrrc.org)
2. IBRRC was brought into Deepwater Horizon by Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research, based in Delaware. (www.tristatebird.org)
3. The tireless coordinator of local staffing and support in Louisiana was Louisiana State Animal Response Team (www.lsart.org)

by Robin Quarrier

The rain has started in the Bay Area. For at least one person in San Francisco, this year’s rain is causing barrels full of excitement. David Kyle, a sixth grade humanities teacher, has just finished installing his homemade rainwater harvesting system. The system is designed to capture rain runoff from his roof, divert it from the gutters and into two 60-gallon oak wine barrels next to his house. The barrels fill in a few hours of moderate rain. The stored rainwater can then be used to water his urban vegetable garden where he is currently growing red runner beans, tri-color beans, rainbow chard, buttercrunch lettuce, dinosaur kale, and potatoes, among others.

This all sounds simple enough, except when you factor in that the first wash of rainwater picks up all of the pollen, dust, bird droppings and other undesirables from the asphalt shingles on the roof. These particulates are potentially toxic and not ideal for use in an otherwise organic vegetable garden. Kyle solved this problem by designing a “first flush” system, automatically diverting the first flush of particulate heavy water down a hose, positioned slightly lower than the hose to the barrels. When this lower, first flush hose is full, the rest of the rain automatically flows into the top hose and is directed into the empty wine barrels. When the barrels are full, the pressure diverts any additional rain back down the gutter drain pipe on the usual course to the city sewer.

Also notable is Kyle’s backyard, which is completely covered with wooden decking. The garden itself consists of 12 EarthBoxes, 29″L x 14″W x 11″H (around $30 apiece) and two large pots. The oak wine barrels were donated from Kyle’s brother who works at Groth vineyards in the Napa Valley. The cost of this rainwater harvesting system, including building materials, hoses, couplings, bibs, diverter, was $225. “A common criticism of growing your own veggies is that it’s more expensive than buying them in the store. That’s absolutely untrue. With the addition of this rainwater harvesting system I’ll easily break even by 2025.” Kyle says with a chortle.

Kyle’s system uses RainReserve downspout diverter.

If you would like to learn more about rainwater harvesting you can see Rainwater Harvesting in San Francisco (2.3MB PDF), a brochure published through a partnership between San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission, Department of Public Health, and Department of Building Inspection.

Kyle also recommends Google SketchUp, a free architectural design tool. After studying the design of Medieval European architecture, his sixth graders designed their own castles, complete with turrets, drawbridges, and the occasional historically questionable flaming swordsman. Kyle found the program helpful to design a comparatively tame 3D mock up of his porch, rainwater piping, and gutter system.

Robin Quarrier is a Green-e Analyst and Counsel at CRS, a triathlete, and a frequent cyclist on the lonely backroads of the San Francisco Bay Area. Contact her at robin [at] resource-solutions.org.