Cities take lead in climate change

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--City governments' response to climate change ranges from cutting-edge distributed energy to adding more bike lanes and trees.

Climate change experts from four cities--London, Toronto, Chicago, and New York--spoke about the connections between sustainable urban design, energy, the economy, and human health on Monday at the Mass Impact Symposium, organized by the Boston Society of Architects and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Beijing traffic. Click on the image to see a photo gallery of different cities' responses to climate change.

(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)

The cities' climate action plans, some of which have yet to be fully rolled out, call for aggressive goals to measure, reduce, and monitor greenhouse gas levels--on the range of 50 percent to 80 percent in the next three decades.

Under that over-arching goal are dozens of programs, including promotion of green technologies to lower energy consumption in transportation and buildings.

"We can't just do one thing," said Ariella Maron, deputy director of New York's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. She said the city's plan covers clean energy, efficient buildings, transportation, and avoiding sprawl--all of which impact water, land use, and air quality.

Called PlaNYC, the program stems from simple demographics: another 1 million people will join its current population of 8.25 million by 2030.

It's not just New York. Urbanization is rapidly accelerating around the world. That means the "tipping point" toward greenhouse gas reductions will come from making cities more sustainable, particularly in developing countries, said John Fernandez, an associate professor at MIT's architecture department.

More than half of the world's residents now live in cities, and 85 percent of the world's population growth will be in urban areas in the coming decades, mostly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Fernandez said.

Green retrofits
Top on the list of these cities' programs is building energy efficiency. Overall, energy use in buildings is about one-third of the U.S.' energy use but it can be a lot higher in cities--in New York, it's 80 percent of energy use and rising.

Chicago requires city buildings requesting funding to meet the U.S. Green Building Council's Silver-level LEED certification.

But while cities can make visible commitments to environment stewardship, it's typically a drop in the bucket when it comes to carbon emissions. That's because 80 percent of buildings that exist today will still be around in two decades, making technologies to retrofit existing buildings more important, city representatives said.

There are also opportunities for individuals or neighborhoods to generate their own energy. Toronto is experimenting with a program called SolarCity to encourage communities to purchase solar hot water systems.

At the end of this month, the PlaNYC program will announce details of a program to lower buildings' carbon emissions 30 percent by 2017 by promoting micro-power generation and waste-to-power technologies, Maron said.

London, meanwhile, is exploring more futuristic approaches, where whole neighborhoods would generate their own energy.

Nicky Gavron, the former deputy mayor of London, said city planners envision replacing natural gas production either by producing bio-gas from organic wastes in anaerobic digesters or using waste to make synthetic gas through plasma arc gasification.

The energy from waste would be used in either individual or neighborhood combined heat and power systems. "We have an opportunity to usher in a new era of municipally owned enterprises around low-carbon technologies," said Gavron, who was member of a hydrogen committee.

Not keeping pace with technology?
City governments are eager to show leadership by adopting green technologies in their own operations.

Toronto's LightSavers pilot is testing to see whether more efficient LED lighting with controls can be used for street lights, parking garages, and pedestrian areas.

And the FleetWise plug-in hybrid pilot has allowed the city government to improve its fuel economy by 50 percent, said Philip Jessup, director of the Toronto Atmospheric Fund. In Winnipeg, Canada, already 70 percent of taxis are hybrids.

Water treatment is an important feature of climate change response, according to planners.

With more extreme precipitation, New York is enlisting trees to try to capture run-off and pollutants. The city is trying to add more green spaces to its streets and change the tree pit specifications so that they are big enough to retain more water, Maron said.

It's also looking to reestablish its mussel and oyster industry, which will filter pollutants from storm water run-off--a move that stresses energy-intensive treatment plants, she said.

"We are already feeling the impacts of climate change," with higher levels of precipitation and higher temperatures, she said. "If a category 3 hurricane hit New York, it's catastrophic."

Despite the good intentions, representatives from these cities said that politics--particularly with regard to funding--make climate change all the more challenging.

To get different sources of revenue, London has taken a minority stake in an energy services company that uses savings from energy efficiency to offset upfront investments.

Toronto's Atmospheric Fund was created and sustained by the savings from building energy retrofits.

Another challenge is that political institutions are falling behind the technology advances in areas like lighting and transportation, said Toronto's Jessup.

"The job descriptions, the bureaucracies, have not changed fast enough for these new technologies so they just don't get it," he said.

[vagreville]

What "climate change"? Can someone please tell me what change this is referring to? As far as the data goes the average temperature has not changed in the last ten years and before that we've seen a change of only one degree C. This is a crisis? Yes, a politically motivated, manufactured one that is!

[suyts]

Lol, some of the quotes here are priceless. "We are already feeling the impacts of climate change," with higher levels of precipitation and higher temperatures, she said. "If a category 3 hurricane hit New York, it's catastrophic."
Uhmm, a cat3 hurricane would always be catastrophic in NYC. Fortunately, the massive increase in hurricanes that have been predicted hasn't happened. While I know New York is experiencing some unusually warm weather, the earth is cooling and has been for a year and 1/2. We are now cooler than we were in 1980. Clearly, this shows that CO2 IS NOT the primary factor in climate change. Further, CO2 is credited to be the cause of an increase in the earth's vegetation.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/surprise-earths-biosphere-is-booming-co2-the-cause/
While everyone should be engaged in energy conservation, we should do it with a little reality interjected. For instance, all the funding(taxes) won't stop the sun from causing cycles of warming or cooling. I would submit, that people like Jessup are the ones that "just don't get it,"

[C_G_K]

Yeah, while they're at it, maybe governments should spend trillions of taxpayer dollars removing bogeymen from the closets of children around the world. Makes about as much sense as fighting "climate change". Climate always has changed and always will change, regardless of what we do. This is just another excuse for governments to micromanage everything you do, and make a killing doing it, at your expense of course.

Are there any software engineers here who actually believe climate can be accurately modeled using computer software? Saying models can predict climate 100 years into the future is the biggest load of bull I've heard in my lifetime.

[thelemurking]

Is Apple still suing NYC over that green apple logo?

[mark1214]

Unfortunately cities are run by politicians that are all scurrying to initiate "change" w/o bothering to check with real scientists. They are like Don Quixote. They think they are battling dragons when in fact they are fighting windmills or paper dragons. There are very real conservation issues, but global warming is NOT one of them. Please see www.icecap.us for information from real scientists, not failed politicians.

The recent ocean temperature survey covering the past 5 years showed no change in ocean temps. When the surprised researchers checked their data again they got the same result. The earth's climate does change-naturally-like it has for thousands of years.

[ToddWBeaver]

Fools who live in these cities obviously have too much money or else they wouldn't give it away to fight a non-existent problem. Why don't the spend the money to stop the tide from coming in, too?

[drtyrell]

Global Warming is a Hoax people. It's designed to destroy all first world countries with Carbon Credits that we'll have to buy from China and India who do NOT have to use their credits to manufacture products. The elite will also exterminate all of Africa who WILL have to use their credits. The Elite are preventing all African countries and Middle Eastern countries from achieving nuclear power so that when it comes time to pay for "Carbon Credits" they will be broke over night at $65/ton of coal burned.

SCIENTIFIC WAKEUP CALL: Carbon comprises .054% of the greenhouse gases and does NOTHING to raise temperature. Water is the #1 source of all heating. The world is a perfect machine that will never lose control of itself.

Stop the insane knee-jerk belief in science that no climatologist believes. Al Gore is NOT a scientist. NO computer can predict the weather tomorrow let alone years from now. You're all being duped like rats in a cage.

WAKE UP.

[earth080808]

Hoax or truth, we should be responsible for the habitat we live in.
We should take every single action with careful thought on Earth.
Value your time on Earth, pledge for Climate Change.
Make your pledge here http://earth.080808.com.my?act=pledgeMake

[eredux]

Check out this Interactive US Energy Footprint Chart, an interactive United States Energy Consumption Footprint chart, illustrating Greenest States and more. This site has all sorts of stats on individual State energy consumptions, demographics and State energy offices.

http://www.eredux.com/states/

[cybervigilante]

If there is no global warming, why are both icecaps melting? Is someone up there throwing a lot of salt on them ;')

Looks like all the procorporate loonies and liars visited today. All we need is more oil wars and more energy consumption.

[rallybird]

Some silly reactionary comments here. Why not make some positive changes to conserve energy and resources for our future generations to enjoy? whatever belief or religion motivates you (or doesn't), it just makes sense to reign in the consumption a bit.

[SallanFoundation]

2008 will be a landmark year in American politics, but not for federal climate legislation. The springtime follies in the Senate meant we?ll be waiting until next year, or perhaps the year after for any comprehensive national law. Until then, cities will remain the leaders and the laboratories in fighting climate change. From this ferment from below, progress will be made and some errors too and we will have the chance to learn how much it costs to become more energy efficient and cut our carbon footprint. If we seize this opportunity, we would get real time, real world numbers on both the cost of energy and the cost of using less of it and this information could be deployed as a front line tool in the local and the national policy arenas. In this precise way, local learning by doing could squelch the paralyzing mantra of climate protection versus economic growth and the savage attacks of politicians like Oklahoma Senator James Inhof who protest that climate legislation is a ?tax on the poor?, and the biggest government burden since FDR?s New Deal.

[se.rev]

solar electrical energy can produce gasses if a stoichmetric hydrogen or other combination type pop can fill a compressor tank instantly to power a pnewmatic drive system ,which im pretty sure run cold and release water vapour as air tools do, in the distant future we might beget global cooling ..great for traffic in warmer areas..get the guys at the lab on it

[se.rev]

maybe large forests would keep the earth cooler and break or slowdown the winds and we could make some more of them some how instead of ripping them out .

[hamed251]

i have anew idea about produce energy in masdar city. if you agree i can explain about.

[hamed251]

i have anew idea about produce energy in masdar city. if you agree i can explain about.

[hamed251]

i have anew idea about produce energy in masdar city. if you agree i can explain about.

[googoobaby7]

Everybody Stop.
THERE IS GLOBAL WARMING AND POLLUTION.
WAKE UP.