The Daily Score blog - Sightline Daily

Oregon's Wolves on YouTube

Eric de Place — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:17:00

In early 2008, state wildlife officials confirmed the presence of a younger female wolf in northeastern Oregon near the Eagle Cap Wilderness. A radio-tracking collar she'd been wearing since 2006 confirmed that she had migrated from a pack near Boise, Idaho. (She's pictured in the photo above -- an aerial shot taken by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. You can see a video of her here.)

Apparently, she's been doing well for herself in Oregon. Last week, ODFW captured excellent video footage of her in the rugged Imnaha region in the northeast corner of the state. She's now the alpha wolf in an unusually large pack of 10 animals, including what appears to be a large number of pups.

The return of wolves to Oregon seems to be happening at the same pace as their return to Washington, where wolves have now been confirmed in at least two separate locations.

Keeping PACE with Energy Efficiencies

Roger Valdez — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:26:07

Someone recently said “energy efficiencies aren’t low hanging fruit, they are the fruit lying on the ground.” Then why don’t people retrofit their homes? There are a lot of reasons, but one of them is finding the money to pay for efficiencies up front. While innovative financing tools (like my favorite bond financing) can help, they are only part of the solution.

An article in the New York Times this week called “A Stimulus That Could Save Money” traverses a well worn path in the discussion of energy efficiencies, asking the question “what will make people retrofit their homes?” The article doesn’t have any shockingly new ideas, but the discussion does surface the concept of Property Assessed Clean Energy financing—or PACE.

Now, sidestepping for a moment the obvious answer, “you can sell the energy efficient home for more money,” PACE is an interesting way of paying for the retrofits as part of regular property taxes. This is another version of “on bill” financing that puts the payments back on the owner’s property tax bill rather than on their utility bill.

PACE enables a property owner to pay for efficiencies over time, and if she sells the home, the new owner would pick up the payments as part of their regular property taxes. The program is funded and financed, typically, with bonds that are sold by local governments. PACE legislation allows bonds to be sold for this purpose and for a lien to be placed on property so the payments are attached to the property—not the owner.

New York State, with some fanfare, just this month passed PACE legislation and the Oregon legislature passed HB 2626 earlier this year, allowing PACE as a tool to create demand for retrofits.

Oregon’s legislation sets up the Energy Project Bond Loan Fund, and the Energy Revenue Bond Fund, allowing the state Department of Energy to sell bonds to finance local retrofits. In turn, the money generated from the sale can fund smaller loans, not to exceed $40,000 per project.

Oregon’s PACE program also provides funding of renewable energy projects, like solar, wind and geothermal, with money from these funds.

Since the legislation was just passed, it is going to be some time before we see how the program affects demand and whether it creates new jobs. California was among the earliest adopters of the program, passing their PACE legislation in 2008.

Now as much as I love the idea of government borrowing money using bonds to finance serious retrofits paid back on property tax bills (a twofer: debt and taxes!), PACE is not a silver bullet solution.

So far the California program started slow, inspiring only hundreds in a state with more than 5 million single family homes, to take on renewable energy and efficiency projects. And all 40 of the Berkeley residents participating in the program opted for solar panels, not efficiencies. There is nothing wrong with solar panels, but tricking out a house with expensive renewable energy equipment when the underlying house might be an energy hog doesn’t seem very smart. Nor is it a way to break through the static of multiple split incentives stalling demand for deep energy retrofits.

The California Institute for Energy and Environment (CIEE) produced a fine report earlier this year called Enabling Investments in Energy Efficiency: A study of energy efficiency programs that reduce first-cost barriers in the residential sector that studied a variety of financing tools intended to stoke demand for retrofits. Their work confirmed what we found (see our two pager on green jobs and energy efficiencies) when looking at how financing energy efficiencies can create green collar jobs: it is only one part of the over all solution. The CIEE concluded that:

Financing is one of many important tools to overcome barriers to implementing improvements in energy efficiency. It is valuable, but not sufficient on its own.

Conventional energy efficiency loan programs cannot address much of the need without significant public support.

New mechanisms are being developed to address key barriers. While these innovations hold great promise, they currently have limited to no experience.

And the review further concluded that the various financing programs have shown “little success in addressing the financial barriers faced by those most in need of financing, including those with the highest energy cost burdens as a percentage of income, low or fixed incomes, poor credit, and those in rental housing.”

However, attaching the financing to the property might make these sources of funding more accessible to these groups because it would tie the lien to an asset, the house or apartment building, meaning that the owner’s or renter’s credit would be less important.

Oregon’s PACE legislation is also on the lookout for jobs, requiring that contractors hired “employ at least 80 percent of employees . . . from the local work force,” and it establishes basic requirements and standard qualifications for project managers. This is a critical component that can create new career ladder jobs.

PACE is a good idea, and Oregon’s legislation has elements that could create fair access to real energy efficiencies and green jobs. But innovative financing tools, in order to get the maximum benefit ought to be embedded in a broader energy efficiency strategy.

As we continue to refine our chart reviewing energy efficiency programs we've decided to add a question mark. The question mark means that the program or idea has promise in a specific indicator area, but hasn't been around long enough to really prove itself.

A Womb of One's Own

Anna Fahey — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:15:10

This week, the Washington Toxics Coalition released a study that should raise the ire of pregnant women like me. Their findings in a nutshell: developing fetuses spend their first nine months in an environment that exposes them to a range known toxic chemicals. That environment? Their mothers’ bodies. That means my body.

The first-of-its kind study analyzed blood and urine samples from nine women in Washington, Oregon, and California during their second trimester of pregnancy, to test for 23 chemicals from five chemical groups. Their bodies were found to be contaminated with 13 of the 23 chemicals. “These chemicals can cause reproductive problems and cancer, disrupt hormonal systems such as the thyroid, and can impair brain development,” the study states.

So, why is my response ire and not panic? I guess I’m over the panic. During my pregnancy, I’ve been reading a lot about the toxics in my body and their potential effects on the fetus (and I'll be writing a lot more about this stuff in this blog series). I realize it’s too late for panic. Contrary to popular belief, my womb is not entirely my own.

I’m with the woman from this Seattle Post Globe story, Kim Radtke, who’s just plain angry. Like me, she made all the right personal decisions about her health and her pregnancy—she eats organic foods, she’s been meticulous about the products she uses, she's a midwife who's very conscious about healthy choices. Naturally, she was dismayed to learn she rated worst among the West Coast women tested for a particular class of chemicals: perfluorinated compounds. They’re used to make Teflon pans, clothing, furniture, and food packaging such as pizza boxes and fast-food containers. “That really kills me as a mom,” Radtke told the Post Globe. “I took the best care I could possible, yet this was beyond my control.”

Every woman tested was found to have been exposed to bisphenol A, delivered in such things as the lining of food cans. Each woman’s body carried two to four “Teflon chemicals”-- PFCs. All had detectable levels of mercury, known to harm brain development. And every woman was exposed to at least four phthalates, a class of chemicals that includes plasticizers and fragrance carriers found in ordinary items such as vinyl shower curtains and scented shampoos.

As the study points out, “the developing fetus is exquisitely vulnerable to the effects of toxic chemicals,” as it possesses “only a small proportion of the adult’s ability to detoxify foreign chemicals” while it “develops at a breakneck pace in the womb.”

The research project, by Washington Toxics Coalition staff scientist Erika Shreder, was conducted to spur legislators in Washington State and Washington, DC, to continue to rein in harmful chemicals in consumer products--and at the very least demand responsible labeling and disclosure by manufacturers. As the Post Globe reports, Washington State Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, says she will push for passage of the Safe Baby Bottle Act, which she introduced last year. (Yes, there are harmful chemicals in baby bottles--of all things!) It passed the House, but not Senate. It would prohibit Bisphenol A in baby bottles, children's food containers and sports water bottles. (The bill doesn’t extend to the Bisphenol A in the linings of canned foods.)

These are baby steps toward wombs that aren’t tainted with chemicals--and toward healthier moms and babies. But this is exactly the kind of policy where moms and moms-to-be should direct their energy—whether it’s panic- or anger-driven...or something else.

Image courtesy: Mahalie, Flickr.com.

Oregon's Shocking Hunger Stats

Eric de Place — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:26:51

By one measure of "food security," the new USDA hunger data released this week puts Oregon right in the middle of the pack. Its rate of food insecurity, is higher than the rest of the Northwest states, but only a little higher than the national average. Yet a closer look at the numbers reveals a more worrisome story.

Oregon's rate of "very low food security" is the second highest in the nation -- only Mississippi does worse -- and is far beyond than anything else in the Northwest. Getting enough to eat is a serious problem for 6.6 percent of Oregon households -- that's roughly 1 in every 15. Here's the official definition of very low food security:

The defining characteristic of very low food security is that, at times during the year, the food intake of household members is reduced and their normal eating patterns are disrupted because the household lacks money and other resources for food.

It's a very troubling figure, though it's consistent with what I remember seeing when I looked at these figures a few years back. (By contrast, the national rate of very low food security is only 4.6 percent -- though it's the highest in the 14 years since we've had consistent measurements. The rest of the Northwest states are clustered below the national average: Montana (4.4), Alaska (4.4), Washington (4.3), and Idaho (3.9).) It's also broadly consistent with Oregon's dire employment situation: the most recent federal figures put the state's unemployment at 11.5 percent, 6th highest in the nation and much higher than anything else in the Northwest.

Let's hope these new figures are enough to put a permanent end to the use of the incredibly grating neologism "funemployment."

Technical note: the margin of error for some states' hunger rates is fairly high. It's 1.14 for the rate of "very low food security" in Oregon, meaning there's a 90 percent chance that the real rate of hunger in Oregon is between 5.46 and 7.74.

How Carbon Markets Work in Europe

Eric de Place — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:21:37

In spite of what you may have heard, Europe's carbon market is working beautifully. The EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has been operational since 2005 and we're now getting a good look at how it functions. It turns out, it's a remarkable success story, both environmentally and economically.

Let's briefly review the major pieces of evidence.

1. European Environment Agency. A November 2009 report finds that the continent is well on its way to meeting its Kyoto targets thanks in large part to its cap-and-trade program. In fact, by 2007,14 countries had already exceeded their reduction goals, including the wealthy industrial giants of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. To wit:

EU‑wide policies are expected to contribute towards most of the planned emissions savings by the end of the period 2008–2012, in particular the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), the promotion of renewable energy sources, policies targeting the energy performance of buildings and internal energy market policies.

Here's a nickel summary from Joe Romm:

...the Europeans are poised to surpass their targets under the terms of the Protocol. It is no longer plausible for those who don’t want a U.S. cap-and-trade system to point to the European Trading System (ETS) as a failure. Quite the reverse.

...the EEA analysis concludes the EU-15 will not need to rely on offsets to meet their Kyoto target

(There's more good stuff at Treehugger.) Importantly, the reductions analyzed in the EEA report do not include the effects of the global economic downturn, which has unintentionally provided much steeper reductions.

2. The German Marshall Fund of the United States. A July 2009 report is a goldmine of valuable lessons from the European experience, but for now I'm going to focus just on the carbon market aspects.

From the executive summary:

1. Emissions trading works

MIT estimates that the EU ETS has cut European emissions by 120–300 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) during its first, highly imperfect phase—up to 5 percent of emissions from the covered sectors, despite excessive allocations of emissions allowances. It captured private sector attention like no other climate initiative, and its rapid introduction and impact contrasted with a decade of dispute over (failed) attempts to introduce a European carbon tax.

Recommendation: Develop an emissions trading system that learns from and improves upon the EU experience.

This is a hugely important point. The EU's cap-and-trade program was, indeed, highly imperfect. It relied on inaccurate estimates of emissions, it distributed too many carbon permits, and it distributed permits in a way that conferred windfall profits on polluters. But here's the kicker: it still worked! The ETS is ironing out its flaws and a future US program stands to benefit from Europe's lessons.

There's more good reading on this report at Climate Progress and Treehugger.

3. Pew Center on Global Climate Change. A May 2008 report provides additional context for understanding the ETS. There's too much in the Pew report to fully explicate in a short blog post, but I want to highlight some of the findings about the carbon markets:

The EUA market has exhibited the same characteristics as markets for tradable permits in the U.S., such as those for SO2 and NOx. Notably, a market developed relatively quickly without special effort on the part of the government beyond creating the scarcity, distributing the permits, and enforcing compliance. In all cases, there has been no lack of intermediaries to facilitate trading among parties with either long or short positions and to create a single price at any one moment in time for trading instruments with similar attributes.

In other words, Europe's carbon markets are functioning relatively smoothly. Despite the fact that Europe had virtually no experience with implementing a cap-and-trade program, and despite the fact that the program includes numerous sovereign nations, the cap-and-trade program works. It reduces emissions -- and it does so inexpensively and efficiently.

The success of the EU's cap-and-trade program shouldn't be surprising. It's entirely consistent with what we've seen in the US. Carbon markets working in the northeast states and cap-and-trade programs have worked across the nation for reducing air pollution.

****

Two updates (11/19/09): Jill Duggan at World Resources Institute has a good blog post on the subject.

Back in February, my colleague Clark also had a smart post about about the ETS. In fact, it's worth repeating the quote that Clark pulled from the New York Times:

In a boost for the system on Monday, however, a prominent research company, New Carbon Finance, said its calculations showed that the largest cause of a reduction in emissions in the European Union last year was attributable to the trading system — because it had encouraged greater use of gas in power generation rather than dirtier fuels like coal.

The Tunnel Won't Be Boring

Eric de Place — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:33:57

Seattle's planned deep-bore tunnel could get even more contentious soon. As state engineers flesh out their early cost estimates, a comparable tunneling project has hit another snag. The Seattle Times reports:

The Brightwater sewage-treatment project, which is costing local ratepayers $1.8 billion, is delayed yet again because fixing a damaged tunnel-boring machine stuck deep underground will take months longer than originally thought.

This should be eye-catching because Brightwater's sewage tunnel construction uses a smaller-scale but very similar tunneling technology to what is planned for the tunnel under downtown Seattle. And the Brightwater tunneling project has encountered numerous problems.

Earlier this year, both machines working on the two "Central Tunnels" were damaged and await repairs underground. The one that was due to be operational by November is, apparently, in worse condition than originally believed. The other is not due to be fixed until December or early 2010.

So the project will be delayed further and the costs will continue to mount:

The delay likely will push completion of the project — originally scheduled for 2010 — into 2012, project manager Gunars Sreibers said Tuesday.

It isn't yet known how much repairs will cost and how much of the cost might be paid by the county, the contractor or the manufacturer of the damaged machines, but, Sreibers said, "We're in the tens of millions of dollars of money at issue."

If Seattle's deep-bore tunnel were to encounter similar problems, it could pose a serious risk for Seattle property taxpayers, who are designated by state legislation to pick up the tab for any cost overruns. The legality of that legislation has been much disputed, but at least one influential legislator has vowed to enforce the provision. (At best, the current funding legislation does not adequately clarify who pays for cost overruns, a potentially serious problem.)

Amplifying the worrisome lessons from Brightwater, the deep-bore tunnel project’s costs were first estimated when the project’s design was considered only 1 percent complete. (Today, the project is considered to be 5 percent designed, but the state has declined to release updated cost estimates until it is 15 percent designed.) None of this is good news, but the Brightwater experience is, unfortunately, consistent with the majority of major tunneling projects undertaken in the area, a topic I covered in a recent report for Sightline, "Cost Overruns For Seattle-area Tunneling Projects."

But I also have at least a partial defense of the Brightwater project. In the course of writing the report, I looked into the cost estimates for Brightwater in some detail and I concluded that the media has not been entirely fair. For example:

The existing $1.8 billion tab for the project is roughly double what the Metropolitan King County Council was told when it first approved the project.

That implied 100 percent cost overrun is technically true, but it's also misleading. Here's a fuller description that I included in the report:

According to newspaper accounts, the projected cost of the total Brightwater project—including a conveyance system for transporting sewage underground, a marine outfall system, and a new wastewater treatment facility—has already exceeded its initial estimates by more than 100 percent. However, this figure is based on an early cost estimate from 1999 of approximately $880 million, which in turn was based on a conceptual design of a wastewater system, without taking into account the actual length and route of the tunnels, the actual cost, or inflation. Cost estimates released in 2004, when the project design was 30 percent complete, established a higher budget baseline that accounted for actual design and siting choices, as well as inflation for materials and labor. Using these updated figures, the total Brightwater project is, at most, 24 percent over budget. [Update 11/20/09: More precisely, I mean that the project's current projected expenditures are, at most, 24 percent higher than the budget approved as the official baseline in 2004.]

And the County Council has approved the higher expenditures for the project.

Additionally, the Brightwater project managers deserve credit for being forthright in a way that some other public agencies are not. The public gets to see annual reports and monthly project updates plus annual quarterly audits. Their community relations officers are informative, engaged, and committed to keeping the public apprised. It's only because of their diligence and accountability that the media has any realistic view of the project's difficulties.

Unfortunately, my experience to date leads me to believe that we should not expect a similar level of openness from officials working on Seattle's deep-bore tunnel.

Introducing the Bike Tree

Alan Durning — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:43:30

A couple years ago, I mentioned that secure bike parking is important to creating affordable, green transportation.

Personally, I’m well provided. Here’s the backyard bike shed I built with my father in-law.

Here’s the bike storage room in Sightline’s building in downtown Seattle. (Pretty nice!)

And here’s what bike storage looks like in one bike-happy Japanese community, courtesy of video from the Guardian in the United Kingdom. Read about it here.

Photo of the Week?

Eric de Place — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:57:56

A remarkably prescient photo from 1891:

No further comment needed, I think.

Hat tip to Nancy Hirsh. Image is used in accordance with the Washington State Historical Society's fair use policy.

How to Shop for a Green Baby

Anna Fahey — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:44:40

I guess I’ve known all along that introducing a baby into the family meant introducing a whole slew of stuff into our lives—much of it bulky, expensive, and—often—plastic.

But I'm fighting all the media and social cues to go on a shopping spree at Babies R Us. Instead, my husband and I decided to buy only one or two essential items new, like a state-of-the-art super-safe car seat. But, for the most part we’ve managed to “go green” as we’ve outfitted ourselves for pregnancy and parenthood—from used maternity clothes to garage sale furniture and non-material shower gifts. Our goal has been to reduce, reuse, and recycle—and to save money while we’re at it.

Here are three tricks that have worked for us:

Identify the real essentials. As a pregnant woman I’m constantly bombarded with advertisements about all the stuff I absolutely “must have” to welcome baby. (On a side note, how does every baby product retailer even know I’m pregnant? I guess it’s because I signed up for email updates about my pregnancy from popular websites, and because I write about being pregnant on Facebook and Gmail…Our “digital shadows” are bigger than our real selves sometimes.) It’s easy to get carried away buying all kinds of baby things you don’t really need. And frankly, babies don’t need much—especially at first. We have relied on Consumer Reports’ list of absolute newborn essentials to cut through all the clutter and determine a real list if essentials.

We’ve even scaled back from this list a bit by asking people we know with newborn babies exactly what they use and don’t use. But this is a great starting place—reassuring new parents that you don’t actually need 50 sleepers and 30 onesies, etc. Figure out what you really need and resist the urge to buy anything more (because you'll get more than you need at your shower anyway!)

Garage sales, EBay, Craigslist, thrift shops, and consignment. Babies don’t usually wear stuff out or even soil it irreparably—especially before they’re crawling or feeding themselves beets. (And pregnant women grow so fast they don't have time to wear stuff out either, for that matter) That’s why there’s a glut of perfectly good, gently-used baby stuff (and maternity wear) on the second-hand market. Along with hand-me-down stuff from friends, we scored most of the clothes we needed from thrift shops and consignment shops. Designer maternity jeans that would have cost nearly $100 were a steal for $15. An organic baby sling that had been recommended to us by close friends was easy to find—in perfect condition and for half the price—on Craigslist. And I felt like a good Samaritan buying it from a single mom who likely needed the money.

Some people love garage sales (I’m one of them); others loath sorting through piles of junk in hopes of finding one real treasure. To streamline your search, look for garage sale listings that help you pinpoint exactly what you’re seeking (sellers often list their major items or let you know they will be featuring lots of baby stuff, for example). That’s how we scored a nearly-new, perfectly safe, high-end crib for a fraction of the cost of a new one. In fact, we paid $100 for a crib that retails at nearly $700. I got to the sale early (yes, I was one of those people) and fended off the other pregnant women who were circling me and the crib like sharks until I could snap it up.

Many people sell entire lots of clothes on eBay—this may mean a little less choice, but buying in bulk cuts your shipping costs and gets you through a whole season of baby fashion needs without driving around town to multiple stores.

Finally, when you’re finished using this stuff, sell it. Consignment shops give you cash or credit. Craigslist works well for the big-ticket items. You rid yourself of excess stuff at the same time you recoup a little cash for the child’s next list of necessities—or for their college fund.

Alternative gift registry. The obligatory baby shower is a celebration of motherhood that, like Mother’s Day, has become more about buying stuff than anything else. Everybody will insist that you register for the gifts you want, but the standard registries lock you in to a consumerist trap. A great resource for expecting parents who want to direct their shower down a more sustainable path is New American Dream’s Alternative Gift Registry. This site makes it easy to ask for used gifts, hand-me-downs, gifts from local retailers, and non-material gifts like babysitting, a diaper service, and help when baby comes—like home cooking or grocery shopping for the new family.

After my shower, a dear family friend told me that shopping at the thrift store for baby clothes was the most fun she’s ever had looking for a shower present. She couldn’t believe the adorable items she found for dirt cheap. She ended up buying at least ten sweet little outfits for the same price she would have paid for one or two new ones. She was thrilled; I was thrilled.

All this takes a bit more time and effort, perhaps, than a few trips to a big box store. And of course buying used items means that you have to be even more vigilant about safety concerns and checking for toxins or synthetic materials you want to avoid. But it beats paying full price and starting your baby’s life off by adding to the consumer waste in the world he or she will inherit.

If you have ideas for green baby shopping (or avoiding shopping in the first place), send them our way.

Image courtesy: Joe Shlabotnik, Flickr.com.

Look to Alaska for Energy Efficiency

Roger Valdez — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:28:00

Eureka! I have discovered a huge new source of clean energy in Alaska that can create green jobs too. Well sort of.

I’m not the first to strike gold, but lately I’ve been describing the potential of energy efficiency like hitting the jackpot. Efficiency is a clean, domestic energy source that would add, in the next decade, $1.2 trillion dollars to the economy. The big numbers (like saving 9.1 Quadrillion BTUs in Two Minutes) get people’s attention. If the kind of economic impact we could gain from energy efficiencies was a natural resource buried in the ground, you can bet that every level of government would be trying to dig them up.

Instead, the job is really about aligning interests, stimulus dollars, and great ideas to capture as much of that potential energy savings in the economy as possible. And that takes time. But Alaska, a state very familiar with taking natural resources out of the ground, has a great model for stoking the demand among homeowners for retrofitting their homes—and tapping this new energy source I’m talking about. The program is just the kind of example that is worth looking at when problem-solvers set out to get green jobs right in their jurisdictions.

The Home Energy Rebate Program is run by the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) and provides homeowners up to $10,000 in rebates for retrofits that will produce significant energy savings. It works like this:

Homeowners contact the AHFC to sign up for an audit, and with the auditor identify where the biggest savings might be. The improvements can range from insulation to water heater replacement, whatever creates the biggest improvement on the scorecard used by the auditor. The homeowner has to pay for the work and can only be reimbursed for the materials and the audits before and after the work. Once the homeowner has an estimate the AHFC will earmark funds for approved work and hold it for 18 months. Once the work is done and a follow up audit is complete the funds are released.

Don’t have money for the work? For those who qualify AHFC provides financing for everything. And the program has had a lot of takers. A recent report in the Alaska Journal of Commerce cites some pretty impressive numbers.

Since May of last year there have been 1,675 approved rebates with an average cost of about $9,000 for each project. Of that, the program paid out an average of $6,100 in rebates per project, or about two thirds of the projects’ costs. Of the $160 million appropriated by the Alaska legislature, about $110 million has been set aside for the program and about $20 million has already been paid out. The average savings per household so far has been gauged at more than $500 per year, meaning that for those average retrofits, payback for the owner’s investment should take about 6 years.

Where is all this money coming from? Alaska experienced huge increases in its oil tax revenue, and they have used $200 million of those dollars for energy efficiency programs like this one.

Another thing this program has going for it is the jobs it is creating. The AHFC estimates that the rebate program, along with weatherization, has directly created 2000 jobs. Some of the jobs are efficiency raters for the before and after audits. There were 30 qualified raters when the program started, now there are more than a hundred, enough to fill more than 6 pages. For a frame of reference, there are 7 in Wasilla alone—population: 10,256.

This program scores big in my book because it does many of the things that are critical for getting it right on both energy savings and green jobs. There is an audit at the beginning and the end of each project, with the biggest savings incentivized (not just fancy new windows—but whatever humble improvements that may prove to be the biggest bang for the buck). There is financing available and AHFC has consolidated all the information in one place, not quite an energy concierge, but darned close. And all of this is funded with oil tax dollars. Not the most sustainable source of funds, but a use that would complement comprehensive cap and trade legislation well. As the cost of oil goes up, that revenue can be turned into efficiencies and alternatives to help us get off the fossil fuel rollercoaster.

I plan on digging into this program more. Members (a Republican and a Democrat) of the Alaska Legislature’s energy committee have issued a report recommended adding $150 million more dollars to the program next year. Senator Bill Wielechowski, one of the authors of the recommendations, had this to say about the report.

This report is a call to action. Alaska’s energy future depends on what we do now. With oil prices on the rise again, Alaska is at a crossroads. We need to invest now for Alaska’s long-term benefit. This plan is an effort to shine the light on one of Alaska’s most pressing needs and offer solutions that can move Alaska forward for decades.

The committee is accepting public comment until next week, November 15th.

We are trying a new way of measuring energy efficiency programs in the region. The check mark indicates which of the most important elements a particular program includes and that they are doing it well. A red dash means the program doesn’t address the element or isn’t addressing it as effectively as it could. Each of these indicators emerged from careful review of dozens of energy efficiency programs in the region. You can find a full description of each of them in our one pager Green Collar Jobs: Realizing the Promise--Energy Efficiency. Let us know if you have a program you’d like us to review.

Consumption Illustrated

Anna Fahey — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:23:53

Did you know that in the United States we consume

60,000 plastic bags every five seconds?
106,000 aluminum cans every thirty seconds?
two million plastic beverage bottles every five minutes?

Sounds like a lot. But sometimes big numbers are too abstract to fully fathom. We need ways to visualize them.

That's exactly what Seattle artist Chris Jordan does with his manipulated photographs depicting, well, stuff. Stuff in massive quantities--stuff in the quantities that we routinely produce, use, and toss it away.

It sounds cliche, but the result is that his photographs tiptoe a fine line between beautiful and grotesque. It's consumer waste displayed in gorgeous patterns of color and texture. It's pleasing to the eye. But the photos are jarring to the mind. This is consumption--wastefulness and pollution--spelled out in undeniable visual strokes. The trail of garbage we leave behind defines us, defines our culture.

Many of Jordan's images portray a specific quantity of something: 426,000 cell phones (the number retired every day); 2.3 million orange prison uniforms (the number of Americans incarcerated annually); 106,000 aluminum cans (the number used in the US every 30 seconds).

If you're in Seattle between now and January 3, 2010, you can see Jordan's large-scale photos in person, in all their haunting and sobering glory at the Pacific Science Center.

Photo courtesy: Chris Jordan and Pacific Science Center. Barbies, detail.

Breathing for Two

Anna Fahey — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:56:23

Early in my pregnancy I developed a bloodhound’s sense of smell: even the faintest of odors overwhelmed me. It’s a common phenomenon during the first trimester of pregnancy, yet my new nasal superpower took me by surprise—and forced me into an unwelcome awareness of the pollution that surrounds all of us. Car and truck exhaust, to my unusually acute nose, was pure poison. It made me recoil, hold my breath, gag, choke. My new super-nose could detect the smell all over the place—waiting at the bus stop in my quiet Seattle neighborhood, wafting through 5th floor downtown office windows, even at the park and in my own backyard. I realized, perhaps for the first time, that the air I breathe really stinks.

And just as my pregnancy had heightened my sense of smell, it also intensified my concern about what was entering my body with every breath. The well being of a clump of tissue no bigger than a lima bean became my top priority—making me more concerned than ever about the purity of the food, water, and air that was nourishing both of us (or not).

Of course, the professional side of my brain had been thinking about the links between pollution and health for years. (Working at a sustainability think-tank will do that to you.) But pregnancy personalized the issues. It turned a hypothetical threat to the imagined families I held in my mind’s eye, into a very real one that affected my own life and my potential child’s future. My work at Sightline on climate and energy policy started to be more about my body and my family than simply about curbing climate change and stabilizing energy prices over the next decade. It's about the air I'm breathing—and breathing for two—right now!

Two thoughts struck me as particularly scary. First: this is the air we breathe all the time. It just happens that only first-trimester pregnant ladies (and perhaps dogs with their heads out car windows) get the full olfactory impact. Do we really know what air pollution does to our bodies? To embryos?

Second: we’re all incredibly complacent about what we breathe. Is it because we can’t smell it or see it most of the time? Do we wait for our cities to be as polluted as Bangkok or Los Angeles before we start to take action? (And, for that matter, are pregnant women in Bangkok and Los Angeles pounding down their elected officials’ doors, demanding cleaner air? As far as I know, they’re not).

Part of our complacency about air quality may stem from an unspoken belief that the health of a child is solely a mother’s personal responsibility. Mass-market books and magazines, for example, dwell on on a mother’s personal choices during pregnancy: alcohol and cigarettes, vitamins and diet. Pregnant women are advised to avoid household toxics like harsh cleaners, lead paint, or garden pesticides.

Yet very few books outline concerns that are beyond a mother’s individual control—concerns about toxic chemicals and particulate matter that pervade the air in our cities and suburbs. And fewer still remind us of the political actions we might take to demand safer air quality standards for fetuses, children, and adults alike.

So, the burden is on the mother. Not on the community that sets rules (or doesn't) about air and water quality or holds accountable (or doesn't) polluters that harm babies.

While some popular pregnancy books advise women who work around toxic fumes or spend their days literally in traffic—like tollbooth operators—to seek alternative work during their pregnancy, only a handful of specialized blogs, and a few books specifically oriented around science, biology, or toxics, examine the prenatal health ramifications of poor air quality for the rest of us—people who simply live and breathe (and procreate) in a world with cars and coal plants. And they paint a disturbing picture of the toxic cocktail we imbibe with every breath.

Terry Tamminen lays out the unappetizing recipe in his book Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction:

Particulate matter—“large” particles of 10 microns or less and small ones of 2.5 microns or less pumped into the air by incomplete burning of petroleum fuels. (For context, a grain of salt is about 100 microns). These fine particles are especially toxic, causing respiratory ailments, cardiopulmonary disease, low birth weight, asthma, and lung cancer.
Carbon monoxide—Colorless, odorless, and highly poisonous. CO robs blood of oxygen. When inhaled by pregnant women, CO can threaten fetal growth and mental development of the child.
Volatile organic compounds—VOCs include substances that easily evaporate, hence the term volatile. The distinctive odor you notice when you pump gasoline is an example. The VOCs in petroleum products—including benzene, butadiene, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)—are known carcinogens.
Ozone—Although ozone in the upper atmosphere shields Earth from the sun’s harmful radiation, high concentrations at ground level are a threat to human health, acting like an acid in the lungs, causing and aggravating asthma, harming the immune system, and causing fetal heart malfunctions.
Nitrogen dioxide—the brownish haze over most big cities comes from NO2, a highly reactive organic gas that irritates the lungs and causes both bronchitis and pneumonia, among other adverse health effects.
Lead—even though it was eliminated from most gasoline in the United States starting in the 1970s, lead continues to be used in aviation and other specialty fuels. And from all those years of leaded gasoline, the stuff that came out of cars as fuel exhaust still pollutes soil along our roadways, becoming readily airborne and easily inhaled. In men, lead reduces sperm count and creates abnormalities in what’s left. In women it can reduce fertility and cause miscarriages. As the brains of fetuses develop, lead exposure from the mother’s blood can result in significant learning disabilities.

Tamminen points to a study of thousands of Los Angeles-area expectant mothers conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles. Those exposed for as little as a month to high levels of smog (mostly ozone and carbon monoxide) were three times more likely to have babies with physical deformities, including cleft lips and palates and defective heart valves, when compared with national averages for birth defects. According to a study published in the Journal of Immunology, in the United States, up to 100,000 Americans will die each year from causes attributable to completely preventable smog.

To its credit, the popular pregnancy website BabyCenter did recently post about a study (by researchers at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University) linking prenatal exposure to air pollution (in particular polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, PAHs) to children with lower IQs:

Fetal exposure to high levels of a common airborne pollutant compound seems to threaten the intellectual development of children, a new study suggests.

The finding is based on the experience of black and Dominican-American families living in the New York City area. Specifically, it indicates that high prenatal exposure to these compounds—automobile exhaust is one example—translates into lower IQ scores by the time a child reaches the age of 5 years.

No wonder city air makes me choke!

There are far bigger questions here than a woman’s personal choices about what to eat and drink. For example: Why is it we’ve let our air become toxic to fetuses? What steps can we take to change the status quo?

And that’s where climate and energy policy comes in. Curbing greenhouse gas emissions means ensuring cleaner air overall. It means we stop taking fossil fuel pollution for granted. It sparks policies to reduce vehicle emissions, and to develop the technologies that would do so—along with policies that focus on energy efficiency and clean energy alternatives. It encourages alternatives to motor vehicle transportation with investments in convenient transit options and better city planning.

I didn’t set out to write a post about why pregnant women should be up in arms. But I do feel that women of child-bearing age—and anyone, for that matter, who cares about healthy babies and kids— should stand up for what I think most of us assume are our basic rights, including clean air to breathe, air that doesn’t hurt us or our families.

But until pregnancy magazines, websites, and books start addressing the health effects of air pollution along with those of alcohol, anyone who cares about healthy children—and for that matter, a healthy, fully-functioning population—won’t be informed enough to be up in arms. It’s a pity because I imagine that if this demographic (isn’t it just about everybody?) did start demanding some policy changes, we’d see some movement. Because, as we’ve seen in other policy arenas, moms—as well as dads, aunts, grandparents, godparents—are political dynamite.

How Carbon Markets Work In RGGI

Eric de Place — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:35:05

With all the hand-wringing over the alleged risk of market manipulation in cap and trade, you'd almost forget that the United States already has a carbon cap and trade program up and running. But it does.

RGGI, a regional program among 10 Northeast states, has been auctioning permits, allowing trading on a secondary market, and even, in a way, encouraging trading in derivatives. And guess what's happened so far?

...we find no evidence of anticompetitive conduct. Participation by a large number of firms is an encouraging sign of competitiveness and efficiency in the secondary market.

That's according to a May 2009 report (pdf) by Potomac Economics, the designated market monitor tasked with keeping a close eye on RGGI's market function. It's the most recent analysis available and it's an encouraging sign. But really, it's no accident that RGGI has been successful so far. Administrators have prized transparency, regulation, and oversight in ways that can usefully inform federal cap-and-trade legislation.

I draw three major lessons from the report.

1. Keep trading transparent. Ownership of RGGI permits are are registered in a public tracking system. Futures and options are exchange-traded on the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange and the Green Exchange. Smart, because:

Public exchanges are attractive to firms that need a simple way to trade standard products. Moreover, public exchanges effectively eliminate the risk of default by counter-parties, since the exchange constantly monitors the account holdings of each participant to ensure that they have posted sufficient financial security to meet their obligations.

RGGI does allow over-the-counter (OTC) trades (trades between two private parties) for futures, options, and other derivative products. While OTC markets do provide some benefits for certain firms, they are murkier than public exchanges. And even the public exchanges may not require all the details that are important to understanding a transaction. (Potomac identified one instance in which a small quantity of allowances was traded at a price that seems too high -- and though there are a number of perfectly reasonable explanations for the trade, the exchanges did not require sufficient information from the trading parties to allow the market monitor to draw conclusions.)

2. Keep a level playing field. RGGI publicly announces the "clearing price" of its auction a pre-specified time so that all participants have access to the same information and the same time. Similarly, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission publishes a weekly report documenting the positions, both long and short, of firms trading futures and options on the commodity exchanges. Once again, market participants operate with shared information, which curbs manipulation.

3. Keep an eye on the ball. Frequent analytical reports, like this one from Potomac, are key to ensuring that the carbon markets are well-functioning and fair. Good market monitoring can enable government regulators and administrators to act in a timely fashion if something goes awry. And they can fine-tune their policies and procedures based on good information.

They also allow the public to breath easier given all the recent nervousness about derivatives. And derivatives and secondary markets are important, as the report notes, for at least three reasons:

First, it gives firms an ability to obtain allowances at any time during the three months between the RGGI auctions. Second, it provides firms a way to protect themselves against the potential volatility of future auction clearing prices. Third, it provides price signals that assist firms in making investment decisions in markets affected by the cost of RGGI compliance.

This may all sound dull, but it's serious stuff. Well-functioning secondary markets keep costs low they help firms to take a carefully planned, financially prudent path to reducing their emissions. All of which is excellent for the public -- and excellent for the planet.

You know what they say in the financial world: "past performance is no guarantee of future results." But that doesn't mean we can't learn lessons from past performance. One lesson RGGI teaches, I think, is that it's perfectly possible to run a well-functioning carbon cap and trade market. The challenge now is doing it on a bigger canvas.

Interviewing Worldchanging's Alex Steffen, Part 2

Emily Knudsen — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:41:21

Editor's Note: Alex Steffen, the editor and cofounder of Worldchanging-a global network of independent journalists, designers and thinkers--sat down with writer Emily Knudsen to discuss some of the topics he’ll be covering in his upcoming talks at Town Hall. The first part of the interview discussed Worldchanging's role in the sustainability movement. This second discusses what Seattle can do to become a more sustainable city.

What can Seattle learn from cities like Copenhagen and London that are now leading the green movement?

There are two big lessons. One is that there are amazing policy and design innovations out there that we ought be just stealing outright. People are doing things elsewhere in the world much better than we are. And we need to catch up or exceed them. So that’s part of what I’ll be talking about (at Town Hall on Nov. 11 and 12)—trying to help people implement that range of really cool innovations out there.

The second part of it is that we really need to redefine realism, especially in Seattle. We have convinced ourselves that there are certain kinds of approaches to solving these problems that are unrealistic.

We’re really doubling down on technologies that are out of date and talking about a form of urbanism that was last generation’s debate. This seems like a great paradox because Seattle’s probably the most famous green city in the world. I’ve been in places, like a small town outside of Delhi, India, where people can identify what Seattle is; they think rain, Microsoft, and green. So we’ve done this amazing job of presenting ourselves as a green city but we’ve kind of drunk our own Kool-Aid. The reality is that we have fallen far behind most of the cities we would consider competitors in the global economy, especially competitors around the next wave of important technologies, which are green and urban innovations. Right now, those cites are implementing the things that we still say are unrealistic.

One of the things that I probably won’t talk too much about at my presentation, but I think is really important for us to think about, is the degree to which both economic development and regionalism have been used deceptively as clubs to beat down the priorities in favor of short-sighted, suburban interests. There are many people in Seattle that already understand a vision of sustainable urbanism, compact community transforming our neighborhoods into even better places, they get all this. But we have a tendency to roll over when we’re faced with fights on these things.

The best example of that is the tunnel. The tunnel is absolutely, clearly a stupid piece of infrastructure. There’s no question about it. It is not in Seattle’s interest and we’re going to end up paying for a lot of it, because we have rolled over for the interests of the regional priorities and economic development. But in fact it will hurt the region and it will really hurt Seattle because the money we’ll be spending on that is the money we won’t be spending on innovative transit or pedestrian improvement in the neighborhoods or what have you.

Where did Seattle go wrong?

Our biggest failure came in the early 1990s. We went through a series of things involving the new comprehensive plan, the urban village strategy, the Seattle Commons idea, and several other things like that. Though the initiatives weren’t perfect, they were fundamentally progressive strategies at the time. Then we had a neighborhood backlash. This crowd, comprised of a small number of people, was really threatened by change and angry about the idea of becoming a truly urban city. Effectively, it worked out that the things we really probably didn’t need that were big and controversial, all went forward. For example, we have two stadiums. And the things that we really did need, like more ambitious urban planning, got thrown to the wolves. That was one of the places where we stepped off the path.

The second problem is the larger political context. There’s a great series of Internet visual jokes called “You’re doing it wrong.” In each photo, somebody will be doing something totally catastrophic. I really think of that when I think of regionalism here. We have a discussion about regionalism that sounds like it ought to make total sense but what it boils down to is that every time there’s conflict, Seattle loses. We don’t invest intensively in the central city, which is the core of any intentional regional strategy. We continue to build out infrastructure on the suburban fringe, to pour money into auto-dependent communities, to really sort of lock in a method of development that’s just over. Those places are done. They’re not going to work in 20 years and we know that. Supporting the building of ecologically disastrous, economically disastrous communities have sucked the money right out of Seattle. That money could have been used to build more light rail or other more regional things. Right now it seems that’s the future we are choosing. That’s not even a poor choice, it’s an utterly disastrous choice.

Other metropolitan regions have been able to transcend this challenge. They’ve been able to strike a different balance between existing suburbs and existing cities. Even both of our neighbors—Vancouver and Portland—are doing great work in this regard. We really have done nothing. We’re setting ourselves up for catastrophe. Failing to properly urbanize in the city with the failure of the urban villages plan and failing to metropolitanize—if that’s a word—are two really huge missed opportunities.

How can Seattle turn that around?

People who know what a better future would look like have again and again given in to the bullying and the false authority of people who claim that they are the realistic people.
Our future depends on these people standing up and saying “Your ideas are outdated, our ideas are better, we win, go away.” But most of us aren’t those people, right? Those who are passionate about urban sustainability tend to be people who are creative, who are designers, who are architects, who are policy wonks, who are into community efforts. They’re not people who are used to thinking in terms of hardball politics.

The only places we have seen progress are where people have stood up and said if you don’t do this, we are going to vote you out of office, we are going to boycott your company, we are going to remove ourselves from this town. And that’s where progress has been made. So I think that “Seattle nice” has actually caused us to become “Seattle failing.” We should be doing what it takes to win those fights. We have to be willing to be tough in these instances or we won’t have a chance.

Are there any new technologies out there right now that you’re really excited about?

There are lots of them. The thing that excites me most is a set of technologies that are all about people living in more compact communities in smaller, better designed spaces, that actually allow people to have more money and a higher quality of life. I think of these things as post-ownership technologies—most of them are about not having to own something because you have easy access to it.

A well-known example is car-sharing. People in dense neighborhoods who have easy access to a car-sharing automobile don’t need to own one themselves. That’s a huge cost savings and it also drops their ecological footprint profoundly. What is true for cars is true for lots of other things too. The ecological difference between owning your own gym and belonging to a neighborhood gym is huge.

Seattle is really poised to be a big player in this because we have a nice combination of a lot of technological savvy and neighborhoods that are fairly compact, people who are already familiar with ideas with CSAs, car-sharing programs, and co-ops. I’m really hopeful about this.

On Nov. 11 and 12, Alex will be at Town Hall in Seattle to present his ideas on how new technologies and smart design can help us overcome current global problems and how Seattle can become part of that solution.

Green-Collar People: Michael McCormick

Jennifer Langston — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:26:39

Editor's note: The following is a profile from Sightline's green-collar jobs primer. Read more about what makes a green-collar job and how we can create more in the Northwest.

Michael McCormick poured his first home foundation more than three decades ago. Since then, he’s built everything from starter houses to mansions to a transplanted English castle.

At 55, he understands the importance of keeping his skills up to date. So he went back to school five years ago to update his blueprint reading skills and knowledge of ever-changing building codes. The collapse of the Puget Sound housing market coincided with his graduation.

For nearly three years, McCormick has done whatever he could to pay the bills and advance his career: taking classes in construction management, doing odd remodeling jobs, building decks, even falling back on a former career cutting hair.

Then he heard a Presidential candidate named Barack Obama talk about green-collar jobs as a way to fix the country’s crumbling economy.

“I didn’t know exactly what that meant, I just knew it was the direction I would go,” said McCormick. “I figured he’d been listening to enough people that he had a pulse on what it was going to take to get things going again.”

Since then, McCormick has done many of the right things to move his career in that direction. He’s gotten training in restoring historic buildings and completed an energy auditing class at Shoreline Community College. He hopes to become accredited to verify that “green” homes are being built to national standards.

For now, though, McCormick remains laid off.

There are few laws requiring existing homes to become more energy efficient, McCormick said. Though interest among homeowners may be growing, it still seems spotty, he said. So far, the Pacific, WA, resident hasn’t seen evidence that homeowners on a large scale have been convinced that making deep and comprehensive energy efficiency investments is worth the hassle.

“Right now there’s no demand. The people from the top down are saying that but no one from the bottom up is saying it,” he said. “Unless that changes, it doesn’t matter how much training I get.”

First and foremost, money is always an issue, he said. There has to be a compelling financing mechanism that allows a building’s owner to help cover the costs of an up-front investment with the energy savings they’ll realize in years to come.

Secondly, homeowners are inherently suspicious of contractors. Any utility- or government-run program needs a strong marketing plan to lay out the benefits and connect homeowners with reputable workers—including an independent energy auditor who can verify that the work has been done correctly.

“A lot of it boils down to trust,” he said.

McCormick hopes that some of the energy efficiency incentives and programs being put into place right now will stimulate that demand. In the meantime, all he can do is keep looking for work and keep learning to stay competitive.

Even with his background in construction, the energy auditing class gave him an education in how buildings leak energy through wall sockets, sheetrock cracks and crawl spaces. He also got an introduction to the science that explains how air flows through homes, picks up pollutants and creates conditions that can harbor mold.

He’s eager to start retrofitting homes and businesses to save energy, improve their performance and make them healthier. All he needs is demand for his services.

“If it does bust loose, I’ll be ready,” McCormick said. “Our country is so energy inefficient...and now we’re being asked to change our ways, and I was the first one to say ‘I’ll do that.’”