Just a quick update — summertime chaos has hit. Multiple deadlines and business travel coupled with a minor crisis has kept me from updating this blog for the last week. Meanwhile, Adam Glenn is wrapping up a big project. So this site has been quiet. Sorry about that, folks.

A lot has been happening on this issue, and I’ll be posting soon to catch everyone up. Also, we’ve got some new volunteers who should be posting next week or shortly thereafter.

I have some correspondence from the city which I will catch you up to date on tomorrow. Thanks everyone for your patience.

Amy Gahran

This new CFL doesn’t quite fit my lamp. Grrrrr….

Today at King Soopers I bought a GE 3-way compact fluorescent bulb to see if I could replace the conventional incandescent bulbs in my living room lamps. I’m glad I bought just one as a test, because I just tried to install it and was dismayed to find that I couldn’t get it into my lamp.

I think it would fit once it’s screwed in, but it’s too tall to get past the metal support for the lampshade.

This is frustrating… I’ll basically have to dismantle part of the lamp just to screw in a light bulb. I need to figure out if I want to go to that trouble. If anyone knows of a less drastic way to get that CFL into the socket, please comment below.

Compact fluorescents are a great idea, but dumb practical issues like this probably keep a lot of people from installing them everywhere. Organizations that promote their adoption — including Boulder’s energy programs — should keep this in mind.

Finding correctly sizeds CFL bulbs isn’t as easy as it should be…

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Today’s Daily Camera features two editorials by associate editor Clint Talbott on Boulder’s latest greenhouse gas emissions inventory.

In Open that Database!, Talbott supports and amplifies my earlier request for the complete emission inventory database from the city. (Thanks!) Regarding the city’s claim that this database is proprietary, he wrote:

“In diplomatic terms, Gahran objected to the denial, arguing that the full inventory is a public document. She is right. The data upon which the city will measure the progress of its tax-funded emissions program is clearly a matter of public concern. It should be treated as a matter of public record.”

As I noted this morning, we seem to be making progress toward getting access to that inventory — not direct access at this point, but the city is will to supply data in answer to specific questions. That’s a start, and it’s my impression that the city intends to work with us on that in good faith.

However, I still intend to push for direct access to the database. I explained that in a comment I posted to Talbott’s first editorial… (more…)

Yesterday I discussed how it might be useful for the Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker project to acquire the dataset from the city’s new municipal emissions inventory. This morning, Boulder’s environmental affairs director, Sarah Van Pelt, clarified her earlier statement. It does appear, after all, that this project will have access to that data — but through the city, not directly.

Van Pelt wrote:

“The data are not proprietary but the inventory maintenance system is proprietary. I am happy to share any data that you want. Because we have a lot of data I would prefer to provide information that responds to specific questions rather than provide the entire data set that may not really get at the questions you have. In short, I’m trying to make it easier for you and others to understand the data rather than provide all of the data with no analysis or interpretation.”

As a journalist, my preference is to have the dataset so I can see for myself its patterns, organization, and intricacies. Also, I’d like to be able to offer it to independent experts for analysis.

But, for the time being, this offer from the city is a good start. So we’ll start here.

I’m looking over the data summaries Van Pelt provided yesterday, and considering what questions we might like to get answered from the latest emissions inventory.

In the meantime: What would you like to know about Boulder’s greenhouse gas emissions? Please suggest your questions in the comments below.

Boulder Dept. of Environmental Affairs

Summaries: 2006 greenhouse gas inventory (above) and 2006 inventory comparison (below). Click either thumbnail to view the full document.

(UPDATE July 11: The city clarified that it is willing to share this data.)

I just heard back from Sarah Van Pelt, Boulder’s environmental affairs directory, regarding the latest municipal emissions inventory I mentioned earlier. She offered two data summary sheets (click thumbnails at right to enlarge) and said:

“The inventory database is a proprietary product so I can’t send the entire system to you but I can provide data to address specific questions. I’ve attached two sheets from the inventory that I hope will provide the information you seek. If not, let me know what you are interested in and I will send additional information.”

I do appreciate Van Pelt’s (and her staff’s) responsiveness and willingness to engage in public conversation on this topic. The department of environmental affairs is obviously a key player in the carbon tax and local climate action issues, and this community journalism project has enjoyed a very positive, communicative relationship with that department. It’s always better to be on good professional terms with your sources.

That said, I do think we need to push further on this. Here’s how I replied to Van Pelt:

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ecenter.colorado.edu

Did CU cause a 4% increase in local CO2 emissions?

Way to go, Camera! The front page of today’s Boulder Daily Camera features a story by Ryan Morgan: Boulder spews more CO2.

Apparently a new CO2 emission inventory for the city of Boulder is, or is about to be, released. I haven’t seen this document yet, but I have requested it from the city’s department of environmental affairs. I am trying to obtain not just the city’s summary, but the complete inventory.

(UPDATE: I did just get some summary data, but am pushing for more.) 

The Camera noted an interesting aspect of the latest inventory: “Emissions across the city rose by 4 percent last year — the first time emissions have risen since city officials started counting carbon. Part of the increase comes from a decision by University of Colorado officials to stop burning natural gas to make electricity, and to instead buy it all from Xcel Energy’s coal plants.”

Emission inventories are crucial documents in understanding local greenhouse gas issues. In my work as an energy and environment reporter I’ve seen them before, and I know they often have many stories to tell. The Camera definitely found a good story here, but I’m sure it’s not the only one.

How can we dig deeper on this? The key is getting the inventory. Colorado’s open records law requires, among other things, that local governments produce upon request public records…

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Amy Gahran

Electrician and entrepreneur Jeff Jones, wiring up my Saver Switch today.

Several weeks ago, Xcel Energy called me to see if I wanted to sign up for their Saver Switch program. That’s when they install a remote-controlled switch on my outdoor central air conditioning unit, which they use to cycle my cooling off for up to 15 minutes at a time on up to 15 hot summer days per year. This helps the utility manage peak electricity demand and hopefully avoid blackouts or brownouts. For that, I get a $25 credit on my September or October utility bill each year I have the switch.

That sounded like free money to me, so I said sure! Today, my Saver Switch finally was installed.

The installer was Jeff Jones, an electrician with Hunt Electric (Xcel’s installation contractor). I had a great conversation with Jeff — turns out he’s got a local business that specializes in renewable energy and off-grid solutions for residential and commercial buildings. He’s trying to convince the state of Colorado to offer more incentives for developers to include renewable measures like photovoltaics in new-construction housing developments. He also dabbles in biofuels, especially ethanol-powered vehicles.

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Amy Gahran

The main level of my home has LOTS of windows — all inefficient.

Earlier I wrote about my home’s new attic fan, which (so far this summer) is doing a much better job of keeping my home cool than the aging central air conditioning unit ever did. I am running it during most of the day, however.

Jay Stein of E Source pointed out that this is not an ideal practice. He commented: “You’re not supposed to run the fan all day long. Just run it at night, when it’s cool out. Be sure all the windows are open. Get the house nice and cold. Then in the morning, shut all the windows and pull down all the blinds. Your house should stay cool until the late afternoon. When the evening rolls around, open all the windows and start over again.”

Jay’s absolutely right; that is recommended practice for using an attic fan. However, our house has some significant flaws which — as far as I can tell — require some compensation as we work to correct them one at a time. Right now, running our attic fan during the day, instead of our central air conditioning, is an intermediate step toward efficiency, and an immediate step toward comfort.

In the summer, cooling our home at night has never been a problem. Our home faces west-east, the same direction as Boulder’s prevailing wind patterns. So if we open all the upstairs windows after sunset and run the bedroom ceiling fan we almost always pull a steady cross-breeze through the house that sucks out the day’s accumulated heat. So we don’t really need an attic fan for traditional reasons. It has more to do with compensating for our home’s serious daytime cooling flaws.

Plus, I personally prefer moving air far more than cooled air. I’m more comfortable in dry, moving air. I’d rather avoid air conditioning if I can — I had more than enough of it when I lived on the east coast. I don’t enjoy feeling like I’m living in a refrigerator.

Making tradeoff decisions when upgrading a home’s comfort and energy efficiency is something many Boulderites face. Much of the housing stock in town is decades old and was built by developers who apparently cared more about construction speed and profit margins than energy efficiency.

Here’s how we’re handling those decisions in our own case…

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As the Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker project picks up steam, people in Boulder and elsewhere will probably want to follow the action. We’ve made that easy by offering free daily e-mail alerts and simple feed subscriptions.

Sign up to receive our e-mail alerts by entering your e-mail address in the form on the right sidebar of the home page.

Just below our e-mail signup form, you can click to subscribe to our RSS feed in any of several popular feed readers. If your feed reader isn’t there, just add this feed to your subscription list: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BoulderCarbonTaxTracker

xcelenergy.com

The lone residential utility rebate for Colorado I found on Xcel Energy’s web site today.

According to the city government’s Climate Action Plan, utility rebates are a key strategy to make energy-saving projects happen in Boulder, Colorado. These rebates are when our local utility, Xcel Energy, pays or reimburses part of the cost of energy-saving measures for residential, commercial and industrial customers — effectively lowering the cost and speeding the payback of these projects. The city expects Xcel to kick in, through rebates, more than $10.3 million toward the cost of local energy efficiency measures by 2012.

As I wrote earlier, Boulder doesn’t have a whole lot of time to meet its self-imposed goal of cutting its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 350,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2012. In order to achieve those savings on schedule, Boulderites must start saving energy now.

Utility rebates can help motivate individuals and organizations to take action to save energy — IF people know about them, and if the program rules and processes are simple enough to encourage participation (rather than cause confusion and frustration).

Those can be pretty big “ifs,” as I just found out when I visited Xcel’s web site…
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