This evening the Boulder City Council will hold a study session on the city’s climate action plan, transportation and renewable energy strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I’ll be attending.

A study session is a meeting of city council members and staff to go over current and upcoming issues, discuss topics, and give staff/consultants direction. The public is welcome to observe, but no public comments, questions, or statements are taken. However, the public may be asked questions. No formal voting takes place.

According to the 65-page memorandum from the Boulder Dept. of Environmental Affairs to the City Council, this session will provide an update on initiatives undertaken as part of Boulder’s Climate Action Plan (CAP, see backgrounder), and the Transportation Master Plan’s FasTracks Local Optimization (FLO) initiative (a planned transportation system in Boulder that will integrate regional rail and bus rapid transit, expected to be implemented around 2014-16).

Also tonight, Environmental Affairs will introduce its draft renewable energy strategy for the city.

Apparently, council has been pushing the city’s Climate Smart program to pursue emissions cuts more aggressively….

Read the rest of this entry »

• A Shift in the Debate Over Global Warming || New York Times
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• Fast-tracking climate policies || Boulder Daily Camera
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• Report: West warming faster than the rest of country || Summit Daily News
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• Completing the beltway an unwise fixation || The Denver Post
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• Save Energy, Save Money, Save the Planet . NOW on PBS
  A very different municipal approach to saving energy and $ locally. This show examines the Cambridge Energy Alliance, which focuses on energy efficiency building retrofit projects and offers low-interest loans. Maybe Boulder should be doing more of this?
  (tags: efficiency energy buildings podcast finance Massachusetts municipal nonprofit loans)

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• Gore Praises Quebec’s CO2 Law || AHN
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The folks at ClimateSmart tell us that their Climate Action Plan (CAP) is right on budget — they’ve spent about $860k and ended up getting just about the same amount from the carbon tax. That’s quite a feat in and of itself, as we can probably all appreciate here in the tail end of tax season.

They’ve also put out a progress report (PDF), which we’ve gone ahead and looked at. One of the interesting parts was a breakdown of greenhouse gas emissions by sector, which showed this:

• Commercial: 58%
• Transportation: 22%
• Residential: 16%
• Solid waste: 4%

Obviously, the commercial sector should be a big focus of the program. And it seems to have been. The progress report explained that the costs and average payback time — that is, the time after which infrastructure changes will have saved enough in energy costs to pay for themselves — have gone up because of “the inclusion of projects which tend to carry higher costs such as heating and cooling system replacements.”

Here’s the assessment of the building performance program, as found in the progress report:

It looks good — like businesses are starting to think more long-term. But the progress report carries on for much longer about residential programs than about commercial programs. While residential programs are important, if a business changes its ways, there’s a bigger impact. It would be great to go into more detail on just how green investments impact the bottom line, and outline some of the changes made by businesses listed in the project report.

We’d love to hear — in the comments or on the forum — from businesses who participated in the project report on how they convinced themselves or their accountants or whomever that they should spend now, save now and save later.

Boulder’s one thing. Boulder’s small. Boulder’s landlocked.

But affixing a carbon tax-like program to a heavily-populated port city like San Francisco is a whole different animal. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District wants to charge businesses a fee of 4.2 cents per metric ton of carbon dioxide. The draft regulation imposing the new fees would go into effect on July 1, 2008.

According to a fact sheet put out by the BAAQMD (PDF here), it would take stock of how much emitted greenhouse gases were reported over a year, and charge the fee before allowing a facility to re-apply for a permit to own and operate equipment that emits pollutants.

One example provided in the initial coverage of the proposal by the San Jose Mercury-News gives is that a Shell oil refinery in the affected area would be charged $186,475 a year for its carbon dioxide emissions.

That’s a lot of money, and even a huge corporation like Shell will take notice of it. But they’ll likely fight it, too. And they won’t be alone. Read the rest of this entry »

• ‘Green’ bandwagon is getting a big push | USATODAY.com
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• You Are How Your Live || WSJ.com (subscription required)
  Across the country, thousands of communities are trying to fight urban sprawl and global warming from the ground up.
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• Lighting the Way || Fort Collins Now, Colorado
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• SPEAKOUT: Benefits of solar energy manifold || The Rocky Mountain News
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• What Would a Carbon Tax Look Like? || TreeHugger
  A new study predicts how electric utilities and consumers would react to a tax on the greenhouse gas.
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• Cap-and-trade vs. “t-word” in California || Marketplace
  California Gov. Schwarzenegger is working on a “cap-and-trade” plan to cut the state’s greenhouse gases … But some environmentalists are skeptical of a market-based approach.
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• Al Gore Backs Carbon Tax || Greentech Media
  Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore says adopting a carbon tax is one of the best things governments can do to fight climate change.
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• Energy Policy & Legislation : Governor’s Energy Office : Colorado
  Rundown of current CO state legislation on energy policy.
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• CRES - Colorado Renewable Energy BLOG
  “Quick summary of some of the most important dockets before the PUC this year, and the groups who support Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency who are intervening, and whom you can support or contact for more information about their activities. “
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Yesterday I wrote about how a remark at a meeting by Boulder Environmental Affairs spokesperson Beth Powell implied that the city might be considering options for not meeting the Kyoto Protocol goals. I called Powell to ask for clarification on this.

In a voice mail, Powell explained that in fact the Climate Smart team is still committed to its original plan of meeting the Kyoto Protocol goals:

“There is definitely no intention to backpedal at all. We want to increase our aggressive approach to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. That said, the Climate Smart team doesn’t have any unilateral decisionmaking power. We aren’t necessarily even going to recommend to council a new goal. We’re just going to ask them if they would like to see another goal. The study session is when all the details will be revealed. We’re writing that council memo now, and are willing to share information on that.”

…I’m relieved to learn that I misunderstood Powell’s remarks in the context of that event — and to get a clear statement that the city (at least at this point) does not intend to take advantage of the apparent wiggle room in the language of the 2002 council resolution that committed the city to meeting the Kyoto goals. Clarity about targets and achievements would seem to benefit everyone involved in this issue, in Boulder and elsewhere.

Many thanks to Powell for clarifying this matter.

(UPDATE Mar. 21: The city has clarified that it does not intend to backpedal on Kyoto.)

Last night’s Climate Smart community meeting at the West Boulder Senior center was well attended, energetic, and constructive. Over 40 community members and city and county employees attended. I took extensive notes and will be writing much more about the event later.

But first, I was a bit surprised to hear city Environmental Affairs spokesperson Beth Powell note that her department may recommend to the City Council, “that we go beyond Kyoto to a 2020 or 2050 goal.”

…A little bit of background: Boulder’s major municipal efforts to address climate change began in 2002, when the City Council passed resolution 906 adopting the goals of the Kyoto Protocol — which would require the city to cut its greenhouse gas emissions reducing greenhouse gas emissions 7% below the estimated 1990 level. The Kyoto Protocol calls for that goal to be met by 2012 — which is when the current carbon tax sunsets.

Actually, the wording of the resolution included some wiggle room…

Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight, Boulder’s ClimateSmart team will be hosting a community dialogue on the city’s response to climate change (get the details here). Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker plans to be at the event, which appears aimed at generating some grassroots support, using volunteers to leverage community action and help change behaviors that contribute to Boulder’s carbon footprint.

The city plans to document the ideas that come up and share them with those who attend, or who take an online survey. That sounds like a great way to encourage dialogue about the effort by, as ClimateSmart’s Beth Powell suggested in a comment on our site last week, bringing people together both in virtual terms and in real, physical ones.

Another way to encourage dialogue is to provide as much information about the scope of the program as possible, to help the community understand how well it has succeeded. So, for instance, we’ll be asking the city to provide up-to-date data about how much revenue Xcel Energy has raised for the city so far through the carbon tax, as well as request an account of how this money has been spent so far.

Another important question: Now that Gov. Ritter has proposed a climate action plan for state, we’re wondering how the city’s existing plan might fit in with the one being developed for Colorado as a whole?

While tonight’s gathering might not be able to get deeply, if at all, into these questions, we think they’re ones that need to be asked, and answered, in order for the community to understand and participate in the program more fully.