Keeping with California’s record as one of the most environmentally progressive states in the country, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) this week proposed sweeping new global warming regulations. If passed, these unprecedented measures will slash deeply into the state’s production of heat-trapping gases, and serve as a fantastic model for the rest of the nation, as the U.S. finally faces down the problems of its current carbon footprint.

 

The proposal, a thick read at 75 pages, details an impressive, comprehensive plan for dealing with California’s production of heat-trapping gasses. The first line of attack seems to be against non-renwable and dirty fuel sources: the report recommends increasing the percentage of the state’s energy that is drawn from clean energy to be increased to a full 33 percent by the year 2020.  

As Dan Kalb, a policy coordinator for the Berkeley office of the Union of Concerned Scientists notes, “California has a wealth of renewable electricity potential we aren't tapping into yet. Shifting to clean, safe sources of carbon-free electricity is a win for the environment, the economy and consumers.”

While I agree with this statement, the Air Resources Plan seems not to delineate any penalties for companies that do not comply with the 1/3 clean energy standard.  Because the current energy market still undervalues clean energy, while not fully forcing utility companies to bear the brunt of fossil fuel use, a system of monetary incentives to back this plan would be an immense help in ensuring utility companies’ compliance with it.

Comparing the clean energy standard to CARB’s stance on consumer vehicle purchases may better highlight my point. While non-fuel efficient vehicles penalize their owners at the gas pump, the net negatives brought upon society by their use go far further: global warming, smog, excessive demand for gasoline, and a greater percentage of the state GDP spent on a largely imported resource all negatively affect the entirety of California. And these negative impacts easily exceed the few extra dollars a month SUV drivers spend on gas.

To compensate for this, California has created a “feebate” system, which CARB aims to expand upon with this proposal. These “feebates” consist of one-time surcharges for gas-guzzlers, and one-time rebates for high fuel efficiency machines, which both help the state compensate for the damages caused by less fuel-efficient vehicles, and make purchasing cleaner vehicles more alluring to cash-strapped consumers. 

While brute force legislative mandates — such as the clean energy standard dictated by this latest proposal — have their place in creating a more sustainable United States, I feel that the most effective changes will come about by manipulating the market forces that have always driven our economy to accurately reflect the environmental impact of purchasing decisions.

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Photo by Kevin Collins

Adding a lane to freeways to loosen congestion has been a traffic solution for 50 years, apparently out of habit or tradition, but not because it works. Environmentalists have insisted that highway expansion triggers the law of nature defined by Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams that “If you build it, they will come.” And they’re right. At least in LA, the most recent highway expansion has lead to double-digit percentage increases in traffic and, alas, plans for another expansion.

"We expected that the opening of the freeway would result in additional traffic on the 210," Ty Schuiling, county transportation planner, said. "…It's not enough to make the freeway crash and burn at this point." What? Clearly, the standards are a bit skewed when LA considers a project whose results are counter to its goals, but not ‘crash and burn,’ worthy of replication.

Even if LA's traffic science is wacky, you'd think they could respect common sense, but no. Home of the 405 and other sprawling freeways, a person could think they would have learned that building a new freeway, like the 210, does not really do anything to solve traffic issues. Schuiling notes they knew ahead of time that traffic would increase, and continued with the project anyway. Their own data now shows that traffic is up by 20% and merging onto connecting freeways is nightmarish.

LA’s answer to 210’s traffic increase is to widen it, evoking the incredulous-wide-eyed look from this author. The anti-rationality of further widening a freeway when it didn’t work the first ten times leads to suspicions that somebody with power has a stake in an asphalt company. There are lots, and lots, and lots of better transit options for LA to take advantage of with the millions they are about to sink into futilely widening 210:

1. Get a rail line. LA’s absence of a light rail is mystifying. They have the density for ridership, the regionalism for effective stops, smoggy environmental motivation obscuring skylines, and gas prices kissing $5.00/gallon. LA is primetime mass transit territory, if only the government would start working on buying the right of ways and launching the scoping meetings.

2. Though they have tried to enhance the bus service, they have leagues to go in that respect and lots of options for Bus Rapid Transit, or specialized bus lanes with limited stops, with all that freeway.

3. There is now fancy technology to make existing traffic more efficient via light timing schemes; they should use it. A lot of LA’s traffic occurs in predictable patterns that could be manipulated via metering lights and software that responds to real time conditions.

4. PRT and GRT: personal rapid transit, or group rapid transit, is the Jetson-y idea of having pods that carry people around on an above ground track or hanging wire, a la ski lift or mini-monorail. Personal rapid transit for personal pods, group rapid transit for larger pods. This is sort of a far-out idea for transit, which is why it would work in LA. LA also has destinations that are very popular but hard to get to and park at, ideal PRT or GRT conditions.

5.The transit district has to win hearts and minds via a serious publicity campaign. LAians are used to cars, and they need to be purposefully weaned off them.

LA shouldn’t expand freeways anymore. They’ve maxed out the utility of that idea. I am not more creative than the people in LA, and I just thought of five alternatives to highway expansion off the top of my head. Thankfully, there are lots of cool solutions like these waiting for LA once a strong leader manages to intercept the vicious freeway expansion cycle. 

Photo by Robert Corbin.

Abandoned malls, the symbol of a lifestyle that some might argue rapidly is becoming outdated, are being used in interesting ways by some cities and towns left with large, often empty structures. Some cities are getting creative with billing removal or demolition costs, but others see the leftover buildings as the framework for opportunity. From the United Kingdom to Colorado, cities are turning the acreage once usurped by malls into vibrant mixed-use centers.

In some ways, enclosed malls will still be serving their original purpose even in their retrofitted state, given their remaining capacity to accommodate lots of stuff under one roof. By turning malls into downtown centers, cities create a single space in which people can access government, social outlets, courts, shopping, housing, sports and culture. The fundamental differences between malls and mixed-use developments are housing proximity and public transit. Malls themselves are often in the proverbial middle of nowhere -- close to nothing but a freeway. Malls are turning into dense housing with incorporated retail and business areas, greenspace, and accessible public transit.

The change has been stunning.  According to Ellen Dunham-Jones, Georgia Institute of Technology’s architecture program director, “In 2006 there was only one new, enclosed mall built in this country.” Compare that to the 1990s, when approximately 140 new malls were built each year, Dunham-Jones says. Clearly, malls haven't dodged the pain inflicted by the rise in fuel costs; essentially every industry that depends heavily on fuel is posting flat or negative growth.

In cities where physical boundaries limit the housing expansion possibilities, axing a floundering mall and redeveloping as a mixed-use project can be one way of addressing a housing crunch while maintaining retail space that is more conducive to small, local businesses. Strip malls are subject to the same treatment. California is replete with single-story malls that could be redeveloped or built upon vertically to  supplement the housing stock.

In most places, our mixed-use zoning laws trail our aspirations. Before environmental laws existed protecting consumers from toxics by regulating companies, zoning ordinances just put businesses close to each other so their pollution wouldn't impact housing. This is how brownfields, or former industrial spaces, came to be -- they were zoned for industrial, but redeveloped for domestic purposes. These days, zoning should be used to promote community and minimize driving. The retrofitting of malls is a great example of the potential benefits of a new development and tax paradigm.  

Photo by Clean Wal-Mart

Municipalities, many already running unhealthy deficits, are facing a new world of cost issues in the face of increasing fuel prices. Most municipalities use fuel on the large scale, with various administrators, surveyors, building code inspectors and other city officials zipping around the city to conduct their business. As cities are looking for solutions to fuel prices, they could be thinking too small. 

 

Mayors that met at the United States Conference of Mayors discussed the results of a survey of over a hundred municipalities, 90% of which said that they had changed operating procedures to minimize fuel expenditures. The result have been soft measures so far. Mayors have been encouraging their staff to carpool, visit sites that are near each other at the same time, encouraging staff to take public transit and turn off the lights when a room is empty. Budgets for 2008 seem to have been built on $2/gallon gas and soft measures are inadequate unless cities want to go the way of Vallejo (municipal bankruptcy).

As challenging as these problems may be, they also offer an interesting opportunity for municipalities to lead the charge in energy savings and fuel efficiency. Municipalities have access to tax-free bonds that should make it ‘easy’ to invest in sustainable technology that will help them hold their costs down. Cities can usually bond design-build wind or solar projects without much trouble, or can use their collective buying power to force utilities into providing clean power for their residents (more problematic where coal companies provide the tax base). Or, they can educate their residents about opportunities for power purchase agreements in neighborhoods.

Cities could be fuel independent. Cities have the capability to incentivize a biofuels test plant in their city that could supply gas to their fleet at a reduced, or at least, controlled cost (some types of ethanol can use waste to produce fuel for less than $1 per gallon). There seems to be no reason that a city over the size of 50,000 people or so shouldn’t have its own biofuels facility. Municipalities should/could all be driving hybrid, flex fuel or diesel fleets, though many cities still have the policy of buying American cars.

Cities also have the most control over infrastructure; they can do the most of anyone to make cars unnecessary. Cities can zone to create dense downtown corridors, create or block bike lanes, and either stifle or push for public transit expansion. Cities can discourage car use by creating walk-only streets and driving up the cost of parking. Confirming some of Amory Lovin’s famous predictions, Mayor John Robert Smith of Meridian Mississippi noted “We have waited until we are at a crisis point to address transportation.”

Cities have control over their building codes. LA and other large cities have integrated LEED standards into law. All cities could do that, as well as plan and zone in a manner that encourages mixed use ecodensity and fosters the ridership for public transit. Cities can also offer microloan or lease-back programs to help citizens front the cash for wind or solar energy for their buildings. There are a range of good ways cities can help their citizens finance energy projects for their buildings.

My ultimate message is this: municipalities have enormous power to change the lives of their residents for the better, climate and energy-wise. I can't think of any reason municipalities should suffer from high energy costs when they have expansive power to control and regulate local price and markets. Municipalities have so much micro-scale control over their cities’ procedures that it is highly effective for peak oil issues to be addressed at this level.  

Photo by Payton Chung

Civilians aren’t the only ones looking for a more sustainable path; the U.S. military has been investigating options for everything from eliminating trash to cutting fuel consumption. Considering that the military’s active duty members number more than 1.4 million -- not counting those members of the military community considered reserve personnel or civilians --  even a relatively small effort is guaranteed to have far-reaching implications.

The military's most recent sustainability measure is the implementation of TGER, pronounced “tiger.” In March, the U.S. military shipped trash-to-fuel generators, or Tactical Garbage to Energy Refineries, to Iraq. Since then, they’ve undergone increasingly intensive testing, which officially ends in August. The testing is going well, and members of the military are planning to deploy the generators to smaller camps and are considering them for use in disaster relief sites.

The TGER contends with two of the military’s key sustainability issues -- fuel consumption and trash -- simultaneously. The amount of fuel the military goes through in even a single day is astronomical and the standard operating procedure for disposal has been incineration. Incineration actually consumes a significant amount of fuel, as well as eating up man hours and producing some unfortunate emissions. The TGER takes that trash and converts it into fuel through a variety of procedures.

If you could take a walking tour through the TGER, you would start at a chute where trash is dumped. Wet and dry wastes are separated and dealt with in different manners. Enzymes are introduced into the wet waste, converting it into hydrous ethanol. The dry trash is crushed, pelletized and gasified. The synthetic gas produced from the dry trash fuels the generator, as well, although it needs about one gallon of diesel fuel per hour to keep things going.

Some drawbacks do remain in the technology — a six-hour warm up period tops the list — but testers are reporting 90 percent efficiency, an absolutely incredible figure. The military’s goal is eventually to improve trash-to-fuel generators so that 100% of its waste will go into one end of the generator while electricity comes out the other. I don’t think the civilian world would object to such technology, either.

Looking at the tactical situation in Iraq, I think these generators make more sense than anyone can guess. Whether you agree that U.S. troops should be in Iraq, it’s clear that one of the most dangerous tasks they have is transporting fuel, mostly for their own use. Fuel trucks and caravans are routinely targeted. Any way to limit the fuel needing transport — such as generating it on site — is practically guaranteed to save lives, as well as spare the environment.

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Photo by AKinKorea