International
G-8 Nations Fail to Agree on Climate Change Plan
L’AQUILA, Italy — The world’s major industrial nations and emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on significant cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, unraveling an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.
As President Obama arrived for three days of meetings with other international leaders, negotiators dropped a proposal that would have committed the world to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by midcentury and industrialized countries to slashing their emissions by 80 percent.
The discussion of climate change was among the top priorities as world leaders gathered here for the annual summit meeting of the Group of 8 powers. The leaders were also grappling with the sagging global economy, development in Africa, turmoil in Iran, nuclear nonproliferation and other issues.
Mr. Obama, who arrived Wednesday morning from Moscow after a two-day visit there, has succeeded in persuading other G-8 leaders to contribute another $12 billion over the next three years for a food security initiative, aides said. The program will provide emergency anti-hunger aid but also help build sustainable, productive agriculture and food delivery systems.
The breakdown on climate change underscored the difficulty in bridging divisions between the most developed countries like the United States and developing nations like China and India. In the end, people close to the talks said, the emerging powers refused to agree to the limits because they wanted industrial countries to commit to midterm goals in 2020 and to follow through on promises of financial and technological help.
“They’re saying, ‘We just don’t trust you guys,’” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group based in the United States. “It’s the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president.”
European leaders and environmental activists had hoped that Mr. Obama would become a leader in the struggle against climate change after succeeding President George W. Bush, who resisted more aggressive measures.
But breakthrough eluded Mr. Obama and the other leaders of the Group of 8 who had invited counterparts from China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and others to join them here. The president will be the host of a parallel meeting Thursday. But the departure of President Hu Jintao of China, who left abruptly Wednesday to deal with unrest at home, reduced the chances of reversing the stalemate.
“Europe wants avant-garde legislation but China is putting up resistance, which I sampled yesterday during my one-on-one with the Chinese president,” Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, the G-8 host, said Tuesday evening.
American and European officials still hope to commit the G-8 to a goal of preventing world temperatures from rising from preindustrial levels by more than 2 degrees Celsius by 2020. Mr. Meyer said temperatures have already risen by 0.8 degrees and will likely rise by another 0.6 degrees based on pollution already in the air, meaning that major steps would have to be taken over the next 11 years to meet the goal.
Michael Froman, Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser and chief G-8 negotiator, declined to specify what will be in the agreement but said it would signal important progress heading toward a United Nations conference in Copenhagen in December to craft a worldwide climate change treaty.
“Our view is that it represents a significant step forward in terms of adding political momentum on the key issues to be dealt with in the U.N. process,” Mr. Froman said. “But that there is still a lot of work to be done and these are difficult issues and the negotiators will be meeting going forward to try and resolve them.”
At a previous G-8 meeting, Mr. Bush agreed to a 50-percent cut in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but not to an 80 percent reduction in those produced by industrial countries like the United States. With Mr. Obama’s support, the House recently passed legislation intended to curb emissions, although not by nearly as much as the Europeans want.
China, India and the other developing nations are upset that commitments to provide financial and technological help made during a U.N. conference in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 have not translated into anything more tangible.
Mr. Meyer estimated that the United States, Europe and other industrial nations need to come up with $150 billion a year in assistance by 2020 to help develop clean energy technology for developing countries, reduce deforestation that contributes to rising temperatures, and help vulnerable nations adapt to changes attributed to greenhouse gases.
source: New York Times, Peter Baker
Local
It Ain’t Easy Going Green
Despite Connecticut’s progressiveness, environmentalists run into roadblocks
Going green has Imani Zito seeing red. Seemingly simple tasks, like installing an environmentally friendly permeable driveway and parking lot at Alchemy, her organic juice bar in Hartford, have been major hassles.
It took her months just to get permission for the parking lot, which is designed to let rain water soak back into the ground instead of flooding the streets, collecting chemicals and other toxins before ending up in the Connecticut River. The material — similar to layers of gravel — wasn’t in Hartford’s building code, so she had to jump through hoops to get approval to use it.
Others trying to make environmentally friendly changes to their homes and businesses report running into any number of problems, from building inspectors ignorant about green technology to neighbors concerned about aesthetics. The new technology leaves some municipal officials dumbfounded about how to apply zoning laws, outdated building codes and how to inspect newfangled machines. In the state legislature, several bills died this year that could have made Connecticut more environmentally friendly (see sidebar).
While in many ways Connecticut has been very progressive — the state’s Clean Energy Fund incentive programs help consumers pay for solar panels and other green technology — the current hodgepodge of local rules and laws are frustrating to people like Zito who are committed to building and living sustainably.
Zito also had problems getting permission to install a green roof, radiant-heat floors and environmentally friendly chemical-free carpet at the new co-op she runs.
“We wanted to be a model for the community,” says Zito while giving a brief tour of her business, which is just a stone’s throw from Trinity College. The co-op was preparing for an art exhibit that night; it also shows free films and offers dance and yoga classes in a building next door to her juice bar, which sells organic and raw food like fudge and sandwiches, environmentally minded books, shots of oxygen and recycled bikes.
“We’re trying to do things differently,” says Zito. “But it took a lot longer than we would have liked. And it was so expensive. It’s not that green building materials cost more, but the extended period of time that it took, and having to do extra things above and beyond normal” were what cost her dearly, she says.
Costs got so out of hand because of stalling and permitting fees, she says, that she ran out of money to install solar panels that should, in theory, hook up to her radiant-heat floors. Instead, she’s using a hot water heater to heat her floors and, as a result, had a $3,000 electric bill over the winter.
“What they should be doing is encouraging businesses: You know, ‘That’s great that you want to help the environment. Let me support you,’” she says. Instead, she says the building inspectors who have the power to approve or deny her renovations “have never done this before so they don’t know how to deal with it.”
“This industry is relatively new, so there’s no uniform way of handling this yet,” says Mike Trahan, the head of Solar Connecticut, a nonprofit umbrella organization of solar panel installers and solar advocates.
Connecticut is one of the country’s guinea pigs when it comes to solar, mostly thanks to the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund’s solar incentive programs. “They’re setting the pace and because of that we’re bumping into a lot of issues,” says Trahan. The problems are like growing pains, he says.
In many cases, whether it’s building inspectors’ criteria or zoning regulations, green advocates say standardization is the key to growing the industry and making green technology more accessible.
With different rules in every town, “It makes it extremely difficult to not know what standard they’re being held to,” says Trahan. The result is a longer-than-necessary permitting process that eventually costs the customer more money.
The statewide building code is interpreted differently from town to town. “That’s a big pet peeve of mine,” says Brian Platz, who just stepped down from a one-year run as president of the state Building Officials Association. There are two culprits, he says: the building inspectors — who don’t have authority to interpret gray areas in the code — and the municipal leaders — who won’t pay for additional training for the inspectors. Inspectors are required to receive 30 hours of training a year, but Platz says more should be required. “If you think training is expensive, try ignorance. Not all building inspectors have received adequate training with the new products and methods and materials being used now,” says Platz. Plus, the state building code is updated every five years, and green technology is evolving much faster than the code.
Some towns, like West Hartford, require that solar panel installation comes with an engineering review, which can cost about $2,000. Mary Ann Basile, West Hartford’s supervisor of inspectors, says she wants to make sure solar panels won’t fly off a roof in a “wind situation” and won’t weigh more than a roof can handle. But, she says, she doesn’t always require an engineer’s appraiser — it depends on the project.
“Those local requirements are an obstacle,” says Richard Dziadul, who works for Pioneer Valley Photovoltaics Cooperative, an employee-owned company in New Britain that makes and installs solar electric and hot water systems.
“They’re asking for professional engineer approval partly because of ignorance — they don’t know what they’re doing or what they’re looking at,” says Dziadul. “They default to caution and that’s expensive.”
Trahan’s group is working on a model set of rules for solar panels to streamline the process for building inspectors, and the Clean Energy Fund has been training building officials on green technology, but solar installers report little-to-no improvement to date.
Towns’ building permit fees also vary wildly. What may cost $20 in one town costs $2,000 in another, says Carolyn Humphreys, who does community outreach for Sunlight Solar, one of the state’s larger solar companies. “When we go, it’s always a different price. It is so arbitrary,” she says.
Solar is expensive, so extra permitting fees put installers on edge. And since the costs are so high — depending on the size, a solar panel system can cost from $20,000 to $80,000 — the solar industry is being subsidized by the state.
Solar installers saw business shrivel when the Clean Energy Fund’s solar rebate program was depleted in November. “That program was a victim of its own success,” says Emily Smith, the Clean Energy Fund’s spokeswoman. The fund has helped pay for more than 1,000 solar installations since 2004.
“When the rebate went away the phones just dropped dead,” says Dziadul. “They just stopped being interested.”
That program was reinstated this month. The rebate — when you include the 30 percent federal tax rebate — is about 40 percent, but only benefits consumers who have the thousands upfront to spend.
To make solar affordable for everyone, the Clean Energy Fund came up with the first-of-its-kind solar lease program: For no money down, a consumer can lease solar panels — installed on their home — for 15 years at a fixed rate.
It’s a way to lock in electrical costs (which have gone up 14 percent for the last two years) in a state with the highest utility costs in the continental United States, and go green at the same time. It’s the first program of its kind in the country.
“The solar lease is the best thing that’s happened to solar in this state,” says Sunlight Solar’s Humphreys. “We need to make solar as easy as possible to get for anybody who wants it. People are very frustrated.”
Wind may face the most turbulent problems in the state. Optiwind, a two-year-old company with a new design for wind turbines, was set to install their first turbine on a 114-acre sewage plant in Goshen last summer. The 200-foot-tall turbine would have been installed in a hilly, woodsy area of the plant’s property.
“This would have been our very first turbine,” says owner David Hurwitt. “It is a new style, and it’s one styled for this type of environment — it’s shorter, it’s quieter.”
Optiwind’s turbines are a tall tube with multiple circular fans on two sides. Goshen residents worried the turbine would erode property values and the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission asked Optiwind to pay for three appraisers, who all said the turbine would have no detrimental effect. Then the town hired its own appraiser who agreed with Optiwind’s three appraisers — a wind turbine would not lower property values.
At three public hearings, angry neighbors spoke against the project, complaining about property values, noise and ruined vistas.
Optiwind’s first project would have been on a property where there’s already a 185-foot-tall cell phone tower. Most residents had never seen or complained about that tower. The wind turbine wouldn’t have been much taller or much more visible.
Residents continued to complain. “They were unwilling to listen to the experts and to reason,” says Hurwitt.
Optiwind was turned down in May, and is appealing the decision. At the end of June, Optiwind got permission to build its first turbine on a dairy farm in Torrington.
“I think there’s often the fear of the new, but people don’t object to the smokestacks at conventional power plants that are arguably less pleasing without even considering what’s coming out of it,” says Bob Wall, who works for the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund. Wall also heads the state’s Wind Working Group, which is designing model policies, like zoning, for wind.
Wind, according to a wind map created by the federal government, is not a viable energy source in Connecticut. To be productive, wind works best in flat, open areas like the Midwest where wind farms are growing. But there are a few spots in Connecticut where it may be viable — either on hill tops in Litchfield County or along Long Island Sound. The Clean Energy Fund will test the viability of “small wind” — single wind turbines as opposed to wind farms with hundreds of turbines — this year with one demonstration site each in Coventry, Lebanon, Meriden and New Haven. After a one-year test the town may keep the turbine if it wants.
Pine Point, a private school in Stonington, applied to be one of those test sites. Back in 2007 the school installed 300 solar panels. “I thought: This should be less a milestone and more of a mindset,” says the school’s director, Paul Geise. “We wanted to enhance education, reduce our carbon footprint and do something good for the economy.”
The school incorporates its solar panels into the curriculum — students use them in math and science classes. Wind could have been used similarly. Ideally, Geise would like to use three different wind turbine models. He gets excited thinking about the possibilities: “The kids could do comparisons, like: How much energy per cost? How much output does each have? The industry would love to know that sort of thing, and the kids would love to do that.”
But it’s not to be, at least not now. Stonington had no zoning regulations for wind turbines. The town wrote its own regulation last year — which the Clean Energy Fund approved of — but it was voted down by the town Planning and Zoning Commission 5-0.
At the P&Z meetings, Geise says he heard many silly concerns. “Somebody said, ‘We’re concerned about the tower crushing children and the blades coming off and decapitating them.’ I guess you could be worried about that, but it hasn’t happened, and I don’t think it’s a reasonable concern.”
The town’s newly created Clean Energy Taskforce worked on a new wind regulation with Pine Point, but the regulation became too tailored to the school, and not the town as a whole.
“I kept saying, ‘I’m not comfortable with that,’” says Geise.
The Clean Energy Fund’s Bob Wall says the ordinance became so restrictive it would have only allowed a wind turbine on about 10 sites in town. The Clean Energy Fund withdrew its support and Geise asked that the proposed regulation be withdrawn.
“We felt that if this is one of the first towns to adopt an ordinance then other towns might look to this as an example — then the whole state could be saddled with very restrictive ordinances,” says Wall. “They lost out, and it’s too bad because [the school] was a great candidate.”¦
Green Bill of Environmental Health
Condo associations are a major roadblock to energy conservation, says Marty Mador, the legislative chair of the Connecticut chapter of the Sierra Club.
For two years now, Mador has lost the fight to pass a “right to dry” law that would guarantee condo owners the right to line dry their laundry. Mador’s bill is part of a national, symbolic movement aimed at reducing energy use.
Nearly 6 percent of residential electricity use goes to clothes dryers, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. If all Americans switched to using clotheslines, the energy savings would be enough to close a few power plants.
Some people think clotheslines are tacky.
“I wanted this to be a vehicle to start conversation about energy, and clotheslines are familiar to everybody,” he says. “You can’t really go up to anyone on the street and say, ‘Whaddya think about those carbon caps?’ But everybody has experience with clotheslines, and that’s why it’s such an important tool to talk about this.”
A national condo association — Community Associations Institute — has been fighting bills like this across the country, turning it into a property rights debate.
At a public hearing on the bill, Joanne Mueller-London, of the CAI Connecticut chapter, testified that condo rules are designed so that people living in close proximity all get along. “And, not everyone wants to see their neighbor’s undergarments, nightgowns, laundry.”
Mador says that’s the wrong thing to worry about. “To me the important property rights issues are people who want to save energy, save money, reduce contribution to global warming. Those are the rights we should be protecting. Instead, we’re putting the aesthetic values of the few ahead of issues of prime national policy, and that’s just doing things upside down.”
Other progressive bills that went nowhere this year include charges for using plastic or paper bags at stores; requiring a 100-foot buffer along streams when building, which would protect wetlands; and requiring bottle deposits on teas, juices and sports drinks (although the water bottle deposit bill did finally pass).
source: fairfield weekly by Betsy Yagla
Green Building
‘Green’ building is here to stay
From local efforts such as York’s wind and green-building ordinances, to Vinalhaven’s soon to be installed wind turbines to the Sears Tower makeover, green building and sustainable design appear to be in full stride. According to the National Home Builders Association (NAHB), approximately 40 percent of new homes built in 2010 will be built to some green standard. Today, when building or renovating your home or office, sustainable design and building practices are the new norm.
As with any sustainable topic, there are many places you can look for green building guidance. The two leaders are the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) with its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program and NAHB with NAHBGreen. Both have their pros and both, one might say, have their cons, but the goal is the same: build comfortable, well designed, energy-efficient, durable homes while minimizing their impact on the environment.
Both the USGBC and NAHB provide criterion to which a project must adhere if it is being considered for certification. There are some minor differences, but the general guidelines focus on location, size, design, materials, energy and water efficiency and indoor air quality. A house built today to either LEED or NAHBGreen standards will be 30 percent to 60 percent more energy efficient than one built by regular standards.
A key to a successful green building project, regardless of whether it is a renovation or new build, is to start with green building ideas in the forefront. As we’ve discussed in previous articles, proactive, conscious decisions are what make things happen. Assessing which parts of the LEED and/or NAHB guidelines align best with your goals and personality will help tremendously in ensuring a fulfilling green building experience. It is when green building ideas come up midstream or if you are pursuing certification and looking to accrue additional points that things can get convoluted and difficult.
Each program provides choices as to the levels of certification available. I am not a proponent for either program or certification level, although I do hold the LEED AP credential. From my perspective, the goal is to complete a project that you are proud of and can enjoy, with certification being secondary. As you review the programs, you should be thinking about which program works for you, what certification level works for you or whether you want to make your own program and take some from LEED and some from NAHBGreen. You can start your experience by visiting the following sites: www.usgbc.org and www.nahbgreen.org, and then let things percolate as you decide what feels right versus not so much. Once you’ve got that figured out, you’re well on your way to building a great new space, home or office. And remember, like all other sustainable choices, learn new things, share your experiences with others and always, always have fun.
source: seacoastonline by Todd Lamoureaux
Solar Energy
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While the US mires itself in controversy over the weakened cap-and-trade bill working its way through Congress, China and India have begun to look ahead with new government investment policies that rapidly expand solar power capacity in each country.
China recently announced a dramatic increase in its expected solar capacity target for 2011, planning to reach 2 GW within the next two years. Already, China’s new renewable energy stimulus plan has expanded the nation’s 2020 target from 1.8 GW to 20 GW–that’s more than triple the amount of PV solar power installed in the entire world during 2008, the industry’s best year ever.
The higher targets will be met by enhancing government subsidies and other deployment incentives, which currently stand at US $2.93/watt capacity for roof-mounted systems greater than 50 kW. Government officials have suggested that the current US $.16 per kWH feed-in tariff for ground-mounted PV systems may be adjusted in order to make solar power production profitable.
Last month, India also signaled that it sees solar as a crucial component of a future clean energy economy, when its New and Renewable Energy Committee announced a massive National Solar Mission. In what one Greenpeace India representative called “the most ambitious solar plan that any country has laid out so far,” the National Solar Mission matches China by setting a new target of 20 GW solar capacity by 2020. What’s more, India estimates that the plan could bring the now-prohibitive cost of solar down to US $.08-.10 per kWh by 2017-2020, making it cost-competitive with fossil fuels.
The cost of building rooftop systems and increasing local manufacturing capacity on the scale India has proposed would run about $20 billion over 30 years, economists say. India’s solar plan will meet this cost by levying taxes on gasoline and diesel, as well as implementing other measures like a feed-in tariff, solar power purchase obligations, tax breaks for manufacturers, exemptions on tariffs for imported equipment, and a national renewable energy standard that mandates a certain percentage of India’s power be generated from solar.
One part of the plan in particular has been making headlines: the provision that the Indian government will provide $100 billion in subsidies over 20 years to utilities for buying solar-generated power.
There are two lessons for the US as developing Asian economies continue to expand solar capacity. First, it’s a clear opportunity for American investment. The Indian government will likely need help from developed countries to finance its huge subsidies plan; through US government investment and foreign direct investment in solar power plants, the US stands to profit while also contributing to India’s clean development and the reduction of global GHG emissions. Such a mutually beneficial arrangement could be a focal point for a productive treaty between developed and developing nations in Copenhagen.
Second, in addition to facilitating international cooperation, the solar push by Asian nations should spark a sense of competitiveness for US domestic energy policy. Direct government investment in solar R&D, as well as subsidies and incentives for deployment of solar energy, could put the US in step with India and China as leaders in the deployment of this vital renewable energy technology. Despite a steadily growing solar PV industry with a current capacity of about 9000 mW, the US needs more solar deployment, and we need it to happen fast. China and India have shown us a model of how to do it.
source: Breakthrough Generation by Johanna Peace
