Tonight the Post Carbon Institute (PCI), a California-based think tank addressing sustainability issues associated with climate change, peaking resources and community resiliency, kicks off a three-day gathering with its Fellows (of which I am one) in Berkeley.
The Institute was founded in 2003, largely around the issue of peaking oil and energy supplies. Author Richard Heinberg (The Party's Over, Peak Everything) was the group's first Senior Fellow. Heinberg has been now joined by 28 other Fellows, and this is their first gathering.
From an initial focus on peaking energy resources and their potential impacts, PCI now addresses multiple areas and issues including climate change, consumption/ waste, communities, economies, ecology, education, energy, food/ agriculture, government, health, social justice, population, water, transportation.
Eighteen of those who are coming to Berkeley (five will join in remotely) to address how our government, society, communities and different industry sectors can prepare better for the system-based or "wicked problems" that climate change, peaking energy supplies and global recession present.
Brian Schwartz (public health expert, professor Johns Hopkins University)
Bill Rees (community resilience expert, author, University British Columbia)
David Hughes (energy expert, geoscientist for Canadian Geological Survey)
Warren Karlenzig (urban expert, author, president Common Current)
Other participants that will join in remotely include authors Michael Shuman, Josh Farley, Bill McKibben and Richard Douthwaite, Transition Town movement originator Rob Hopkins; Johns Hopkins' Cindy Parker.
Look for my report next week on the outcome of this historic gathering.
What will the impacts be of the Dubai credit crisis on Masdar City, the famous living sustainability lab being built in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), with the goal of being a zero-net carbon city?
So far the UAE capital city-state of Abu Dhabi, backed by significant revenues from oil production and collateral from reserves, has escaped the financial panic that has gripped neighboring Dubai. This bodes well for Masdar City, to which Abu Dhabi pledged $15 billion in investments; some are predicting the Dubai domino effect will not stir up dust in Masdar.
Abu Dhabi is looking at Masdar as being an international crucible for renewable energy and other sustainability technologies so that the UAE can make the transition from relying exclusively on fossil fuels to exporting technologies for future low-carbon/ low-water global energy and resource needs.
Masdar, which will have about 55,000 residents when complete before 2020, is notable in that it is serving as a large-scale test bed for new technologies in renewable energy, passive wind cooling, advanced materials design, innovative car-free transportation, water conservation and local food production.
The project is financed by funds through partners such as Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse and is being developed with technology corporations such as General Electric, the anchor tenant in Masdar's Ecoimagination Center.
The Masdar Institute, which started classes this fall, is backed in a cooperative agreement with MIT (The MIT Technology Review is the source above that predicted things will be hunky dory in Masdar despite Dubai's situation).
In terms of financing, The Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, which is the government entity behind Masdar, announced in late September that it was seeking $600 million over seven years to fund construction of Masdar, where ground was first broken earlier this year. The government reported that it was not seeking an estimated $18 billion to finance the project, a figure that was published in other media reports.
Carbon credits and trading represents another form of project financing for Masdar. Last month Masdar was required by the United Nations to resubmit four out of six its carbon credit schemes that were part of the Clean Development Mechanism program of the Kyoto Protocol under the UN, which will become active in earning credits in June of next year.
Masdar is currently engaged in a wide assortment of R&D, including working with the nation of Spain to test large-scale concentrated PV solar power production in semi-tropical desert conditions. Masdar features some 30 manufacturers of PV and thermal solar products testing more than 40 solar related technologies alone.
With GE, the city is testing smart-grid technologies, including smart appliances, for home energy monitoring and energy conservation, among other technologies.
It seems that Masdar represents a completely different mindset than the 'build it and they will come" approach taken in Dubai.
Instead of Dubai's living-for-today mentality with giant indoor ski slopes and man-made islands built in the desert for jet-setting tourists, Masdar is more about channeling global innovation for both the future of its own nation's economy and the growing demands of the world.
Still, many interested in clean technologies and sustainable cities will be watching Masdar closely during the next few months to look for signs of how a critical sustainability innovation ecosystem will survive the stress tests of a volatile global financial ecosystem.
The boldest move by a US city to remake its transportation system occurred five years ago, when Denver metro area voters in 31 communities committed $4.7 billion in sales tax funding for its FasTracks initiative.
It turns out not one of the 119 miles of promised light rail have been built yet because of material and land acquisition cost increases, a poor economy and other complications. Through city-wide strategies for making public transit, walkability and bikeability the modes for addressing freeway and city arterial congestion, however, Denver has so-far succeeded despite the snafus.
The city has almost doubled its public transit ridership since FasTracks was passed in 2004. In 2004 about five percent of city commuters used public transit; that figure hit nine percent in 2008, figures recently released by the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey.
So how did the Mile-High City make itself into a case study for how to take a car-dependent Sun Belt metro and move it toward multi-modality?
First, the city created a regional mandate for public transit, combined with tangible, measureable goals. Mayor John Hickenlooper told me in 2006, "We passed the most ambitious transit initiative in the history of the United States. It was because all 31 mayors in the seven-county area unanimously supported it."
Hickenlooper said the city wanted to reach 20 percent ridership by 2020, even 25 or 30 percent if it could. Little did he know at the time that the city would be on its way to hitting its goal without even laying one mile of new rail under the FasTracks. (Denver has recently extended its southern light rail line through a federal funding initiative separate from FasTracks, so that did help boost its ridership to a degree).
Peter Park, Denver's chief city planner, credits a number of approaches with the big gains in transit use. Strategic transit plans laid out in the 2002 Blueprint Denver document are explicit about not adding extra freeway lanes or widening city streets; these acts often occur as a panacea for traffic congestion. Most studies show such isolated approaches only eventually create more congestion.
Instead, Blueprint Denver took the radical tact of not projecting how many vehicles would be needed to get people around the growing city, but instead projected the number of "person trips": driving, transit, walking and riding bikes.
Another strategy was the Living Streets program, created by the public works department in collaboration with a range of civic and commercial organizations, including Kaiser Permanente. "The idea was that roads are for cars: streets are for people," said Park.
A video on Denver's city site has Kaiser's Dr. Eric France discussing how and why cities can be less auto dependent: "The way you build your neighborhoods can influence the way we live," France said. "Incorporating active transportation into our lives is one of the best strategies for keeping people healthy."
Park and others from the city have been working with a new citizen's academy, The New Transit Alliance, to raise awareness about the economic benefits of transit with businesses and community leaders.
Denver's creative approach to transportation, health and the green economy even helped it this summer get selected as one of three US cities in the federal government's new Interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities.
All three heads of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency came to Denver earlier this month (others in the program are Philadelphia and Kansas City, Missouri) to figure out ways to collaboratively increase quality of life and reduce automotive reliance in affordable housing and beyond.
I remember working on a charrette for the "greening" of the one of the largest federal housing projects in the West. No matter how green the materials, landscaping and energy systems were, one of residents' biggest concern--besides not getting caught in gang cross-fire--was having to run across a freeway on-ramp to get to the only nearby store.
FasTracks is by no means dead in the water. Under the measure, the city will still be extending its light rail lines through 2018, though some of the plan might get scaled back unless another tax increase is levied. The system expansion should lead to exponential increases in ridership because of the new light rail stations being created--six neighborhood station plans have been completed and 10 are underway, according to Park. Bus service, including Bus Rapid Transit, is also being significantly expanded.
Denver's metro light rail and Bus Rapid Transit system, if FasTracks is built out to the original plan
"Each station will create a portal into new neighborhoods, breathing life into the streets and the economic vitality of businesses," Park said.
Denver has a long way to go before it gets anywhere near the 55 percent transit commute rate of New York City, or even the low to mid 30's commute rates of DC, Boston and San Francisco. But the city is an important model--good and bad--for how newer US urban areas can create a landscape and way of life that will no longer be defined only by the car.
Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and co-author of a forthcoming book from the Post Carbon Institute on urban and societal resiliency.
Here are the top ten sustainability related stories of 2008 that we have been watching and participating in at Common Current, a global sustainability consultancy. True to sustainability system dynamics, most of these items impact the other items on the list, and they will continue to unfold in 2009 and beyond.
1. Election of Barack Obama
After Barack Obama's historic November 2008 election, he continued to demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the risks posed by global climate change and the nation's dependency on foreign energy. In addition to making green jobs and clean technologies a major part of a national economic stimulus package and a precondition for many cabinet appointments, Obama's view of sustainability as an opportunity shows he will take on vexing problems with new solutions.
Obama's statement on "60 Minutes" when asked about his energy priorities with oil going from $147 a barrel to under $60 a barrel was telling: "We go from shock to trance. You know, oil prices go up, gas prices at the pump go up, everybody goes into a flurry of activity. And then the prices go back down and suddenly we act like it's not important, and we start filling up our SUVs again. And, as a consequence, we never make any progress. It's part of the addiction, all right. That has to be broken. Now is the time to break it."
Obama's dipping into the Clinton well to appoint former EPA politcal warhorse Carol Browner as Energy and Climate Czar demonstrates that his new solutions don't necessarily mean new people will be addressing them.
Barack Obama with new Energy Secretary Steven Chu, EPA chief Lisa Jackson and "Energy and Climate Czar" Carol Browner (AP photo)
One of Obama's sustainability-related appointments, though, does demonstrate how multi-sector collaboration will reshape the US economy to be more energy efficient and less carbon intensive. Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy is a savvy choice. Chu, a Nobel-prize winning director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has piloted economic-development enhancing climate change solutions with the energy industry, the green building sector, venture capital firms and alternative fuel academic researchers. He also supervised the Helios Project, which is trying to bridge the gap between transportation and solar energy technologies.
And to bolster the administration's science-based approach on policy further, Obama selected Harvard's John Holdren as Chief Science advisor. Holdren is respected as one of the leading experts on global climate science (he advised Al Gore on An Inconvenient Truth), and is well versed in clean technologies.
2. The 2008 Presidential Campaign
Unlike previous elections where "The Environment" garnered nary a mention, the months leading up to the 2008 election of Barack Obama saw the big-time advent of sustainability topics.
Both McCain and Obama supported carbon cap and trading for industry to reduce greenhouse gases. Obama also made a vague campaign pledge of investing $150 billion over 10 years on clean tech and energy efficiency.
But the most memorable sustainability campaign moments came in spring when gas prices began to hit their historic high of more than $4 a gallon. McCain's call for a consumer federal gas tax holiday was met with derision from most including Obama, as it would only make foreign oil dependence worse, not to mention increase carbon emissions. The McCain "gas tax holiday plan," supported by then-candidate Hillary Clinton, died on the vine during the heat of June.
3. 2008: The Highest Gas and Oil Prices Ever
When oil reached $4-5 a gallon at the pump and more than $145 a barrel in July, a future of energy volatility and potential energy scarcity came into sharper focus. Record numbers of Americans took to public transit, while others reconsidered where and how they could use less gas not only in their cars but in their lives: "Mixed-use" real estate (neighborhoods with shops, jobs and homes) with good public transit were suddenly hot tickets. Meanwhile, people started using web tools such as "WalkScore"to judge whether potential jobs and homes were easy walking distances to shopping, schools and entertainment. Offices or homes that were too car-dependent were suddenly out of fashion.
4. 2009: The Lowest (Relative) Gas and Oil Prices Ever?
The world economic meltdown of 2008-2009 demonstrates how closely energy supply, particularly oil, greases the gears of commerce--and vice versa. As the stock market and demand plunged, so did oil prices. Oil reached a year low of under $40 a barrel in late December, when OPEC's announcement of production cuts did little to stop the slide.
The real hand on the throttle of pricing is the economy, as global demand has slowed considerably. When the economy does pick up, scarce supply (or speculation about scarce supply) might again force steep price hikes, as private oil companies and nationally owned oil producers are canceling development plans for refineries and exploration because of the large drop in prices. In the meantime, alternative fuel development will be hurt as this emerging market, when unsubsidized, requires a minimum oil price of about $50 a barrel to be competitive with crude.
5. Arctic Ice Cap Melting Accelerates Wildly
The surprising loss noted by scientists in 2008 of the Arctic ice cap and inland Arctic ice is major cause of on-going global environmental, economic and geo-political concern, with the area now up to ten degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was in the 1980s.The newly open Arctic waters will cause even warmer temperatures in the region and beyond, as water absorbs far more heat from the sun than does ice.
Besides releasing the trapped methane (worse than carbon dioxide in terns of greenhouse impacts) from permafrost, melting inland ice is raising global sea levels. Two trillion tons of arctic ice has melted since 2003, according to NASA. Sea ice in the arctic region broke up earlier in the season, opening up a potential permanent shipping lane around the former polar ice cap and precipitating an international scramble for the region's energy resources.
6. Super Storms and Global Climate Change Adaptation
The strength, duration and location of major storms in 2008 led many to speculate how much global climate change is contributing to deadly and economically devastating events.
Burma's southern coast before and after (May 2008) Typhoon Nargis. A present day image providing a snapshot of what many climate change forecasts project for some coastal areas.
On the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Ike came ashore as a dangerously large hurricane (though only officially Category 2 strength) near the Houston-Galveston area, killing at least 17, and destroying or damaging thousands of homes as well as knocking out refineries, oil platforms and major supply pipelines. Southeastern US cities such as Atlanta and Charlotte, NC were hit with severe price hikes and gas shortages for the month that followed Ike, demonstrating the vulnerability of the nation's economy to storms that may be intensified by climate change.
7. China's Industry Impact on Olympics, Consumer Products, Global Food and Air
(Thanks to Jared Press on this)
After taking up a "Blue Skies" campaign and relocating or ceasing industrial production and much of Beijing's downtown traffic, China barely cleared its polluted skies in time for the opening Summer Olympic ceremonies. Air, water and toxic waste pollution have been increasing steadily in the nation as a result of consumer demand in the United States for inexpensive products. Only one tenth of the nation's sewage is treated, according to a University of Hong Kong scientist. This "ask no questions" mentality has created runaway cancer rates, turned rivers bright green or black, and smudged the atmosphere so much that at times in Beijing airplanes have not been allowed to land.
Then there is product contamination from China, which began with lead-tainted toys and jewelry, and spread to exported poisonous toothpaste by 2007. In 2008 the industrial and agricultural by-product melamine, first detected in animal feed for chickens, cattle, and fish has now gone up the food chain into eggs and milk. The tainted baby formula has caused kidney failure and illness in 294,000 Chinese infants and six deaths. Tainted chocolate, chickens and hogs have been found in the US, though the meat was not recalled, so it's likely that many Americans have been unknowingly exposed to China's dangerous practices not only in the air that they breathe, but in the food they eat.
As for the ballyhooed "Eco-City" of Dongtan that China was said to be developing with Arup Engineering, groundbreaking has not occurred and the permit for development has lapsed.
8. Foreclosure Crisis: Recipe for Smart Growth?
The foreclosure crisis that started in 2007 when gas prices began to skyrocket and that magnified in 2008, had its beginnings in the areas of the United States that largely lack public transit, walkability and mixed real estate uses. Meanwhile as gas prices rose to record levels, metro areas that had housing and jobs close to good transit and walkable amenities saw their value hold steady. Any plan for preventing future housing sector meltdowns needs to include an analysis of how gas and transportation prices pushed many over the financial edge, despite the plentiful supply of distant housing from job markets that seemed (or seems) affordable with low gas prices.
One smart move in policy in 2008 was California's Senate Bill 375, the nation's first law designed to limit sprawl and provide communities and developers incentives to build transit-oriented "infill."
9. US Auto Fleet to go Electric?
With the survival of the current US auto industry in doubt, whatever rises from the ashes will likely be greener and cleaner than anything Detroit ever thought possible before the 2008 downturn. Leading the "charge" for an electric US fleet is none other than Ford Motor Co. Chairman William Ford III, grandson of Ford founder Henry Ford. Bill Ford met privately with Obama during the campaign and with Obama and his advisors after the election: Ford is reportedly advocating for a mostly consumer electric fleet as a way of restructuring the industry to be competitive with imports while reducing climate change emissions.
10. Green Jobs
Through the leadership of Van Jones, president of Green For All, the reality of "Green Collar Jobs" came roaring into the United States during 2008, culminating in the "Green Jobs Act" which could be included in Congress's 2009 economic stimulus package. The act aims to provide 25,000 jobs in solar panel installation, home and business energy retrofitting and other high-paying jobs for Americans, launching new training centers and education programs in high unemployment areas with disappearing manufacturing jobs.The US Conference of Mayors estimates growth of 4.2 million new "green collar" jobs in the nation over the next 30 years. Welcome news after a sobering year.
Warren Karlenzig
Common Current founder and president, has
worked with the federal government; the nation of South Korea ("New
Cities Green Metrics"); The European Union ("Green and Connected Cities
Initiative"); the State of California ("Comprehensive Recycling
Communities" and "Sustainable Community Plans"); major cities; and the
world's largest corporations developing policy, strategy, financing and
critical operational capacities for 20 years. Read more here.
