Clean Energy Springfield

In the talks that I've given recently, I try not to focus too much on the doom-oriented aspects of climate change. I give them a mention, but I think it's more useful to talk about the ways that reducing our greenhouse gas emissions can make for a better Springfield--more comfortable, more affordable, better for business.

That said, it's important to not let the bigger picture slip by, since that's what makes the problem so urgent. The big news the past couple of days has been the leak of an early draft of the second part of the IPCC's fourth round report. That's a mouthful, but it's important. The IPCC--the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--was commissioned by the UN in 1988 to study climate change, and is probably one of the largest scientific endeavors ever. It synthesizes the state of climate change knowledge in rounds, and it's in the process of releasing the results of the fourth round now. A little over a month ago, it released the first part of the fourth round report, looking at the what we know about humanity's contribution to climate change (a lot, and what we know is that we're very certain--more than 90% certain--that we're contributing to the current warming).

The second half of the report, not due for another couple of months, looks at what impacts we're already experiencing and what we can expect in the future. Let's reiterate that: we're already experiencing climate change. It is not something that happens exclusively in the future. However, the future has even more in store for us, and there's not much good news. Droughts, flooding, famine, and no more habitats for polar bears.

What does this mean for Illinois? It's hard to know. So far, most of the attention has gone to Africa and Latin America, which are set to get hit the hardest in the near future. However, a couple of years ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists put together prospects for states in the Great Lakes region, including Illinois. This doesn't have the same heft at the IPCC, but it is specific to us. (Sadly, it's a little undercut by projecting out to 2100 only under a business-as-usual scenario, and not looking at the impacts under reduced emissions.) The basic idea? By 2100, Illinois's climate will be like that of present-day Oklahoma.

The big debate at tonight's utilities committee meeting was definitely alderman McNeil pulling representatives from KBV (the contractors building the new Dallman IV power plant) and a couple of the unions to talk about getting more minority workers out at the power plant. Fierce!

By contrast, the first wind power contract discussion was relatively mild. Aldermans Kunz and Edwards had some aggressive questions, but I think CWLP gave them good answers and seemed to address their concerns. The utilities committee put it on the debate agenda for next week's city council meeting on Tuesday, and (apparently) gave it a "do pass" recommendation.

I'll have more details tomorrow, but I'll hit the highlights now. First, the contract under consideration tonight is for the first 20 MW of the 120 MW CWLP will eventually purchase. CWLP is still hammering out the details for the other 100 MW, and fulfillment of this contract is contingent on that one going through.

Why two contracts? These 20 MW are part of an existing wind farm owned by Florida Power & Light (FPL) in Hancock County, Iowa. The next 100 MW are in a farm under construction is Osceola, Iowa, whose target completion date is January 2008. Under the terms of the contract, CWLP would start purchasing these 20 MW starting July 1 of this year. Both contracts will be 10 years long.

The cost comes in at just under CWLP's anticipated cost of $60 per MWh--over ten years, the average price will be $50.79/MWh. The price is set to start at $41.43 per MWh, and rise at a rate of 4% per year. Assuming that the price of energy on the market rises at 3.5% per year, total cost to Springfield ratepayers will be $2300--basically nothing, according to CWLP.

CWLP described that energy inflation rate as a conservative estimate--over the past 10 years, the price of energy has gone up 9% on average. The more that price goes up, the more revenue CWLP will bring in on this. Finally, it sounded like CWLP said that revenue that the wind power brings in will go toward a negative fuel adjustment charge--i.e., lowering ratepayer's per-kWh cost of electricity.

I'll see how the SJR covers this tomorrow, as well as how comments over there go. In the meantime, anyone with any questions about the contract, or more broadly about the energy plan in general, feel free to post them here or email them to cleanenergyspringfield at gmail, and I'll try to address them from my notes and from the handout that CWLP gave out.

Chris Wetterich has pretty solid coverage of the wind power deal in this morning's SJR. But man, oh, man, when do we get to retire this: "But CWLP and the Sierra Club say that by buying it, CWLP will reduce the overall amount of carbon dioxide emitted by fossil-fuel power plants, which most scientists believe causes global warming"? How much agreement do we have to have before the SJR can just say "carbon dioxide causes global warming"? Is it enough that, politically, there is bipartisan agreement? How about that three major energy associations now not just agree that carbon dioxide causes global warming, but are calling for compulsory carbon caps. Ditto ExxonMobile. Or check out long-time warming skeptic Ron Bailey talking about how he came to believe he'd been wrong.

The presence of a few people that deny the connection between HIV and AIDS doesn't lead to this sort of CYA, does it?

Brad Plumer at TNR has a good background article on the recent division among evangelicals that made the news this week. As you've probably heard, the National Association of Evangelicals (led by vice president for governmental affairs Richard Cizik) is getting mean letters from prominent, politically-connected evangelicals like James Dobson, for Cizik's push for more attention to creation care, their word for environmentalism. It's pretty interesting, and worth reading. (SIDE NOTE: I have a TNR login, but not a subscription, so let me know if anyone has problems accessing this.)

That said, if you're only going to read one TNR article this year, make it Ryan Lizza's profile of Young Mr. Obama, and his formative years organizing under Saul Alinsky's method. Great not just for background on Obama, but for an introduction to hardscrabble, power-oriented organizing.

One of our goals with the website here is to put together a list of what innovative energy initiatives other cities are doing. A lot of these are small affairs--how they structure incentives for incremental improvements in energy efficiency, for instance.

Today, though, I came across a startling example of what can be done. Soldiers Field, WI, town of 635, passed an ordinance mandating that all new commercial buildings would get at least half of their energy from solar power. They ramped up their thermal performance standards to twice Wisconsin's standards. They passed a solar access law, to ensure that future buildings wouldn't steal the sun from all of those solar panels.

Of course, as exciting as this is, it's actually a little depressing that it happened in 1978.

In more contemporary news, 143 towns in New Hampshire have passed a resolution calling on the US to commit to greenhouse gas reductions. The resolution is here. It has support from all sorts of groups, from the environmentalists to the American Snowmobilers Association, and including (if I read it right) Stonyfield Farm. This is particularly clever politics, given New Hampshire's privileged position in the upcoming presidential election.

The Washington Post has a shortish article about how species respond to climate change. It's focused on Maryland, and notes that the Baltimore Oriole is shifting northward, while Louisiana's brown pelican is starting to show up. It touches a little bit on the troubles that other species may have--birds are relatively mobile, after all. Can plants shift northward as quickly? They can certainly shift in response to natural climate changes (and in fact, Illinois is a prime example of those shifts, as it floats between forest and prairie land depending on temperature and precipitation changes), but manmade warming is going to happen a lot faster than that.

This reminds of something I think would be great to have: an indicator garden. Long-time horticulturalists can see climate change in their records, as their flowers bud and bloom earlier. And we know that species will shift around in response to climate. Why not set aside a little portion of one of parks to serve as a publicly maintained climate indicator garden: connect it to records of when the species within it typically bloom and where different species are native to, and with just a little management we'll be able to see climate change happen on a year to year basis. This would be a phenomenal education tool, as well as providing a natural amenity.

I'm going to task this to the Illinois Native Plant Society.

Industrial-scale carbon sequestration is in the news again: an MIT report (and here) says the coal industry is way behind in getting sequestration off the ground. A lot of people (including my second link) see sequestration as absolutely crucial to our future energy system. (See wikipedia for a good introduction to sequestration, and ignore the stuff about biological sequestration for now.)

As I'm sure you'll be surprised to know, I'm not so sure. (And I'm important! I have the blog to prove it!) Sequestration is a tricky thing--ocean sequestration may be a new form of pollution, while underground sequestration may be risky due to, you know, earthquakes. One thing I'm fairly confident on, though, is that sequestration doesn't need subsidies. The fossil fuel industry is fully mature, and it got that way through a century or more of public support and subsidy. It can afford to look after itself, if it wants its product to make the transition to a future de-carboned world. Public money is scarce, though, and so it ought to go to support technologies that we know can work, like improved efficiency, solar, and wind.

I know some people will croak at the thought of solar and wind being proven technologies, but to my mind the only thing holding them back is battery capacity. And building a better battery--or, at any rate, a lot more batteries--seems like more a sure thing than tucking a gas into gaps in the deep ground, such that it won't escape. And, of course, wind and solar (not to mention my pet favorite, geothermal, and not to mention the really new kids on the block like tidal power) are still comparably new. Subsidies can help mature these industries that can become the core of the our energy the easiest. Moreover, anyone can get in on solar and wind and all the rest at this point--someone as little as CWLP has the potential (in my mind) to be a major driver of geothermal, for instance. Not so for coal: subsidies there are going to go to one of a few well-established massive energy companies.

I don't, actually, have a lot to say about Al Gore's testimony in front of the US Senate today, even though it's been the buzz of the environmental sector for a few days now. David Roberts at Grist has a run-down of the core elements of what Gore is calling for. Some stuff we've heard before, some stuff is new. I'm pretty tickled by his proposal for "Connie Mae," a carbon-neutral mortgage association, to help defray the upfront costs of energy-efficient building." That would be pretty nifty. It's probably something we could even do locally, lacking federal leadership.

Tomorrow is World Shut-Off Day, asking us all to Step Away From the Computer for just one day. I'm torn: I have so much great blogging to share with you all. On the other hand, there is spring cleaning and a garden to putter around in. So, if you don't hear from me tomorrow, it's because I'm being virtuous, not that I'm lazy.

UPDATE (Saturday morning): So much for that.

Nothing strikingly new here, but researchers have identified climates in the world that are likely to disappear entirely, as well as zones that will have new climates, unlike any others we experience today. This doesn't have much meaning for Illinois (we're the new Oklahoma, Canada is the new Illinois), but having grown up in the south, I am not excited at the prospect of visiting my parents' new Venus-like home. Read the full story. Here's the picture that's worth a thousand words:

Some bad news to go with yesterday's good news out of the UK. Those salmon that are returning to the Thames have apparently brought coal mining with them.

One thing that's always important to keep in mind is that, as technological development goes, wind power, solar power, geothermal, and all the rest are still in a growth stage. They haven't had decades of industrial investment like coal and natural gas. So, expect to keep seeing articles like this one, about a turbine blade design that's more efficient at harnessing low-wind speeds. The more diversity we get in terms of dealing with different wind speeds, the more evenly we'll be able to spread wind farms, which means less concentration in particular regions and less loss due to transmission. It also makes us better able to take advantage of the continual availability of wind somewhere.

So, keep it in mind: wind is getting more efficient (and already some studies put it as generating up to 50 kWh for every one kWh of fossil fuel input), while coal is mired where it's always been: about 30% efficient (i.e., 1 kWh of electricity for every 3 kWh fossil fuel input).

ALSO: Years ago, I heard that one of the big problems facing wind turbines was bugs. Just like bugs splat against your windshield on the highway, bugs splat against turbine blades, which--after enough time--degrades their performance. Does anyone know if this is still an issue? It seems like a straightforward maintenance fix, but maybe nothing is straightforward on a tower 250 feet in the air.

Whoa! Stopped home for lunch today, and what do I find, but that the Supreme Court has ruled (5-4) against the US EPA's refusal to regulate greenhouse gases. Grist has a quick overview here, and you can read the whole opinion, including two dissents from Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia, here.

This is big, but I think it can go in two general ways. First, the EPA puts up some perfunctory regulations, whose primary result is a lessening in urgency to act. Second, this could give moderate Republicans and Democrats the impetus and/or cover to support stronger regulations formulated by Congress, such as Henry Waxman's Safe Climate Act.

I was going to say that it's wait-and-see time, but that's not really true. I think this ups the case for action. April is chock full of opportunities to get involved--to rally, to discuss, to make commitments. I'll be posting about upcoming events throughout the month--consider coming out to show your support or find out what you can do.

Good op-ed in the SJR today from Eric Grimm, about the perverse attempts to undermine the science of global warming. A lot of advocates of climate change (as opposed to myself, an opponent of climate change ;) ) claim to be speaking in favor of sound science. What I don't really hear, though, is any sense of what an unbiased test would look like (to their eyes). Instead, you get a lot of railing against the use of computer models, which strikes me as completely bizarre and about as anti-scientific as you can get. After all, a model is a tool--shaped by theory, tested against reality, and like anything else in science you get bonus points for being repeatable and consistent.

Anyway, I think at this point this is something of a futile effort. We're at the point where only a committed core of people don't think global warming is human caused* and requires action. Better to spend our time figuring out how to adapt and prevent.

With that in mind, here's a scary little nugget: Russia has long relied on its winters to repel all invaders. Turns out the warming world might be leaving Russia vulnerable, not just to the ghost of Napolean, but to the hantavirus, which survived this year's record setting warm winter, and thus got a boost in prevalence. It's still unclear whether the spread is due to the warm weather or cyclical mouse population dynamics, but it's certainly an example of the kinds of weird and unwanted results we expect to see as the world warms.

* One commenter at the SJR was in a huff over the use of "human caused." For the record, when I say "global warming is human caused," I mean "the unnatural part of global warming is human caused." No one's concerned about natural warming, because it happens on a timescale that's easy to adapt to.

I was hoping that my absence would give Illinois and Midwest newspapers the opportunity to make the latest news from the IPCC a little more close to home. Andrew Revkin of the New York Times got a scoop on the key news, which is that poor nations are, inexplicably, in for an even worse time in the century to come*. A few other links to general coverage, the impacts to natural wonders, and just on the general bleakness of the report.

Sadly, however, the stories on local impacts haven't really started yet. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch seems to have the only news on Illinois impacts: a longer growing season to start, with less rain and even more heat in the further future. More heavy storms rather than gentle rain. My go-to document on Illinois impacts is the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate Change in Illinois, and that's looking pretty solid: Illinois will get Oklahomazized. (According to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin will get Arkansized.)

All is not bad news, however. For one, the "what do we do?" section of the IPCC report is still yet-to-be-released--expect it in the fall. For another, China has agreed to join negotiations for the follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol, governing what to do after 2012. That is big, important news, and hopefully it'll finally bring the US to an international commitment.

* What Revkin's piece details is disturbing enough, but a little bit of context makes it clear that climate is more than just the weather. Mike Davis's book, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World (also available in our library!), makes clear the ways that economic and imperial power work opportunistically in times of climate strife to prolong the devastation of droughts and floods. Those opportunities will surely abound in the wake of global warming driven catastrophes.

It's often said that environmentalists only know bad news. So let us take a moment to savor another bit of good news: bald eagles are found in Sangamon County. This is long-time example of the good work that national conservation efforts can do.

Habitat preservation is a tricky business, even in the best of times. It combines concerns with sprawl and agriculture, energy and water use, and general smoke-belching pollution in all its forms. Put in the context of the warming world--which the IPCC's latest report says could drive 30% of the world's species to extinction--and suddenly a tricky task doubles in on itself.

So, it's important to remember: not only can we do this, we have done it.

Governors Blagojevich and Doyle (Wisconsin) issued a joint statement on the latest IPCC report and the Supreme Court ruling against the EPA. Nothing groundbreaking here: global warming urgent and real, state action viable, wind + biofuels == the future. It does remind me that I've been negligent in linking to Illinois' Climate Change Advisory Group, which is pulling together recommendations for the Gov. (Sadly, still waiting for the materials from their meeting last week.)

I try not to feed the global warming trolls at the SJR too much, but some people are still swayed by them, so it's important to not ignore them completely. One point that repeatedly comes up is the fact that Mars is warming. (Because, if Mars is warming, and the Earth is warming, clearly they must be warming for the same reasons. These are people who, in other contexts, quite happily trot out the tired warning that correlation is not causation. But whatever.) And, as I mentioned in an earlier post, you also get a lot of kvetching about how climate science is bogus since it's models models models all the way down. Actual Climate Scientist Gavin Schmidt, of Real Climate, has a post up to explain some of the basics of modeling radiative forcing (that is, how solar energy gets trapped by greenhouse gases).

The post itself is interesting, but what really caught my eye was the first comment, which is quibbling with Gavin over the idea of presenting simplified models to the general public, since some simplifications wind up with weird, runaway results.

Now, one of the elements in Gavin's model is that it assumes there's a single layer of atmosphere, topped with the greenhouse gases. He also says that, basically, there are two sources of radiative forcing: increased solar energy and greenhouse gases. (This is where the warming skeptic's Mars stuff comes in--if it's increased solar energy that's causing our warming, then it's no big deal.) The commenter (Spencer Weart) says that it's an important point that the atmosphere isn't a single layer: it stratifies, and each layer acts a little differently to sunlight coming through; in turn, each layer reacts to warming a little differently, and most crucially, these layers react different depending on the source of the warming. If it's warming due to increased solar energy, then you'd see warming at all of these layers of the atmosphere. If it's warming due to greenhouse gases, then you'd see the layers below the greenhouse band warm, and you'd actually see the layers above that band cool off.

So far, so model-ly. But one of the great things about models--which in their feverish contempt for the m-word skeptics never note--is that they give you things that you can empirically test. And guess what the empirical tests show? Yup: lower layers are warming; upper layers are cooling.

There's been a lot going on this week, so I'm behind in stuff, but let me put out a call: Drop by the Step It Up! rally today at noon at the corner of 6th and Monroe. Step It Up is a national effort to urge Congress to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050. The rally is for an hour--noon to one--and there'll be a petition there that will get sent on to Congress.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of rallies, and it's cold, and it's a little wet--but I'm going to be there. Half a year ago, NASA climate scientist James Hansen--once a global warming skeptic--said that we have ten years left to start action on global warming before too many systems start to tip. Getting Congress to set the regulations now will make it easier to adapt and to prevent large-scale disaster.

So, come on out. This is how we build a movement for action, locally and nationally.

Joel Makower has a good post about concerns with fraud in the carbon offset market. This is a tough, but inevitable issue, and it highlights the importance of supporting verified carbon offset programs, as well as the difficulty in national or international carbon trading. A reminder of the importance of local action.

Another reminder of the importance of local action: Brad Plumer notes a paper by Hoff Stauffer, one of the designers of the US's SO2 cap-and-trade system, arguing that a CO2 cap and trade won't work, and that anyway, the better strategy is to focus on performance standards for new greenhouse emitters--buildings, appliances, energy sources, cars. I've seen arguments on both sides for cap-and-trade, and have to confess that I don't know who to believe.

However, one point of Stauffer's is that we're facing two problems: how to reduce emissions from existing sources and how to reduce emissions from yet-to-be-created sources, and that the solutions for each of those are different. That makes sense to me, so that's going to be my new line. One of the nice things about that is that it's even easier for states and localities to take the lead in performance requirements for new developments--among this is basic stuff that we already regulate, like land use and building design. And since we in Springfield have a wonderful public utility, we can really press forward on continuing to green our energy supply as well.

I decided that today's SJR story on the Arbor Day's reassessment of central Illinois' hardiness zone needed a snappier headline, so I came up with the one above. Chris Young skirts around the edge of climate change, and leads with the pleasant idea that "[p]eople may be able to plant their favorite trees farther north than they could have a mere 15 years ago," without noting, of course, that as species shift into Springfield from the south, that means that species already in Springfield will shift north out of town, as well.

Nonetheless, it's good to start seeing reporting on the concrete effects of climate change in our area.

ALSO: And as always, check out the comments for a good time. My own contribution was the wish for a "Prairie Day" to go along with Arbor Day.

The SJR editorializes against the punditry class that's making a cottage industry out of global warming debunkery, eloquently invoking Carl Sagan's gift for bridging the scientific community and the public at-large.

And it's true: we need more people can better bridge that chasm. But we can also make do with what we have, which is engagement between scientists, activists, businesspeople, government officials, and politicians, working in a variety of spheres with varying degrees of expertise in climate science and other issues. The public at large is convinced of the reality of global warming and the need to act.

So what we also need is mounting pressure to do what we can, with the tools at hand. And there is much that we can do--our tools are as varied as the problem, and there is a long way that we can go before we start hitting a wall where great technological advance is required. Quite simply, what we need most of all is commitment. I hope the SJR's global warming realism extends that far, as well.

I can't complain too much about the SJR's "In My View" columns, since they were kind enough to run mine. But today's is a doozy. I don't want to grapple with it to much, for fear of granting it legitimacy it doesn't deserve. So let me say this: Mr. Watt's contention is that his back-of-the-envelope probabilistic calculations suggest that there is slim chance that climate scientists can accurately predict the exact temperature the Earth will reach under a business-as-usual scenario. Well, okay. But they don't try to do that. They provide ranges, which are based (in part) on understanding the sensitivity of their models to changes in initial conditions, which Mr. Watt appears to not realize is something that they do. Of course, you must always make allowances for limited space in these columns, but I don't see how his example doesn't fall apart completely when you understand that climate projections are done this way.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a snide little thing about warming skeptics who are appalled by the very idea of a climate model. Somehow, I guess through a trackback at RealClimate, Ian Rae found his way here, and took issue with some of my characterizations. A not-bad discussion ensued, at the end of which ... whoops! I just realized that I misunderstood something Ian said (I took his crack about the IPCC as a funding-driven cabal as more earnest than it now appears on a re-read -- Sorry, Ian!).

Anyway, Stentor Danielson at debitage had a nice post a few days later on scientific consensus that I wanted to link to. It's not as topical as I'd planned on it being due to that misunderstanding, but it's an interesting read nonetheless.

A few bits and pieces of news on global warming, plus a book recommendation. First, scientists appear to be warming projections. As, it further turns out, is the whole world, as less CO2 is collecting in the oceans around Antarctica, which means warming is going to happen faster than previously though.

Now for the book recommendation. It is not about global warming, per se. However, since all news points to more hotness, I thought I'd recommend Heat Wave, Eric Klinenberg's social autopsy of the 1995 Chicago heat wave. Heat waves are the real silent killers among natural disasters, killing more people than most other natural events. What comes out in Klinenberg's accounts is that it's not the heat that kills people, but the social disorder. In particular, he finds that community-oriented neighborhoods fared better than non-community-oriented neighborhoods, even holding constant relative poverty.

Neighborhoods are crucially important on a range of matters. Klinenberg's success is to show how they matter even in the case of a natural disaster. I think it's the case that our neighborhoods are going to dictate how well we respond to global warming. Both in terms of slowing and stopping it and reacting to the climate change that's already locked in. And this shows how, I think, there's nothing that we can do to fight global warming that doesn't also do something else for us.

A few weeks ago, Mechanical Engineering had an article about where the U.S.'s carbon emissions come from. The article is a good introduction to the issue, and includes the following really excellent chart:

(via Grist)

I mostly look at things that CWLP ought to do, or things that you can do in your home, and on occasion about changing larger patterns of how we live. But climate change is a comprehensive problem, so we can't let anything slip by. Electricity generation, transportation, home energy use, food miles--these are the biggies that we mostly talk about when we talk about fighting climate change. The big unknown is the embodied energy (and greenhouse gas emissions) in what we buy.

So it's good news that we now have Climate Counts, an effort to rate the brands we buy for their climate friendliness. Joel Makower has a good backgrounder and explanation. The short version is that Climate Counts looks at what companies do to monitor and reduce their emissions, as well as what public policies they support and how open they are with all of that information.

I don't imagine that this is hugely crucial information--I suspect that the people who are most likely to take big actions based on these rankings are already moving into lifestyles where they aren't as important, and everyone else is going to decide their purchases based on other qualities. But, if you're ambivalent between McDonalds, Wendys, and Burger King, but still wedded to the fast food hamburger, maybe this can nudge you over to climate-friendly option.

I've been negligent in not praising the SJR for opening up all of its content online--so, thanks, y'all!

In the news today: front-yard gardens in marketplace, about their roles in not just making food about as local as possible, but also as community areas, bringing neighbors together. We've done a lot to bring greenery, including vegetables, into our tiny tiny yard, but it's all in the back. The one thing I really wanted to do, and haven't, is to put a pumpkin plant in the front yard, near the house, and grow it up a trellis, so that by the time fall hits, we'd have ready-made Halloween decorations, in the form of ghostly floating pumpkins. Alas.

The other big thing in today's paper: 2006 temperatures higher than average. There's not a whole lot of new information here, but it's always good to get a reminder of where we're at, and it's rare to get this kind of thing from an Illinois perspective. For some context, here's average temperatures across the US last year:

The full report is here.

I remember reading a federal report several years ago that highlighted the energy-saving benefits of manufacturing goods from recycled materials. Using recycled materials as feedstock typically requires less energy than producing goods from virgin materials. For example, recycling aluminium saves 95% of the energy cost of processing new aluminium because the melting temperature is reduced from 900 °C to 600 °C. Paper recycling saves 40% of the energy required to make a new product. A few days ago, I decided to dig a little further to find out if recycling can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Bingo! I found a U.S. EPA web site with loads of information about climate change and recycling.

Both waste prevention and recycling are considered “potent strategies” for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. How so? When people reuse things or when products are made with less virgin material, less energy is needed to extract, transport and process raw materials and to manufacture products. Waste prevention and recycling also divert materials from municipal waste incinerators, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the combustion of waste. Composting diverts organic waste from landfills, meaning less methane is generated when these materials decompose. Finally, waste prevention and recycling of paper products allow more trees to remain standing in a forest, where they can continue to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The EPA web site featured two case studies, which show that recycling can make a big difference. By recycling all of its waste paper for one year, an office building with 7,000 workers could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 570 metric tons, when compared with landfilling the paper. This is equivalent to taking about 370 cars off the road. If an average family of four were to recycle all of its mixed plastic waste, nearly 340 pounds of greenhouse gases could be reduced each year.

So keep recycling, try to reuse items and look for products made with recycled content when you go to the grocery or hardware store. By choosing to prevent waste and recycle, you will be doing even more to help curb climate change.

U.S. EPA recently updated its Top 25 Green Power Purchasers list, which highlights organizations buying energy produced from renewable resources like wind, solar and biomass. The top five purchasers are PepsiCo, Wells Fargo and Company, Whole Foods Market, the Pepsi Bottling Group and the U.S. Air Force.

The Top 25 list accounts for more than 6 billion kilowatt-hours per year of green power purchasing. This is equivalent to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to those of more than 700,000 vehicles.

Now that CWLP is purchasing wind energy, it should consider joining this program to receive national recognition for its efforts to support green power.

Up to now, the fight to slow global climate change has focused primarily on such things as increasing fuel economy for cars and trucks, boosting renewable energy technologies like wind and solar, making our buildings greener and cleaning up power plants. A major national report issued last week by the Urban Land Institute, Smart Growth America and other organizations indicates that if there is any hope of reducing heat-trapping carbon dioxide gases, we will also have to curb sprawling development patterns that fuel growth in driving.

Since 1980, the number of vehicles miles traveled in the United States has increased at three times the rate of the population, according to the report, primarily because of the vehicle-dependent way communities and commercial areas are designed and built. The report projects that even with expected increases in miles per gallon produced by more efficient engines, vehicle emissions of carbon dioxide in 2030 will be 41 percent higher than they are today.

The report, “Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change,” recommends adoption of growth and transportation strategies that reduce our miles behind the wheel. This includes compact development, which mixes housing and businesses in denser patterns, with walkable and bike-friendly neighborhoods. The report estimates that a compact development strategy would reduce vehicle miles traveled by 12 percent to 18 percent by 2050, and reduce carbon emissions from mobile sources 7 percent to 10 percent.