Clean Energy Springfield

TriplePundit has an interview with one of the authors of Green to Gold, about how businesses can find profit in environmental performance. I got GtG for my birthday last year, but haven't been able to crack it yet. I'll try to get to it soon, and get a review up.

I'm getting lucky with the news today. I hung off commenting on the H.D. Smith expansion last night, hoping that today's SJR would have more details*, and sure enough: it did! And even better, it crucially converges with one of the Sierra Club's survey questions:

Many cities, including Normal Illinois, have adopted ordinances that promote sustainability, energy conservation and environmental concerns for buildings. Do you think Springfield should promote green building practices such as providing incentives for developers, or rewriting zoning, stormwater management, building, and other ordinances? If yes, what steps should Springfield take to implement these standards?

According to the SJR:

The "green buildings" will be constructed using the latest environmental and energy-efficient technology, according to Smith.

Now, it's unclear whether the "green buildings" means specific buildings on the campus, or everything. And it's unclear how far they intend to go. Hopefully, it's everything and all the way. In particular, it would be great if they pursued LEED certification, which evaluates how "green" they've managed to be, along a range of factors, such as location efficiency (compactness v. sprawl), energy use, materials use and re-use, landscaping, and water use. LEED has several levels: Certification, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. The certification process is tough, but it would be wonderful to see an out-in-the-open application in Springfield. It would be a great learning opportunity, especially if HD Smith manages to make it costless (which it can be, but often is not).

Moreover, let me tentatively thank for HD Smith for choosing a reasonable location. It's tough to place a campus-sized complex on an infill site, but if I'm not completely misunderstanding "off Sixth Street north of Stevenson Drive" (and since it's the Fiat-Allis site, I assume it's along Fiat Drive), it looks like it's not just infill, but bus accessible (route 1 and maybe route 10).

Of course, some people might say that HD Smith proves that a city ordinance calling for green buildings is unnecessary--the free market is working successfully. I don't think that's the case, for a couple of basic reasons. First, there's often an incentive split between developers and ultimate property owners/users, which results in focusing on minimizing the upfront construction costs of the development, potentially at the expense of efficient design, which often (but not always) is cheaper over the long-term, but costs more upfront.

Second, most people--developers and architects included--tend to operate on the basis of routines, within realms that they're comfortable. So, if they're used to building a certain way, they'll tend to keep building that way unless something forces them to do otherwise. That something can be community pressure, a persistent client, widespread press, or ... regulations. What we're seeing more and more recently is that LEED certified buildings are getting closer and closer in upfront cost--which means that their long-term savings are just that--savings--and not payback. But until people get used to designing for green status, they'll overlook those savings.**

(As an aside, I think--and I'm sure CWLP would contest this--that this is part of what happened when CWLP commissioned the new power plant. They pursued a typical strategy of looking for emissions reductions, and found something in line with what they were already doing. When pressed, though, they found that they could emit far, far less than that, and because of the emissions market, that cleanliness will pay off to the tune of $38 million.)

* Speaking of which, I am not an SJR subscriber. However, I will happily plug AT LEAST one SJR story a day if they give me full online access to each day's articles and letters to the editor for free. I'm just throwing the idea out there.

** Saying this gives me an opportunity to link to my Favorite Economist Joke Ever.

I'm going to be on a panel discussing the movie Power Shift on April 11 at the Lincoln Library. Because I'm special, I get to see the movie in advance; otherwise, I'd just drool on the other panelists for half an hour. It's good--anyone interested in clean energy and sustainability should drop by. In particular, you get to see Bill McDonough, co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. McDonough is one of those people who's been a real visionary in promoting the kind of viewpoint shift in environmentalism that I talked about earlier: away from lessening impact and toward working like nature. And he's an architect--a businessman--so he's focused on balancing societal and environmental benefits with his need to keep his company afloat. So, come out and hear his pitch for how we can make our buildings net energy generators, rather than energy users.

ALSO: Check this out: Navarra, Spain, gets 70% of their energy from wind and solar power. That's insane! That's nuts! And that's not good enough for them: they've set a goal of 100% by 2010.

One of the issues that's always lurking around the topic of environmentalism is: What does it mean for jobs? At the Step It Up panel discussion the other night, we got some tough questioning from someone currently unemployed, who's living on the streets. (I think he was with Homeless United for Change, though I could be wrong.) He wanted to know how what we were talking about was going to help him get a job.

Sadly, I don't think anyone had a good answer. At this point, CES has a general sense, I think, that relocalizing our energy supply--focusing more on efficiency and using the energy within our borders--is a better long-term strategy for jobs than building huge power plants every couple of decades. (And this doesn't even get into the issue of buying more locally for everything else.)

However, I don't think any of us have spent the time that the issue deserves, which is too bad, because employment is always going to be a predominant driver of political and economic decisions. We have to get better about making the case for green collar jobs--the jobs that span blue and white collar groups and that provide employment by protecting or improving the environment. We also have to get better about reaching out to employment-driven groups--the unions, but also the NAACP, Black Chamber of Commerce, the other Chamber of Commerce, and HUC.

I think we have the potential for a good message here. We just have to nail it, and then bring it out to people.

ALSO: I drifted away from my questioner, which is bad of me, but probably to be expected, since I don't have any good answer for him. The only answers I have are long-term and structural, and he quite rightly said that people have been making promises about the future for forever, and he's still out of work. What's more, at this point, we're not even talking to him. Read the paragraphs above, and it's probably apparent to you that I'm talking to people like myself--educated, upper middle class bureaucrats and technocrats. I'm not going to feel bad about who I am, but I do recognize the limitations this puts on us, having me as our public face.

You know the bad news already--it's been all over the news this morning and last night. There is nothing I can do, except to provide a little bit of good news, in the energy field.

First, the average New York City resident has a carbon footprint one-third the size of the average American's. A lot of people chalk this up to density, but I have a different answer: accessibility, or the number of places a person can get to within short distances. If you're a big city, the only way to be accessible is through density. But if you're not a big city, if you're a small city like Springfield, maybe you can simply get a little denser, and allow for mixed use.

Second, Pittsburgh's Green Building Alliance has been extremely successful in bringing green building to Steel City.

Third, here's some choice excerpts from a Wall Street Journal story on how, for the past 30 years, Denmark has kept its per capita energy use stable while doubling its GDP. Hopefully, this is the end of the idea that rising economic growth requires rising energy use.

Be to good to everybody you meet today.

Some news on the jobs and clean energy front: a new report on the things we can do to create the green collar jobs that we need to restore our environment and our communities. Grist has a brief overview. This is going to require some attention.

I have a pile of urgent and relevant clean energy links that I have just not had the time to share with you. So what do you get instead? Harry Potter news, of course. The last book in the series, slated to arrive at the house of all the children you know on Saturday, is apparently something of a leader in green publishing, to the extent that, "Production of the book spurred the development of 32 new ecological papers, six for Potter exclusively, and prompted 300 publishers to adopt new environmental policies, according to Markets Initiative, a Vancouver-based environmental group." Who knew?

Via Triple Pundit, Johnson Controls, a major provider of heating and cooling controls, is remodeling its international headquarters in Milwaukee into a green campus. Hopefully, this marks a company-wide re-orientation toward sustainability (which is not some kind of bizarre thing, to be clear--a lot of buildings are going to need HVAC retrofits ...). Good for Springfield, because Johnson serves our market (for all I know, Johnson serves every market, but still). Finding corporate citizens out there with a dedication to sustainability is a good thing.

For the detail minded, take a look at the site layouts, at either the TriplePundit or JS online links. Looks like a smorgasbord of steps--solar panels, a wind turbine, green roof (rather small, but good that it's there), permeable pavers, and a cistern for stormwater. What's nice about this is that Johnson didn't just go for sustainability on the things it specializes in, it went for a broader range of tools. No word on whether they're going for LEED status ... maybe it's just assumed anymore?

The City of Portland and Multnomah County have created a step-by-step resource guide to help local government agencies integrate sustainability into their policies, programs and operations. The guide is premised on the notion that local governments can be a role model for environmental stewardship and set a positive example for institutions, businesses and citizens within their communities.

The interesting part of the guide is that it doesn’t just focus on one or two environmental concepts. It takes a more systematic, coordinated approach and provides organizational tips on how to build support for sustainability, prioritize opportunities, create an action plan and evaluate results.

It seems like environmental activists in Springfield are working on different pieces of the sustainability puzzle, lobbying city officials to address climate change, make neighborhoods bike friendly, support green building design, improve waste collection services and protect wildlife habitat. This resource guide provides a template on how local officials can address a wide variety of environmental, economic and community equity issues simultaneously, using an open and inclusive decision-making process.

The sustainability resource guide has not only helped put sustainability on the map in Portland area government, but the City of Fort Collins also used the guide to develop a sustainability action plan for its operations. Given the growing interest in advancing different aspects of sustainability in Springfield, perhaps the time is right to try a more holistic environmental planning approach in our community.