Left In Lowell

OMG awesome. I’m all tingly!

So Patrick has decided to propose a gas tax increase instead of a toll hike. I generally approve, with some caveats.

1) A $.27 increase is going to cause a political uproar. I suspect that’s sort of the point - pick a pie in the sky amount, expecting people to talk you down. If you started at $.11, chances were that the legislature might cut that amount. However, personally, I don’t object to the $.27 increase (though, all at once? that might be difficult for people). I think gas tax should be over a $1 per gallon, if only to discourage the use of gas. Suddenly a hybrid pays for itself much faster, doesn’t it?

The only thing I hate about the gas tax is that it’s rather regressive - the people who tend to drive distances are the ones working for a living, and many already just barely making ends meet. If much of that money went towards improving regional and statewide public transit, that helps. But it’ll hurt working class folks more than the wealthy, because they use the roads just about as much but have less disposable income.

On the other hand, isn’t preserving our planet worth at least that much per gallon?

2) The second caveat, and the bigger stickler for me, is this:

Tolls would be removed west of Route 128 by the end of next year. Tolls within Route 128, from Weston to Boston, would come down as the state shifts to a program of tracking — and charging — all Massachusetts drivers based on the miles they travel.

Trips would be measured by a chip installed in a vehicle inspection sticker as soon as 2014, and in-state drivers would receive a gas-tax refund for their mileage to avoid double payments. Out-of-staters would remain subject to the higher gasoline tax.

Now, look, we all carry cell phones and GPS systems and by golly, we are so trackable in this day and age that whole companies are devoted to collecting that data and selling it. But the idea of such a large database of where I’ve been all year in my car, well, that’s a little scary. If there were guarantees that data would be deleted after the tax surcharge figured out, and NOT collected to give out to other agencies or even given to police for investigations, I might be assuaged. The problem is, even if you start out with such assurances in the law, there’s no guarantee that the law won’t change (say, if there’s a push for “law and order” in some dystopian future). Of course, something being in law doesn’t mean it won’t get abused, as we found out under the Bush administration, and even if you trust this guy in charge now, in five years from now, or ten, who’s going to be at the reigns?

It’s just all a little too Big Brother to me. Get rid of the tolls entirely, don’t stick us with a system that could potentially be so badly abused. (Then again, with all the OnStar type of services people use these days, and everything else, maybe we’ll all be wired up one way or other anyway…)

It is true, that like a cigarette tax, you put such a tax on gas to discourage its use, and with diminishing use, comes diminishing revenues. But I don’t think we have to worry about that for a few years yet…unfortunately.

So there you have it. Any thoughts?

(If you want to hear us hash out our thoughts more thoroughly, check out our 2:30pm podcast this afternoon on LeftAhead, where this will be sure to be discussed. Listen live here.)

Well, I just sent in my Intent to Apply form for the Getting to Zero program that the City of Lowell is putting together, with a $25,000 prize to the project that brings one’s energy footprint down closest to zero. (Deadline for Intent to Apply is Feb 20th.)

As I go through the process, I hope to document it and make this a broader educational moment for our readers.

For my household, the outlying costs might be an obstacle we can’t find a way to overcome in the end. Many of the incentives for getting home owners to invest in efficiency and renewable energy generation is to reimburse them with grants after the fact. You need the capital up front to actually do the work. (That may change if the stimulus bill includes the building weatherization grants, which I am hoping it still does once it overcomes the inevitable Republican filibuster attempt…)

However, at a minimum, going through this process will allow my husband and I to formulate some sort of plan. It puts your home on the priority track for the National Grid MassSave energy audit. Otherwise, I hear there’s quite a waiting list. Then, the city is working with UMass Lowell students to do a more comprehensive audit on your home.

This alone will help us determine the best ROI, or return on investment, the lowest hanging fruit that will help us reduce our energy bill and at the same time our carbon footprint. Are our vinyl windows too old to be very efficient? Or should we really be spending money on insulating our basement? Or perhaps our first action ought to be our home heating and hot water systems? Can we afford a PV (photo-voltaic) installation? Or maybe a solar hot water heater? Can our old house even handle the roof load? All of these questions are daunting to a home owner, and therefore a blueprint to navigate your investments for the short and the long term would be very useful.

So I’ll be writing my thoughts and experiences as we go through this process, however far we can get. Hopefully it helps other homeowners who might be contemplating how they too can be part of the movement to reducing their environmental impact while lowering their energy bills at the same time.

Finally. Someone else is saying it. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! (Sorry, this is one of the things that just frustrates me to no end.) Thank you Al Gore…

The biggest argument from the proponents looking to build CO2-polluting power plants in MA, like ones proposed in Billerica and Brockton, is that we’re constantly in need of more power, and need to ramp up our infrastructure to meet tomorrow’s needs. And anyway, natural-gas-fired plants are sooo much better than coal, so really, we need these in the interim…let us build these plants so we can make money hand over fist, your air quality won’t get that bad, and you need us. Sure we’ll be transitioning to renewables and conservation someday, but in the meantime…

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

The gas- and diesel-burning plant would produce 350 megawatts of electricity and is slated to open by 2012.

But new sources of power won’t be needed until 2014 at the earliest, according to a recent report from electricity overseer ISO New England.

And it may be even longer before the Brockton plant is needed if other plants come into service first, electricity projections show.

Yet that won’t mean state energy regulators will reject it. Under state law, such forecasts aren’t considered by the Energy Facilities Siting Board, the permit-granting board.

That’s a disappointment to project opponents.

(And remember, the more natural gas plants go up, the quicker our residential gas bills, yours and mine, go skyrocketing too.)

The thing is, by 2014, we should have long been seeing the effects of better policies at the local, state, and federal levels - both in conservation (reducing our need for power overall) and in ramping up the use of renewables, spurred on by such programs as Commonwealth Solar, or local contests (to start with). Thereby, I predict (and am quite sure of myself) that even 2014 will not see an increased need for power. If we’re seeing an increased need for power in five years, we have much bigger problems than having the cost of electricity go up due to scarcity (and honestly, having scarcity might be the only thing at that point that will force us to conserve like we should be).

Like the oil market these days, where a downturn has reduced demand so sharply we’ve seen the price slip to 1/3 its peak cost, below $50 a barrel (a price I never thought I would see in my lifetime again!), power and electricity demand should be going down, and also be supplemented by decentralized power, where every rooftop which is prime real estate for solar will have it, and every windy backyard will have a windmill, and home owners will begin to look beneath their foundations for geothermal.

Decentralized power, as discussed by such people as Jeremy Rifkin in “The Hydrogen Economy,” is a huge threat to the profits of Big Power types that like to pressure us with warnings of electrical scarcity, so they can keep building giant, polluting plants in our backyards. This time, we don’t have to listen to them. We’re on our way to true energy independence - including from our own industrial power giants. The plants in Brockton, or Billerica, or the myriad other sites being considered in MA, are not needed.

Let them go the way of the dinosaurs. Evolve, or get out of the way.

The Patrick administration is announcing a couple more initiatives to get the state onto more efficient, renewable energy. From their press release:

Governor Deval Patrick has set two new goals for energy efficiency and renewable energy: making all new malls and “big box” retail stores energy efficient and powered in part by solar energy by 2010 and offering a super-efficient building code as a local option for municipalities looking to take the lead in combating global climate change.

With the U.S. Green Building Council’s Greenbuild International Conference under way at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, Governor Patrick directed Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs to initiate a dialogue with the development community to put together the technical assistance, financing support, and regulatory standards to facilitate the universal adoption of solar power and super-efficient buildings for large retail stores and malls, typically greater than 50,000 square feet in size.
….
Secretary Bowles noted that there are already substantial financial incentives in place for solar power, but that only a few large retailers have taken advantage of them. These incentives include Commonwealth Solar, the state’s rebate program, which provides as much as 40 percent of the cost of a solar energy installation, and federal investment tax credits for solar installations, which were recently extended for another eight years.

“We want to work with the development community to make them aware of the opportunity they have before them in energy efficiency and solar energy, and work with them to find out what they need to take advantage of that opportunity,” said Secretary Bowles. “Malls and big box stores have big flat roofs that are naturals for solar power, and Governor Patrick wants to see them put to use generating clean, renewable energy.”
In addition, Governor Patrick has asked staff at the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and the Department of Public Safety to develop a super-efficient energy code for consideration by the Board of Building Regulations and Standards as a local option for municipalities that want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from development in their communities.

Under the Green Communities Act, the comprehensive energy reform bill signed by the Governor in July, Massachusetts is required to incorporate the latest version of the International Energy Conservation Code in its building code within one year of its adoption. The IECC approved its 2009 standards in September, and the BBRS is expected to update the Massachusetts energy code to include these standards sometime next year.

The new law also allows the BBRS to adopt standards event more stringent than the IECC, and Governor Patrick proposes the Board do so by creating a second, super-efficient code that local officials could adopt as a local option.

“The state is already adopting the highest standards of energy efficiency for its building code, but some municipalities would like to go further,” said Governor Patrick. “An alternative code that is 20 to 30 percent more efficient they can adopt as an option will give cities and towns the tool they are looking for to reduce their community’s carbon footprint as development moves forward.”

This “stretch” code, which will be presented to the BBRS for adoption in the coming months, will be based on established national voluntary above-code efficiency standards that have shown themselves to be cost-effective in producing energy savings, such as the Energy Star For Homes program and the New Buildings Institute’s “Core Performance” program for commercial properties. As an optional addendum to the state building code, the stretch code would be voted on by the BBRS following a public hearing. Once approved by the BBRS, any municipality choosing to adopt the stretch code would have to do so by a vote of town meeting or city council.

So, if there’s more solar going up on all new big retail and mall buildings, adding energy to the power grid, and many cities and towns adopt the more stringent building codes, there’s no need to build more polluting power plants. If we can reduce our usage in this state (and there are a lot of low-hanging fruits to achieve this quite quickly), then this state should have to host NO NEW traditional power plants ever again. Maybe even start thinking of closing some older, seriously carbon-polluting dinosaurs. Right?

This myth that “well, the future isn’t here yet so we still need to build CO2-producing power plants in the interim in order to sustain the current system” is bull. Don’t listen to it. You’d be surprised how rapid the tipping point towards lessening our dependence on fossil fuels will come with the right initiatives in place. I mean, do you like paying more every year for natural gas to heat your home? I sure as hell don’t. The fault for that lies at higher demand for supplies…because more natural gas power plants like the one proposed in Billerica are being built. I say it’s high time to stop the insanity.

Bernie has his report on the energy audit company which has been hired under a performance contract with the city published on his blog. Take a read.

Très super cool.

The Patrick administration admits they should not be needed if their energy plan works (hear Secretary Ian Bowles at Lowell’s public meeting last week talking about the Billerica power plant), many local officials are opposed, and specifically, the peak power plant being proposed in Billerica is just that - a peak power plant, less efficient and more polluting than other peak usage solutions, such as grid energy storage. The only people who really want the plant built are those slated to make millions on it selling us power that, it turns out, we really don’t need.

Not if we go California’s route, that is. Sensible regulation has stabilized California’s usage of energy, despite its population and economic growth. According to the article at Salon,

In the past three decades, electricity consumption per capita grew 60 percent in the rest of the nation, while it stayed flat in high-tech, fast-growing California. If all Americans had the same per capita electricity demand as Californians currently do, we would cut electricity consumption 40 percent. If the entire nation had California’s much cleaner electric grid, we would cut total U.S. global-warming pollution by more than a quarter without raising American electric bills. And if all of America adopted the same energy-efficiency policies that California is now putting in place, the country would never have to build another polluting power plant.

Saving energy is also saving money, and given our growing energy costs (like your gas bill, which has increased largely due to demand from new power plants like the one being proposed in Billerica) we could all use the break for our household budgets.

Simple things, like painting the flat roofs of warehouses white, or requiring outdoor lighting to lose less than 6% of the light to an upwards direction (requiring lower wattage to light the same square footage) can go a long way, but businesses don’t do these things out of the goodness of their hearts.

Read the rest of the article, it’s really excellent. Yet again it shows that reducing climate-changing pollution and our dependence on foreign sources of carbon-based fuel does not have to cost us - in fact, it will benefit consumers, businesses, and most of all, our economy.

Second place in today’s news in why-the-Billerica-power-plant-is-a-bad-idea, who wants to wake up to a sound like your kettle on the stove whistling, except as loud as a power plant can make it?

“It sounded like a very loud whistle, for a short duration of time, until proper operations could be restored,” Nydam said. “The valves helped save the plant, but they did create a lot of noise, which some folks in the area reported to the mayor’s office.”

Nydam said National Grid spent 15 hours repairing the power lines that were damaged, and that during that time his plant’s entire phone system was out of order.

Oh and did we mention that the Billerica power plant is slated to be a “remote operations” plant? You know, via phone and internet, and stuff. Run from Lowell. Real secure.

For all intents and purposes, Lowell, and Massachusetts, are headed in the right direction for sustainable energy and green living. We have a landmark energy bill which promotes conservation as much as it seeks to invest in renewable techonology. We in Lowell have made higher rates of recycling more likely with the adoption of a new mostly pay-as-you-throw system to limit the amount of waste per household.

All this is great, but a major part of the discussion has to be alternative transportation. With budgets for the MBTA strapped, oil prices going up (and with it, ticket prices), Boston and its surrounding towns are doing some serious thinking about the availability of safe biking routes for its citizens.

I’ve tried to make the commitment to bike more around Lowell, since I have the perfect live/work situation for it. However, the best routes for me to get to work include the Lord’s Overpass, and/or Thorndike and Dutton. Let me tell you just how nerve wracking that can be…well, nevermind, all you have to do is drive it and you’ll see how precarious it is. (I wind up getting off the bike and using the crosswalks at the overpass when I go through there.)

Although there would be some infrastructure investment (for bike paths and right-of-ways), and maybe an educational and promotional program (to alert drivers to keep watch for cyclists), getting a city to be bikeable is probably less costly these days than trying to build train tracks or run buses. I’d like to see the Lowell City Council begin serious talks about how to make Lowell a bike-friendly town.

Cyclists even could come from the train station, head to the Folk Fest or shopping downtown, and head back. A bikeable city is one which is more fit, and less polluting. I remember a fellow blogger who came up from the Boston area, bike in tow (so to speak) on the commuter rail who biked to my home from the Gallagher and then back again. This is the sort of behavior we should be encouraging, and what better way to do so than to make sure cyclists don’t get hit in the streets for doing the right thing and leaving their cars at home? Nothing says welcome more than that!

(Another installment from Paige of billericapowerplant.org. I think we deserve an answer as to why our state Senator declined to protect public health and wellness in favor of outmoded, out-of-state corporate-driven fossil-fuel burning power plants. –Lynne)

Senator Panagiotakos, among other legislators, voted in the last two weeks against the amendments that would prohibit the siting of a fossil fuel burning power plant “which is less than a mile in linear distance from a playground, licensed day-care center, school, church, area of critical environmental concern as determined by the secretary of environmental affairs pursuant to 301 CMR 12.00, or area occupied by residential housing”. Large plants are under consideration for Billerica, Brockton and Walpole.

Given that there is an 85MW power plant due to go online in Lowell this summer, one that burns all the time and will contribute particulate matter and carbon dioxide, among other pollutants to the air in Lowell and beyond, and given that he is surely aware that pediatric asthma cases are quite high in his community, and given that he knows there is a 348MW plant under consideration for Billerica, and given that yet another plant may be built in Lowell in the future, and he lives and breathes in Lowell, one wonders why he voted the way he did.

The committee on which he sits also voted against convening a special commission to review the criteria used to site power plants in Massachusetts. The conference committee did not take a leadership role and seek to protect the respiratory health of its constituents. Given what is known scientifically about the impacts of particulate matter on the lung development of children, the elderly, and those with compromised breathing issues, surely he would agree that plunking down a very large fossil fuel burning plant in the middle of a densely populated area is not the most forward thinking move, right?

Others in the local delegation have had no trouble expressing their concerns for their constituents including Senators Fargo and Tucker, Representatives Miceli, Hall, Nangle, Golden and Atkins, so why is Senator Panagiotakos not on board? What does he believe these plants bring to the area that offset the clear health impacts in terms of air quality, the potential impacts to the Concord River, local drinking water supplies, and safety of area residents?

Send Senator Panagiotakos an e-mail. Ask him to explain his rationale for not only refusing to protect his constituents, but for voting down the suggestion to create a commission to evaluate the criteria used to site plants in the future.