Left In Lowell

Elections have consequences! Tomorrow, President Obama’s EPA will be hearing the case from California, Massachusetts, and other states who are interested in raising auto emission standards in an effort to combat the global climate crisis. This can be done under the existing Clean Air Act, which gives CA the right to tougher rules and for other states to adopt CA’s standards after, but the Bush administration denied CA a waiver in 2005 when they passed the new standards.

From the press release of Environment Massachusetts:

Giving a green light to Massachusetts’ clean cars program would reduce global warming pollution from cars by 26.1 million metric tons by 2020. And from reduced gasoline consumption, Bay Staters would save $5 Billion by 2020 at the pump, according to Environment Massachusetts’ analysis.
[…]
In 2005, California adopted first-of-their-kind standards requiring cars and light-duty trucks to limit emissions that contribute to global warming. The standards would cut global warming emissions from passenger vehicles by 30 percent by 2016. A total of 13 other states—Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, plus the District of Columbia —have adopted the tailpipe standards. Several additional states are actively considering adopting the standards.

Finally, we have an Environmental Protection Agency poised to actually protect the environment.

This Wednesday evening, at 6:00 PM at Lowell City Hall, the Environmental Subcommittee will discuss the proposed Billerica power plant and the consequent impacts to Lowell. Subcommittee members as well as attendees will ask questions and make comments. The developer will be present. It is also expected that City Manager, Bernie Lynch, will attend. The Environmental Subcommittee includes City Councilor, Rodney Elliott, as Chair, Councilor Kevin Broderick, and Councilor William F. Martin. They have been trying since May to have this meeting.

Although the Lowell Sun has reported that the Energy Facilities Siting Board has rendered a tentative decision to permit the plant, the EFSB must still deliberate a final decision. More importantly, the proposal has yet to pass the scrutiny of several boards in Billerica. The process is far from over and the voice of neighboring residents continues to be very important. The neighborhoods near the proposed site would suffer increased noise and traffic, and reduced air quality. Lowell’s school buses travel the same roads tankers would use, and a newly renovated playground is on the same route.

A large show of support will send a strong signal to Lowell officials about the importance of this issue to its residents. Senator Panagiotakos and Representatives Golden, Nangle, and Murphy have been invited to attend.

Nice, just nice. This last legislative session ended on some serious high notes. What a difference from the past tug-of-wars, even during the first year of this session.

The 1913 anti-marriage law was rescinded (and the usual 90-day implementation timeline forwent), we had bills to address our failing infrastructure, global warming, and fair voting, among other things. Awesome!

Of course, just the mere fact I’m mentioning any of this in a positive light might mean I get some derisive, condescending ink in Joan Vennochi’s column. *snicker*

I especially like David Guarino’s comment in his post referencing this: “At the risk of getting myself in another Globe column for keeping you guys in the loop, here I am again…” LMAO.

The 1913 law is all but appealed (just needs the Gov’s signature). Congrats to the people who worked so hard to see this happen. Let’s relegate bigotry and discrimination into the past. I am proud to live in Massachusetts today.

Secondarily, I just got an email from MassVote that the state Senate has also passed Same Day Voter Registration. So we need to call our state Reps, folks, and make sure it passes in the House as well before the session ends on Thursday.

Now, if they could both pass the Global Warming Solutions Act, to complement the great work done in MA for the environment, this will have been a legislative session well worth lauding.

Thanks to the House and Senate members who have helped us make so much progress this session, and to the Governor and all his hard work on so many fronts. I believe I can safely say I am cautiously optimistic about Massachusetts’ future.

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.

I can’t even tell you how much I support and applaud Al Gore and his admonition that our half measures (not even half - quarter measures!) are not only short of the real action we need to take on climate change at this late hour, with two decades wasted, but also selling our nation and its ability to accomplish great things short. Getting off of carbon-based energy in a single decade is entirely possible, good for our economy and our national security. Say it with me: energy independence is good for our economy and good for our national security. Now, say it one more time.

From Gore’s speech (I’ve bolded some highlights):

I don’t remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously. Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse, gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure. Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly.

Like a lot of people, it seems to me that all these problems are bigger than any of the solutions that have thus far been proposed for them, and that’s been worrying me.

I’m convinced that one reason we’ve seemed paralyzed in the face of these crises is our tendency to offer old solutions to each crisis separately - without taking the others into account. And these outdated proposals have not only been ineffective - they almost always make the other crises even worse.

Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges - the economic, environmental and national security crises.

We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that’s got to change.

But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that we’re holding the answer to all of them right in our hand.

The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels.

Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.

This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans - in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.

A few years ago, it would not have been possible to issue such a challenge. But here’s what’s changed: the sharp cost reductions now beginning to take place in solar, wind, and geothermal power - coupled with the recent dramatic price increases for oil and coal - have radically changed the economics of energy.

To those who argue that we do not yet have the technology to accomplish these results with renewable energy: I ask them to come with me to meet the entrepreneurs who will drive this revolution. I’ve seen what they are doing and I have no doubt that we can meet this challenge.

To those who say the costs are still too high: I ask them to consider whether the costs of oil and coal will ever stop increasing if we keep relying on quickly depleting energy sources to feed a rapidly growing demand all around the world. When demand for oil and coal increases, their price goes up. When demand for solar cells increases, the price often comes down.

When we send money to foreign countries to buy nearly 70 percent of the oil we use every day, they build new skyscrapers and we lose jobs. When we spend that money building solar arrays and windmills, we build competitive industries and gain jobs here at home.

I for one do not believe our country can withstand 10 more years of the status quo. Our families cannot stand 10 more years of gas price increases. Our workers cannot stand 10 more years of job losses and outsourcing of factories. Our economy cannot stand 10 more years of sending $2 billion every 24 hours to foreign countries for oil. And our soldiers and their families cannot take another 10 years of repeated troop deployments to dangerous regions that just happen to have large oil supplies.

What could we do instead for the next 10 years? What should we do during the next 10 years? Some of our greatest accomplishments as a nation have resulted from commitments to reach a goal that fell well beyond the next election: the Marshall Plan, Social Security, the interstate highway system. But a political promise to do something 40 years from now is universally ignored because everyone knows that it’s meaningless. Ten years is about the maximum time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target.

When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But 8 years and 2 months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon.

Of course, we could and should speed up this transition by insisting that the price of carbon-based energy include the costs of the environmental damage it causes. I have long supported a sharp reduction in payroll taxes with the difference made up in CO2 taxes. We should tax what we burn, not what we earn. This is the single most important policy change we can make.

Of course the greatest obstacle to meeting the challenge of 100 percent renewable electricity in 10 years may be the deep dysfunction of our politics and our self-governing system as it exists today. In recent years, our politics has tended toward incremental proposals made up of small policies designed to avoid offending special interests, alternating with occasional baby steps in the right direction. Our democracy has become sclerotic at a time when these crises require boldness.

It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now.

If you want to know the truth about gasoline prices, here it is: the exploding demand for oil, especially in places like China, is overwhelming the rate of new discoveries by so much that oil prices are almost certain to continue upward over time no matter what the oil companies promise. And politicians cannot bring gasoline prices down in the short term.

However, there actually is one extremely effective way to bring the costs of driving a car way down within a few short years. The way to bring gas prices down is to end our dependence on oil and use the renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1 per gallon gasoline.

So I ask you to join with me to call on every candidate, at every level, to accept this challenge - for America to be running on 100 percent zero-carbon electricity in 10 years. It’s time for us to move beyond empty rhetoric. We need to act now.

This is a generational moment. A moment when we decide our own path and our collective fate. I’m asking you - each of you - to join me and build this future. Please join the WE campaign at wecansolveit.org. We need you. And we need you now. We’re committed to changing not just light bulbs, but laws. And laws will only change with leadership.

On July 16, 1969, the United States of America was finally ready to meet President Kennedy’s challenge of landing Americans on the moon. I will never forget standing beside my father a few miles from the launch site, waiting for the giant Saturn 5 rocket to lift Apollo 11 into the sky. I was a young man, 21 years old, who had graduated from college a month before and was enlisting in the United States Army three weeks later.

I will never forget the inspiration of those minutes. The power and the vibration of the giant rocket’s engines shook my entire body. As I watched the rocket rise, slowly at first and then with great speed, the sound was deafening. We craned our necks to follow its path until we were looking straight up into the air. And then four days later, I watched along with hundreds of millions of others around the world as Neil Armstrong took one small step to the surface of the moon and changed the history of the human race.

We must now lift our nation to reach another goal that will change history. Our entire civilization depends upon us now embarking on a new journey of exploration and discovery. Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years. Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind.

The landmark bill on energy and the environment carefully worked out by the legislature and the Governor and signed by Patrick into law yesterday makes some important leaps forward to reversing our state’s contribution to global climate change and reducing our energy use.

The bill, which includes some controversial provisions for gasified coal and biofuels with which I disagree, does take some very new and significant steps: energy efficiency and conservation is addressed in a big way, as are incentives (indeed, requirements) for our utilities to get some of their energy - 25% by 2030 - from renewable sources. This paves the way for Massachusetts to perhaps be the first state in the nation to reduce their CO2 emissions to below 1990 levels, something Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles said we could see in the next five years.

So with the goal of reducing our emissions to those levels, and even further, why are we entertaining the notion of putting up large, inefficient peak power plants run off of fossil fuels like the plant being proposed in Billerica? The more of these plants we allow to be built while enacting the provisions of this new law, the harder it will be to reach the goal of CO2 reduction. It’s like taking your treadmill and deliberately placing it on an uphill and expecting that you can do the same amount of work to exercise.

The cost of natural gas to heat our homes has almost doubled since December (I noticed it on my bill, did you?). Part of the reason for the cost is that over the last couple of decades, the cheap availability of natural gas, which enticed many homeowners to convert from oil or electric heat to natural gas, also attracted big corporate energy companies like the one building the Billerica plant or hoping to expand the Lowell L’Energia plant. They are the long-term cause of higher prices, as they made the commodity more scarce and precious. (We residential customers pay the price of course, twice - once at our own gas valve for heating our homes, and the second with higher electricity prices as the cost of generating power with natural gas goes up.) The shorter term cost hikes are more about the volatility of the oil markets and other commodity prices, but suffice it to say that not only are we, as consumers, shooting ourselves in the foot for every natural gas plant built anywhere, but we are also contributing to more global warming and pollution for our local residents.

This is why allowing the Billerica power plant, or allowing L’Energia to go online at all (or expand, though the developer swears he’s not planning to, there appears to be confusion on that) undermines the good work of this landmark legislation.

So to Governor Patrick, Sal DiMasi, and Terese Murray, I congratulate you on your courage, vision and intelligence in passing this bill, but don’t let the Big Energy fool you - they will undermine that goal if it means they can make money. If we stop allowing fossil fuel peak power plants to be built, then we’re that much closer to the goal line. Let’s not build any more of these outdated power plants, and certainly not in dense residential (and disadvantaged) neighborhoods, any longer.

From the Department of Public Works:

Yard Waste containers are popping up on sidewalks near you. Curbside collection of yard waste officially starts Monday, March 31st. Collection, by Allied Waste, will occur on your neighborhood ‘trash day’. Our contract provides this service every week through your ‘last trash day of November’.

Diverting organic material from the incinerator is the Law! And makes fiscal sense. In 2007 Lowell sent 2,985 tons of yard waste to composting operations, saving the City over $207,000 in disposal cost.

It is preferred that you use paper Lawn & Leaf bags. However, grass, leaves and small brush (<3 ft smaller than 3 in thick) can be placed in a labeled barrel. YARD WASTE stickers are available at City Hall (Rm 34), DPW (1365 Middlesex St) or at the Health Dept (341 Pine St). Kindly do not place bags or barrels out prior to your trash day; we would like to keep sidewalks open for pedestrians. Should you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact this office.

It should be noted, that it is 1) illegal to put yard waste into the regular trash and 2) that the city composts yard waste. This saves room in landfills, saves us taxpayers a lot of money, and recycles that waste to useful soil. But, you could save taxpayers even more money! Why not compost your own yard waste, and all your non-meat food waste, yourself? Compost bins are sold at reduced cost (the expensive one is sold out, but the basic one, which I have, is available) via the city. Here’s the form to fill out (pdf).

Some easy and simple tips, all of which I myself employ, to reduce your trash and carbon footprint on this earth:

• Recycle every container that the city lists.
• Recycle every scrap of paper that you can. I recycle my pasta and cereal type boxes, shredded mail, paper towel rolls, newspapers, anything on the list.
• Even better, get off of those junk mail lists! I did, and it’s fabulous. I saw a huge reduction in credit card offers and all that crap, saving paper from ever needing recycling!
• Compost all your yard and (non-animal) food waste (and use the resulting soil in your garden!)
• **** Use canvas or reusable bags to go shopping - for anything! I have a whole set of bags I’ve collected over the years for grocery shopping. They hold more groceries each, are more comfortable to carry than plastic bags (which cut into your hands!) and reduce the amount of bags in the world. Plastic which is made out of oil, by the way. If little ol’ Ireland can do it (get rid of most plastic bags) gosh darn it, so can Americans!
• When out at the corner store, refuse a bag. Look, if you can carry a couple of items in your hands, why put it in a plastic bag? I’m constantly refusing bags for single or small sets of items. You don’t need it! I’m hoping to develop good enough habits to pretty much eliminate my plastic bag usage by the end of the year.
• Use rain barrels to water your plants. This year I want to buy two more for a total of three, wherever there is a gutter, I want to gather water, and hook in drip lines to my future front, side, and back gardens. This prevents the water falling off your roof from going into the city’s sewer/storm drain system, costing the city, and your water bill, less money. If it doesn’t rain for a few weeks in summer, at least you have a short supply of water without turning on the hose to keep your plants happy. Using city water costs for treatment, too.

Most weeks, my husband and I produce less than one kitchen trash bag of waste. I think I’d like to get that down even further. The city helped a lot when it went to accepting all numbers of plastics. One of the things which really helped was paying more attention to paper recycling. So much packaging on everything! Putting all the chip cardboard (cereal boxes, etc) into your paper recycling seriously reduces your garbage waste.

So, what are your everyday tips for becoming sustainable?

(Update: Just found a cool link, will quote it and comment in the next section.) (more…)

I may have to change my mind about hydrogen.

Every week seems to bring more breakthroughs and positive developments regarding renewable energy. However, getting these products to market fast enough would require our government to actually invest in incentives and infrastructure. They would have to stop giving away the store to Big Oil and Big Coal. I’m not holding my breath.

Update: And I’ve been meaning to link to this article. You have to read it.

What’s more, the turbine will burn biodiesel, a renewable fuel with much lower emissions than normal diesel; a hydrogen-injection system will then cut those low emissions in half. And when it’s time to fill the tank, he’ll be able to just pull up to the back of a diner and dump in its excess french-fry grease–as he does with his many other Hummers. Oh, yeah, he adds, the horsepower will double–from 300 to 600.

“Conservatively,” Goodwin muses, scratching his chin, “it’ll get 60 miles to the gallon. With 2,000 foot-pounds of torque. You’ll be able to smoke the tires. And it’s going to be superefficient.”

He laughs. “Think about it: a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!”

Yet, our government and our companies languish in stupidity while Rome burns.

The big state news yesterday was a proposal (the first of its kind nationwide) by Patrick and lawmakers to require a certain amount of home heating fuel to be made up of biofuels in Massachusetts.

I’m of two minds regarding biofuels…after all, petrochemicals are used in farming, for fertilizer and pesticides, as well as to power the mechanical farm and harvesting vehicles. And it’s still unclear whether or not biofuels is a net gain or a net loss of energy (given all that it takes to produce the biomass from soup to nuts). And it’s certainly taking a toll on our farming habits - with a rise in corn prices from the rush to ethanol, we now see beef and other meat prices rising, and other crops we need (veggies, rice, whatever) are getting incentivized right out of the market.

And will this proposal, looking to go to 2% by 2010 and 5% by 2013, really make much more than a dent in our carbon emissions? My biggest problem with our leadership on this issue is that our incremental steps are only marginally better than no steps at all - we’re rapidly running out of time. (Estimates are that in less than 10 years, we’re past the tipping point. Now, with things heating up faster than expected, it could be sooner.)

I also think that in the rush to look at these energy producers, we are missing some very low-hanging fruit in energy saving and efficiencies which we, with current technology, could easily achieve. If our energy consumption goes down, so does carbon emissions - and it makes it so effortless to meet carbon-neutral goals as well. I hope that our leaders can tackle energy efficiency even harder than they are regarding renewable energy production.

However, Patrick’s proposal is looking to increase the use of cellulosic ethanol, specifically. If there’s a biofuel that might work, it’s this - which can use the waste products of corn production - the stalks and leaves - and other lower-maintenance crops like switchgrass. And biomass-based energy is carbon-neutral. In one season, you lock up the carbon from the atmosphere (CO2) in the biomass, and the next, you might be burning and releasing it to produce the same amount of carbon dioxide as what you took out. There is no net gain of CO2, like there is when we burn the eons-locked carbon in petrochemicals or coal.

And to boot, you’re creating an incentive to produce more of this carbon-neutral fuel. They admit there might be a slight increase to the cost of home heating oil, but to my mind, this is tinky-winks compared to the sacrifice we ought to be willing to shoulder to save ourselves, and I hope that our leaders (especially in the legislature) are willing to ask us to make those sacrifices.

I have to combat the point that the opposition makes, as well:

Samuel Krasnow, spokesman for Environment Northeast, said the bill is a disappointment because there’s no standards to reduce pollution.

“There should be a requirement that there be a net reduction of greenhouse gases,” he said. “If we’re really caring about both global warming and energy independence, it should have greater than zero reduction in greenhouse gases.”

This is the silliest argument I’ve ever heard. No energy system is going to be carbon-negative. Neutral’s as good as it gets, and anyone who says otherwise misunderstands everything about chemical processes. Wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, biomass…they are all at best carbon neutral. There’s no such thing as carbon-negative energy producers so far as I have ever seen. In fact, in order to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, we would have to spend energy. Let’s say we decide to lock carbon back in the ground. Breaking the carbon dioxide bond takes energy (say, from solar panels, or wind farms, or biomass). So carbon-negative is also energy-negative. We might wind up having to do it, but it doesn’t mean we can have our cake and eat it too.

So on net balance, I like this proposal. It doesn’t go far enough…they never go far enough…but if we can really put incentives in place to ramp up cellulosic ethanol, and use up our scrap wasted corn leaves for energy, at least it’ll be something. Now, I’d love to see us surpass this goal by 2013. I’d like to see 50% carbon-neutral energy use by 2018. But we can start here.