Urban Land Green - Spring 2008 - Feature
Since 2005, hundreds of mayors across all 50 states have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, thereby initiating important first steps in their own communities and playing a major role in shaping the national discussion.
On the Front Lines of Positive Change
By Tom Murphy, John Miller, and Uwe S. Brandes
On February 16th, 2005, the Kyoto Protocol—an international agreement created to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change—became law for 141 countries. On the same day, faced with the U.S. government’s decision not to ratify the international agreement, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels took the opportunity to commit his city to Kyoto’s goals on a local level because of his concerns about the impact of climate change on Seattle’s water and energy supplies, which depend on snow. Interest from a growing list of other leading cities soon led to the creation of the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, which provided local governments with the opportunity to commit their municipalities to Kyoto’s goals.
By signing the Mayors Agreement, cities pledge to meet or exceed the targets in the Kyoto Protocol in their jurisdictions—achieving at least a 7 percent reduction from 1990 emissions by 2012. They also commit to pressing their state governments to meet the emissions reduction target set by Kyoto and to lobbying the U.S. Congress to pass greenhouse gas reduction legislation, establishing a cap and trade system for emissions.
Two years after Nickels’s clarion call, in February 2007, the U.S. Conference of Mayors formalized the 2005 Agreement by creating a Climate Protection Center in Washington, D.C., which provides mayors with additional support for their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change. Since 2005, 802 mayors across all 50 states have signed the agreement—taking important first steps in their own communities and playing a major role shaping the national discussion about climate change. And they have done so while continuing to address their traditional responsibilities—be it fighting crime or providing adequate public services—of city management.
In a public process that is less than three years old, the breadth and scope of initiatives is remarkable. The number of cities involved is increasing daily, and the population of these cities now represents almost 40 percent of the U.S. population. The entrepreneurial responses by mayors to the challenges of reducing greenhouse gas emissions provide a dramatic statement of the seriousness with which mayors and their communities view this issue. Even more remarkable is that these initiatives are happening locally, community by community, without federal, or in most cases, state, mandates. The response to climate change and energy volatility is on its way to becoming a significant movement.
First Steps toward Significant Reductions
Thus far, the actions of cities to lower their carbon emissions have been creative and reflect the diversity of local community issues. These first steps rely largely on strategies within easy control of the municipalities, which can be classified broadly into six categories: fleet efficiency of municipal vehicles, building efficiency, municipal energy purchases, transportation, water and waste recycling, and environmental health and education.
l Fleet Efficiency. From Lexington, Kentucky, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Eugene, Oregon, cities are beginning to convert their municipal fleets to hybrid or alternative fuel low-emissions vehicles. For example, in Eugene, Oregon, over half (53 percent) of the city’s nonpolice sedan fleet today is made up of hybrid vehicles. Where possible, the city also uses biodiesel and ethanol in other vehicles. By the city’s own estimates, fuel efficiency has nearly doubled, increasing from 23 to 42 miles per gallon since the program began. Compared with a conventional vehicle, hybrids reduce costs by 14 percent per mile driven, according to the city’s estimates. Moreover, New York City is also requiring the city’s numerous and highly visible taxicabs to go hybrid by 2012, although no other city to date has made such a conversion requirement for private fleet operators.
l Energy Efficiency in Buildings. Most cities are requiring energy audits and improvements in all municipally owned buildings and LEED certification for new municipal buildings. Some cities—such as Austin, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Stamford, Connecticut; and Rohnert Park, California—have extended these regulations to require that new residential and/or commercial construction meet green design standards that exceed minimum building code requirements. In some cases, the investments are already paying off. In Alexandria, Virginia, for example, the city has invested over $1,045,000 in green projects, reaping an average cost savings of $139,000 per year. In one instance, the city spent $3,000 modifying the HVAC system for the Beatley Public Library, which has led to $35,000 in energy savings in fiscal year 2006 alone.
l Municipal Energy Purchases. Many cities are major users of electricity, natural gas, coal, and oil in their operations. A medium-sized city of 350,000 people might spend $2 million per year just for powering its streetlights. Some cities—including Chicago, Syracuse, San Diego, Colorado Springs, and Tucson—not only are requiring larger portions of the energy they purchase to come from renewable sources but also are working to develop their own renewable energy infrastructure—from solar panels to wind turbines—to generate their own power. In Boston, 8.6 percent of the city’s energy now comes from renewable sources—which won it the recognition of the EPA’s Green Power Leadership Club. Similarly, Austin now receives 11 percent of its energy from renewable sources—chiefly wind power—and is actively pursuing options to buy additional land to build more turbines in the wind-energy hotbed of west Texas. In its long-term plan, the city hopes this will help boost its percentage of renewable energy to 30 percent.
l Transportation. Many cities are working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation by increasing equipment efficiency, providing attractive alternatives to cars, and adjusting commuter patterns. Charlotte, North Carolina—which is at the center of a two-state, eight-county clean air nonattainment area—has created a regional campaign known as Clean Air Works!, which provides free assistance to employers to promote alternative methods of transportation tailored to each company. The Pedal Instead program in Columbus, Ohio, promotes the building of additional bike lanes. Chattanooga, Tennessee, has launched a small fleet of all-electric buses designed by a local business. And, through its Flex in the City Program, Houston is working with large private employers to develop flexible work schedules for employees. In the program’s first two weeks, in which more than 140 organizations took part, the city estimates that over 20,000 employees eliminated a peak-hour commute by working from home or changing their travel hours at work—thereby decreasing overall commute time by 5.8 percent while lowering traffic emissions.
l Water and Waste Recycling. Facing problematic water supplies and increasing landfill costs, many cities see the ability to reduce water consumption and municipal waste as a win for their budget and for the environment. Sacramento, California; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Hollywood, Florida, are examples of cities implementing aggressive water conservation efforts. Meanwhile, Denton, Texas, is creating biodiesel fuel from the methane generated in the municipal landfill. Many cities are dramatically increasing their recycling efforts, which seek to recapture some of the embedded energy used to create these materials. Waste-to-energy conversion is being revisited as an energy alternative in several communities.
l Environmental Health and Education. Many cities—including Houston, Texas; Trenton, Delaware; Ft. Wayne, Indiana; Miami, Florida; Annapolis, Maryland; and Irvine, California—have environmental health and education programs focused on raising awareness of the causes of greenhouse gas emissions with students, businesses, and the general public. These programs take many forms, from elementary school curriculum to voluntary energy audits for businesses, to educating residents on a range of subjects, including options in purchasing electricity and strategies in upgrading their homes and appliances to be more energy efficient.
Measuring Success
Although cities have established methods (such as decreases in crime rates or increases in homeownership) for tracking the progress of longstanding programs, gauging the success of these nascent climate change initiatives has been challenging because the measurement tools for carbon emissions are still in their infancy.
At the scale of individual buildings, the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building program is being used by many cities to ensure that their own building projects, including both new construction and renovated facilities, are more sustainable. LEED has also been used by cities to evaluate private development projects. Some cities, like Stamford, Connecticut, have taken the step of requiring LEED standards for all new buildings, making LEED certification a de facto supplement to the building code. Stamford also rewards developers for achieving higher levels of LEED accreditation by reducing city fees for progressively higher-rated projects. And, as of January 2007, Boston requires all buildings larger than 50,000 square feet (4,645 sq m) that must get a building or use permit to achieve LEED certification. The USGBC’s latest rating system, LEED Neighborhood Design (LEED-ND)—which is now in its pilot phase—will encourage a level of sustainability over a broader area. Though reducing carbon emissions is not the only aim of the LEED program, many of LEED-ND’s focus areas, such as energy efficiency, materials selection, and sustainable site development, lead directly to significant reductions in carbon emissions.
Other organizations have emerged to actually quantify carbon emissions. An example is ICLEI–Local Governments for Sustainability, an association of local governments committed to achieving more sustainable communities. Among its many programs to assist local governments, ICLEI is developing innovative software to measure and track a city’s or region’s total greenhouse gas emissions. This snapshot can offer a city an invaluable starting point for planning future reductions in carbon emissions (see sidebar, page 36).
The Elephant in the Room
While the climate initiatives of the mayors nationwide are creative, varied, and certainly commendable, pursuing the ambitious goals set by Kyoto is proving to be an ongoing challenge. Even for countries that have officially signed the Kyoto Agreement, achieving the reductions stipulated in the agreement has been difficult. According to Brad Swing, director of energy policy under Boston Mayor Thomas Merino, meeting the mayors’ commitment to achieving a meaningful decrease in carbon emissions requires a determined, long-term effort.
Among other challenges, there is one glaring blank at the nexus of land use, energy volatility, and climate change. It is estimated that 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are transportation related. Yet, few cities to date have initiated land use strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The spotlight of change is slowly shifting to land use efficiency.
Recently, Congress passed and the President signed an energy bill that for the first time in 30 years raises the mileage requirements for cars, dramatically increases ethanol mandates, and sets building standards for energy efficiency. Recent studies outlined in detail in ULI’s new book Growing Cooler, however, demonstrate that the increasing numbers of miles driven daily by the average household will outpace any savings achieved in greenhouse gas reductions by vehicle and fuel efficiency improvements. The increasing miles being driven are directly connected to land use decisions, housing choices, and lack of funding for transit. Without a dramatic reduction in the average household’s annual driving—some estimates are that it needs to be cut in half—it will be virtually impossible for municipalities to reach the reduction goals that they have established for themselves.
This situation is the elephant in the room; to talk about it is to confront the suburban and exurban development patterns that have shaped America over the past 60 years. As a result, issues like higher density, regional planning, transit investment, mixed-use developments, and zoning are often difficult issues for individual local governments to address. Courageously, a few cities are beginning to face them. Fayetteville, Arkansas, has adopted a comprehensive land use strategy, City Plan 2025, using SmartCode, a model design and development code that prioritizes infill development, discourages sprawl, standardizes the traditional compact town form, lays out a transportation system, assembles a green network, and mandates housing choices. Austin has taken many of the same actions to encourage developers to build higher-density, mixed-use walkable communities served by a transportation network. Its recently created corridor zoning will increase density along transit corridors as well as near transit stops on a soon-to-be-completed commuter rail line. Albuquerque has set as its first core target the integration of the city’s growth into mixed-use, compact, and transit-oriented urban villages. Atlanta, through the Atlanta Regional Commission, created the Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) explicitly to link transportation improvements with land use development strategies to create mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods with a range of travel modes available. And municipalities in California and Massachusetts are now beginning to require developers to disclose the direct and indirect emissions generated by new development, and also to require the disclosure of alternatives to reduce them.
The elephant is coming into the spotlight. Private investors and leaders at all levels of government are becoming increasingly aware that thoughtful land use decisions are needed to address multiple community challenges such as congestion, housing availability, infrastructure costs, and greenhouse gas emissions. The recently passed energy bill—entitled the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007—includes a Conservation Block Grant authorization that will provide funding for local governments to develop plans to lower emissions. As well, the Warner-Lieberman Carbon Cap and Trade Bill and the reauthorization of the Federal Highway Trust Fund both will likely include requirements to reduce carbon and vehicle miles driven, putting more pressure on state and local governments to amend existing land use regulations to allow for more efficient land use. Increasingly, states are beginning to look at transportation, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions as interrelated.
It is with the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, however, that the rubber has hit the road and that innovation has begun. ULG
Tom Murphy, a former mayor of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a ULI senior resident fellow, specializing in urban development. ULI scholar-in-residence John Miller recently earned a master’s degree from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Uwe S. Brandes is ULI’s managing director of Initiatives.
Quantifying Carbon
Once you’ve signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, become one of Sierra Club’s Cool Cities, or made another commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in your community, what do you do next? The sometimes intimidating task of honoring those commitments is made easier by ICLEI–Local Governments for Sustainability.
ICLEI is an international membership association of local governments dedicated to climate protection and sustainable development. Initially called the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives, the organization was established in 1990 when more than 200 local governments from 43 countries convened at the United Nations in New York. ICLEI USA was launched in 1995 and has grown from a handful of local governments participating in a pilot project to an active network of more than 350 cities and counties. It is headquartered in Oakland, California, and has regional offices in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, and Seattle, with plans to open another office, in the Southeast, later this year.
The mission of ICLEI is to build, serve, and drive a movement of local governments to advance deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and achieve other tangible improvements in local sustainability. In particular, ICLEI USA helps local governments through performance-based programs, training workshops, peer networking, publications and tools, software assistance, and publicity. Many of these tools, resources, and peer networking opportunities can be found on the organization’s new Web site, www.icleiusa.org.
When a city, town, or county joins ICLEI, it is introduced to the Five Milestone Methodology, which consists of the following:
- Conducting a baseline emissions inventory and forecast.
- Adopting an emissions reduction target.
- Developing a local climate action plan.
- Implementing policies and measures.
- Monitoring and verifying results.
To work toward these milestones, local governments first turn to the Clean Air Climate Protection (CACP) software, which was developed in 2003 based on an earlier version from the late 1990s. CACP helps a local government create a greenhouse gas inventory, which is, in essence, a sum total of all the greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors within a defined boundary within a given year. The software can then calculate the amount that emissions will be reduced per year for any given strategy, such as the conversion of the police car fleet to hybrid vehicles, and go on to formulate a local climate action plan that compares current emissions levels with projected emissions levels if and when these various proposed strategies are implemented. This software also calculates the cost savings associated with proposed energy-efficient measures and the amount of reduction in air pollutants associated with a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.
ICLEI USA currently is working with Microsoft and the William J. Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Climate Initiative to create an Internet-based version of CACP to facilitate the reporting of data and the tracking of progress. This tool, which is expected to be available by the end of 2008, is intended to establish a common software platform to enable cities worldwide to share and compare emissions data and measures designed to reduce emissions. It will use internationally accepted conventions and a standardized approach to quantifying greenhouse gas emissions as established by the Local Government GHG Protocol, which is currently being developed by ICLEI in partnership with the California Climate Action Registry and the California Air Resources Board, and in collaboration with the Climate Registry.
Another tool, the Climate and Air Pollution Planning Assistant (CAPPA), will be released this spring. CAPPA is designed to help local government officials select the best mix of strategies for meeting their emissions reductions and air quality improvement goals. Drawing on the experience and expertise of hundreds of local governments, this tool will help take the guesswork out of climate protection planning.
Through expertise, direct support, and the innovation and evolution of tools, ICLEI strives to help local governments meet their goals in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Michelle Wyman is executive director of ICLEI USA, based in Oakland, California.
City Survey
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) report, Local Leaders in Sustainability—A Study of Green Building Programs in Our Nation’s Communities, examines the growth and effectiveness of green building policies in cities with populations greater than 50,000. This represents a total of 661 communities, or 107,918,963 Americans. In conducting this study, the AIA spoke to planning, building, and sustainability officials in 606 cities, for a response rate of 92 percent, during the summer of 2007. The study provides the following data:
- Ninety-two cities, or at least 14 percent of all cities with a population greater than 50,000, have green building programs.
- At least 42,374,499 million Americans live in cities with green building programs.
- An additional 36 cities indicated they are in a more advanced stage of developing green building programs, forecasting a future of increased green activity.
No less than 14 percent of all Americans live in cities with green building programs. The true number is greater, however, because the study purposefully limited the data set to cities with populations greater than 50,000. Therefore, many smaller communities that have equally impressive programs are not represented in the analysis.
While the overall, nationwide trend is toward an increased level of green building activity, there are marked differences in regional distribution of green building programs, with certain regions moving forward at a faster rate than others. The regional distribution of green building programs helps to illustrate the growth of sustainable development throughout the country.
- The western region leads the way in green building programs, with 42 cities in just six states, or a total of 46 percent of all green building programs.
- The Mountain Region is well represented and is second in the percentage of its cities that have green building programs.
- The East is growing quickly but comes in third in the percentage of programs compared with the number of cities surveyed, and second regionally in overall programs.
- Although the central states have the lowest percentage of overall programs, they have several innovative, well-established policies.
The study identifies several pioneering cities, largely concentrated in California and along the D.C.-to-Boston corridor, that are incorporating green requirements into all or nearly all buildings. Many of these policies are either just now getting off the ground or are being phased in over the next few years. In the Northwest, there is even a group striving to design buildings that are zero net energy and zero net water users, creating truly sustainable buildings.
The results of the study point to no single guideline or policy that is best for all cities. Just as certain design features are more effective depending on the regional climate, certain policies are more effective depending on the political climate. However, the data revealed common threads in successful policies.
The Local Leaders in Sustainability report, which includes best practices case studies from six cities—Portland, Oregon; San Francisco; Scottsdale, Arizona; Chicago; Austin; and Atlanta—is available at www.aia.org/adv_localleaders.
Brooks Rainwater is director of Local Relations for the American Institute of Architects and the lead author of Local Leaders in Sustainability.
Urban Land Green: Spring 2008
© 2008 ULI–the Urban Land Institute, all rights reserved.