Climate new this week: colleges, mayors, Europe & Google deal with climate change--10/31

Before I begin this week’s news roundup, just a quick reminder that the 2008 election is only a few days away. So let’s be sure we all get out to the polls (and get everyone we know out to the polls!) on November 4 to vote for climate leadership!

Now on to the news. An article this week from the Christian Science monitor details the lessons being learned as American campuses face the challenging task of becoming climate-neutral.

Campuses account for a small portion of the United States’ greenhouse-gas emissions – less than 5 percent by some estimates. But many see themselves as well positioned to promote environmental sustainability – as centers of innovation, models of social responsibility, and educators of future workers and decision makers.

“Climate planning is an emerging field, and … the plans [colleges] come up with will be helpful to folks in other sectors learning to do this for the first time,” says Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). Based in Lexington, Ky., it’s one of the groups overseeing the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, which requires signers to report publicly on their progress.

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For UVM and other campuses, it’s key that decision makers break out of traditional “silos” to come up with climate action strategies, says Sally DeLeon, a research fellow at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit energy policy think tank in Snowmass, Colo.

“A lot of times, the barrier is stated as, ‘It’s too expensive,’ ” when it comes to investing in a new heating or cooling system, she says, but often the real problem is that capital and operating budgets are looked at separately, which makes it difficult to account for money that would be saved down the road.

On the international front, good news came out of Tokyo last week, where mayors from the world’s leading cities met at a conference in Tokyo and pledged to fight climate change and its effects:

"The focus of this conference was adaptation and particularly on measures that support adapting to climate change that is already occurring," [Toronto mayor David Miller] told a news conference.

The city leaders also urged national governments to commit to "drastic" cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, which are blamed for global warming, in the period after the Kyoto Protocol's obligations expire in 2012.

Some 40 cities are part of the C40 including Beijing, London, New Delhi, New York, Paris and Sydney. City planners from 32 of them took part in the Tokyo talks.

The cities charted out 13 areas for action to prevent the "urban heat island effect," in which temperatures tend to rise in crowded metropolitan areas.

The ideas include expanding green space in urban areas and building corridors to allow more wind and water to come into cities.

If good science informs good policy, then all of us pushing for climate legislation got a sure boost this week! The European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) and Greenpeace released a 210-page report, praised by Rajendra Pachauri (Head of the UN Climate Panel), that outlines a timeline for the elimination of fossil fuel use:

"Renewable energy could provide all global energy needs by 2090," according to the study, entitled "Energy (R)evolution". EREC represents renewable energy industries and trade and research associations in Europe.

A more radical scenario could eliminate coal use by 2050 if new power generation plants shifted quickly to renewables.

Solar power, biomass such as biofuels or wood, geothermal energy and wind could be the leading energies by 2090 in a shift from fossil fuels blamed by the U.N. Climate Panel for stoking global warming.

Needed energy investments until 2030, the main period studied, would total US$14.7 trillion, according to the study. By contrast, the International Energy Agency (IEA), which advises rich nations, foresees energy investments of just US$11.3 trillion to 2030, with a bigger stress on fossil fuels and nuclear power.”

In other news from our own shores, Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski introduced a comprehensive climate change proposal this week:

The governor’s climate change agenda for the 2009 Legislature is broken down into four key areas: greenhouse gas reductions, renewable energy, conservation and efficiency and sustainable transportation.

Key among the proposals is a plan for pushing Oregon’s involvement in a regional cap-and-trade system for regulating carbon emissions. The Western Climate Initiative, a coalition of seven Western states — including Oregon and three Canadian provinces — last month outlined the framework of a cap-and-trade system that would start in 2012.

Kulongoski’s proposed legislation would authorize the state’s participation, starting with a “citizen-led” process to help the state Department of Environmental Quality develop recommendations for the program. Those recommendations would be brought back to the 2011 Legislature, prior to implementation a year later.

“We have made great progress in the fight against climate change over the last five years, but that was just the beginning,” Kulongoski said in a news release. “This next session we must be bolder, more strategic and even more visionary if we want to reach our greenhouse reduction goals and truly pull ahead of the pack, leading our country and the globe on green living and green working.”

Lastly, although last week we read that the push for alternative energy may be waning with the economy, we are happy to hear that Google is pushing right along with their clean energy agenda:

From its beginning, the company has invested millions of dollars in making its own power-hungry data centers more efficient. Its philanthropic arm has made small investments in clean energy technologies.

But in recent weeks, Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, has hinted at the company’s broad interest in the energy business. He also joined Jeffrey R. Immelt, General Electric’s chief executive, to announce that they would collaborate on policies and technologies aimed at improving the electricity grid. The effort could include offering tools for consumers.

Meanwhile, engineers at Google are hoping to unveil soon tools that could help consumers make better decisions about their energy use.

And while the company’s philanthropic unit, Google.org, has invested in clean energy start-ups like one that uses kites to harness wind power, Google is now considering large investments in projects that generate electricity from renewable sources.

“We want to make money, and we want to have impact,” said Dan W. Reicher, director for climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org.

That wraps up this week’s news! Happy Halloween!