Daily Score Blog

Someone recently said “energy efficiencies aren’t low hanging fruit, they are the fruit lying on the ground.” Then why don’t people retrofit their homes? There are a lot of reasons, but one of them is finding the money to pay for efficiencies up front. While innovative financing tools (like my favorite bond financing) can help, they are only part of the solution.

An article in the New York Times this week called “A Stimulus That Could Save Money” traverses a well worn path in the discussion of energy efficiencies, asking the question “what will make people retrofit their homes?” The article doesn’t have any shockingly new ideas, but the discussion does surface the concept of Property Assessed Clean Energy financing—or  PACE. 

Now, sidestepping for a moment the obvious answer, “you can sell the energy efficient home for more money,” PACE is an interesting way of paying for the retrofits as part of regular property taxes. This is another version of “on bill” financing that puts the payments back on the owner’s property tax bill rather than on their utility bill.

Eureka! I have discovered a huge new source of clean energy in Alaska that can create green jobs too. Well sort of.

I’m not the first to strike gold, but lately I’ve been describing the potential of energy efficiency like hitting the jackpot. Efficiency is a clean, domestic energy source that would add, in the next decade, $1.2 trillion dollars to the economy. The big numbers (like saving 9.1 Quadrillion BTUs in Two Minutes) get people’s attention. If the kind of economic impact we could gain from energy efficiencies was a natural resource buried in the ground, you can bet that every level of government would be trying to dig them up.

Editor's Note: Alex Steffen, the editor and cofounder of Worldchanging-a global network of independent journalists, designers and thinkers--sat down with writer Emily Knudsen to discuss some of the topics he’ll be covering in his upcoming talks at Town Hall. The first part of the interview discussed Worldchanging's role in the sustainability movement. This second discusses what Seattle can do to become a more sustainable city.

What can Seattle learn from cities like Copenhagen and London that are now leading the green movement?

There are two big lessons. One is that there are amazing policy and design innovations out there that we ought be just stealing outright. People are doing things elsewhere in the world much better than we are. And we need to catch up or exceed them. So that’s part of what I’ll be talking about (at Town Hall on Nov. 11 and 12)—trying to help people implement that range of really cool innovations out there.

The second part of it is that we really need to redefine realism, especially in Seattle. We have convinced ourselves that there are certain kinds of approaches to solving these problems that are unrealistic.

Editor's Note: Alex Steffen, the editor and cofounder of Worldchanging-a global network of independent journalists, designers and thinkers--sat down with writer Emily Knudsen to discuss some of the topics he’ll be covering in his upcoming talks at Town Hall . The first part of the interview (below) discusses Worldchanging's role in the sustainability movement. The second discusses what Seattle can do to become a more sustainable city.

What inspired you to establish Worldchanging?

In the late 1990s, I was working as a consultant doing strategic communications work with environmental groups and other NGOs. One of the questions I would often ask the people I worked with was “What’s your win scenario? If you win, how is the world going to improve?” In essence, “What’s in it for me to believe in your change?” I was really amazed by how many people didn’t really have an answer to that.

Last Saturday, two stories about green jobs caught my eye. One was in the Washington Post and the other in the Seattle Times.  The Post article was a hand-wringing affair about the failure of energy efficiency efforts funded by stimulus dollars to create any of the promised green jobs. The Times article was a bit more positive, reporting about a training program I wrote about in a post titled Labor Sees Green Job Opportunity. The Times piece highlighted the first graduates of the program, created by the Laborers' International Union of North America (LiUNA) to train weatherization workers. But the Times piece also asked the crucial question of one of the graduates, “will you be able to get a job?”

The graduate, Ahmalik Claiborne, answered, "I'm sure I can get a job . . . We are at the start of something good." Not everyone is so optimistic. But it is important for our region’s problem solvers not to give in to pessimism. The fact is, our region is ahead of the rest of the country and getting green jobs right is better than getting them right now.

More and more cities in our region—and in the world—are developing plans to reduce carbon emissions. Both Vancouver and Seattle have plans, and Portland just passed the latest version of their plan last week.

To me the importance of these moves lies more in the substance of the plans than in their passage. Portland’s plan is big (literally), with 93 specific actions on 70 printed pages. It’s worth highlighting its focus on the importance of pedestrian infrastructure to curb climate change. Portland’s plan weaves them together into a strategy that will pay off in more ways than one.

Take walking. The Portland Daily Journal of Commerce recently highlighted one neighborhood, Powellhurst-Gilbert, as a place where a higher incidence of obesity correlates with lack of sidewalks. The Northwest Health Foundation has given a grant to the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability to further study the link and to work on improving pedestrian infrastructure, making it easier to walk rather than drive. This pushes the climate reduction agenda while at the same time promoting health.

I love reading Matt Taibbi. I mean, who else puts together a sentence like this?:

The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Funny and righteous at the same time. Good stuff. But in a piece he wrote for Rolling Stone this past July, he made some awfully curious -- and curiously unsupported -- allegations about carbon markets:

...if the Democratic Party that [Goldman-Sachs] gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

Yikes. It's pretty scary stuff, but Taibbi doesn't elaborate. At all. 

Which is frustrating.

It's frustrating because this is precisely the kind of thing you hear all the time from cap and trade critics. Taibbi's telling a big hairy ghost story here, but because he doesn't explain it we can't know whether to be spooked or just laugh it off. At minimum, somebody needs to explain how it is that a carbon-credit market will replicate the commodities market in ways that make it eligible for gaming by Goldman or others. And then someone needs to explain why that risk -- if it's even true -- is worse than the risk of failing to cap carbon.

That's where Paul Krugman comes in.

An interesting piece in the Christian Science Monitor yesterday by Robert Dujarric (who heads the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies at Temple University) makes the case that Americans can be motivated to act on climate measures by rousing their sense of patriotism.

I've written before about the powerful terminology of war in this context. But this is a new take. Dujarric recommends taking aim at particular targets. Namely, the sinister foreign oil barons who are getting rich and powerful thanks to  our oil addiction.

Is it an effective call to arms to remind Americans that the money we spend at gas pump and on our heating bills funds "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuclear and missile programs, enrich[es] Muammar Qaddafi (while he rants at the UN against the United States, and give[s] assistance to Vladimir Putin as he threatens American interests in the Caucasus and Central Europe?"

Should we start talking about climate policy as a move to "wage war to bankrupt oil tyrants?"

Over the last week there has been quite a bit of discussion in the media about the number of jobs created by stimulus dollars. Some argue the money is being wasted and others that the amount of money allocated were never enough in the first place. Paul Krugman suggested that “the really bad news is that “centrists” in Congress aren’t able or willing to draw the obvious conclusion, which is that we need a lot more federal spending on job creation.”

Either way, as I wrote in a post called Color of Money, a lot of money has been allocated and has yet to be spent. The facts seem to agree that moving funds (and allocations for bond and tax credit programs) out to local governments and into broader circulation is taking a long time.

But, when it comes to energy efficiency in general and stimulus funding in specific, the Northwest is getting high ratings. In their 2009 state ranking of local implementation of energy efficiency programs, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) ranks Oregon 3rd and Washington 7th among the top ten states for implementing energy efficiency policies.

Early this week, President Obama gave a speech touting the $3.4 billion in grants the federal government has awarded to local companies, utilities and cities working to improve the country’s aging and outmoded electric energy grid. The awards will support “smart grid” technology that enables easier and more effective transmission of electricity from one region to another. One of the recipients is Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative (PNGC), a Portland-based electric generation and transmission cooperative owned by 16 Northwest electric utilities. The grant will fund installation of “95,000 smart meters, substation equipment, and load management devices that will integrate electric cooperatives across four states using a central data collection software system hosted by PNGC.”

But will all the smart grid money create green collar jobs?

Unfortunately—and surprisingly considering unemployment rates—according to a recent report by the National Commission on Energy Policy, smart-grid investment will require trained workers who aren’t yet available in large numbers.

A CNN/Opinion Research poll released today shows strong public support for cap-and-trade legislation. As Alex Kaplun of E&E points out, this is despite months of attacks from those opposed to climate and energy policy.

The poll found 60 percent of the public expressed support for a cap-and-trade proposal that would "limit the amount of greenhouse gases that companies could produce in their factories or power plants." About 37 percent of voters say they would not support such a proposal.

Most interesting, perhaps, the poll found a relatively strong level of support among Republicans for the legislation, with about 4 in 10 backing the bill. A solid majority of both Democrats and independents back the measure.

There's a clear generational divide. Younger voters are more inclined to support the measure, with 68 percent of those under the age of 50 supporting the legislation but with those older than 50 evenly split.

A study released over the summer found that there are some great opportunities in Washington state for green jobs in the renewable energy sector. But it also pointed to some problems ensuring adequate training for those jobs.

The study confirms what Professor W. Norton Grubb found: work force training needs to be better integrated with education. Training is about learning tasks or work related skills that allow immediate employment while education is grounded in more broadly applicable skills like reading, writing and organizational skills.

The education training dichotomy is one aspect of the fragmentation that plagues work force training and by extension training for green collar jobs. Grubb’s ideas, creating better connections between education and training, are still relevant today more than a decade after he wrote about them in his book Learning to Work.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults (reached on cell phones and landlines) revealed some disheartening trends when it comes to opinions about climate change. At the same time, things are looking decent (if not rosy) for cap and trade policy.

• 57 percent think there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades. In April 2008, 71 percent said there was solid evidence of rising global temperatures.
  
  
• Over the same period, there has been a comparable decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity, such as burning fossil fuels. Just 36 percent say that currently, down from 47 percent last year.

• The decline in the belief in solid evidence of global warming has come across the political spectrum, but has been particularly pronounced among independents. Pew found that just 53 percent of independents now see solid evidence of global warming, compared with 75 percent who did so in April 2008.
  
  
• Republicans, who already were highly skeptical of the evidence of global warming, have become even more so: just 35 percent of Republicans now see solid evidence of rising global temperatures, down from 49 percent in 2008 and 62 percent in 2007. Fewer Democrats also express this view -- 75 percent today compared with 83 percent last year.

Despite this trend backwards when it comes to skepticism (is it a seasonal thing?), the survey found more support than opposition for a policy to set limits on carbon emissions.

• Half of Americans favor setting limits on carbon emissions and making companies pay for their emissions, even if this may lead to higher energy prices.
  
  
• 39 percent oppose imposing limits on carbon emissions under these circumstances.

Very few of the stimulus dollars allocated for energy efficiency -- and the green jobs they can create -- have been allocated or spent by governments. At first this might seem a bit discouraging. Lots of money allocated but caught up in the bureaucracy of federal, state, and local governments. However, a look at green stimulus funding in the Northwest is more encouraging, with some cities and local agencies starting their work off on the right foot. 

A recent report by London-based New Energy Finance has found that less than 10 percent of green stimulus money allocated worldwide has actually been spent by governments this year. That’s about $177 billion spent so far on supporting energy efficiencies, renewable energy and green jobs out of more than a trillion available. (The report found that the United States government has spent about 12 percent of its stimulus allocation thus far or about $7.92 billion dollars.)

You look at your watch. You look at the bus schedule. You look down the street. The bus that will take you half way across downtown should arrive in another 15 minutes. So do you wait for it, or start walking? 

The answer might depend on the weather and what shoes you wore, or maybe you're looking for a mathematically-defensible solution. If the latter's the case, we at Sightline can help! Operating under the premise that there's no query too small to calculate and then graph, we bring you "Walk or Bus?" from Visualmotive.

This cool little chart requires that you know or guess at how far you're traveling, then lets you figure out which mode of transportation will be faster depending on when the bus is coming.