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Who Pays The Freight?

2008-07-03T03:01:25Z

On June 26, 2008, Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa signed into law a City ordinance, passed by a unanimous vote of the L.A. City Council, enacting the Port of Los Angeles Clean Trucks Program, the most progressive in the nation. If the ordinance is left undisturbed – litigation attacking the plan by the trucking industry may come as early next week – it has a very good chance of reducing deadly diesel particulate emissions from the Port of L.A. by 80 percent within five years.

The Port of Long Beach is a different story. As I’ve written before, the Long Beach trucking program continues the current, broken economic model of port trucking by forcing underpaid “independent” truckers to finance, maintain and replace new trucks on their own nickel. The reality of this misguided decision became crystal-clear at a Port of Long Beach meeting this week on financing new trucks.

The problem is this: money from the port’s container fees, state-sponsored incentive funds and other sources will not cover 100 percent of the cost of a new, low-emitting diesel truck. So, a portion of the cost needs to be financed by the (mostly low-income) drivers. To pay for their new, low-emission trucks, drivers will need to make monthly payments in the amount of $500-$700 even with a subsidy paying for up to 80 percent of the truck.

Long Beach asked three potential lenders to bid: Bank of America, GE Credit, and Daimler Trucking. B of A and GE declined to take on more than a small piece of the risk, presumably partly based on the grounds of risk related to providing financing to drivers who may not be able to meet payment schedules. Daimler, which did pony up to take on the full risk, explained that it expected about 40 percent of the drivers to (at some point) have problems paying their bills on the new truck, and touted its experience in repossessing trucks.

This sorry testimony from hard-headed businesspeople should be a wakeup call for Long Beach. The business plan that the Port of Long Beach wants to continue is risky because it has kept trucker incomes so low that they can’t afford new trucks, even if most of the truck is already paid for. And this doesn’t even consider paying for maintaining the trucks, or buying new ones when these wear out. This is exactly why the L.A. business model that Mayor Villaraigosa signed into law is better – it relies on well-capitalized private industry rather than poor truckers to pay the freight.

Coal Plant Developers Confront The Future of CO2 Controls -- And Freak.

2008-07-02T16:55:41Z

This week a state court judge in Georgia issued the first court ruling in the country concluding that power plant developers and state regulators must establish permit limits for CO2 pollution from new coal-fired power plants, based upon "best available control technology" under the Clean Air Act.

The judge further ruled that coal plant developers and regulators must fully evaluate alternative energy production processes, like integrated gasification combined cycle ("IGCC").

The proposed Longleaf Energy Plant in Early County, Georgia, a joint venture of Dynegy and LS Power Group, would be a 1,200 MW pulverized coal-fired power plant expected to cause as much as 9 million tons of harmful CO2 pollution each year.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) issued a statement decrying the court ruling and calling for a "prudent Federal climate policy" to prevent similar rulings.

It was entirely predictable that ACCCE would rebuke a judge for being so rude as to apply the law correctly against a coal plant developer's economic preferences. What was more remarkable was the alacrity with which ACCCE called for effective national climate change legislation to control global warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Don't bet on the word "effective" in that last sentence. "Prudent Federal climate policy" is just as likely utility industry code for Congressional or EPA intervention to save power plant developers from application of the existing Clean Air Act; code for federal preemption of state global warming action; or even national legislation but founded on windfalls for utility companies by giving away the right to spew global warming pollution into the atmosphere for free.

ACCCE for its part has 12 lengthy and demanding conditions that must be satisfied before its members will support federal legislation, and those conditions echo some of the explanations for the code above.

ACCCE's press statement reacts with thinly veiled alarm to the court ruling for good reason: this judge's opinion is the first to really engage and consider some basic legal disputes at issue in almost all of the pending controversies over conventional coal-fired power plant permits.

And you know what? The judge reached the most sensible conclusions based upon the most obvious reading of the relevant Clean Air Act language. There is nothing in her ruling that is a stretch.

Coal power plant developers have taken comfort thus far in the fact that political agencies at the state and federal level have gone to whatever lengths are necessary in order to avoid being the first jurisdiction -- or a jurisdiction -- willing to regulate global warming pollution from power plants under rather obvious Clean Air Act authorities.

So this court decision terrifies coal plant developers not just because it is the first adverse ruling, but because it truly is rooted in the most obvious reading of the law and heralds more judges reaching the same conclusion.

You can bet on that.

When Shops Keep Doors Agape, Think of Cold Air at $140 a Barrel

2008-07-02T13:54:41Z

Greedy shop owners are, sadly, not the only ones who both needlessly and thoughtlessly waste energy by keeping the doors to their air-conditioned shops open.

A few Saturdays ago, I had to fly to Atlanta. Because of construction at La Guardia, we were told we had to use the shorter runway. We were a full flight and, because of that, a bit too heavy. And so the pilot said we’d have to sit on the taxiway for a while and burn off fuel to lighten up the load.

When airlines are complaining of higher fuel costs, and curbing global warming demands immediate action, it is hard to imagine something more wasteful than this.

Coal: Not Just a Climate Killer

2008-06-30T19:49:18Z

In a single year, less than one in 100,000 Americans contract a rare form of bone marrow cancer. In Pennsylvania coal country, the rate is 15 times higher.

This chilling stat opens an eye-opening, heart-rending short documentary produced by the American News Project. The video portrays the story of local residents suffering from coal ash that is poisoning their water and, many contend, making them ill. (Yes, it’s not just the smokestack air pollution that threatens our health.)

Make no mistake: No matter how many millions of dollars Big Coal spends on PR to spew its propaganda, there is no such thing as “clean” coal.

The same goes for the dubious process of converting coal into liquid as a alternative to oil for transportation. This “dirty fuel” has all the negatives of solid coal – from mining to toxic emissions – with the added touch that the process to create liquid coal doubles global warming pollution. NRDC’s movie on this – Crude Substitute– profiles yet another eastern Pennsylvania community suffering the consequences of dirty coal.

Let's Respect the Public With More Information

2008-06-30T14:00:00Z

We need a lot more environmental information to begin to address the lack of public understanding of environmental harms.

This may seem obvious, but it isn’t. At a meeting a few years ago, I was shocked to find the head of a state water agency opposed to an effort to provide the public with more information on sewage overflows. His argument was that he didn’t want to scare the public, and that the public wasn’t sophisticated enough to understand the information.

About our families swimming in sewage, I thought?

Sewage overflows happen much more frequently than they should. In the Clean Water Act of 1972, Congress set a goal for our waters to be fishable and swimmable by 1983. Yet today, fewer than one half of our waters have even been assessed. Of those, only about half meet their designated uses. And for most of those, the designated use is something less than fishable and swimmable.

Take our beaches, for example. In 2007, the NRDC released the results of our annual water quality survey. The results were startling. In 2006, pollution caused a record number of beach closings nationwide. Closing and advisory days topped 25,000 – more than had ever been recorded in the survey’s 17-year history. The public needs to know about this. And yet, agencies are wary of releasing information that would hold them responsible.

In one EPA negotiated undertaking I was involved with, we were discussing the possibility of electronic filing of permit applications, permits, and monitoring data. Many dischargers were first supportive – after all, it would save them time and money. But once they realized that if electronically filed it would be easily accessible, they changed their minds. They knew that publicly available information leads to more awareness, more attention, and more enforcement. They were not sure that was good.

In my opinion, this is backwards. If there is a concern about the reaction, the answer is to provide the public with more, or better, information, not less. We should have more respect for the public.

To solve this problem, we need to begin by providing the public with more information – much more information than they currently have. But we also need to provide them with better information. It’s not just about quantity, but quality. The information should be about the full range of effects – health, environmental, cultural – and not just about the associated costs.

And we need to make the information available. The internet is a truly terrific opportunity for this (if you’re reading this blog, I hope you’ll agree). Environmental information should all be up on the web so anyone can find out about the permit (or lack of a permit) for the factory or whatever is down the street from one of their kids’ schools.

This is one of NRDC’s goals. We believe that an informed citizenry is an active citizenry – one more likely to hold the federal government to its promise of providing clean water for our families, and for our kids.

The light bulb, the cocktail party, and you

2008-06-26T23:12:43Z

Years ago, when I was young, I spent most of my time working on energy efficiency technology policy. Now I spend most of my time working of renewables, but from time to time, my colleagues forget and ask me questions that are way over my head. And so it was that I was recently pressed to provide our board with simple answers to all the questions they might possible get asked at a cocktail party.

One of the issues that everyone asks about is mercury in compact fluorescent. I wrote one of my early blogs about it, and spent a good chunk of my talk for the board focusing on it. My main message on CFLs and mercury is that if you care about mercury pollution, one of the best things you can do is use more CFLs. But if after using a CFL, we can recycle it, that's even better. So I was happy to see this story that Home Depot is going to start to take CFLs back for recycling.

NRDC's real expert on bulbs and all energy efficient appliances is Noah Horowitz and I encourage you to read more about him and his great work here and here. Now Noah is one of those incredibly smart people that have the ability to make very complicated topics comprehensible. And he helped me do that with bulbs for the board. So without further ado, here's the presentation I gave at NRDC's most recent board meeting.

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Hurray for Home Depot!

2008-06-24T15:36:27Z

This weekend, the husband and I stopped by Home Depot to see if we could find shelves to house my out-of-control Kidrobot collection. We got our shelves -- at a huge discount in fact -- but still walked out a couple thousand dollars poorer.

How? Well, we finally bought a new refrigerator, replacing our ancient grumbling sweating box with a sleek French door model from LG. Most importantly, it was an Energy Star model and from I could tell from comparison shopping, it operates at the lowest end of the energy consumption scale.

So what transformed a simple trip for cheap shelving into a major investment in home appliances? Home Depot was offering a gift card worth as much as $250 for buying an Energy Star appliance. Combine that with a 10 percent sale and free delivery and removal of the existing refrigerator and I figure we saved about $600. That's real money and we're not even talking about the energy savings.

After our credit card failed to melt at checkout, I felt good about the purchase and about Home Depot for offering the $250 gift card as an incentive to switch to Energy Star. I recognize that it is their enlightened self interest to help sell refrigerators and other appliances but it also educates -- and prods -- folks like us who knew our refrigerator was a energy monster to make the shift.

And then this morning, while flipping through The New York Times, I saw the prominent news that Home Depot has started a recycling program for compact fluorescent light bulbs. Home Depot -- the nation's second largest retailer -- will announce today that it will take back CFLs at all of its 1,973 stores in the United States, a move that the Times says will create "the nation's most widespread recycling program for the bulbs."

CFLs carry a very small amount of mercury -- roughly equivalent in size to the tip of a ballpoint pen -- and, according to an excellent NRDC fact sheet, it is sealed within the glass tubing.

I've previously applauded Home Depot for starting, among other programs, a new line of environmentally friendly paints and for actively encouraging the purchase of energy saving bulbs.

"We're trying to do the right thing," Ron Jarvis, Home Depot's senior vice president for environmental innovation, told the Times. "Some of the things we do are for the community and not for the bottom line."

The cynical journalist in me finds that really hard to swallow, but in this case I'm prepared to let go and believe. It feels good to do that every once in a while.

Transit-oriented development in Arlington: stunning success and some lessons (part 2)

2008-06-24T13:23:04Z

Yesterday I wrote about how Arlington, Virginia’s redevelopment along one of the Washington, DC region’s Metro subway lines has created an amazing amount of new mixed-use development - all without expanding the region’s development footprint, while preserving the community’s single-family residential neighborhoods, and while strengthening the county’s tax base.

If all Arlington had done was to provide new housing and office space in an existing community at smart densities, thus saving thousands of acres that might otherwise have been developed as sprawl on the region’s fringe, the planners would have earned our praise. But here’s the really good news: Arlington also greatly reduced automobile dependence, providing residents and workers with convenient transportation choices, putting shops and many other daily destinations within walking distance of homes and offices, and shortening distances for those who need or prefer to drive.

It worked. Today, fewer than half of the residents in the Rosslyn-to-Ballston corridor drive to work. 39 percent use public transportation, and over 10 percent walk or bicycle (2.3 percent work at home). Perhaps most significant, the additional 17 million square feet of office space and 24,000 homes have added only minimal automobile traffic. Mariia Zimmerman of Reconnecting America reports that the daily traffic count on the corridor’s main street, Wilson Boulevard, was around 15,000 vehicles in 1980; in 2004, it was 15,795. (In 1980, before the redevelopment began, the county had been predicting that the count would soar to 36,900 vehicles per day!) The count on nearby Washington Boulevard actually decreased from 1980 to 2004, from 20,000 to 17,230.

Arlington’s lovely single-family neighborhoods remain lovely, and now residents can walk to more neighborhood conveniences and Metro, without suffering the traffic increases people sometimes fear from intensive development.

As Roger Lewis points out in The Washington Post,

"The corridor functions well. It offers pedestrian-friendly sidewalks, on- and off-street bicycle lanes, plazas and mini-parks. It takes less than 10 minutes to walk between any two adjacent Metro nodes on the corridor -- Rosslyn, Court House, Clarendon, Virginia Square and Ballston. People there can get along without cars.
"Appropriately high densities and multiple uses -- commercial, residential, civic, cultural and educational -- are concentrated at each node. Intense redevelopment and convenient transportation have made the corridor successful as a place to live, shop and play, as well as to work or commute to work."

Well said. Although the corridor's redevelopment is outstanding, I can’t say that it’s perfect. Roger also notes that the “urban design is not flawless, and much of its architecture is less than exemplary.” I have to agree. Although I love Clarendon and find much to like near the Court House and Virginia Square stations, some of the new concrete-canyon development around the Ballston station feels uninspiring at best and oppressive at worst. Surely it confirms NIMBY fears of what transit-oriented development might bring elsewhere, which is too bad. I say to take Ballston as a valuable lesson to provide more architectural and building-height variety, along with more green space, in future development near transit, and look to Clarendon instead for the better model.

High-rise glitches aside, this is an amazing success story. The amount of development in Arlington went way, way up compared to what was forecast in the 1970s, while automobile traffic on the arterial and residential roadways basically stayed the same. New homes, shops, and offices were provided close to public transportation and close to the region’s center.

Arlington could rest on its laurels but, instead, the planners are now looking to innovative, citizen-endorsed redevelopment of another section of the county that has suffered decline, the Columbia Pike corridor, and this time the development will be supported by streetcar service. (Watch this space for a future post on Columbia Pike.)

I believe the country has turned a corner and this, not sprawl, is our future. Arlington is setting a terrific example, and I'm lucky to be able to visit anytime I want, right across the river from DC.

Did you see the Washington Monument and US Capitol in the photograph that opened yesterday’s post? If not, look again. You can see the Jefferson Memorial, too.

High diesel prices...

2008-06-23T22:28:46Z

With all of the stories being written about the increase in gasoline prices lately, it’s only a matter of time before reporters and producers start writing and taping stories about the increase in diesel prices and what that means for the prices of so many products we use every day.

Over the past year, diesel prices have risen even faster than gasoline. According to AAA, gasoline costs, on average, 4.07 right now, up from 3.00 a year ago. Diesel costs, 4.77, up from 2.89 last year. That’s a 65 percent increase!

Think about it: at this time of the year, diesel fuel is usually cheaper than gasoline, thanks to the price pressures created by the annual peak driving seasons of spring and summer. That, along with the better efficiency, durability and reliability of diesel engines usually added up to a summertime win-win-win-win for truckers, transit operators and others who relied on diesel fuel and engines.

Now, fuel costs are up by two-thirds to our nation’s truck operators.

This is really tough, especially in an industry known for long hours, thin margins, and plenty of ups and downs. (A personal aside: I spent several summer vacations in high school and college loading and unloading refrigerated trucks hauling meat from the Midwest to New York, so I have some sense of how hard the trucker’s life can be and how little margin there is for dramatic changes in operating costs).

Recently, CNN really blew it by implying that cleaner diesel fuel was the culprit. They could not have been more wrong. Sure, today’s ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel is 97 percent cleaner than it was two years ago. As a result, every diesel truck and bus is operating 5-10 percent more cleanly, and new engines are 90-95 percent cleaner, thanks to new pollution-cutting filters and catalysts that can only use the new fuel.

But guess what: there’s no appreciable difference in the price of this cleaner, ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel and the older, higher-sulfur fuel (which you can still buy for farm, construction, and industrial uses). In fact, you’d see more price differences driving any stretch of U.S. 1 or Route 66 than you’d see between the two diesel fuels. For examples, take a look at the fuel prices at the Flying J nearest you.

So what’s causing the price hike?

There are a few factors worth noting. Obviously, most of the reasons for high gasoline prices are true for high diesel prices also. These factors include high petroleum commodity prices; record high profit margins throughout the oil industry; the declining dollar and the increasing trade imbalance; rapidly increasing demand in China, India, and other emerging economies; commodity speculators (and their regulators); and so on.

The diesel story is further complicated by the fast-increasing demand for diesel fuel and other so-called “distillates” (like home heating oil) in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In Europe, more than half of all new car sales are diesel-fueled, up from only 28.4 percent of the new car market in 1999 (In the US, it’s about 1 percent. This market will certainly expand as numerous new diesel cars enter the market in the next few years, which may create even more supply constraints for diesel). In Asia and Middle East, diesel vehicle sales are surging—especially for the diesel-fueled construction and industrial equipment that is critical to building all of those new buildings, roads, airports, and other huge projects that typify many growing cities in those regions. You can read more about this on the Diesel Technology Forum site.

But, in the meantime, what can a diesel truck or bus operator do?

Just like car owners, truck operators can trim their costs by doing some simple things more often.

First, cutting unnecessary idling should be a no-brainer, for starters. Every year, unnecessary idling wastes 1 billion gallons of diesel fuel—that’s almost $5 billion wasted, yet recoverable if we cut unnecessary idling.

Second, keeping tires inflated at the proper pressure and performing regular maintenance is critical to ensuring that diesel engines operate as efficiently as possible. As with cutting idling, this will save fuel, cut costs and reduce pollution in the long run.

And, of course, investing, whenever possible, in more efficient technologies will be helpful to cut costs in the long run. EPA’s Smartway Transport Partnership offers many more ways to cut fuel consumption, including on the three quick ideas I’ve mentioned above. This website is a must-look for anybody who want to invest in more fuel-efficient trucking.

In future posts, I’ll detail some key policy options and report on political responses to these higher diesel fuel prices.

Stay tuned.

Transit-oriented development in Arlington: stunning success and some lessons (part 1)

2008-06-23T13:29:37Z

The image you see above, of Arlington, Virginia looking north to the Potomac River and Washington, DC, shows one of the country’s most stunning smart growth success stories.

With amazing foresight and gifted planning, Arlington has transformed itself in about three decades from a declining inner-ring suburb into a thriving, bustling and immensely livable community. This was done by coordinating the county’s (under Virginia law, Arlington is a county, not a city) redevelopment and growth with the region’s Metro subway system.

As Roger Lewis put it in Saturday’s Washington Post,

"Arlington planners and politicians were bold, optimistic and foresighted. They insisted that the [Metro line] run underground through Arlington, following Wilson Boulevard and Fairfax Drive, rather than running along the Interstate 66 right of way, which would have been the path of least resistance and at the lowest cost. And they wanted five closely spaced stations [along the route].
"Arlington leaders were predicting, some would say gambling, that the extra cost of running the line underground and building those five stations would someday yield big returns. They expected that billions of dollars of private real estate investment would be attracted to the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, in turn producing tens of thousands of new jobs, as well as new dwellings, and pulling in new residents, plus many millions of dollars in new tax revenue."

In a nutshell, that is exactly what has happened, and it has brought a range of environmental and community benefits. I am particularly fond of Arlington's Clarendon neighborhood, which seamlessly blends new and old near its Metro stop:

Chris Zimmerman of the Arlington County board notes that the community’s planning goals were to focus redevelopment within walking distance of the Metro station entrances, preserve existing single family and garden apartment neighborhoods and green space, and strive for a 50/50 tax base mix of residential and commercial development.

Check, check, and check. Since 1980 Arlington has nearly quadrupled both its housing units and office space along the Rosslyn-to-Ballston Metro corridor you see in green above. More people now work in Arlington than in downtown Dallas or Denver.

The areas around Arlington’s seven Metro stations (the others are along Jefferson Davis Highway, appropriately running south) produce more than half of the county’s tax revenue, Not coincidentally, Arlington residents now enjoy the lowest tax burden in the metropolitan Washington region. What makes this such a tremendous smart growth story is that all this great development happened without expanding the region's development footprint.

Tomorrow: why Arlington is an environmental as well as planning success story.