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Kim CN MetricsA Carbon Neutral City – Metrics and Other Considerations Kim Ryle – Aug 15, 2007 SOME QUESTIONSOne question we may want to ask is not, "How do we reduce our impact?" but "What impact do we want?" The first question encourages us merely to slow down on the path to destruction; the second compels us to take a different path. Fred has already posed this quite eloquently. To what extent is it possible for a whole city – Fairfield – to become Carbon Neutral? How accurately could this be measured? i.e. the existing baseline and stages to the goal. Since getting compliance from every household and business would be unrealistic and extremely time consuming would a statistically significant representation be acceptable? Without some measurements how will we know if we're making progress or if we have succeeded? If we agree to "draw some kind of line around Fairfield" to designate the city boundary by what we CAN measure, could we still have a limited number of qualifiers, asterisks and footnotes so that the results are still meaningful? Assuming a Carbon Neutral City is possible, and one of our goals, what agency/agencies is/are qualified to certify this achievement? What agency certified Shaklee as Carbon Neutral? LOCAL GOVERNMENTS FOR SUSTAINABILITYA broad and significantly respected approach for city sustainability, that I know of firsthand, is through an agency called ICLEI, Local Governments for Sustainability. ICLEI was founded in 1990 as the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. The council was established when more than 200 local governments from 43 countries convened at the inaugural conference, the World Congress of Local Governments for a Sustainable Future, at the United Nations in New York.http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=391 There is ICLEI International and ICLEI USA. ICLEI is headquartered in Oakland, CA. Cities for Climate Protection® (CCP) is ICLEI's flagship campaign. The program is designed to educate and empower local governments worldwide to take action on climate change. CCP is a performance-oriented campaign that offers a framework for local governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve livability within their municipalities. It would cost no more than $600 to become a CCP member and gain the support and resources that come with membership. A compelling PowerPoint presentation can be sent directly to Mayor Ed Malloy. More than 500 cities, towns & villages are ICLEI members worldwide. ICLEI helps local governments generate public and political awareness of key issues, build community capacity through technical assistance and training, and realize tangible progress toward their goals. ICLEI Members help govern and steer the direction of the organization. There are 217 cities in the US that are ICLEI members including Albuquerque, Amherst, Burlington, VT, Denver, Kansas City, MO., Minneapolis, New York, Palo Alto, Seattle & Des Moines, including many smaller communities. List of ICLEI members Under the CCP program we could get numerous resources including:
They typically start with the local government becoming a member and becoming the lead agency. They already have some cities that are engaging the whole community, residential, commercial & industry. For metrics on a whole town/city they use the help of the local utility to gain a macro look at the town's total energy use – mainly electricity & gas. It MAY be able to be broken out by electric rate class, which would let us differentiate homes from schools and businesses. (At PG&E I've worked with ICLEI city members to get just this information.) Under CCP there are 5 Milestones: The methodology underlying the 5 Milestones of the CCP Campaign provides a simple, standardized means of calculating greenhouse gas emissions, of establishing targets to lower emissions, of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and of monitoring, measuring and reporting performance. ICLEI has developed a software tool that helps cities comply with the methodology. The 5 milestones are: 1. Conduct a baseline emissions inventory and forecast 2. Adopt an emissions reduction target for the forecast year 3. Develop a Local Action Plan 4. Implement policies and measures 5. Monitor and verify results ACTION SUGGESTIONI suggest you all read about ICLEI further at:http://www.iclei.org/us If you like what you see I'd recommend speaking with Mayor Malloy about this, and have our main contact at ICLEI send him the Powerpoint presentation for his possible use for the council. Our ICLEI contact, a nice lady, is Ayrin Zahner, Membership Liaison for the Midwest Email: ayrin.zahner@iclei.org Ph. 510.844.0699 ALLIANT ENERGY UPDATE I spoke to Kari Gehrke yesterday in the Residential Energy Conservation Dept.They have a campaign underway as we speak to encourage home energy audits before the winter season. While we may not be able to get a special 1-2 day blitz of home energy audits in FF we can certainly work to provide PRE-QUALIFIED home audit leads to them. By pre-qualified I mean identifying people who are interested in home audits AND have some money to invest in cost effective measures such as some, or more, attic insulation, wall insulation, more efficient windows, setback T-stats, appliance upgrades etc. ACTION SUGGESTION If you like this idea let's vote on this as a near term action to get an early win. If approved either Allan or I will draft a sample home audit application/advertisement (w/Alliant's guidance) to place in 1 or more newspapers for approval by our group and I'd like to coordinate with Lonnie/Grover's group. Kim |