What is "necessary" legislation for GHG reduction

I think that sometimes a "knee jerk" reaction of environmentalists is, "Let's pass a law!" However, especially in protecting the commons, there is no easy way to incentivize the desired behavior. So I propose that there is some minimum set of regulations that will be required for communities to pass, in order to significantly reduce GHG emissions from new development, from existing building stock and from transportation.

These new regulations are:
1. A green building ordinance
2. A "energy efficiency upgrade on remodel or sale" ordinance
3. A carbon tax
4. Land use/zoning regulations

A green building ordinance normally has an energy component. In California, communities that have adopted a green building ordinance usually specify that new buildings exceed Title 24 (State Building Energy Code) requirements. Usually, the energy requirements can be either performance-based or prescriptive. The prescriptive measures usually include double-glazed, low-e windows, a certain insulation level, and minimum efficiencies for heating and cooling equipment. Green building ordinances can (and should) go beyond energy, to water and wastewater use, runoff mitigation, transportation considerations and others. Santa Monica has an excellent ordinance.

The City of Berkeley, CA has ordinances called RECO/CECO (Residential/Commercial Energy Conservation Ordinance). These ordinances specify a minimum efficiency level that existing buildings must be brought to on transfer or when remodeled. These ordinances are being redrafted to include performance and prescriptive approaches, and will be adopted by San Francisco and Oakland.

A "carbon tax" or gasoline tax, can be enacted at the county level in California. The proceeds from the tax should be earmarked for improvement of the mass transportation system.

Land use policies and zoning regulations at the county level should require new development to be high density and mixed use, to follow transit lines with frequent service, parking restrictions, well maintained pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. This paper describes the details of this kind of development.Download land-use-greenhouse-gas.pdf

Comments

[Zeno Swijtink]

Dave,

The Million $$ Question! Cities and County have set their reduction targets. What now? How are we going to get there?

Is the CPC active in the General Plan Update GP2020 of Sonoma County?

As you know, Sonoma County is working on an update of its General Plan and a draft is completed.

http://www.sonoma-county.org/prmd/gp2020/index.html

County Planning staff and county council have completed their review and returned their comments on the Draft EIR (DEIR) of the Draft General Plan to the consultant who created the DEIR. This consultant will now draft Chapter 2 - the Summary, and integrate all the comments. The Draft with the changes will be returned to staff and county counsel. If there are no further changes, it will go to press.

They hope this series of steps will allow the DEIR to be released early in November. If the DEIR is released to the public on this timetable, the Citizens’ Advisory Committee would make its comments sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas with the Planning Commission workshop/hearing following by a week or so.

What plan does the CPC have to follow the GP2020 as it winds thru the Planning Commission and thereafter the Board of Supervisors? We also need to think about follow-up work to create Climate Protection ordinances that elaborate on the rather general language in the General Plan.

-- Zeno

[Zeno Swijtink]

Dave,

More about the Million $$ Question: Cities and County have set their reduction targets. What now? How are we going to get there?

The general strategy of CPC seems to be: have cities and county set targets and help them reach their targets by designing efficiency improvements. Sound reasonably, but does it work?

Let me point out that depending on efficiency improvements is the “Bush approach” since the Bush administration wants to deal with GCC solely by improving the “energy intensity” (the energy used to create a unit economic good) thru higher efficiencies.

So can the targets (which Bush and cohorts do not set) be reached by efficiency improvements?

This is a big question and I need to say, in a later posting, more about the dangers of rebound effect and possibly boomerang effects (Jevons Paradox). Just to mention here that in the past our economic system has used efficiency improvements to grow and improve people's "quality of life" while increasing the total per capita energy use. So what’s different this time?

But apart from these issues (I promise to get back to them!) it’s clear that your proposed necessary legislation for GHG reduction will not lead to actual reductions but at most a slowing of the growth, if at all.

(Except for the carbon tax) all what you are talking about is greater efficiencies for _new_ developments. But in absolute terms each new development will increase GHG emissions.

Moreover, as houses get bigger even more efficient heaters will take more energy to heat the house then before people got their addition. Etc.

To get the steep reductions necessary we need to reduce the number of cars, passenger miles, home size and improve existing infrastructure, etc.

-- Zeno

[Dave at CPC]

Zeno, first, I don't speak for the Climate Protection Campaign. My own opinion is that in every general plan should be encoded a procedure to ensure that any new growth is carbon neutral. In my mind, that is the only way we are going to deal with the threat of climate change. You can't stop growth, can you. But you can make choices about how growth occurs, and what the requirements are for accomodating a growing population, such that this growth does not increase overall anthropogenic carbon emissions. This means that new development must supply its own energy (no net increase in energy use from grid) it must not increase vehicle miles traveled (mixed use with mass transit requirements, water recycling, no net increase in water use, pedestrian and bicycle friendly, etc).

To me, all of this must be encoded in zoning requirements and development fees to create infrastructure that allows car free living.

But we must go beyond this: business visions must be created that present a value proposition to the consumer that make GHG-free lifestyle choices possible.