Kent Portney's "Our Green Cities" Blog

Zerofootprint Toronto

I see that the City of Toronto has initiated a new project called "Zerofootprint Toronto."  This is a collaborative effort between the City government and a Canadian nonprofit organization called "Zerofootprint," located in Toronto. 

The idea behind this project is to create a municipality-focused means for all residents and businesses to compute their own carbon footprints, and, in the process, incrementally build a picture of the carbon footprint of the city as a whole.  This is a unique approach to carbon footprints -- there are numerous footprint calculators available online, but this is the only resource that is specifically designed to aggregate the results of individuals within a city.  So the idea seems to be to make this tool available to everyone in Toronto, where they can register for an account and login to get access to the carbon footprint calculator.  As a result, the calculator does what most carbon calculators are designed to do, that is, to elevate peoples' awareness about how much carbon they are responsbile for.  But here the information helps the city to understand the footprint of the city as a whole. See the City's web description of the project at Zerofootprint Toronto.

ZeroFootprint is a nonprofit organization that offers this type of project to individuals, municipalities, businesses, and a wide array of other organizations, including schools, generally.  It was founded by Ron Dembo, a Canadian businessperson who founded and ran a company called Algorithmics.  Zerofootprint's Executive Director is Deborah Kaplan.  Check its web site for a more complete look at what Zerofootprint does.

Obviously, cities have other ways of estimating their carbon footprints (see my other postings on the subject).  How useful will this project be?  I suspect that it will be useful in raising peoples' awareness. I wonder whether it will provide city officials with any new information or insights about the city's carbon footprint.  What do you think?  Will it help the cause of reducing carbon emissions. Will the information gather from Zerofootprint Toronto aid in the city's carbon inventory process?  Is this the kind of project that might work in your city or town?  Let me know what you think.

OECD Metropolitan Review of Sustainability in Toronto

I recently had the pleasure of joining a team from the Organisation for Economid Co-operation and Development (OECD), headquartered in Paris, for the purposes of conducting an invited assessment of metropolitan Toronto's economic and sustainable development strategies.  The team, made up of a stellar group of people from the US, Mexico, Japan, the Netherlands, France, and Italy, consisted mainly of professional and academic economists. Although everyone on the team had at least some familiarity with the idea of smart growth and sustainability, I was explicitly asked to focus on the sustainable development aspects of Toronto's efforts to become a global city. 

The team spent a full five days meeting with metropolitan Toronto municipal, provincial, and national government officials, as well as nonprofit leaders and representatives from the business community.  The team is now in the process of preparing a final report that is planned for some time in December. 

I was truly impressed with what Toronto and its surrounding cities have accomplished in terms of trying to become more sustainable.  Toronto is a large city (2.5 million people) in a metropolitan area of about 5 million, with several surrounding cities of 700,000 people or more.  These cities face similar challenges as other cities in North America as they try to find ways of managing growth without damaging the environment, including precipitous increases in the volume of traffic. Despite this, some of Toronto's programs include a very aggressive effort to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon, its long-term commitment to transit oriented housing and urban villages, and many others.  (See the separate posting on Toronto's collaborative effort with ZeroFootprint)  The city is embarking on Mayor Miller's "Tower Renewal Project" to upgrade the energy efficiency of the hundreds of highrise residential buildings in the city.  The city runs a "district cooling system" that uses cold water from deep in lack Ontario to cool downtown office buildings, including city hall.  I could go on and on and on, but when the OECD report comes out in December, it should contain a comprehensive review of what the city and region are doing to try to become more sustainable.

What is your sense of Toronto's sustainability efforts?  How does it stack up against other Canadian cities that are committed to sustainability, especially Vancouver?  I'd love to hear from you about what Toronto does well and what it needs to improve on.

ICELI and Cities' Carbon Footprints

Over the last few months, I have had the opportunity to take a look at cities' measures of their carbon footprints.  Just as the carbon footprint calculators for individual people and households are pretty uneven in their methodologies, so too are the carbon footprint estimates for whole cities.  Although the latter have much different methods of estimation, what struck me is how much variation there is in the methods, and the quality and availability of the appropriate information needed to produce accurate estimates. 

I know that when cities' mayors sign up to join the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) Program they agree to spearhead a carbon inventory project. Yet I'm surprised at how few of the signatories have actually accomplished this to date. There are some really good efforts, such as New York City and Toronto, for example.  But most cities do not seem to have made the effort to try to measure their actual carbon emissions.

But now ICLEI is about to issue a complete set of protocols and methodologies for measuring carbon and producing the inventory.  It is in the testing phase right now, and can be downloaded from the ICLEI web site during the "exposure period."  See the ICLEI GHG Emissions Analysis Protocol web site for more information.

This should present a huge improvement in the quality and availability of greenhouse gas emissions information for cities.  It should also make it possible for cities that don't already have the internal expertise to devise a carbon emission inventory methodology to standardize with other cities so that comparisons over time and across cities will be possible.

Have you taken a look at the ICLEI protocol?  How does it look to you?  Is this as much of a breakthrough as I think it is?  Please post your thoughts on this here.

Wind turbines in Hull, MA

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit the town of Hull MA with a small group from the newly re-constituted Tufts Environmental Literacy Institute.  (The Literacy Institute, started some years ago by Tony Cortese, has now been resurrected by my two colleagues Jonathan Kenny from the Chemistry department and Ann Rappaport from the Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning department, with a special emphasis on Climate Change).  Hull operates two wind turbines, one (a 660 Kw unit installed in 2001) adjacent to its high school and another (a 1.8 Mw unit installed in 2006).  I believe they both use Vestas brand turbines.

The town is now in the process of siting four more turbines off the coast of Nantasket Beach, and when this project is completed, all of the town's electricity will be generated from wind. Hull is a pretty small town on Boston Harbor, and through its innovation and willingness to take risks, it now is poised to achieve a high degree of energy independence.  My understanding is that the economics of wind energy have changed rather dramatically. 

On our visit, we had a tour of the facility. What I found most impressive was how quiet the operation is. With the wind blowing about 30 mph and the rotor spinning at a pretty good clip, there was only a modest hum from the generator and a hissing sound from the propeller.  If you'd like to see and read about what Hull has done, go to http://www.hullwind.org .

Brookings Institution Study of Cities' Carbon Footprints

You may already have seen this, but a couple of weeks ago, the Brookings Institution researchers Andrea Sarzynski, Marilyn Brown, and Frank Southworth released the latest study of carbon emissions in cities (actually in metropolitan areas).  The measures of carbon don't account for a lot of the sources of carbon emissions -- they focus on two main sources -- transportation and residential energy -- but they do provide a glimpse at how cities vary in their emissions.  The three lowest emitting metro areas are Honolulu, HI, (1.36 metric tons of carbon emitted per person), Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA, (1.14 metric tons), and Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton WA (1.45 metric tons).  The three highest carbon polluters are Cincinnati, OH-Middletown, KY (3.28 metric tons), Indianapolis, IN (3.36 metric tons), and Lexington-Fayette, KY (3.46 metric tons).  To see the full list of cities and their estimated carbon emissions, go to http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/05_carbon_footprint_sarzynski.aspx .

You can also read the Newsweek story, written by Miyoko Ohtake. Miyoko interviewed me briefly for the story, so check it out when you have chance at http://www.newsweek.com/id/139212 .

I will have much more to say about carbon footprints and relate issues over the next couple of weeks.

Sustainability Director in Philly

Congratulations to Dr. Mark Alan Hughes, the newly appointed Director of Sustainability in Philadelphia.  I know that Mayor Nutter and his team did a thorough search for the right person to head this newly created department, and with this move, Philly has taken a huge step in the right direction.  Check the story on the appointment and Dr. Hughes' background at http://www.nextgreatcity.com/node/582 .  Dr. Hughes was at the University of Pennsylvania at the time of his appointment.

Tufts Tisch College and US Conference of Mayors Forum

On April 28, 2008, the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts is hosting a policy forum on "Urban Issues in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Campaign" with the U.S. Conference of Mayors.  The Forum will be moderated by Tom Cochran, the US Conference's Executive Director, and the panel will include a number of high-profile mayors, including Douglas Palmer, the current President of the U.S. Conference, from Trenton NJ, who is rapidly becoming a leader on sustainable cities and climate change in cities.   The forum provides an ideal opportunity for discussion of how and in what ways environmental, sustainability, and smart growth policies need to be both part of the presidential debate and on the agenda for the next presidential administration.  I have been astonished that so little discussion of urban issues has emerged from this presidential campaign.  There seems to be absolutely no recognition on the part of any of the candidates that so many cities are doing so many important, impactful things with respect to the pursuit of sustainability. There is also no recognition that there are many things that need to happen in Washington to facilitate cities' efforts.  I'm hoping that this forum will spend some time developing some of these ideas so that they can make their way into the campaign. 

Wind turbines in Massachusetts

There was a short piece in the Boston Globe Sidekick section yesterday providing an decent overview of the proposed and pending wind turbine electric generating projects in Massachusetts.  Check out the article called Blowing in the Wind. The latest is project to install a single turbine in Ipswich that would provide about 2% of the town's electricity.  All in all, Massachusetts has been pretty slow to move forward with wind power, with much local opposition to the proposed 130 turbine project off the coast of Cape Cod and Nantucket.  Especially given how windy it tends to be in the state, it is somewhat surprising that a greater effort has not been made to locate turbines.  What else is going on with municipal-based wind turbine projects in New England? 

Wall Street Journal Article on Cities and Energy

In case you missed it, there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal recently that briefly profiled the efforts of nine cities around the world in their efforts to reduce energy consumption. It profiles New York City, Chicago, Aspen CO, Ann Arbor MI, Palm Desert CA, Amsterdam, Beijing, London, and Thane, India.  View the article here. 

This is a pretty solid article as far as it goes, but what struck me the most is that it did not attempt to provide a larger view of how widespread such activities are around the world, and even in US cities.  In fact, if I were to look for the US cities that are doing the most, I don't think I would have selected many of the places discussed in this article.  I definitely would include NYC and Chicago; but I would have included Austin TX, Cambridge MA, Santa Monica and San Francisco CA, Grand Rapids MI, and some other cities because I think they probably better exemplify best practices. 

I was also struck by the fact that there was no effort to provide a sense of the larger context in which the selected cities have decided to pursue energy efficiency and conservation.  For many cities, that larger context consists of broad-based efforts to try to become more sustainable, especially in terms of the bio-physical environment and quality of life. 

Let me know if you are aware of any other major city efforts, either on energy efficiency or climate change.  I'm particularly interested in actions and programs undertaken by the city government.

Finally, a Little Creativity in Boston

Tammy Zborel sent along this NPR story that shows that there may be some hope for Boston yet.  The city is considering an indoor composting facility that would capture the resulting methane.  Check out the story on Composting in Boston at the NPR web site.  I don't know much about the technologies involved in this kind of project.  If you do, please post some comments so we can share information about this.