In Bern Grush's blog dedicated to exploring the mileage fee (where he responds to this old PowrTalk post) he identifies a complex of purposes that would try to shape road policy, then argues that the mileage fee is the one tool capable of addressing them all:
LEED is a voluntary system to measure how sustainable a building is. In my happy thinking, LEED was a stepping stone that would simply dissappear once its underlying benefits were widely understood (we choose to build green because logic compels it). The more sensible evolution, though, might be to codify those parts of LEED that have broad, implementable benefit.
Truth is, in the budget and time constrained world of the construction project, we don't always do what logic compels, but we do tend to do what the building code compels. For example, the International Building Code (used for much of what gets built in the US), requires fire sprinklers in most buildings. And while we know in our bones that fire sprinklers save lives and reduce property damage at a level that probably matches cost (and human life is worth...?), sprinklers would be on the budget chopping block for many projects were they not required by code.
So those pieces of LEED that prove to have irrefutable societal benefit could be moved from the voluntary, experimental world of LEED to enforceable code, so that they would not be sacrificed on the twin altars of the deadline and the budget. LEED could continue to serve indefinitely as a testing lab for the development of code-worthy sustainable construction practice.
Here's one article on the anounced collaboration between the US Green Building Council (LEED) and the International Code Council (International Building Code) to develop a model green building code.
Photo: Georg Hoermann on flickr
[Post-script: Here's the original editorial that prompted the post: Why the World Needs Another Green Building Standard ]
Forget big wind farms with their pesky transmission issues. Locally produced power is the way forward. (See the richly detailed argument made almost a decade ago in the compelling treatise Small is Profitable). Floundering efforts to get transmission in place for big wind farms highlight the wisdom of Small.
T. Boone Pickens' $8B wind program is mucked in a transmission tarpit (okay, maybe among other issues as well). This Fast Company article plumbs California's similarly large, expensive, mired, maybe-someday transmission project Green Path North, and arrives at the same "power locally" conclusion.
Big Wind and Big Solar may pencil out as cost effective renewable energy solutions, but adding variables like government agency and NIMBY can wreck the cost equation, or, in a time equation, put them in the way back (back there with Nuke and Big Fossil Plant). Priced holistically and in the real world, distributed renewables might be best, and what we should be focusing on.
Distributed renewables: an old idea to make powr cleanr soonr.
Photo: Darren Rogers on flickr. Also, check out Darren's stuff at RedBubble.
Here's a little marriage that wants to be arranged: the Mileage Fee and Better Place's software platform.
The Mileage Fee offers a unique opportunity to put the traffic jam on a diet, and it is gaining traction as a way to deal with dissappearing gas tax revenues as people drive less, drive more fuel efficient cars, or eventually drive cars that don't use gas at all (read the preceding link commentary to feel the gaining traction part). To be deployed broadly, however, the mileage fee needs GPS systems to be manufactured into new vehicles.
Consider these rather large silos of development:
Maybe we shouldn't go after that colossal, transformational Smart Grid infrastructure project. Looking at the last big one, Eisenhower's National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, it cost a lot more and took much longer than anticipated. In 1956, the plan was for federal government to seed the "self-liquidating" effort with $25 billion, so that 43,000 miles of interstate could be created in 12 years (the self-liquidating part was to come from increased gas taxes). Well, the Feds ended up dumping $114 billion into the project over 35 years. A huge miscalculation. A 456 percent budget overrun.
Ike's vision, his drive to see this massive highway undertaking through, was informed by his participation as a lieutenant colonel in a 1919 army convoy to service-test military vehicles on our nation's roads, from D.C. to San Francisco. The snail-paced journey took 62 days (58 miles a day), claiming nine of the seventy-three vehicles used, as well as twenty-one soldier casualties. The dismal convoy experience was contrasted in Ike's mind by the American army's swift movement on the German autobahn in World War II. From these juxtaposed experiences, Eisenhower knew in his bones the potential of a well -built, end-to-end national highway system.
In the end it cost a lot more than Ike thought it would. But the huge miscalculation, the budget overrun that brought us the interstate highway system, is buried by the inestimable contribution to American productivity and prosperity those highways have delivered year over year since. So while the Smart Grid may have a big price tag, and it may get even bigger than we now envision, the payoff offers much. It will leverage the capital and innovation of the free market. It will deregulate and place in the free market what to date have been the monopolies of the utilities. We will use electricity more efficiently and intelligently. We can tailor electricity to our needs, as well as to the limitations of the grid. The stage will be set to use electricity to power vehicles. Our grid will be more resilient and resistent to terrorist attacks and natural disasters. And as with other transformational efforts (like the internet) it will bring things we haven't even considered yet (like the internet's ability to track goods and mail, YouTube, Skype).
The Smart Grid could bring untold productivity and prosperity to future generations, much as the Eisenhower's visionary highways brought them to us.
Photo: courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library & Museum
We're getting ready to do lots of infrastructure. But exactly what "infrastructure" is has become a loosely defined, elastic territory at the critical juncture of being made firm. And while the shovel ready stuff is needed to create jobs quickly, more important for long term success is the transformative undertakings listed below. Some don't create lots of jobs right away, but they don't require as much capital either, and it makes sense to get them (and their big, long lead times) rolling now.
Here are some good bets for infrastructure that could unleash untold (and as of yet unimagined) waves of innovation and progress by creating abundant energy and transport (as computing and the internet created easy, abundant information):
Photo: Steve Kelley on flickr
It was "only five, maybe ten minutes," Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert said of his conversation with T. Boone on using natural gas instead of diesel (the City is on the verge committing its bus fleet to diesel). It's interesting how competing objectives and moving target costs can obscure clear choice. Diesel saves $54 million over natural gas, proponents said at first...$200 million they said later. How are they forecasting for diesel and natural gas, given the volatile price histories of each? Is there a way for them to make account for the external costs of foreign diesel dependency? Are the fuels environmentally equivalent (diesel was dirty but is getting cleaner, but is it cleaner than natural gas today; will it get cleaner still going forward--who can weigh in authoritatively)?
In the absence of an over-arching national strategy (sustainably eliminate foreign oil dependence, for instance), it's tougher to evaluate options for local decisions with so many moving price pieces and in the swirl of so many opinions. Here's hoping that people like incoming National Security Advisor Jim Jones, a former Marine with a keen sense of how energy and national security issues intersect, can articulate a national strategy that creates a meaty backdrop for state and local decision making (like the for-now-stalled Dallas fleet fueling decision).
National strategy doesn't have to dole out incentives to influence local decision making. Example. Building mechanical engineers often over-designed air conditioning and air distribution systems because "you don't get in trouble with building owners if occupants don't complain," and most owners weren't good at connecting sloppy, inflated construction design with inflated construction costs and utility bills. Green building strategy helped us re-look at the habit of over-designing air conditioning and brought a renewed focus on efficient design. Green building strategy didn't hand out rebates to go green, it just helped people think about things differently.
Likewise, a clear national strategy to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil could help shape that swirl of opinion that decides whether city buses are diesel or natural gas.
Photo: Katherine Anderson on flickr
The U.S. military increasingly recognizes its own special energy dependency (within a larger national U.S. energy dependency). Why special? Because:
The Obama Presidency plans to invest $150 billion to "catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future." One big, fat way to do this is to turn the military loose to address its special energy issues and create a military that uses energy more sensibly. Given that it is a part of the federal budget, the military could catalyze the private sector without becoming bogged down in questions about the proper role of government. Funding the military is a proper role of government. Providing funding that ensures that the military remains effective is a proper thing to do.
Andy Bochman, who co-authors this blog, goes deep on Deparment of Defense energy issues here, cataloging some of the best thinking from within the DoD (see his sidebar "DoD Energy Reports" or this guy in particular, or this guy in particular). He's found bright minds within the defense establishment that grasp the precariousness of the way the military currently uses energy, and offer sensible solutions for a post-oil military.
The U.S. military could be the beast of burden that does some heavy lifting for Obama's clean energy plan, the nation's economic revitalization initiatives, and the military's own transformation to remain a viable fighting force in an energy constrained future.
Photo: elderonda on flickr
How will America change the way it uses energy? Last month we offered a draft speech that would let the new US President to tell us how. Here's the speech updated with the most excellent insights of our readers.
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