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Rejection of the RFS waiver highlights need to move forward
Submitted on Thursday, August 07, 2008
4:05 PM

Today, the EPA rejected Texas's request to waive the renewable fuel requirements established under the renewable fuel standard. For EPA to have approved the waiver, the agency would have had to agree with Texas' argument that a) the corn ethanol being required under the RFS is causing the economic hardship to the livestock industry and Texas citizens and b) that waiving the RFS requirements would reduce the levels of corn ethanol produced and thereby reduced the hardship. There can be no doubt that corn ethanol is driving up the cost of feed for the livestock industry and driving up the cost of grains around the world. How much is the subject of much debate. The economic modeling finds anywhere from 10 percent to 75 percent of the increase in the price of food is attributable to biofuels. More importantly though, it's not at all clear that waiving the RFS would reduce the volumes of ethanol produced. Every year since the original RFS was adopted in 2005, the oil companies have consumed more ethanol than required under the standard. As Matt Wald noted in his article in the NY Times today:

The effect of the decision on fuel and food markets is hard to determine. Recently, high energy prices have led to even more ethanol production than the quota required. On the other hand, rising corn prices made some ethanol operations unprofitable, especially as oil prices started to fall.

Ultimately, I believe that a waiver is just tinkering around the edge. Congress needs to get in the act and do more to move the biofuels industry beyond today's technologies and towards better environmental performance. This means replacing the mix of technology and feedstock specific tax credits with a single, technology-neutral, performance-based incentive. Today we are wasting billions of tax payer dollars paying for corn ethanol facilities that were full paid off years ago. We should get more for our money. We should get more water efficiency, less fertilizer runoff, better soil and wildlife management and we should avoid encouraging competition with food production. We also need to aggressively and effectively implement the environmental safeguards in the the RFS. These safeguards are the best way to minimize the impact of the RFS on food prices and global warming pollution while protecting our wild forests and grass lands. Whether corn or switchgrass the real food vs. fuel problem is taking food producing land and turning it into fuel producing land.  The RFS climate safeguards make sure this type of land switching is accounted for and thus provide a direct disincentive to using feedstocks that displace agriculture land—and food.

Lummi, the Orca, R.I.P.
Submitted on Thursday, August 07, 2008
3:54 PM

Sad news today that Lummi, the great-great-grandmother of a family of killer whales in Puget Sound known as “K-Pod” has gone missing and is presumed dead.  She was believed to have been born in around 1910.  When I read the story I was reminded of how incredibly ancient many of the worlds’ whales are.  In fact, Orca’s are relatively short-lived.  Scientists believe that bowhead whales can live 200 years.  Just last year scientists discovered a 130 year harpoon point buried in the blubber of one bowhead.  When you think about that fact that there may be whales alive today were frolicking calves during America’s civil war, it makes the persistence of commercial whaling all the harder to understand.

It's About the Economy, Not Drilling
Submitted on Thursday, August 07, 2008
2:44 PM

Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times that outrage is the proper response to last week’s Congressional debate on offshore drilling. I agree. It is outrageous that in the face of the combined energy and economic crises, our representatives are fighting over a false promise that will neither save consumers money at the pump nor address the other looming crisis of our time: global warming. Congress was dug in fighting over drilling when it should be talking about a new energy economy that will truly drive down energy prices and create jobs. In last week’s debate and this week’s calls for Congress to return from its recess for the sack of drilling, it seems like our elected officials are forgetting two important realities: 1) America’s energy and economic troubles are interrelated, and 2) so are the solutions. Clean Tech: Engine of Economic Growth, Not a LuxurySome people ask whether we can afford the ‘luxury’ of investing heavily in clean energy now that capital markets are in trouble and the economy increasingly in turmoil.My answer is that we cannot afford NOT to make these investments. In fact they’re the best, most lasting economic stimulus plan I can think of.  The fact of the matter is, over the next 20 years, America will spend an estimated $3 TRILLION dollars on energy infrastructure.It’s our choice whether to spend that money smart – on clean, efficient technologies that cut emissions, create new jobs and new wealth for our society – or spend it dumb, on more of the same 19th century technologies. And every dollar spent on a dumb idea that moves us back is a dollar taken away from smart solutions that move us forward.  We Are Not Just Talking about Solar Panels  Remember, a clean energy economy isn’t just about wind farms and solar roofs. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs for architects and engineers; drywall and air conditioning contractors; software designers and lighting companies. These are opportunities in precisely the sectors that are experiencing the greatest difficulties right now. These are jobs in businesses that pay lasting dividends to the U.S. economy through increased competitiveness and reduced dependence on energy imports. Here is an example of how just one clean energy solution—increasing energy efficiency—can boost the economy:·        Department of Energy studies show that energy efficiency measures can create up to four times as many jobs as constructing and operating large central power stations. ·        When businesses and consumers save money on their utility bills, they have more money to invest in other parts of the economy--a development that has been shown to generate jobs.Putting the Green Thumb on the Invisible HandAt a time when the nation’s economy is sliding into recession it is doubly critical that we seize these clean tech opportunities now and for the long term. It is time for us to realize that that economic growth and clean, sustainable energy go hand-in-hand. I believe in the power Adam Smith’s invisible hand because I’ve seen it work. But I believe just as deeply that we need that hand to have green thumb in order to make sure it’s pointed in the right direction.  But we have to move quickly. There are several tools for jumpstarting sweeping investment in clean energy, ranging from the renewable energy tax credit which is up for reauthorization to a comprehensive bill to tackle global warming that will likely come to vote in the next Congress. These measure should appeal not only to clean energy advocates, but to economists and business leaders as well.    

America’s top 10 (newish) neighborhoods for 2008 feature sustainability
Submitted on Thursday, August 07, 2008
11:45 AM

 The magazine Cottage Living has released its 2008 list of the best neighborhoods in the country.  Their feature is really well done IMHO.Despite the magazine’s name, their choices aren’t necessarily “cottage-y” as I usually think of the word, but they are many terrific things, including convenient, walkable, welcoming, mixed-use and, in my favorite cases, great examples of infill and adaptive reuse of previous, now obsolete development. That's sustainability in action.For example, the Noisette development in North Charleston, South Carolina, first caught my attention when its developer applied to participate in the pilot program for LEED for Neighborhood Development.  Later, Keith West of the Noisette Company was kind enough to send me a package of information about the development.  (Although NRDC is a partner in LEED-ND, I am not directly involved in individual certification reviews.)  One of Noisette’s neighborhoods, Oak Terrace Preserve, features 374 homes (including the one pictured at left) on 55 acres.Noisette appears to be doing everything right – creating a great place to live, work and play while re-using an abandoned Navy base, building green, restoring wetlands, creating walkable scale, building complete streets, and using land efficiently so the development can absorb growth that might otherwise go to sprawl locations.  Over a 20-year period, the developers anticipate building 5,000 homes along with parks, commercial areas, and other good stuff.  Here’s a photo and rendering showing how one of the main streets will be transformed:    (For another North Charleston project that is doing things right, look here.) Another redevelopment project among the magazine's top 10, Baldwin’s Run in Camden, New Jersey, used HOPE VI funding to transform a deteriorating 1930s public housing project into a new, mixed-income, award-winning community of rental units and attractive owner-occupied homes.  The web site of the neighborhood’s developer, Pennrose Properties, says that, “by designing and building a mixed-income multi-generational community, which seamlessly integrated the 297 rental units with the 219 homeownership residences and a state-of-the art 74-unit affordable senior complex, the development team achieved a stable sustainable neighborhood.”   Baldwin’s Run also now includes a multi-purpose community center, an improved neighborhood park, and a site for a new school.Boulder’s Holiday neighborhood is both derived from and a subject of the movie business.  Its site was once a drive-in theatre (named, of course, the Holiday) and the neighborhood has since become featured in Dave Wann’s Designing a Great Neighborhood: Behind the Scenes at Holiday (one of DW’s excellent photos appears below).  I haven’t seen it yet but now I really want to.  According to Wann’s website, where you can order the DVD, the film follows the progress of Holiday’s Wild Sage Cohousing Community, where future residents participated in the design of their own neighborhood. The stated architectural goal of Wild Sage is a "zero emissions" neighborhood in which “solar energy, energy efficiency, and changes in behavior eliminate the need for fossil fuels.”  Who can quarrel with that aspiration?  Holiday also contains a substantial component of below-market affordable housing, built seamlessly into the architecture of the community as a whole.  The Holiday neighborhood’s own website lays out a vision for a great community:

“The Neighborhood provides work place options for small businesses, artisans and entrepreneurs, and diverse housing choices for households of all types. “Parks and gardens are within walking distance. Front porches provide a comfortable transition between the privacy of your home and the public space of the community. “At Holiday Neighborhood, you will find a great lifestyle complete with neighborhood businesses, convenience and community.”

Many such claims are made for new development, of course, but Holiday appears to be making them real, and kudos to Cottage Living for giving them a pat on the back.  There’s much more about Holiday in this excellent article.The ten winners selected by the magazine are:• Serenbe (Palmetto, GA) • Baldwin's Run (Camden, NJ) • NorthWest Crossing (Bend, OR) • Parkview Neighborhood (Redding, CA) • Agritopia (Gilbert, AZ) • Arbolera de Vida (Albuquerque, NM) • Holiday Neighborhood (Boulder, CO) • Westside (Kansas, MO) • Noisette (North Charleston, SC) • Prairie Crossing (Grayslake, IL)A distinction between this top-10 list and the "most walkable" list published a couple of weeks ago by Walk Score is that all of these new choices either are still undergoing development or have finished only just recently.  Walk Score's picks were all older communities.  So, this is some of the best of the new, and the best ones really are designed to mimic the characteristics of the older ones.One of the great things about the story’s web site is a two-minute video about each community, as told by neighborhood residents and others involved in their making.  For a sample, here’s the one on Noisette, where you can really see the transformation taking place: