SANTA FE, N.M., June 21 (AScribe Newswire) -- As the public's interest in global warming heightens with this summer's big-budget disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow", many eyes will be on New England and their commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2010 and 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. That is why many public interest and environmental groups were praising Massachusetts recently unveiled Climate Protection Plan. Surprisingly, a careful review of the document revealed that the Plan will fail to meet its targets on emissions because it is mostly voluntary, has no teeth, and barely addresses the region's largest polluter.
The Massachusetts plan is reminiscent of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which then president George Bush, Sr. signed and the United States Congress ratified. The Convention called for voluntarily reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. From 1992 to 2000, voluntary reductions failed miserably, and US CO2 emissions increased by a whopping 16.8 percent during a purportedly greener Democratic administration.
Meanwhile, in New England, carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase annually. A recent story in the Boston Globe reports that emissions appear to be growing "because people are driving more and using bigger, less fuel efficient vehicles that emit more of the gas." Environmentalists contend that the region's attempts at reductions "are bumping into a federal government that is deeply reluctant to reduce these gases."
What has New England failed to recognize? For the past decade we have been blaming gas-guzzling SUV's and the federal government for lack of progress on emissions reductions. And, while it is true that the automotive industry has been grossly negligent on increasing the gas mileage of its fleet, and the Bush administration has been arguably deceptive and supportive of polluting industries and relaxed emissions standards, they are not holding back Massachusetts, New England or any other state from realizing significant reductions in emissions.
What is holding them back is a fundamental lack of recognition and understanding of the key sector causing New England's emissions to rise. Buildings, their construction and operation, accounted for approximately 75 percent of the increase in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in New England from 2001 to 2003 according to statistics from the Energy Information Administration. Transportation was responsible for 15 percent and Industry 10 percent. While there are many worthy parts to the Massachusetts Plan, it falls critically short in addressing the area of greatest concern.
The part of the Plan that refers to buildings points out that "energy use in government buildings accounts for over 90 percent of state government's GHG emissions" and that the state will "consider seeking U.S. Green Building Council LEEDTM certification for each appropriate (state building) construction project". There are three elements of this statement that are worrisome. First the word consider is not very assertive. Second, acquiring a LEEDTM certification hardly insures that a state building will use significantly less fossil fuel energy in its construction and operation than a conventionally designed building. This is because there are many levels of certification and the minimum LEEDTM standard for building energy consumption is not much different than what the local building codes currently require. And finally, state government building construction is only a small fraction of the building that takes place in Massachusetts annually. For all its good intentions and initiatives, the bottom line is that under this Plan, Massachusetts will do very little to curb its emissions and realize it commitments.
In this country, buildings and their construction account for nearly half of the greenhouse gas emitted and energy consumed each year. Globally, the percentage is even greater. And confronting the building and architecture sector is the key to turning down the global thermostat.
The reason for this is quite simple. U.S. Industrial Sector emissions are not increasing much annually. If a recent Swedish study is correct and global oil reserves are significantly overestimated, then the Transportation Sector will stabilize in the near future. The economics of oil will dictate this and by using existing efficient technologies, the Transportation Sector can transform quite rapidly as the entire fleet of automobiles and light duty trucks in this country turn over about every 12 years. That leaves the Building Sector, and once built, buildings have a lifetime (and energy consumption pattern) that lasts for 50 to 100 years. And this sector's consumption of energy is mainly in the form of burning oil, natural gas and coal. And therein lies the problem.
U.S. oil and gas production have been in decline since the 1970's and global oil and natural gas reserves are limited. Most of these remaining reserves are located in a small area stretching from Saudi Arabia to Siberia, currently an unstable part of the world.
The Building Sector is poised to boom and fuel the world's rush toward climate change on the backs of coal. The U.S., Russia, China, Australia and India have plenty of it and it is cheap - and dirty. Clean coal technology is decades away - as is CO2 sequestering and disposal - and they are costly. A decade or two of business-as-usual in the Architecture Sector will have such inertia that we may just throw up our hands and live with the consequences.
To achieve dramatic statewide reductions in energy use and emissions, government at all levels must require that all major public renovation and new building projects be designed to use half the energy they now typically consume. If the LEEDTM standard is adopted by a government, then the minimum requirement for building certification must be a 50 percent reduction in fossil fuel consumption. When these standards are in place, local building codes for all housing developments and commercial, institutional, and multi-family buildings can be changed to the standard that will be in place for all government buildings. Coupled with this transition in the public sector, there must be a similar commitment from professional architecture schools to teach design that engages the environment in a way that significantly reduces or eliminates the need for fossil fuels.
We know that buildings can be designed to operate with less than half the fossil fuel energy of the average building in the area at no additional cost. The design information needed to accomplish this was developed in the 1970's and 80's along with demonstration projects that were built at that time. Since then, many buildings of all types, and in all regions, have been designed and constructed with energy consumption and CO2 emissions of 50 percent to 75 percent below the U.S. average, further illustrating that this magnitude of reductions is readily attainable.
To meet the commitments it made in 1991, Massachusetts (and New England) must not only revise its approach to the design and renovation of its state buildings, but it must quickly convince local governments, the business community and the region's professional architecture schools to do so as well.
Edward Mazria is an architect, author and educator practicing in Santa Fe, N.M. He is senior principal at Mazria Odems Dzurec, an architecture and planning firm in Santa Fe, author of The Passive Solar Energy Book and Adjunct Professor at the University of New Mexico.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Edward Mazria, Architect, 505-988-5309; mazria@aol.com
Media Contact: Edward Mazria, Architect, mazria@aol.com;
505-988-5309
|
|
|
AScribe Newswire distributes news from nonprofit and public sector organizations. We provide direct, immediate access to mainstream national media for 600 colleges, universities, medical centers, public-policy groups and other leading nonprofit organizations.
AScribe transmits news releases directly to newsroom computer systems and desktops of major media organizations via a supremely trusted channel - The Associated Press. We also feed news to major news retrieval database services, online publications and to developers of web sites and Intranets.
And AScribe does it at a cost all organizations, large and small, can afford, a fraction of what corporate newswires charge. Click here to see how we do it