California Enters Carbon Trading Market

California Air Board OKs Cap-and-Trade Regulations
Wyatt Buchanan, SF Chronicle, December 16, 2010

The California Air Resources Board on Thursday approved the creation of the nation's first broad-based program to put a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and to begin charging large emitters for the excess carbon dioxide they discharge to the atmosphere.

Under the new rules, which take effect in 2012, the number of metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions estimated for California will be capped at the currently-forecasted emissions levels for 2012. Over the next three years, the cap will shrink by 2 percent per year. From 2015 to 2020, the cap will drop by 3 percent per year.

The cap first applies to the some of California's biggest emitters, including utilities and large industrial plants. In 2015, it will expand to fuel distributors. In total, it will apply to 360 businesses at 600 locations across the state.

Read the complete article here.

Environmental Economist Joins White House Staff

Nathaniel Keohane, most recently the chief economist at the Environmental Defense Fund, has moved to the National Economic Council at the White House to help direct environmental and energy policy.

Mr. Keohane is a vigorous proponent of the market-based system of cap and trade to control greenhouse gas emissions.

The top job at the economic council is currently vacant; the former director, Lawrence H. Summers, resigned at the end of 2010. Carol M. Browner, the White House coordinator for energy and climate policy, is rumored to be moving to a new post, possibly deputy chief of staff.

Via Green, a blog about energy and the environment, at NYTimes.com.

New Life for Old Stuff

Mike Ross’ Big Rig Jig, created using decommissioned tanker trucks, is a marvel in repurposing whose message is about man’s precarious relationship with nature.

The artist describes his monumental, interactive, visually compelling creation as: “Big Rig Jig is constructed from two discarded tanker trucks. The work serves both as a sculpture and an architectural space: Visitors may enter the lower truck, climb through the tankers and emerge through a portal at the top. The rear axles of the upper tanker serve as a viewing platform, 42 feet in the air.”

Read more here, at 1800recycling.com.

Proposition 23

Proposition 23, which would suspend AB32, is on the November 2, 2010 ballot in California as an initiated state statute.

AB32 is known as the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. The act, passed by the California State Legislature and signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is California's landmark clean air legislation. AB32 requires that greenhouse gas emission levels in the state be cut to 1990 levels by 2020. The process of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the state is slated under AB32 to begin in 2012.

Proposition 23, if enacted by voters, will freeze the provisions of AB32 until California's unemployment rate drops to 5.5% or below for four consecutive quarters. California's unemployment rate, which currently hovers around 12%, has been at 5.5% or below for four consecutive quarters just three times since 1980.

Read a summary of the ballot measure, a list of its major supporters and those who oppose it, and listings of donors and donation amounts for and against at ballotpedia.org.

Costliest School in the Nation

Historic L.A. Hotel Finds New Life As School Campus
Karen Grigsby Bates, National Public Radio, September 13, 2010

Several elementary schools, high schools, and K-12 schools now make up the new Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools campus, located in one of the poorest, most densely populated parts of California.

The campus' six schools have been the focus of considerable criticism. The price tag for the entire campus totals approximately $578 million. And in a state awash in waves of red ink, that has attracted a lot of notice.

There have been detailed descriptions of the professional-quality science labs, the giant swimming pool and the chic faculty dining room (on the site of the Ambassador's coffee shop, designed by the city's most prominent African-American architect, Paul R. Williams).

Some critics have said, "They could have built a good school for a lot less."

Georgia Lazo, principal of one of the K-12 schools on campus, says, "It's a great facility and our kids deserve it, our community deserves it," she says.

The schools were built on a site formerly occupied by the hotel where Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Once the hotel was razed, officials realized the assassination wasn't the only bad luck at the site-- a methane gas field was discovered under the building. All told, the city paid $33 million to mitigate the problem.

Most state and local governments do not have the funds or property available to build schools on greenfields, however, as this and the Carson-Gore school case demonstrate, site selection guidelines and proper environmental due diligence can help prevent unplanned and costly investigations and remediation.

Read more here. (And here.)

New LA School Built on Contaminated Site

New school campus devoted to environmental themes
Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times, September 5, 2010

The $75.5-million Carson-Gore Academy of Environmental Sciences opened this September for about 675 students. However, critics say the campus' location poses a long-term health risk to students and staff. School officials scrambled to replace contaminated soil with clean fill, remediate groundwater, install vapor mitigation and air monitoring systems, and put a 45 foot barrier in place between the school and a gas station prior to opening, adding up to a cost of about $4 million.

Construction crews were working at the campus up to the Labor Day weekend, replacing contaminated soil with clean fill. All told, workers removed soil from two 3,800-square-foot areas to a depth of 45 feet, which was impacted from over a dozen underground storage tanks that used to serve light industrial businesses in the area.
The underground tanks of an adjacent gas station may be an additional source. In addition, an oil well operates across the street, but officials said they've found no associated risks. Like many local campuses, this school also sits above an oil field, but no oil field-related methane has been detected. Groundwater about 45 feet below the surface remains contaminated but poses no risk, officials said.

Read more here.

A New Type of Hybrid

Building on the success of the first hybrid tug launched into service at the Port of Long Beach in 2009, Foss will retrofit an existing tug with hybrid technology for service in San Pedro Bay, thanks to a $1 million grant from the California Air Resources Board. The project will be implemented through a partnership between Foss, the Port of Long Beach, and the Port of Los Angeles.

Foss will retrofit the Campbell Foss, a conventional dolphin tug currently assisting oceangoing vessels in the San Pedro Bay. The goal is to achieve significant reductions in pollution emissions while enhancing fuel efficiency and operational capabilities. Projected annual emissions reductions per year include:

• More than 1.7 tons of diesel particulate matter
• More than 53 tons of oxides of nitrogen
• More than 1.2 tons of reactive organic gases
• More than 1,340 tons of carbon dioxide

In addition, more than 100,000 gallons of diesel fuel will be saved each year.

Read more here. (Found via TriplePundit.)

More Open Space

East Bay district opens new Dublin Hills park
Caroline Jones, SF Chronicle, July 22, 2010

The East Bay Regional Park District has opened its newest park, Dublin Hills. The park, Dublin's largest, is 520 acres of grassy ridgetop just west of downtown. It boasts views of San Francisco, Mount Tamalpais, Mount Diablo and all points in between.

For a century, much of the land has been ranched by the Machado family. But over the past 20 years, the park district chipped away at the acquisition with easements and negotiations that culminated in this month's $2.5 million purchase.

Dublin Hills was a critical acquisition because it potentially will link to Pleasanton Ridge and the Calaveras Ridge Trail, a 30-mile ridgetop path from Las Trampas in Alamo to Mission Hills in Fremont.

Read the complete article here.

Making the Case for Ecosystem Services Valuation

Nature, Volume 465, Pages 985–986

On June 14, 2010, BP pledged $20 billion to an escrow account to pay for damage caused by the April 22, 2010 sinking of its Deepwater Horizon drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana. The beneficiaries of this fund are expected to be fishermen, hoteliers, charter-boat operators, and other Gulf-coast business owners who have lost income, as well as states and other entities with clean-up costs.

However, whether payment will ever be made for the loss of 'ecosystem services' is unknown. Ecosystem services benefit everyone but are owned by no one, such as the carbon sequestration provided by marsh plants and ocean plankton, or the buffering that coastal marshes provide to nearby communities from the Gulf's many hurricanes.

The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska raised similar questions, and sparked a flurry of research in the once-obscure discipline of ecological economics, which seeks to estimate quantities such as the 'replacement cost' of an ecosystem — or even an individual organism. (For example, killer whales cost $300,000 at the time; cormorants were $310.) The Gulf oil spill seems likely to inspire another surge of research in this field.

Ecological economist Robert Costanza at the University of Vermont in Burlington has already estimated a $34 billion to $670 billion price tag for the loss of Gulf ecosystem services.

Read more in "A Full Accounting", in the June 24, 2010 issue of Nature.

EPA Sets Stronger National Air Quality Standard for Sulfur Dioxide

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is issuing a final new health standard for sulfur dioxide (SO2). This one-hour health standard will protect millions of Americans from short-term exposure to SO2, which is primarily emitted from power plants and other industrial facilities. Exposure to SO2 can aggravate asthma and cause other respiratory difficulties.

The EPA is setting the one-hour SO2 health standard at 75 parts per billion (ppb), a level designed to protect against short-term exposures ranging from five minutes to 24 hours, revoking the current 24-hour and annual SO2 health standards in the process.

The EPA is also changing the monitoring requirements for SO2. Any new monitors required by this rule must begin operating no later than January 1, 2013, and modeling as well as monitoring will determine compliance with the new standard.

EPA estimates that the health benefits associated with this rule range between $13 billion and $33 billion annually. These benefits include preventing 2,300 to 5,900 premature deaths and 54,000 asthma attacks a year. The estimated cost in 2020 to fully implement this standard is approximately $1.5 billion.

Read the full press release.