Category Archives: Climate Change

City Saves Energy with Electronic Building Plans

Salt Lake City’s Building Services Division has moved to completely electronic building plans in favor of energy savings. Based on 2,500 building plans reviewed per year, Salt Lake City and its customers will save approximately 360,000 miles driven, 512,000 pounds of paper and prevent 2,300 pounds of hydrocarbons from being released into the atmosphere annually. Additionally, with all plans now available online for viewing by staff, there have been substantial savings in time and resources tracking down archived files, which were previously located in an offsite storage facility.

Although electronic plan review submissions were only made mandatory a few months ago, the City has been using the electronic plan program for four full years. It’s estimated that on a voluntary basis, about 35% of reviews have been paperless over the past four years. This has saved 504,000 miles driven, 716,000 pounds of paper and prevented 3,220 pounds of hydrocarbons from being released into the atmosphere. Way to go, Building Services!

Credit: Orion Goff, CBO, Building Official, Director, Building Services and Civil Enforcement, Salt Lake City Corporation

Solar Farm Tour

Tyler Poulson (pictured) from SLCgreen traveled to Parowan, UT with a busload of other solar enthusiasts to tour Utah’s first utility scale solar project. The tour was hosted by Utah Clean Energy, EDCUtah, and the Utah Governor’s Office of Energy Development.

This project is the first of many large-scale solar installations that will occur in Utah by the end of 2016. Additional details are included below:

• This 340,000 solar panel project is being developed by a Norwegian company (Scatec Solar), but over 80% of the onsite labor to-date and sub-contracted work is from Utah. Part of the land is being leased from an alfalfa farmer who eagerly moved his operations, and water rights, elsewhere in spacious Iron County.

• Scatec Solar has signed a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Rocky Mountain Power (RMP). The contract locks in an electricity price for RMP and its customers.

• This specific solar power plant covers 630 acres. Each row of panels will track the sun east-to-west daily to produce enough electricity for about 60,000 energy-efficient residential customers (assuming use of 3,400 kWh / year). See a panoramic view of the plant. Generating the same amount of electricity with coal over a 25-year time frame (equal to the warranty of the panels), would require about 13,000 pounds of coal per individual panel installed.

• This 104 megawatt (DC) solar project will be fully operational in December 2015, but represents just 10% of the total new utility-scale solar development that will occur in Utah over the next 17 months. An additional 900 MW, over roughly 3,000,000 new solar panels, will be added by third-party companies. All of these arrangements are contracted through PPAs with RMP at Avoided Cost pricing, locking in a fixed rate for energy for decades.

Here is a link to a video about the tour, and more photos are available on Utah Clean Energy’s Facebook page.

President Announces Clean Power Plan

Today President Obama announced the Clean Power Plan rule. The Clean Power Plan, proposed by Environmental Protection Agency, is a plan to cut carbon emissions from existing power plants. This plan will maintain an affordable, reliable energy system, while cutting pollution and protecting our health and environment. There were previously no national limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants, which account for forty percent of U.S. carbon emissions and are the largest source of carbon pollution in the U.S. These EPA-proposed standards are the first-ever national limits on this type of pollution. Nationwide, the Clean Power Plan will help cut carbon pollution from the power sector by 30 percent below 2005 levels. (1) According to a recent survey by Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, “A large majority of Americans support setting strict emission limits on coal-fired power plants.” (2)

Mayor Becker gave the following remarks:

“I applaud President Obama and the United States Environmental Protection Agency for announcing the Clean Power Plan today. The Plan is a forward-looking and common sense policy to address one of the most critical issues facing local communities: climate change.

Like many other cities across the Nation, Salt Lake City is actively working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions responsible for contributing to climate change. In particular, Salt Lake City continues to be a leader through many initiatives, including increasing energy efficiency of our existing municipal facilities, requiring all new municipal facilities to achieve “net zero” status, and promoting and investing in clean distributed solar energy. These investments not only cut pollution, and save money on our energy bills, but they make Salt Lake City an energy-smart and more livable city.

Over the coming days and weeks, I look forward to learning about the full scope and the long-term benefits that the Clean Power Plan will have on our communities.”

In addition to his work with the City, Mayor Becker is serving as the president of the National League of Cities, which advocates on behalf of over 19,000 member cities, villages, and towns from across the country. Mayor Becker has asked the National League of Cities to act as “an army of advocates” to encourage better climate change policy and work with the administration to assist state, local, and tribal work on this critical issue. #ActOnClimate.

Sources:

Environmental Protection Agency, http://www2.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan, July 31, 2015.
Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, http://environment.yale.edu/poe/v2014/?&est=CO2limits, August 3, 2015.

Buildings are Key to Salt Lake City’s Clean Air Future

Buildings represent a large and growing part of our local air quality problem. A new infographic, released at the Mayor’s Project Skyline Awards Ceremony, presents statistics on building energy efficiency and economic benefits. For example, buildings contribute nearly 40% of pollutants on a typical winter day. By making buildings more energy efficient, we can conserve enough resources to power up to 37,000 homes every year. If Salt Lake City were to adopt energy savings best practices, building owners across the city could save up to $48 million dollars annually.

As many know, Salt Lake City has significantly poor air quality, especially during the winter months; however, fewer know how dramatically we can improve our air quality by improving the energy efficiency of our buildings. By making large buildings in Salt Lake City more energy efficient, we could remove one million pounds of pollutants, which equates to taking 32,000 vehicles off the road for one year. Additionally, we would prevent 650 million pounds of CO₂ from entering the atmosphere each year! View the complete infographic for additional facts.

Join us and become a part of Project Skyline to save money, improve property values, and clean our air.

Salt Lake City Announces Project Skyline Challenge Award Winners

Today, Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, Kathleen Hogan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency for the U.S. Department of Energy, and Matthew Dalbey, Director of the Office of Sustainable Communities for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, joined City leaders and building owners in honoring the winners of the Project Skyline Mayor’s Challenge 2015 Awards. Project Skyline, a multi-year challenge to reduce building energy use in buildings across the city, was launched in May 2014. The goal is to challenge building owners across Salt Lake City to proactively meet – and exceed – the air quality and energy-saving targets of the Sustainable Salt Lake – Plan 2015 by 15 percent by 2020. Throughout its first year, Project Skyline has been overwhelmingly successful, hosting educational and networking workshops, providing resources for evaluating the building’s energy use, and helping establish energy-saving goals for each business involved.

At the 2015 Project Skyline Awards Luncheon, five winners were recognized for their leadership in Challenge efforts over the past year.

This year, the Energy Innovator Award goes to Basic Research. Basic Research has improved the efficiency of their 230,000-square-foot facility by improving the lighting, HVAC systems, and installing the largest privately owned solar photovoltaic project in the state of Utah. By making these improvements, Basic Research has improved their ENERGY STAR score from 10 to 99.

The Sustained Excellence Award goes to Fidelity Investments. Across the country, Fidelity Investments is working to obtain LEED certification in 65 percent of their buildings and their location on 49 N 400 W is no exception. The building falls under LEED Silver certification, and recently, they added LED lighting and lighting controls and photovoltaic panels to improve the building’s ENERGYSTAR score to 96.

The McGillis School, a private co-ed school located on the Northeast bench of the Salt Lake Valley, has earned the Most-Improved EnergyStar Score Award. In 2014, the school reported an ENERYSTAR score of 97, which marks a 17 point improvement from 2013.

The Energy Efficiency Leadership Award goes to Newmark Grubb ACRES. Throughout the past year, Newmark Grubb ACRES has helped tremendously attending and presenting at multiple workshops. Company leadership also participates on BOMA Utah’s Energy and Sustainability committee and helped launch the BOMA Utah Kilowatt Crackdown. Additionally, the company is working on energy efficiency in several of its properties and are continuing to improve their ENERGYSTAR scores.

Lastly, the Benchmarking Champion Award goes to the Salt Lake City School District. Since 2009, the Salt Lake City School District has begun benchmarking to monitor energy consumption in over 40 buildings. Not only are 72 percent of the district’s schools benchmarked, but they are also certified ENERGY STAR buildings. They have seen an an 18 percent improvement in ENERGY STAR scores in all of their buildings.

Congratulations to these businesses. For more information on Project Skyline and the Mayor’s Challenge, visit our website.

City Continues Efforts to Reduce Emissions with New Electric Vehicles

With ongoing air quality problems, the City continues efforts to reduce its overall emissions. Seven new, all-electric vehicles are being added to the City’s fleet this year, replacing older, fossil fuel-burning vehicles and helping to achieve aggressive emission reduction goals set by Mayor Becker. Salt Lake City has a total of 224 clean vehicles as part of its fleet, including clean diesel, CNG, all-electric and hybrid-electric options. Since 2009, the percentage of clean fleet vehicles operated by the City has grown from just over 2% to more than 15% of the total fleet. The City has historically focused on integrating hybrid-electric vehicles, with 120 of these in the current fleet, but new all-electric sedans represent an even greater air quality benefit due to zero tailpipe emissions.

“Our program to carefully assess emissions and local air pollutant impacts, as part of the cost-to-own analysis for fleet purchases, is paying dividends,” said Mayor Becker. “We weigh these factors to produce outcomes that mitigate climate and air quality impacts and save taxpayer resources.”

Salt Lake City currently operates public EV charging stations at six separate locations. The City recently received a $200,000 grant from the Utah Division of Air Quality to expand public charging options and will use these funds to install 25 new charging ports throughout the City.

Residents can review, and weigh-in on, the City’s work to reduce its overall carbon footprint via the Sustainable City Dashboard tool, here.

Idle Free City Celebration

An Idle Free City celebration took place at Liberty Park Tuesday morning. This media event included speeches by Mayor Becker, UCAIR Director, Ted Wilson, and Youth City students. High pollution levels are affecting air quality this summer. Join the Clear the Air Challenge, which starts today, and remember, turn your key, be idle free!

The Climate 25–Diverse Voices on Climate Change

By Jessica Oglesby, SLCgreen Intern

In “The Climate 25” The Weather Channel brings together 25 diverse voices and perspectives on climate change. Interviews range from a CEO of a Fortune 100 company to a US Army General to a Syrian refugee. Through these interviews the series explores the interconnections between climate change, security, energy, and peace.

Some may be surprised to encounter so many conservative voices in this series, like Christine Todd Whitman (former New Jersey Governor and EPA administrator), former congressmen Bob Inglis, and President George H.W Bush’s EPA chief, William Reilly, all of whom acknowledge climate change and talk about their own perspectives. Inglis believes that the republican orthodoxy is changing, and that they have got to start looking at market solutions like a carbon tax. Former New Jersey governor Whitman gripes that “the way the republican party is addressing the issue of climate change is both frustrating and puzzling.” She explains that the republican party has a long history of environmental action — like Nixon establishing the EPA — and that conservation is conservative.

National and global security are big topics that many of the 25 speakers touch on, including the four military members that were interviewed. Retired General Charles Jacoby explains that while climate change has become politicized, his years as a soldier have trained him to evaluate situations based on harsh realities, thus he recognizes the threat that climate change poses. He explains the military’s grave concern over the growing impacts of extreme weather, and competition over natural resources, including energy and clean water. For this 4-star general, and distinguished combat veteran, “the issue of climate change is always foremost in our minds.”

Henry Paulson, the former Secretary of Treasury (under Pres.Bush), believes that “climate change poses a massive threat to the world”, and that to do nothing about climate change would be “radical risk taking.” He believes that this is the greatest economic risk the US has ever faced. George Luber of the CDC sees other great risks of climate change when it comes to human health. He says that heat waves kill more people every year than all other extreme weather combined, and climate change has already resulted in more intense and frequent heat waves. Moreover, changes in climate will result in increased spread of diseases like Malaria and Lyme’s disease.

Other prominent voices in the series include: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, former CIA director James Woolsey, former deputy Undersecretary of Defense Sherri Goodman, Bangladeshi General Major Muniruzzaman, and special advisor to President Obama, Dr.John Holdren. Less prominent, but equally important voices include: community leaders in Uganda and Papua New Guinea, a Global Crop Diversity Trust special advisor, a WWF climate change policy expert, and the CEOs of Energy Innovation and Care USA.

Together the 25 voices form a refreshingly diverse picture of how urgent the issue of climate change is and how wide-reaching its impacts are. What do all 25 of the smartest voices on climate, security, energy and peace have to say about climate change? Watch the rest of this fresh video series to find out!

Top 3 Favorite Interviews:

General Jacoby <<http://weather.climate25.com/project/general-charles-h-jacoby-ret/>>

Heidi Cullen <<http://weather.climate25.com/project/heidi-cullen/>>

Henry Paulson <<http://weather.climate25.com/project/henry-paulson/>>

Watch all of the interviews here!

Mayor Becker Joins Mayors’ National Climate Action Agenda

By SLCgreen Intern Jenny Spaulding

Mayor Becker has joined the Mayors’ National Climate Action Agenda, showing his support for national climate change action. The MNCAA is an organization of mayors that are asking President Obama to “fight for the strongest possible climate agreement” at the UN Climate Conference in Paris in December.

Many initiatives in Salt Lake City reduce local environmental impact, however the Mayor recognizes the importance of federal action. The MNCAA released a letter to the president stating that “The United States can and should be the leader in the transition to a clean energy economy.”

Salt Lake City is now among the twenty-six cities represented by the coalition. Mayor Becker announced that “Salt Lake City is proud to be joining the MNCAA in this important call for action.”

“Your Utah, Your Future” Survey

How do you envision the future of Utah? By 2050, our population will nearly double, and Utah will add an estimated 2.5 million residents. Will we have enough water to drink? Will our air be clean? How will we educate twice as many students? Will our economy remain strong? What kind of future will we leave for our children and grandchildren?

Envision Utah has created a survey called “Your Utah, Your Future” commissioned by Governor Herbert. The survey gives five scenarios for the future of Utah. Each scenario includes 11 topics affected by our population growth. In the survey you select the choices you want to make in each topic area and then choose an overall scenario for Utah in 2050.

The survey will close on May 31, and at over 31,000 recorded responses, it is already the single largest community visioning effort ever undertaken in the US. The goal is 50,000 participants. Take the survey!

Please consider sharing it with your employees and coworkers, family and friends, and encourage them to take it, also.

Additionally, over 300 schools have registered across the state. You can earn money for your local schools- $1 for every response collected!