Tag Archives: air quality

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!

How Updated Energy Codes Will Benefit Utah

On Sunday, the Desert News printed an Op-Ed by David Brems with GSBS Architects and Kevin Emerson with Utah Clean Energy outlining how Utah needs new new energy codes that make buildings and homes more efficient. Here is an excerpt, you can read the entire piece online.

Air pollution is a top concern for Utah citizens. So is financial stability. Improving our air quality while saving money for Utahns is a win-win opportunity. This summer, decision-makers will be voting whether or not to adopt up-to-date building energy codes that will help new homes and buildings constructed in Utah cut energy waste, lower air pollution and reduce Utahns’ energy bills.

The average Utah home wastes far too much energy because it was not designed and constructed with energy efficiency as a priority. This is where the energy conservation codes come in. While lacking the flashy glamour of solar panels or electric vehicles, the “2015 International Energy Conservation Code” can dramatically reduce energy waste and related air pollution by incorporating common sense, readily available, yet often invisible efficiency solutions to new homes and buildings.

Industry leaders like GSBS Architects and public interest organizations like Utah Clean Energy see tremendous value in adopting the new energy code. But despite the benefits it brings to Utah families, businesses and consumers, getting the new code adopted has become a political undertaking. It shouldn’t be. Just consider the benefits from updating the energy codes.

Read more.

Utah Clean Energy has also released the following infographic — Three Ways Updated Energy Codes Benefit Utah. Take a look!

Idle Free Signs

New #IdleFree signs are going up around the city. Do you know of a location that could use a sign? To suggest sign locations or to learn more, click here.

Help to make your workplace or child’s after school/summer program idle free! Contact Olivia Juarez at 801-535-7761 or Olivia.Juarez@slcgov.com for more information or to request a FREE sign.

Check out these great photos from businesses around town that have put up new signs:

Thanks to UCAIR for your generous support of an Idle Free City.

“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!

Exchange your old gas can (for free!) on Saturday, April 11

Exchange your old empty 2.5 or 5 gallon gas can for a free, brand new, environmentally friendly can of equal size!

UCAIR and Chevron are exchanging over 4,500 gas cans. That’s equivalent to eliminating 540 cars off Utah’s roads per day over the 5-year life of each gas can. Making this small change can have large impact on our air quality. Together we can make a difference in Utah’s air quality.

The Gas Can Exchange Program will be the first of its kind in Utah and help our state come into compliance with the EPA standard.

The event will be held on April 11, 2015 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the following locations:

2100 S. 300 W., Salt Lake City, Chevron Station
1997 E. 3500 N., Layton, Davis Landfill
1855 Skyline Dr., South Ogden, Chevron Station
1200 Towne Center Blvd., Provo Towne Center Mall

Why exchange your old can? Old gas cans contribute to volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions by:

Permeation of vapors through walls of containers.
Escaping fumes while fuel is being dispensed.
Spillage and over filling as fuel is being poured into equipment.
Spillage and evaporation through secondary vent holes.
Evaporation through inadequately capped spouts.

The new cans have several improvements including:

Automatic shut-off feature to prevent overfilling.
Automatic closing feature.
- Sealed when it is not in use.
- Prevents leaking vapors.
- Protects children from accidental spills and ingestion.
- Secondary venting holes are eliminated to stop venting of fumes into the air.
- Thicker walls to reduce vapor permeation.

Please contact Angie at coordinator@ucair.org if you have any questions about the gas can exchange.

Source: http://www.ucair.org/hot_topics/ucair-chevron-gas-can-exchange/

Your Utah. Your Future. Take the Survey!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9eO2iHG9cg]

Envision Utah needs 50,000 Utahns like you to help make history and participate in the Your Utah Your Future project. Over the past few months, they have been using your input from the BUILD YOUR 2050 UTAH WEB APP and working with more than 400 task force members to create a survey to find out what you want Utah to be like in 2050.

Take a few seconds now and reserve your spot in the survey. Envision Utah will send you a link to the online survey when it goes live this spring.

Learn more about the Your Utah Your Future initiative below, or visit EnvisionUtah.org.