Julia and Graham chart various innovative ways to use OZs that are already being pursued:

“The OZone program is a good fit for clean energy and sustainable development. First, the tax benefits — capital gain tax deferral, partial forgiveness of tax on capital gains and forgiveness of additional gains on investments in OZones — make it easier to include sustainability features because the projects can deliver higher returns and be structured with simpler capital stacks. The higher return on Opportunity Fund investments, for example, could allow sponsors of clean energy projects to add features to projects or partner with energy customers that are considered more risky, as proposed by Jon Bonanno, CXO of New Energy Nexus. New Energy Nexus provides assistance to global energy entrepreneurs.”

“Second, the program allows for more comprehensive and holistic projects. In fact, the lack of restrictions on investments in the Opportunity Zone program creates an opportunity for integrated, interdisciplinary development plans. With the clarifications in the federal rules for OZones making it clear that clean economy projects are eligible, every project can be a clean energy and a clean jobs-producing project.

“Third, the program allows for a deeper commitment to neighborhood success than many past economic development incentives. That’s why Bo Menkiti of the Menkiti Group has teamed up with Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) to pursue OZone funding for its Neighborhood Investment Model, which includes LEED buildings. Because OZone investors must keep their capital invested for a full decade to realize the maximum tax benefits, they have a stake in a neighborhood’s long-term success. In this way, the OZone program creates space to combine clean energy projects with initiatives to train local workers and nurture new local clean economy businesses.”

Full Parzen/Graham report

The post Putting Real Urban Opportunity–Carbon-Free and Equitable–into Opportunity Zones appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

Once upon a time, there were no filling stations and no gas-powered vehicles. That was in the late 1800s–a situation much like that for electric vehicles just a few years ago. Now there are 100s of thousands of gas stations, more than 100,000 of them in the US alone.

The honor of hosting the first filling station–if it’s an honor–belongs to Wiesloch, Germany, where in 1888 Bertha Benz refilled the car her engineer husband, Karl, had built. She bought ligroin, a petroleum-based solvent, from a local pharmacy to use as fuel. Later, pharmacies started to sell gas as a side business.

In the US, before there were any filling stations, drivers got fuel from general stores, hardware stories, and blacksmith shops, using cans, buckets, and drums and funnels. The first drive-in filling station opened in Pittsburgh in 1913, selling a gallon of gas for 27 cents. Around this time, pumps and meters were developed for the growing market. Oil companies started to open filling stations and branded chains/franchises appeared.

In other words, what began as improvisation and resourcefulness–filling however one might–became an entrepreneurial activity–a business model–and then a branded corporate product line. Along the way, government regulations for safety, pricing, and environmental protection came into play.

The emergence pf EV charging infrastructure has some similarities and some differences to the advent of gas stations. (Photo above: Charging station with NEMA connector for electric AMC Gremlin used by Seattle City Light in 1973.) Cities that are deeply committed to decarbonizing their transportation systems have been investing directly in installing public charging stations. By 2020, for instance, Oslo will have more than 3,000 chargers available to the public. At the same time, EV owners are charging their vehicles at home–a filling option that wasn’t available at the start of the gasoline age. And the expansion of EV charging will have implications for the electricity grid.

Some 100-year-old gas stations have become museums and someday all gas stations will have been retired. EV charging will be as normal and pervasive as gas stations are today.

The post Where Did Gas Stations Come From? appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

In most cities, buildings are the main source of Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions. In dense cities, the building share of emissions can easily exceed 75%. These emissions typically come from three sources:

• The electricity consumed by buildings for lighting, HVAC, plug loads, etc. The fuel source of the emissions depends on the emissions factors in the regional electrical grid. In New England, this is mostly natural gas. In other regions, there will be more emissions from coal and fuel oil.
• Space and hot water heating. Most of these emissions are typically from natural gas, which is the dominant urban thermal fuel. Fuel oil is a larger factor in residential buildings with older oil furnaces.
• Cogeneration. Many larger buildings and campus-style operations (health care, higher education) use on-site combined heat and power (CHP) systems to provide a combination of cooling, steam heat, and electricity generation. Most of these systems are powered by natural gas.

There are several basic strategies for eliminating building-based carbon emissions.

• Reduce consumption – implement energy efficiency measures to radically reduce the amount of energy used.
• Clean the grid – take carbon out of the generation sources for the regional electricity grid by substituting renewable energy for coal, oil and natural gas. (Unless a city has its own utility, this process will take place through state-level policy and market changes.)
• Make or buy your own clean energy – generate renewable energy on-site or purchase it through Power Purchase Agreements.
• Renewable thermal – convert from fossil fuel heating sources to non-carbon sources of heating, such as heat pumps powered by renewables, or sustainable biogases.

When taken to their logical conclusion at scale in a “2 degree world,” these strategies sum to an elimination (or at least a radical downsizing) of the natural gas industry over the next three decades. (Yes – 2050 is not that far away!)

So far, though, there is no clear roadmap for this transition in the US, and it presents a set of “wicked” challenges.

• Limited city control. Most cities have little or no control over natural gas supply systems. Decisions about building new pipelines are mostly made at the federal level through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The only thing cities control is the demand side. They can reduce/eliminate demand for natural gas, but they cannot affect its availability as a fuel source. How do cities support a natural gas transition strategy when they have so little influence on supply? In addition, cities have little control over the cleaning of the grid. But a building electrification strategy only makes sense if the buildings are using clean electricity. How do cities synchronize these two strategies to make sure that you get the desired GHG reductions?
• No clear incumbent business model. In most of the other sectors involved in deep decarbonization, there is some kind of successor business model that allows incumbents to adapt to the market and re-purpose their old assets in a new way. Distribution utilities can still make money by moving electrons, even if those electrons now come from renewable sources. Generators can plan a transition of their generation assets from fossil sources to renewables over successive asset replacement cycles, and still stay in the generation business. Automotive manufacturers can replace internal combustion engine powertrains with hybrid and battery powertrains. But natural gas is different. There is no obvious way to reuse natural gas production and distribution assets. Some very small portion of distribution pipelines might be re-purposed to move “green steam” or “green gas” but that will be a miniscule fraction of the existing market. What happens to these “stranded assets”? How do cities enforce their retirement and who pays for it?
• Long asset lifecycles. Natural gas distribution assets have very long useful lives – often in the 30-50 year time scales. So a pipeline that is built today will still be alive and well in 2050. How do we create short-term continuity of supply without locking ourselves into long-term carbon assets? And again, who pays for any stranded assets in the future? A similar dilemma exists for individual buildings – what is the asset replacement cycle of heating systems and how do you set up the economics so that it makes sense to replace a fossil-fuel based system with a renewable fuel-based system?
• Improve or transition? Some natural gas powered energy systems represent large improvements over legacy systems. Natural gas residential furnaces are far less polluting than oil furnaces. And CHP systems powered by natural gas can in the short term bring large efficiency improvements. But at some point in the asset replacement cycle, you are locking yourself into a carbon source that will be functioning well beyond your target date for carbon neutrality. When do you stop improving the old system and transition to new technologies?

Many of the world’s “climate innovation lab” cities are deep in the details of working out the answers to these dilemmas. But so far, there is no clear “pathway” for managing the natural gas transition that does not result in serious economic and political stress. Figuring this out is one of the big climate mitigation challenges.

The post The “Wicked Problem” of Transitioning Off of Natural Gas appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

The first thing to notice in the report is the economic sectors that are growing: green buildings and clean tech. The green building sector has developed deep expertise in building envelope performance, while the city and the province of British Columbia have adopted some of the toughest green building standards in the world. The clean tech sector covers clean-energy production, management and storage; water treatment and management; material efficiency and circular economy; advanced materials development; green agritech; and clean transportation. Province-wide, clean tech companies raised $6 billion in equity investment between 2011 and 2017.

The report notes that “green job growth includes both new and transitional jobs. New jobs come from market expansion and growth, while transitional jobs are existing jobs in traditional sectors that have become green due to changed norms and practices (e.g. construction changes due to greener building codes). On average, 40 percent of growth in green jobs each year may be attributed to new jobs, while 60 percent of growth is due to transitional jobs.”

It also points to some of the fundamentals for urban success in the emerging economy:

• Branding–“Vancouver has a global reputation as a leading clean and green economy”
• Talent — Large numbers of highly educated people who become green-business entrepreneurs and employees and want to live in a sustainable city.

The report has much more information that other cities may find useful for developing strategies and indicators of their standing and progress in the economy that is coming.

The post Going Carbon Free: Vancouver Builds a Green Economy appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

It is designed by our Meister Consultants Group colleagues to help cities plan for a transition towards 100% renewable electricity supply. Cities and their partners will be able to use “Pathways to 100” to

1. understand their unique energy landscape,
2. identify strategies that are applicable to their utility and state policy context, and
3. organize city staff and external networks to support energy supply transformation.

“Pathways to 100” includes an Appendix that can help cities embed equity in their city energy supply system transformation. This work was made possible through the generous support of the Energy Foundation and The Kresge Foundation.

The post Pathways to 100: Energy Supply Transformation Primer for Cities appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

The Zone is composed of two stretches of mostly coastal land in the United States, covering 12 states. Atlantic Climate Zone spans 400 miles, from Washington D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia to New York City and Boston, and contains more than 33.7 million people in its major metropolitan areas. Pacific Climate Zone sweeps across 1,100 miles, from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Portland and Seattle, with about 24 million people in the largest metro regions. These Zone’s combined metropolitan areas alone generate about 23 percent of the entire U.S. economy’s annual output—a combined GDP larger than any nation except China and Japan.

When you use a climate economy lens to look at this population and economic data, adding climate change, physical and economic infrastructure, and political culture, a larger and intriguing picture emerges—a potentially robust response to the Trump Administration’s ferocious opposition to climate-smart policies.

Why add these particular elements? First, they are critical to the prosperity and wellbeing of urban economies in the 21^st century. As has been widely noted, a “climate-smart” economy—clean-energy technologies, green buildings and infrastructure, energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, electric vehicles, water-efficient utilities, and more—is growing rapidly and becoming a driver of urban wealth creation and a means to reduce the cost of living for households. At the same time, the risks of severe physical damage and business disruption from climate changes is growing; examples already exist worldwide and climate science tells us that things are only going to get worse. The cities, states, and regions that will be big winners in the emerging economy are those that take climate change seriously, as an opportunity and a threat, by forging the political leadership and consensus needed to invest in innovation and infrastructure. Second, these elements lend themselves to geographic mutuality, the connection and alignment among metropolitan regions and states that makes it possible to generate shared benefits that an individual city or state cannot realize by itself. As strategist Parag Khanna argues in Connectography, the global trends of urban connectivity across national borders, devolution of authority from central capitals to provinces and cities, and competition over global supply chains, energy markets, and flows of finance, technology, knowledge, and talent all lead “smaller political units” like cities and states to fuse together so they have the resources needed to survive.

Applying the climate economy lens reveals that these coastal urban agglomerations—the metro areas and states of the Pacific and Atlantic zones—look pretty similar, and quite different from much of the rest of the nation.

When it comes to climate change, California, Massachusetts, New York, and other coastal states and the cities we’ve mentioned are national and international leaders in reducing GHG emissions and building climate resilience and, In many cases, they have achieved strong “vertical” alignment of local and state policies. They are adopting and implementing public policies that require new and existing buildings to meet strict standards for energy consumption; transition as much energy supply as they control with renewable sources; promote a shift from driving to walking, bicycling, and use of public transit; and remove potential sources of GHG emissions from the waste stream. They are using their resources to stimulate the emergence of “green economy” businesses and jobs—especially clean-energy technologies—as a robust and sustainable sector. They are taking steps to assess the risks they face from increasing climate turbulence, to plan actions that will make them “climate proof,” and to develop the community, technical, and financial capacities to implement plans.

When it comes to infrastructure, the economies of the Climate Economy Zone’s two regions, especially their metropolitan areas, are based on a similar model for success: They are deeply embedded in the interconnected global trading economy and have developed, over the decades, world-leading business clusters in technology, finance, education and other sectors. They depend critically on competitive transportation and digital systems, corporate supply chain management, research and development assets, availability of financial capital, and well-educated and entrepreneurial talent. And they face similar challenges due to the national underinvestment in physical and communications infrastructure and the chronic underperformance of public education systems.

When it comes to political culture, the climate-economy regions have developed large constituencies and prominent stakeholder groups, including business leaders, which support aggressive climate action and have been willing to support substantial local changes, including increased public investment. They share a strong affinity for political leadership that fully acknowledges the practical and moral responsibilities of the nation, as well as its cities, to address climate change. One indicator of this is voting in the 2016 presidential election. In 10 of the 12 Zone’s states, Clinton defeated Trump by landslides, 10 to 29 percentage points, won another by 4 points, and narrowly lost one, while the District of Columbia went 92 percent for Clinton. Another indicator is found in survey data from Yale University: people in the Zone’s metropolitan areas and states are more likely than most other Americans to think that global warming is happening, caused mostly by human activities, and already harming people in the U.S., and that carbon emissions from power plants should be strictly limited and utilities should be required to produce 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources.

This sketch of the Climate Economy Zone suggests a potential for “horizontal” economic, infrastructure, and political collaboration at the regional level, multiple cities and states, which has only been minimally tapped so far. Pacific Zone states, for instance, are slouching toward a regional price on carbon emissions; California has a cap-and-trade market, while Washington and Oregon have explored options. The three states are developing the West Coast Electric Highway, a network of fast-charging stations located every 25 to 50 miles on Interstate 5and other roads. Six states in Atlantic Zone are part of a regional carbon-emissions trading market. Core cities on both coasts work together on aggressive climate actions: eight are members of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, six are in the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance, eight are among the 100 Resilient Cities.

But much more could be explored and perhaps done. We tend to think of public policy making as occurring along the traditional vertical axis of federal-state-local authority, and this obscures the potential of horizontal approaches. We tend to think of cities as locations, and this obscures their growing interest and engagement in international relations. We tend to think of climate change as a problem of reducing GHG emissions through national government regulation of energy markets, but this obscures the crucial role of corporations and cities as end users in the energy supply chain. If we were to think more about Climate Economy regions not as separate states and separate urban regions, but as “countries within the country” that align around a shared framework of public policies to address climate change, business growth, and urban development—what opportunities might be revealed?

The post America’s Climate Economy Zones appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

AEE’s latest report, “Advanced Energy Jobs in California,” provides a good look at both the methodology and its conclusions. Here are some highlights:

• California contains 20% of all advanced energy jobs in the U.S.—more than 500,000 workers in all, triple what California’s most famous sector, Motion Pictures, TV, and Radio, contains. [Note: The state has about 12% of the U.S. population, but is a leader in promoting energy efficiency and has a cap-and-trade market.]
• Advanced energy generated jobs at six times the rate of the overall California economy last year, 18% versus 3%.
• Energy Efficiency accounts for about 60% of advanced energy jobs in California.
• Driven by strong supporting policies and declining prices, employment across Advanced Grid technologies—energy storage, smart grid, and electric vehicle charging stations– more than doubled between 2014 and 2015.

The post California Dreaming appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

After 9 hours on an inter-coastal ferry and 6 hours on a river ferry I found myself in Ketapang on the remote south side of the island, staring at a solar powered LED streetlight.  My inner Leslie Knope (the most hilarious public servant to grace American sitcoms) smiled at the progress of this municipality and snapped a picture (see photo).  That night, after watching the evening rush of commercial goods being delivered to the ferry dock, my thoughts turned back to the solar powered streetlight. Had that fixture, and pole, and screws, and screw drivers arrived in Ketapang after 15 hours on boats from the international airport where we landed 222 miles away? They certainly weren’t made on this island; were they? How reasonable is it to expect places like Ketapang to leap frog industrialized nations into an energy transition if so many other parts of their infrastructure are in equal or greater need of innovation?

This notion distracted me again when I found myself staring at another streetlight on the Malaysian side of the island in a town called Marudi. Did I tell you I’m pretty into streetlights? I led an initiative in my home town of Asheville, NC to convert all of our streetlights to LEDs in 2012; we were the first city in the U.S. to do this.

This second fixture wasn’t nearly as elegant as the solar powered LED fixture in Ketapang. Yet it made me smile for their municipal leadership just the same.  This time, also, for the ingenuity of it. You see, this light had a cover of scrap roof tin, a single CFL bulb, and a beat up plastic water bottle light shield (see photo).  Many of us can understand the vulnerability of above ground power lines connected to an inconsistent grid and power source. But even with that, Marudi was able to provide a municipal service to their citizens via a quick install of readily available and reusable materials.

These two examples beg the question: Which approach is more sustainable? A homemade streetlight with reusable materials you can find in country or a solar powered LED streetlight manufactured abroad? When facing puzzles of this sort, I start by asking, “What problem is that city trying to solve?” We don’t always acknowledge that answering questions about sustainable energy, and ultimately climate change, isn’t about the right answer, it’s first about the right question. We have to understand that needs on the ground, especially in developing countries, are rarely only focused on CO2 reduction.  Sometimes they are just about a little bit of light.

If you want to invest in a life after carbon, I encourage you to understand what the problem feels like on the ground, then ask yet another question, “How can I support the problem solvers in these cities?” After all, it will be their knowledge of their problem that will guide their solutions.  It’s these homegrown solutions in cities at home and abroad that should disrupt current practices, policies, and technology for a carbon-free future.

Maggie Ullman is a contributing author to Investing Strategically in Social Impact Networks, the companion guide to Connecting to Change the World. She leads Ullman Consulting (www.UllmanConsulting.net) which specializes in helping philanthropy invest in climate change at the local level. They work with foundations and their grantees to translate theory of change into action. Maggie lives in Asheville, NC and day dreams of orangutans in Borneo.

The post Illuminating Homegrown Solutions: Streetlights in Borneo appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

Cleveland’s Solar Production Dashboard

INC President John Cleveland successfully converted to a 100% renewable energy heating and electricity system on his home in Tamworth, New Hampshire.  This was accomplished through the installation of:

• Five Mitsubishi air-source heat pumps
• A heat-pump water heater
• A 12 KW ground-mounted solar array

The post Committing to Renewable Energy appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

“The fossil economy has one incontestable birthplace: Britain accounted for 80 percent of the global emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion in 1825 and and 62 percent in 1850. . . . Britain . . . continued to generate more than half of the world’s emissions far into the nineteenth century. The origins of our predicament must be located on British soil.” (13)

“By 1800, most of the smoke from British coal combustion still left fairly small chimneys. . . . Combustion had yet to be decoupled from population, and so Britain could not be said to have constituted a fossil economy proper. By 1850, all that had changed. . . . By 1870, three times more coal was burnt in general manufacturing, iron and steel than in the hearths and homes of Britain, the fires decoupled from population growth and linked to self-sustaining economic growth.” (249-250).

Book details here »

2. “Wind and Solar are Crushing Fossil Fuels” (April 6, 2016)

The world’s first coal superpower, the U.K., now produces less power from coal than it has since at least 1850.” (Bloomberg News) Article here »

3. “Solar power sets new British record by beating coal for a day” (April 13, 2016, The Guardian)

The sun provided British homes and businesses with more power than coal-fired power stations for 24 hours last weekend. While solar power has previously beaten coal for electricity generation over a few hours in the UK, Saturday was the first time this happened for a full day. Analysts said the symbolic milestone showed how dramatic coal’s decline had been due to carbon taxes, as solar had “exploded” across the UK in recent years. Article here »

4. Peabody Energy, a Coal Giant, Seeks Bankruptcy Protection (April 13, 2016, New York Times)

The collapse in natural gas prices over the last three years and new environmental regulations by the Obama administration have led to a rapid decline of the industry, especially in the Appalachia region, where mines are deep and expensive to operate. Domestic production last year slumped to a three-decade low. Coal was once the provider of roughly half of the nation’s power, but it was surpassed by natural gas as the No. 1 source of electricity for the first time a year ago. The Paris climate agreement signed in December has convinced many investors that the coal industry is in a death spiral. At the same time, there is a glut of coal on global markets, in part because of uneven economic growth in Europe and emerging markets. Article here »

5. The day coal power dropped out of the UK’s national grid for the first time in more than 100 years (The Independent, May 22, 2016)

At midnight on 10 May 2016, the UK hit an energy milestone. For the first time in over 100 years, the amount of coal being used by the national grid to power Britain’s kettles, computer and televisions fell to zero. And then it stayed at zero for four hours. The Independent, United Kingdom.  Article here »

6. Solar power breaks UK records thanks to sunny weather (The Guardian, May 29, 2017)

The post The Rise and Fall of Coal in 7 Stories appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.