Thursday, April 8, 2010

Experience first hand how Boulder develops techniques to attack climate change on Friday, April 16, 2010

BY ELLIE BIRD

On Friday, April 16, 2010, Boulder is holding an Inaugural Community Climate Action Summit. The purpose is to engage organizations from throughout the community and across Boulder County in a conversation about achieving community climate goals. To date, Boulder’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) has worked in partnership with Xcel Energy, Boulder County, local nonprofits and community volunteers to keep roughly 81,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. In 2002, the Boulder City Council passed a resolution committing the city to achieving the targets established by the Kyoto Protocol. The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. In 2006, Boulder passed the country’s first-ever carbon tax. Strategies focus on improving energy efficiency and conservation in homes and businesses and reduce emissions from transportation. To meet the goal, we must reduce green house gas emissions by more than 400,000 metric tons by 2012. Boulder’s Climate Action Plan defines six key strategy areas to address greenhouse gas emissions; reduce use (retrofit existing buildings and replace appliances to improve energy efficiency and promote energy-conserving behavior), build better (maximize opportunities for energy efficiency in new buildings), ramp up renewables (promote use of renewable energy sources for individual buildings and sites and increase renewable sources in our regional energy supply), travel wise (increase the percentage of trips made by transit, bike and walking and encourage the use of low-emission vehicles), waste not (reduce and eventually eliminate the amount of waste going to landfills), and grow green (plant more trees and protect the existing urban forest). Though progress has been made in each of these areas, projections must be updated annually and programs will be monitored and modified as needed to continue progress toward our goal. At the meeting on April 16th discussions will revolve around what has been accomplished to date, how to proceed with remaining items, and how to improve coordination and communication in the future. The meeting has hopes of bringing Boulder community groups, active organizations, business leaders and the broader community together around a common goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They strive to identify solutions and opportunities to leverage actions and resources to maximize impacts and to define specific actions and priorities for future events. As inspired community members, this is a significant opportunity to get informed and involved with Boulder’s progress in achieving community climate goals.

3 comments:

  1. I Understand that we as humans have a veritable impact on the World around us, however I believe it has not been measured accurately or honestly. The IPCC (the main authority on this topic), as we discussed in class this week has come under fire and their refusal to open up all their numbers, letters and cases, as well as their academic bullying of Two (i will not name) Canadian Scholars contradicting their work, makes one have a dissatisfied, and uninterested mindset in this topic. This however does not downplay on all impacts of our reform. Energy cost and American Energy consumer dependency are two things related to our depleting oil and coal reserves and these two topics alone are enough to affect those of us who live with a very selfish nearsighted view on life, such as myself perhaps..

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  2. I think that the point of the article was to show that inevitably there is some uncertainty with climate change. Whether or not there is absolute consensus on the topic is irrelevant, and we should be asking ourselves if the potential consequences of climate change are worth the risk. Hopefully the market will take care of these issues on its own just by the depleting fossil fuel reserves and the availability of better and cheaper technology of renewable energy. Hopefully this will happen before irreversible damage is done to the Earth's climate systems.

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  3. I am an intern for Boulder County and I work exlusively with their ClimateSmart Loan Program which is a part of their Sustainable Energy Plan to retrofit current buildings with energy efficent and renewable energy options by financing loans for such projects. It is a really cool program because most banks won't even give loans for green projects, and the debt is tied with the property so if the home owner moves the debt gets moved onto the new owner. The popularity of the program has been exceptional and we just got awarded a 25 million dollar award to lower interest rates and fund more projects. The only other place that has this program is Berkely, where it was started, but I think this could be a great financial option for other areas that aren't as environmentally conscious as Berkely or Boulder. There just needs to be more education about the options one has as well as a committment from the city to ensure interest rates stay low.

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