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The Air Up There
Environment Northeas's Sosland says the time is now
to make Connecticu's air cleaner by 2050
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Business New Haven
8/4/2003
By: BNH
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Dan Sosland is an environmental attorney formerly with the Conservation Law Foundation and a co-founder and executive director of Environment Northeast, a non-profit Hartford environmental research and advocacy organization Sosland helped to start in 1998. The group focuses on New England and the eastern Canadian provinces, with a heavy focus on Connecticut. The group’s recently released report is called The Climate Change Roadmap for Connecticut.
What is your organization’s mission?
Addressing large-scale environmental problems by doing policy analysis working collaboratively with [other] parties. We employ a core staff of seven professionals as well as an extended network of experts in various fields. Members of our group’s involvement in Connecticut goes back to 1988 to energy issues in Connecticut promoting the idea of utility investments in energy conservation. We’ve also done an overview on ‘green’ power called "Clean Power for Connecticut." Most of what we do involves preparing filings or position papers [for] administrative agencies or at various studies at the legislature.
What are some of those positions the group has advocated?
Our focal point in the past few years is in promoting energy efficiency and cost-effective energy efficiency investments. We’re looking to respond to what we regard as public interest in ‘green power’ markets. We’ve also worked on various models to offer alternatives to electricity customers for power choice, including ‘green power’ choice. We have a project underway to examine ways to reduce emissions from large, heavy-duty diesel engines, which have numerous public health impacts.
What exactly is meant by
‘green’ power?
People get their electricity from the power pool, which consists heavily of nuclear power and also oil and some coal [generation]. Those dominant sources produce significant amounts of air pollution — and in the case of nuclear raises other serious concerns. What green power means is an effort to diversify the power mix. Laws were changed to increase some of these sources like wind power and other alternatives. Also there is a core change occurring in transition to natural gas, which is a very promising development.
What green power options are available now, and how significant might they become in the short to mid-term?
If you look around there are wind farms built in upstate New York and Pennsylvania, although beyond that you don’t have a lot. You have some very small wind projects in northern New England. There is the potential for increased kinds of clean energy, but we’re not there yet. The potential varies depending on who you talk to. There are some advocates for offshore tidal power who believe the potential is enormous and could replace thousands and thousands of megawatts of capacity — half or more of the existing power plants in the region.
Our approach is that there is interest in cleaner air, in fuel diversity, and therefore we are working to take a look at the mechanism that could promote changes in the fuel mix and provide for an increased role for cleaner sources.
In talking about climate change, the Kyoto accord figures prominently. What are its implications, if any,
for Connecticut?
Once the issue of climate change became high-profile in the late 1980s, there have been various national meetings and conventions to discuss addressing the issue of climate change. Kyoto is the best-known event and the treaty calls for reductions in emissions to around 1990 levels. That treaty has been endorsed by many of the developed countries, many in Europe, but not by the United States. Really Kyoto represents an effort to say this is a serious issue that deserves international attention. In and of itself Kyoto does not solve the climate problem. We don’t focus on the Kyoto treaty.
With regard to many environmental and political issues there are individuals or groups that were the early proponents. Is there a person or group or event more responsible than others for bringing the issue of climate change to the fore of global debate and discussion?
I am not an expert in the development of climate science. There were trends being noticed by certain scientists, whether they were working in the Arctic or meteorology, noticing upward trends in annual temperature increases. There were at the same time some assessments, including at environmental groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund. It also was something noted by NASA scientists looking at climate and weather patterns. More than any seminal event there was a growing interest and then concern leading up to more explanation of the science.
There are different ways of looking at this. One is the temperature, and this is what people are really concerned with. The temperature increases are caused by the concentration of certain chemicals, particularly carbon. It is these concentrations [of greenhouse gases] and the projections [for more] that drive the temperature increases.
But so far we’ve had about one degree over the past one hundred years is that correct?
One degree is the [worldwide] average. It is a little bit higher in Connecticut — in the winter about 2.4 degrees [higher]. Connecticut has gone up about 1.4 degrees [as an annual average].
Is the culprit just carbon dioxide or are there multiple compounds that contribute to the so-called greenhouse effect?
Carbon is the dominant one but there are other gases, like methane, and a series of chemicals that produce what we call a warming effect. Particulate matter out of diesel emissions has a warming effect, but carbon is the largest one.
Many people in the business community and possibly in the labor community are concerned about global treaties that potentially can direct where industrialization may occur.
I understand there is concern. We are trying to delve into the issue and point out a little more soberly what exactly would have to happen. There is no question on a global basis every country has to participate, including developing countries. There is also the fact of the math that the developed countries produce the overwhelming amount of emissions. Overall global emissions have to come down by about 50 percent.
Some of the European countries that are pushing this the hardest have big environmental issues of their own that they don’t seem to be addressing.
Even if that is true, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t address this one. Our point of view is that the risks of climate change are very real and that states and countries that accept that risk and address it are going be ahead of the curve. They are going to be modernizing their economic base, focusing on new technologies and leading the way. Generally in economics and business, leaders ahead of the pack do pretty well. This can be seen as a moral issue, but in the end it’s going to be in everyone’s self-interest to reduce the risk climate change poses to all of us.
For environmental reasons the U.S. decided after Three Mile Island not to build new nuclear plants. Is that why more is being demanded of the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions than might be demanded of, for example, France, with its heavy reliance on nuclear energy?
I don’t know if that’s true. I think every developed nation has to look at very substantial reductions in their current emissions profile. If they’re heavily reliant on nuclear power like France is they’re still going to have to have very deep reductions from the rest of the economy and the rest of the emitters. All developed countries have a fairly equally burden.
What are the major sources of greenhouse gases here in Connecticut?
There really are two large categories: One is generation of electricity, and more broadly the use of energy for heating and cooling. The second is transportation — cars, trucks, buses. In Connecticut, transportation is about 35 percent of the total amount [of emissions] and power generation and energy use is about 45 percent. There are other sources, but those are the two major categories.
Let’s focus on the 45 percent. In your report you state that 85 percent of your hoped-for changes would come from a select group of electricity generators in Connecticut. Could you explain that?
If you look at the current mix of power plants, eight plants — six oil [-fired] and two coal plants — generate an overwhelming amount of the emissions. Those plants, like every other plant, will come to the end of their useful lives. Because of the impact they have on the state’s carbon profile, they ought to shut down and be replaced by cleaner fuels.
What are those cleaner fuels?
In the short and mid-term, it’s natural gas. These eight plants produce something like 20 to 25 percent of all the greenhouse emissions in the state. If you look at where we need to be in our reductions by the middle of the century, if those plants are still running they’ll be producing something like 83 percent of the [carbon] ‘budget.’
If they were shut down today and we just decided to do without the energy, what would actually happen?
It would reduce current carbon output by 25 percent. We’re not suggesting they all be shut down tomorrow. They coincide with the ‘Sooty Six (or Seven). They’re basically the older plants. Some of those plants are providing power in some of the most congested [energy] areas of the state, in Fairfield County. There are proposals and approvals to build new natural-gas plants, many of those will be cheaper to run and much more competitive as well as being cleaner.
What would be the impact on greenhouse gases and C02 from switching a plant from relatively efficient oil generation to natural gas?
Roughly, you will get a two-thirds reduction in carbon emission.
Switching to natural gas would get us a two-thirds reduction from those existing plants. If we don’t, they eat up 90 percent of the future C02 budget.
And there are even larger reductions in pollutants other than carbon.
In your report you don’t really spell out that natural gas would itself solve such a large part of the problem.
The reason is we are looking at a time frame that puts us out to 2050, and what we’re really suggesting is that over that period of time these old dirty plants should shut down for a wide variety of reasons. They should be replaced, and are being replaced, largely by clean and cheaper natural-gas plants. But then you have to get into a stage beyond that, which is the desirability of having even cleaner technologies available. And that is where these new currently unavailable technologies come into play.
What political support have you received for your report?
We released the report in Washington and both [U.S. Rep.] Chris Shays [R-4] and [U.S.] Sen. [Christopher J.] Dodd spoke at that event. I would not say they endorsed the report, but they did say was that it was thought through and took a lot of care. They liked that it took the issue beyond the environmental community toward a more diverse set of interests, including the business community.
We are not holding this up as ‘the plan,’ the only way to get us to the promised land. We have a series of recommendations that involve the business community, homeowners, state policymakers and people in everyday walks of life. People could respond to these suggestions and we can be well on our way to solving this problem.
If we were to deal with these eight power plants it would have a substantial impact right away. But there wasn’t the political willpower to deal with the ‘Sooty Six’ as a health hazard. How do you begin to generate a sense of urgency among decision-makers over a problem with no immediate effects?
We can’t just say we have time to work it out; we have to start getting reductions now. [We need to] pursue the things we know will produce real results immediately. Some might be harder than others.
Whether a politician, elected official, decision-maker or regulator will respond to that, I think the jury’s out. Some of these things are important to pursue for all kinds of reasons, [especially] public-health benefits. There is example in efficiency in Fairfield County, there is a very good chance that by reducing demand you are going to save Connecticut electric ratepayers tens of millions of dollars. The challenge for us is to point out what those benefits are so we can build more consensus and awareness.
Even as you say we need to expand natural gas usage, many politicians and much of the public is wary of any expansion of natural gas infrastructure. Every pipeline that’s ever been built has been held back by environmental opposition. Is this an issue of conflicting environmental needs and how do we make those choices between one environmental group that says, ‘I want more natural gas for cleaner air and lower carbon dioxide emissions,’ and another environmental group that says, ‘I don’t want a pipeline going through my community’?
It is an excellent question, and there are potential tensions between the two. Our position is to say that natural gas supplies substantial air-quality benefits and that the benefits of natural gas need to be understood by the public. [Environment Northeast has] not gotten involved in any of the pipeline-siting decisions. It’s not so much a copout; it’s just not something we’ve done. Siting and having pubic acceptance of the infrastructure around natural gas or anything else is very, very important. Generally I think these things can find a balance.
What is really likely to happen in the near term?
There is no question we waste enormous amounts of energy, which results in higher bills and higher emission. One challenge that we would make to the energy industry is that to the extent that they make the case for new capacity, their credibility would be enhanced if they would also make the case for [greater] efficiency. In the policy arena we have a real divide and it shouldn’t be there. We should be pursuing cleaner fuels and all the other things to make the system cheaper to run and cleaner to run.
Every large commercial power user is exploring how to cut back on energy consumption, and it’s getting worse because the costs are going up.
I think there is a perception that reducing your energy means doing without. Real efficiency means you get the same level of service and comfort by using far less electricity. When you do that as business, you pay lower energy bills.
We have examples throughout the state of inefficient electricity usage. You have very large office buildings in Stamford that are heated with electricity. The windows leak a lot of energy. The price signal should work — the problem is, who is getting the price signal? If the landlord is getting it, he is going to increase the rent or absorb the costs. [Then] you have what we call a split incentive between the landlord and the tenant.
There are examples of reasons why the pricing signals aren’t clear enough. If you step back from all of that and say, I know we have a building that’s using 30, 40 or 50 percent more electricity than it needs to. That’s putting demand on the state’s wire, the power plant, is chugging out all kinds of pollutants that they don’t need to and we are paying more money. These are opportunities to invest in addressing those problems and you reduce costs as well as emissions.
If there was more recognition of that as a viable public policy, the debate around things like pipelines and transmission lines would change somewhat. And while there would always be people concerned about where they go and what they look like, the perceived need for them might change and the advocates for those infrastructure improvements might have more credibility.
How do we realistically change the transportation sector?
It may be he hardest sector to address. There are steps that can be pursued that focus on alternative transportation. The things you hear a lot about in terms of transportation congestion — using buses, trains, telecommuting. That’s all in the category of reducing vehicle miles traveled. And that extends to land use. If you site people’s workplace closer to their homes, if you don’t continue to sprawl-develop, people won’t have to travel [as much] and [place] stress on the highways. You are reducing the amount of time people are spending in car, and therefore [reducing] emissions. Those are all policies that we have to look at that can produce real benefits. The benefits are not so much on climate as on quality of life.
But quality-of-life decisions are made by individuals and not for you or me to sit down in a committee and mandate for them.
Absolutely. But if you are stuck on the Merritt Parkway trying to get to a meeting in Stamford and it takes you three hours to get down there, you’re suffering because of that. Nobody like to sit in traffic burning fuel.
The report talks about expanding public transportation. Increasing mass-transportation options such as more trains along the shoreline or to Danbury has been demonstrated to come with very high costs per passenger. Maybe that money should be spent on something that would have a more immediate and tangible, and less philosophical, effect.
If alternatives are going to be [useful], they have to be ones that meet a need and that people are going to use. If you offer a better alternative, people might get out of their cars and onto the commuter train or bus. But it has to be convenient. There is no question we all like to drive and having the convenience of getting to our home. There are certain policies that can be examined, such as subsidized parking that makes it seem cheaper to drive. Maybe we ought to examine paying for parking.
Here in New Haven we sure pay for parking.
That may be, but there are a lot of places where the employer pays or reimburses the employee. There are federal tax policies that allow that, and it is not considered taxable income. If you get a stipend to buy a bus ticket that is considered income.
There is something wrong with a system that relies on the Department of Transportation for cleaning up the environment, when they are one of the major polluters. The DOT has perhaps the largest fleets of ‘dirty’ vehicles in the state.
There are clean buses in the state, but there aren’t enough of them. Why there aren’t more is a serious question that has to be examined. Change comes very slowly.
But for now, you’re saying people should take public transportation — and when they do they are sitting in a more highly polluting vehicle than the one they otherwise would drive to work in.
We agree we should be looking at more public transportation and reducing the [perception of the] car as the sole choice. We also long-term have to focus on changes in technology or we will not get carbon down from that [transportation] sector to the degree we need to.
In your report you indicate a need to move away from diesel fuel. What would replace this fuel?
We don’t call for the replacement of diesel fuel. There are new regulations for diesel engines that [take effect] in 2006 that will drastically reduce the amount of emissions from diesel. But diesel engines are so long-lived they can last for 25 years, go a million miles — that’s one of their benefits. Many of the diesel engines on the road today are going to be here for a very long time. What we’re saying for many of those engines, largely in trucks and buses, is that by using a fuel with a lower sulfur content and putting a particle trap on the engine, some of the most important emissions can be reduced by up to 90 percent. Thus the diesel engine can stay in use but the emissions profile will come down drastically. There [also] may be some cases where the alternative to diesel is compressed natural gas. Currently there are natural gas buses in the state, certain bus fleets, certain delivery fleets like UPS. There are alternatives. With diesel we don’t need to get rid of diesel, per se, but we ought to pay attention to reducing emissions.
How expensive would it be to clean up all the state’s buses with the diesel technology you’re talking about?
The highest estimates we’ve heard are about $4,000 per engine. If the state was to float a $20 million bond issue, all of the school buses in the state could be retrofitted. That is a fairly reasonable investment to get that reduction in pollutants.
What are the three or four most urgent action items for us as a state?
We first recommend diesel emission reduction. That provides an immediate public health benefit. New Haven and Hartford have among the highest asthma rates in the country among schoolchildren. The climate effect of reducing diesel emissions is immediate. [Secondly,] improved building energy codes, and energy efficiency more broadly, is a cost-effective way of getting significant reductions and we think there ought to be some attention paid to a strategic plan for introducing new technologies in a systematic way. By that we’re generally focused on hydrogen infrastructure, something that could yield a lot of benefit down the road.
Your report calls for a carbon tax. Wouldn’t that benefit nuclear power?
Maybe it is a matter of semantics. We don’t so much call for a carbon tax as for a way to fund a greenhouse gas-reduction program, [by which] a certain pool of money could be gathered through a tax on fuels. That money gets established as a market option and businesses can bid in and offer their approach for how they reduce emissions. Through this process the lowest-cost bids could be selected and there would be a payment. It starts up an option process.
Apart from diesel, we still have a lot of dirty air and attendant health issues. Why would we want to direct funds toward remedies so far in the future when we haven’t addressed what is making people sick right now?
Anytime you reduce carbon emission you are reducing other pollutants at the same time. The ancillary benefits on something like diesel are probably larger than the carbon benefits.
So why not do the reverse? Any time you get rid of sulfur dioxide you’re probably getting rid of greenhouse gases.
You can do that, we have a strategy where we talk about the state re-evaluating what pollutants it looks to regulate. Get beyond what is embedded in the federal Clean Air Act and have a very comprehensive approach to addressing these pollutants.
Right now carbon dioxide has the buzz. While your report mentions pollutants that have current negative health consequences, why focus on the one that doesn’t?
When people dig down, there isn’t as much a conflict as you might perceive. If you look at power plants. The real damage of old dirty power plants is to the local environment. They pump out heavy metals and other pollutants that are very damaging to local environments, especially urban environments. If you talk about a strategy of shutting the plant down over time you are going to have a very large health benefit.
If you look at trucks and buses, they travel through urban corridors. They blacken the cities, they’re up and down city streets where they add to very real health impacts. You can see how reductions in the power-plant sector and in the transportation sector start to produce very localized public-health benefits to the population. I don’t think there has to be a perceived divide between public health advocates and climate advocates.
Does your group get any funding from the nuclear power industry? It seems that the environmental community has become less concerned about nuclear power generally. Is that because of the C02 issue and the global warming issue?
We get no funding from the nuclear power industry or any other industry. I think there are some in the environmental community who are willing to take a second look at nuclear power because of the carbon benefits. For example, 70 percent of electricity in France comes from nuclear power. If that were all generated from fossil fuels you would have a big change. It is that concern that is leading people to think that maybe there is a role for nuclear power. That is not our position. Our position is that you have to look at all the impacts across the board. Nuclear power still suffers from issues about safe disposal, safe operation, safe design, contaminants. It is also an industry that is still heavily subsidized after being around for 50 years. All of those issues are there even if it doesn’t produce carbon or other air pollutants. Until they can solve those problems I don’t think nuclear power should be discussed as a climate solution.
In your carbon ‘budget’ for 2050, what are the assumptions about Connecticut’s existing nuclear power plants?
For planning purposes we say that the nuclear plants would shut down at the end of their licenses. For Millstone II that would be 2015. [With regard to replacements], the honest answer is replaced by natural gas.
Why a 50-year time horizon.
The point of looking long term is that it sets a goal. If we achieve that goal we will have done something meaningful. We will have asked the right question — what reductions do we need? — and taken the steps to get there. The real challenge to the state is to look at what really needs to happen and taking the right steps now. BNH
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