putting some energy into regional planning

The Blueprint Project of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) is a comprehensive regional planning process integrating land use, transportation, air quality, and other regional concerns. Its aim is to confront the challenges of growth in the region by asking where and how the region should grow, and how this will affect standards of living. As reported in the May 2004 edition of the APA's Planning journal, the three-year process is based on the Envision Utah process, and is "on the cutting edge of helping the public to understand their future and to make good choices about what they want their region to look like." With high levels of forecast growth in population, employment and traffic, they already face a major smog problem, the ninth worst rush hour traffic in the U.S. and the threat of the loss of federal highway funds because of a failure to meet federal air quality standards. They recognize that they cannot use transportation solutions alone to resolve the problem, and are looking seriously at land use. To do this, they have gone a step further than Utah by using the PLACE3S software program, which integrates public participation, community development and design, and GIS mapping to help communities produce plans that retain dollars in the local economy, save energy, attract jobs and development, reduce pollution and traffic congestion and conserve open space. PLACE3S was designed specifically for local and regional governments, and uses quantification of energy use, energy cost, and energy-related air pollutant and GHG emissions to document existing conditions and compare alternatives in the urban development planning process. The project is still underway, but SACOG's executive director believes that it has already achieved success as it prepares to award the first of $500 million in planning grants for compact, transit-friendly projects.

there's a way; we just need the will

Recent research published in the August 13 edition of Science confirms that the technology needed to halt the growth in carbon emissions is already out there.

Current yearly global carbon dioxide emissions contain seven billion tonnes of carbon. But that figure is expected to double in the next 50 years due to increasing populations and energy demands.

The researchers identified 15 technologies that either store carbon, or provide energy without producing carbon emissions, or improve the efficiency of carbon-based energy supplies. They say that large-scale use of any one of these has the potential to reduce global carbon emissions by at least one billion tonnes per year by 2054.

"We don't have to time to do things wrong for 50 years and then try to do things right," Socolow [the study's co-author] told SciDev.Net. "Let's get on with doing things carbon smart all over the world."

[As reported by the Science and Development Network.]

every little bit counts

David Suzuki's Nature Challenge lets you see the effect on the environment of picking just three actions you can take in your daily life. It's easy and informative, and if you want you can join others who have committed themselves to taking those actions. The web site is a useful resource, too.

mixing carbon and oil

Carbon sequestration (storage) is a contentious strategy that some are investigating as an alternative or supplement to emissions reductions. Tests are already underway to see if undersea storage can work, although a concern is that failure of a large-scale storage site could have an instantaneous impact on the climate. The Dutch government is about to take this strategy two steps further in a project that will use CO2 storage to improve the viability of other energy sources. In the first step, CO2 will be extracted from methane at source to reduce carbon emissions from the burning of methane, and this CO2 will be stored in an exhausted methane field. The second step entails pumping this store of CO2 into crude oil wells, which makes the crude more fluid and boosts pressure in the field, thereby extending the life of oilfields. [This and other climate-related topics are reported in the International Institute of Sustainable Development's Climate-L News.]

beat the heat in London

Building designers in the UK are starting to plan for future climate change.