Overcoming barriers: grading potential government measures

Our friends at the Sustainable Prosperity Project have just published a timely report to coincide with the various economic stimulus measures proposed by governments around the world, including our own in Ottawa. Their idea is to tie-in economic stimulus measures with environmental benefits.

The report, titled “Building a Green Economic Stimulus Package for Canada” ranks all kinds of proposed government measures and interventions according to three general tests (and nine different criteria), and then grade up to 23 different interventions and government measures.

The three general tests are:
1. Economic Test: How much economic stimulus will the measure provide to the economy?
2. Environment Test: How much improvement will the measure provide to the environment?
3. Policy Implementation Test: How easily can the measure be implemented throughout the country and how equitable are its impacts?

And the final grades for the 23 measures, following good academic procedures, are shown in the table below.

One can only hope that tomorrow's federal budget will get a passing grade.

Existing emission standards – another barrier to change

A key barrier to innovation and change are existing regulations. Changing regulations to lead to a sustainable society can be an uphill battle. The automotive industry in the US has been lobbying hard to avoid new regulations and standards for higher fuel efficiency and cleaner emissions, and had the support of former President George Bush. But this is about to change.

According to the New York Times today, President Obama will direct federal regulators on Monday to move swiftly on an application by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday evening.

The directive makes good on an Obama campaign pledge and signifies a sharp reversal of Bush administration policy. Granting California and the other states the right to regulate tailpipe emissions would be one of the most emphatic actions Mr. Obama could take to quickly put his stamp on environmental policy.

Mr. Obama is expected to direct the Environmental Protection Agency to begin work immediately on granting California a waiver, under the Clean Air Act, which allows the state, a longtime leader in air quality matters, to set standards for automobile emissions stricter than the national rules.

This is likely to be the first of a many initiatives by the Obama admisitration on climate change. Stay tuned.

Barriers to innovation and change: lack of awareness

Anne Murray Choudhary has brought to our attention the following observation on the Ontario Power Authority (OPA). OPA has decided a few years ago that a kilowatt saved is much cheaper than paying for a new kilowatt of installed capacity, and has therefore embarked on an ambitious program to reduce electricity demand. A key challenge they face is to address the lack of consumer awareness, a major barrier to change:

The Conservation Bureau of Ontario, which spearheads OPA’s efforts to reduce electricity, conducted a market research study in 2007 in an effort to evaluate consumers' attitude towards energy conservation. The research objective was to "identify barriers to electricity conservation knowledge and action". The findings by the firm Environics show that --
• Energy (generally) and electricity (specifically) are not salient issues for most Ontario consumers
• There is public awareness of a supply/demand issue in the province, when prompted
• Cost of electricity is not a “hot-button” issue – except in the North
• Concerns emerge about environmental impacts of production and consumption, when prompted - but not the focus of public’s environmental concerns

The Conservation Bureau had also conducted a workshop in 2006 to gather intelligence on barriers from low-income housing residents. The workshop participants identified "Education and Communication", "Small Appliances and Lighting (efficiency)" and "Building Envelop and Systems" as key barriers. The Conservation Bureau's analysis also consists of specific mitigation plans for each barrier included in its workshop report.

So as part of its renewed efforts to educate consumers and communicate at the community level, the Conservation Bureau of Ontario, published in January 2nd, 2009 edition of the Kanata Kourier-Standard, a piece entitled "Conservation Zone" written by Peter Love, Chief Energy Conservation Officer of Ontario. Peter Love gives readers 10 easy steps to save money, and energy, in 2009 as a New Year's Resolution:

"1. Schedule a home energy audit. The auditor can tell you which home energy efficient changes are eligible for provincial and federal grants. Call 1-888-668-4636 and make an appointment today.

2. Install a programmable thermostat in your home. Every degree you drop reduces the heat costs by up to five per cent.

3. Change your furnace filter regularly - dirty filters make the fan work harder. Similarly, a clogged clothes dryer lint trap uses more energy and clothes take longer to dry.

4. Inspect exposed heating ducts and where you feel warm air leaks seal the ducts with special metallic tape. This keeps heat going where you want it.

5. Turn off the lights when you're not using them. Replace old, incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. CFLs use 75 per cent less electricity and lasts longer.

6. Participate in Energy Conservation Week (May 17-23, 2009) and World Wildlife Fund's Earth Hour on March 28, 2009.

7. Pull the plug on your old fridge and call the Great Refrigerator Roundup (1-877-797-9473). Older refrigerators can cost four times as much to run as a newer ENERGYSTAR model.

8. Buy cold-water soap for doing laundry. 85 to 90 per cent of energy used by washing machines goes towards heating the water.

9. Dryers alone account for six per cent of total household energy use in Ontario - use a drying rack indoors or an outdoor clothesline if possible.

10. Install weather stripping and caulking around windows and "sweeps" that seal the bottom of your outside doors. This can cut your heating bill by ten per cent."

Articles like the one in the Kanata Kourier-Standard can be found in many Ontario community papers and illustrate OPA’s continued efforts to increase consumer awareness of the benefits of energy conservation.

(Written by Anne Murray Choudhary, Telfer School of Management)

More on the importance of convenience

Here is another quick comment on inconvenience and barriers to innovation. Murray Hill of Saskatoon writes in today's Ottawa Citizen about a new device, Kill A Watt EZ from P3, that tells you precisely how much electricity your appliance uses and how much it will cost to run.

Having a simple display of how much energy you use at any given time is a very powerful tool to encourage energy conservation and behavior change. But the two barriers he notes are that “the display is it difficult to see unless you use an extension cord, and that it's difficult to find in stores.”

Barriers to innovation and change: the convenience of the right choice

Alain Martin of the Professional Development Institute shared with us how people make choices and change behaviour, and the importance of making sure that the desired change is as “convenient” as possible. He illustrated his point with the vivid example of increasing gasoline efficiency by having car tires properly inflated, and how the lack of convenience made this difficult for many people.

By all measures, one of the easiest ways to save 3-4% and even up to 8% of gasoline for cars and road transportation, is to have tires inflated at the right air pressure (See, for example, John Mahler’s article) But how easy is this to do? How convenient?

First of all let's look at the messaging and public awareness. If society were really serious about saving gasoline through the correct air tire pressure, then it would drive that message to you at every opportunity, just like wearing seat belts, or not drinking and driving. Each time you drive up to a gas station to fill up, you would be reminded to inflate your tires to the appropriate pressure. When you insert your credit card, you would be reminded again. And before you leave, you would be asked whether you did. As it is now, all you are asked whether you want to use air miles, have a car wash, or use any other kind of reward points or promotion. But there is nothing to remind us about air pressure. And it would cost nothing to add that reminder to the many other useless messages that bombard you each time you buy gas.

Moreover, getting the correct air pressure in your tires is not a trivial matter. It’s not easy or convenient. To start with, you need to find a gas station with a working air pump. By my estimate, only one in four or five gas stations in the Ottawa area would qualify. Last month I had to drive ten blocks before I could find a station on Carling and Maitland with a decent air pump. And I remember the manager telling me “Oh yes, they all love me for my pump. They come from all over just to inflate their tires.”

Then you need to measure the right pressure at a given temperature. Trying to decipher those tiny graduations on a pencil extendable gauge in the darkness of a winter evening is challenging at best. Getting an air tight contact between the gauge and the tire valve with your cold bare hands while scraping off the snow, ice and salt is definitely not fun. And the few air pumps that actually have a numerical readout are generally calibrated incorrectly. So if it reads 30 psi, it could mean anywhere from 27 to 32. All very inconvenient.

You can buy a digital air pressure gauge at Canadian Tire, but generally it's tricky to get an airtight seal with the tire valve so that the gauge can measure the pressure correctly. And who knows what the minimum wage gas station attendant will actually pump at your full service gas station. You’re lucky if they wash your windshield without leaving a streak.

To add insult to injury, some automated pumps will actually charge you $.25 or more to pump air into your tires with no indication whatsoever that the resulting air pressure will be correct.

Now if we are really serious about lowering gasoline consumption, it should be easy to keep our tires inflated at the right level all the time.

But it isn’t. So it’s not surprising that while 3 out of 4 Canadians wash their car every month, only one in seven will check their tire pressure in that same period. According to a recent survey of the Rubber Association of Canada, 70% of cars on the road were found to have incorrect pressure in their tires.

Imagine what ease and convenience might look like. Each time you buy gas, a green flashing reminds you to check your air pressure (in addition to reminding you about the inevitable car wash, air miles, etc.). Gas pumps are easily accessible, well-lit, with valves that fit properly, and easy readouts. Tire pressures are easy to check. And pumps are well-maintained and calibrated at all times. And it would probably cost only a few thousand dollars investment per station to have such pumps.

Let’s go further. Imagine that manufacturers now have dependable factory installed sensors inside your cars, with a warning light for over or under inflation. The built-in pressure gauge on your dashboard is as reliable as the speedometer or tachometer. As you pump the air, it pings when you reach the right pressure for the given road condition, outside temperature or type of driving you intend to do.

Now that would be convenient! And it would be so easy in such an environment to change behaviour.

But there signs of hope. US regulations require all cars below 10,000lbs to have systems that notify the driver if tire pressure drops more than 25% below the rated pressure. Europe is considering stronger measures as part of GHG emission reductions. And some luxury cars such as the Cadillac SRX have tire pressure monitors to the nearest psi (or so they claim).

We are finally moving in the right direction of convenience.

Barriers to Innovation and Change: The NRTEE report on Commercial Buildings Energy Efficiency

The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy published today its long-awaited report on energy efficiency in the commercial sector.

Titled "Geared for Change" the report, which is the result of a partnership with Sustainable Technology Development Canada, presents a comprehensive analysis of the energy use of the commercial building sector Canada and its CO2 emissions, its fragmentation and complexity, as well as a particularly thorough analysis of barriers to the adoption of energy-efficient technologies in that sector.

In our ongoing quest to explore barriers to achieving sustainability, we reproduce in its entirety the summary of these barriers, which can be found in Table 4 on page 29 and 30 of the report:


Barriers to Energy Efficiency Technology Adoption in the Commercial Building Sector

Risk Management
• Market, technical, and financial risk
• Level of positive external/personal recognition for “doing the right thing” by installing the efficiency measure(s)
• Level of perceived risk that the efficient product may not perform as promised

Information Gaps
• Lack of complete data and information
• Lack of public understanding of infrastructure needs and resource constraints, i.e. the functionality, cost, drivers and challenges are unknown to the public
• Skills and labour shortage in the construction industry
• Lack of training resources (time, available education, funding) for building operators, inspectors, and trades
• Lack of interdisciplinary programs to promote integrated design processes between
universities and colleges
• Low awareness of available products and services
• Availability of installation and inspection services
• Low awareness of benefits: cost and co-benefit
• Required technical ability to assess the options
• Consumer preferences that do not value energy efficiency
• Existence of a viable infrastructure of trade allies

Value Chain and Principal-agent Relationship
• Level to which the incentives of the agent charged with purchasing the efficiency measures align with those of the person(s) that would benefit

First-mover Disadvantage
• Lack of enabling tools and techniques to facilitate market adoption of sustainable energy solutions
• Need to foster acceleration of advanced technologies
• Lack of performance monitoring of technology systems
• Access to appropriate financing
• Size of required energy efficiency investment vs. asset base
• Payback ratio – actual vs. required
• Level of effort/hassle required to become informed, select products, choose contractor(s), and install

Market Price Signals
• Energy pricing at levels that do not integrate externalities associated with the whole lifecycle (full-cost accounting)
• Energy pricing signals that do not reflect real-time costs

Institutional and Regulatory
• Codes, standards, and permitting processes that prohibit implementation of innovative energy efficiency technologies
• Constitutional jurisdiction for buildings includes all levels of government and results in different standards across the country
• Lack of long-term policy development due to short-term political agendas
• Limited horizontal cooperation/coordination to integrate policies and implementation
• Disconnect between longevity of infrastructure and short-term horizons on crucial decisions, such as budget allocations for maintenance and rehabilitation and rate structures
• Insurance industry acceptable practice, standards or levels of infrastructure service may lead to liability perceptions for professional designers, municipalities, developers

Barriers to innovation and change: Ontario Power Authority and "interval metering"

As part of our ongoing exploration of barriers to sustainability, here is an interesting snippet from the ongoing efforts of Ontario Power Authority. OPA has embarked on an ambitious effort of conservation and demand management to reduce the horrendous costs and environmental impacts of bringing on new generating capacity. In the process, they commissioned a number of studies on consumer behavior in the various client sectors. Here is one study that identified very clear barriers to energy conservation, targeted at clients that use "interval metering", or pay for their electricity consumption on an hourly basis at a variable price which fluctuates throughout the day according to supply and demand. Price ‘spikes’ can happen at any time during the day for a wide range of reasons. These clients tend to be larger commercial or industrial clients.

The theory goes that clients will schedule their operations to the time of day when there is a lower price, and avoid times with peak price. But in practice, as revealed in the course of the meeting in 2007 with interval meter customers, there are a number of real barriers to make this work properly. As the meeting notes show,

“...the barriers evolved into both ‘macro barriers’ and ‘micro barriers’:

Macro barriers: those broader issues that fall within the scope of policy makers, regulators and program administrators. Most interval meter customers find these barriers to be complex, confusing and beyond their ability to affect. They preferred to have the confidence that a ‘system’ is working efficiently on their behalf without requiring an understanding of the specific issues. This confidence would be achieved by ensuring that a transparent system is in place which would weigh the true costs and benefits of energy efficiency against supply options.
Micro barriers: those issues faced by customers at the facility level. These barriers exist as a result of “too few resources chasing too many projects” (resources were considered to include people and funding). Overcoming these barriers requires a range of solutions, including assistance from conservation and demand management (CDM) programs that are developed in response to their challenges i.e., incentives, tools, etc. and presented in the ‘customer language’ "

These barriers were specifically identified by "interval metering" customers, but in fact have elements that are much broader than that as we will see in our continued exploration.

Barriers to innovation and change: the “greening” of city of Toronto

Thank you to Stewart Elgie for pointing our attention to Moira Welsh’s December story in the Toronto Star on “Toronto’s green report card”

This story neatly illustrates not only some quantitative sustainable goals set by Toronto Mayor David Miller, but also evaluates the city’s performance on these goals, and in the process – which is highly pertinent to our study “Making it happen” - identifies a number of barriers to change.

Clean air: 30% lower GHGs by 2020 and 0 smog days
Barriers: budget cuts and delays, delays in approvals, planning and building,e.g. bike lanes.

Less waste: 70% waste diversion by 2010
Barriers: Collecting and processing organic waste and recycling it generates 20,000 tonnes of plastic bag containers. The capacity of the Toronto organic processing plants was exceeded requiring shipping to other facilities in Quebec which uses 1000 diesel fuelled trucks. New plants being considered will not have the capacity to process all organics, especially from apartment buildings.

Clean Water: “Blue flag” designation for Toronto’s 14 beaches (i.e. open 80% of time)
Barriers: need to further reduce burden on city sewers in “wet” years, and have targetted homes disconnect downspouts from sewer system to reduce sewage overflowing.

Setting sustainability and environmental targets (4): Masdar city in Abu Dhabi

Also in the December 6 2008 Economist is an up-date on the most ambitious sustainable project in the world today: Masdar city in Abu Dhabi.

In 2006 Abu Dhabi's development agency unveiled the Masdar Initiative, to pursue "solutions to some of mankind's most pressing issues: energy security, climate change and truly sustainable human development". The initiative consists of a research institute to develop environmental technologies, an investment arm to commercialise and deploy them, and an eco-city to house these two outfits and to serve as a test-bed for their ideas. All this, it is hoped, will turn Abu Dhabi into the Silicon Valley of clean technology, where green-minded academics, entrepreneurs and financiers will rub shoulders.

Some specs:

• Seed funding from Abu Dhabi: $15 billion
• Partners for the research institute: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Partners for commercialization: Credit suisse ($100 million), British Petroleum, Rio Tinto
• Anticipated population: 40,000 residents
• Strategic focus of technologies: no green house gases and no waste through next generation solar power, desalination, “personal rapid transit”. In fact, the city is expected to export 2% of its energy.

This is a refreshing change from other United Arab Emirate energy-guzzling mega-projects, such as the Dubai Ski resort built in 2005, the Abu Dhabi Formula 1 racetrack, or the proposed project to create an air contitioned beach in Dubai, as reported yesterday in the New York Times.

Barriers to innovation and change: wind power and the pace of technology development (2).

In its December 6 2008 “Technology Quarterly”, the Economist has a case study on the history of wind power and how far it’s come.

Technology deployment is never instantaneous. It takes time to improve the technology and it takes more time to deploy the technology.

As the authors say “The basic idea is ancient, but its modern incarnation adds many new high-tech twists”. Here are some highlights from the Economist article:

Improved technology and design
- Danish model with three-bladed horizontal-axis, upwind machine becomes broadly accepted in early 1980s, over vertical axis “egg beater” and two-blade horizontal axis models.
- Improved knowledge of impact of fluctuating winds (wind gusts) on turbine structure and gear boxes lead to variable pitch of blades, variable speeds and better control systems.
- Optimization of machines and weight reduction achieved through mathematical models – components become lighter, machines are scaled up.
- Move to larger “off-shore” ocean-based machines, e.g. 7.5MW. Total installed off-shore capacity expected to reach 8 GW by 2012.
- Efforts are ongoing to improve gear boxes, or eliminate them entirely with a “direct drive” system.
- At 50% efficiency – i.e. % of kinetic energy extracted from wind, today’s machines are coming close to maximum theoretical efficiency limit of 59%.

Increased capacity of wind machines
- In the 1980’s, after the first OPEC crisis, windfarms began sprouting in California, thanks to generous incentives.
- Rotor diameters were about 15 metres with production capacity in the tens of kilowatts.
- Today rotor diameters reach 100 meters, with capacity 30 to 50 times larger.

Lower Costs
Generating costs have dropped from 30 cents a kilowatt hour in the 1980s down to approximately 10 cents in 2007.

Exponential rate of technology deployment
In 2007, wind power produced 1% electricity globally, and is expected to reach 2.7% in 2012, and 6% by 2017.
In Europe, in 2007 wind contributed:
- 20% of Denmark’s electricity (the country has had an ambition R&D program since mid 1970s and is the world leader in the field),
- 10% for Spain, and
- 7% for Germany.
- In 2007, Germany accounted for almost one quarter (23.7%) of the world’s installed windpower; and
- the US was at 18%. By comparison, in the 1980s, California was the world leader and held 90% of the world’s installed wind capacity.
- China has been doubling its wind capacity every year since 2004.

Barriers to innovation and change
- Need for better transmission lines to integrate windpower into grid and capacity to absorb fluctuations
- Dependency on subsidies makes industry vulnerable to sudden cut-off (at least until some form of carbon tax is in place), e.g. abrupt halt of California’s industry when subsidies were cut in mid-1980s.
- NIMBY – resistance from consumers who don’t like the noise or cluttered horizon, and are worried about danger to birds.

These barriers are very siumilar to Margaret Wente's article last year (see our earlier Post)

Barriers to innovation and change: the London experience

The city of London is experiencing a remarkable transformation in its commitment to addressing climate change. In a recent presentation as part of the most recent Japan-UK low Carbon project, Charles Secrett, special advisor to the Mayor, outlined some of the programs in place to move the city to a sustainable, low GHG emissions future. In the process, they had to address the major barriers to change:

“[…]There are many opportunities to reduce household carbon dioxide emissions. For example, switching off lights/appliances at home and office by all Londoners could reduce annual CO2 emissions by 2.3 million tones. If all light bulbs were energy efficient, London would save 575,000 tonnes of CO2 and £139 million from energy bills (2006 prices) per year; if Londoners bought the most fuel-efficient/lowest CO2 car in their preferred class of vehicle CO2 emissions would fall by 30% in this sector.

“So why aren’t people doing them?”

Some highlights from Charles Secrett PowerPoint presentation:

The challenge –turning aspirations to be greener into actions that matter
• In UK, people now believe a sustainable home is: modern (90%); attractive (72%); hi-tech (79%); fashionable (78%); good value for money (72%)
• BUT while 90% of people broadly accept the science, and 70% say they are willing to change –ONLY 20% are changing carbon behaviour slightly (buying local food, recycling, driving car less) and only 5% changing significantly

Changing carbon-heavy behaviour ultimately means changing …
• Attitudes
• Values
• Beliefs
• AND MARKETS

As long as it is cheap, convenient and legal to waste carbon and natural resources, then that is what the great majority of individuals, households and companies will do… at work, home and play.

Blocks to uptake of renewable energy in UK/London
• Lack of statutory targets –Planning Policy Statement 22 (PPS22) ‘Planning Guidance on Renewable Energy’in 2004 -The Merton Rule (10% of renewable energy in new developments); Mayor guidance 20%; Olympics 20%.
• Confused and frequently changing Government grant systems for local and micro-renewable energy schemes (Government funding scheme -‘The Renewables Obligation’-consistent support for large wind schemes)
• Local authority opposition and public opposition to wind in many rural areas
• Ignorance of planners and developers of policy, costs and technical options/quality


So, what works …
• Laws and Regulations to ban/restrict unsustainable behaviour
• Polluter Pays Levies and Charges–if revenues are recycled into building up low carbon solutions (infrastructure, technologies, products)
• Financial Incentives–grants, discounts, rewards for low carbon choices and behaviours
• Focused Advice and Assistance programmes that are convenient to access for user, and help navigate a muddled market-place
• Widely available information on problems, causes and solutions (especially when help individuals, families companies in short-term)
• Exemplar Best Practice–‘seeing is believing’
• Partnerships across public, private, domestic and voluntary sectors
• Respected Champions
• Coordinated and demonstrable international action

Thanks to Ralph Torrie for pointing the Japan-UK low carbon research to us, where this paper was presented.

Barriers to innovation and change: a first cut at a framework

For some time now, we’ve been discussing within our team our unique focus: identifying and understanding the barriers to innovation and change that would address climate change., i.e what's stopping us from implementing or deploying given technological innovation and changes to reduce GHG emissions.

Our colleague and interim chair of the project’s advisory board Tom Brzustowski has sketched out a preliminary framework for classifying these barriers. As we progress, we will identify more of these frameworks, and we will have the opportunity in the new year to meet with subject matter experts and practitioners to put these barriers to test.

Here are Tom’s preliminary categories of barriers and notes:

Institutional
No appropriate institution exists
. Turf issues among existing institutions break up the needed perspective
. Current institutions don't fit but claim jurisdiction

Practical
. Established practices delay new approaches
. Shortages of people (e.g. trades) with the necessary skills and knowledge

Behavioural
. Resistance to change at the individual level: "old dog, new tricks", etc.
. Change in life/work patterns - too big, too sudden, too many people involved

Cultural
. "taboos"
. "can't imagine…"
. Surprising objections to change in doing things apparently unrelated to the substance

Financial
. too expensive in the short term
. not enough credit
. not enough investors, lenders, etc
. new risks, not understood

Political
. other priorities
. long-term measures, sometimes of preventive nature, don't bring much . political return

Making it happen: what to do to reduce Green House Gases by 50%

Many people have designed approaches and scenarios for dramatically reducing our energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This includes the early work by Amory Lovins on energy soft paths, especially the low energy scenario that he did for Canada as part of his work on the Conserver Society for the Science Council of Canada in the mid-70s (“Canada as a conserver society: resource uncertainties and the need for new technologies”, Science Council of Canada, Ottawa, 1977). These scenarios demonstrated that with existing technology, it is possible to run our economy effectively with a fraction of the current energy and fossil fuels.

More recently, Ralph Torrie’s work for the David Suzuki foundation (see “Kyoto and Beyond: The low-emission path to innovation and efficiency”, Suzuki Foundation, 2002) listed approximately 150 distinct technologies and changes, which if implemented completely, would result in a 50% reduction in GHG emissions from 1990 levels, by the year 2030.

All of these 150+ technologies which he lists in his low-carbon scenario are proven and available on the market. If we deploy and implement all of them, we will actually exceed the Kyoto targets. The graph and table below show the results of his scenario calculation, and how the deployment of these technologies will result carbon emissions, sector by sector.

This graph (no. 51 from Torrie's original paper on p. 115) shows how GHG emissions are reduced over the years, sector by sector.

This table shows the percentage reduction by the year 2030 in CO2 emmissions, sector by sector. It is taken from Torrie's table 26, p.117.

To achieve the 60% reduction in GHG emissions for the residential building sector, Torrie calculates that we need to deploy and implement no less that 58 different technologies and changes.

Similarly, we need to deploy and implement 28 different technologies and other initatives to achieve the 71% reduction for the commercial building sector.

For the passenger transportation, deploying and implementing 34 technologies and changes will yield a 75% reduction in eCO2 emmissions. And as Torrie points out, all these technologies are proven and exist on the market.

What next?

Our project "Making it happen" will continue to explore these 150 technologies, see if we can update that list - after all, technologies have evoleved since 2002.

But most importantly, we will look at barriers - institutional, cultural, behavioural, political, etc. that impede or slow down the deployment of these technologies.

Setting sustainability and environmental targets (3): Ottawa’s “Choosing our future”

Here’s one important and highly relevant major exercise of setting long-term goals, objectives and visions for a sustainable city 50 to 100 years from now. The city of Ottawa jointly with the city of Gatineau and the National Capital Commission has embarked on a two to three years exercise to develop a vision for a sustainable region. Following the pioneering work of CitiesPlus in Greater Vancouver, the project will bring a wide range of specialists and stakeholder into the process. Some of the same peole are also involved, including urban planner/ process facilitator Sebastian Moffat from the Sheltair group.

The most recent phase of that project was a four-day charrette held December 9-11 2008 in the Ottawa Art Gallery in downtown Ottawa. The event brought together urban planners, architects, designers, academics, and other specialists to colectively articulate the vision for a sustainable region 50-100 years into the future. To bring the exercise down to earth, four representative neighborhoods were selected, in which the vision was to be worked out in much greater detail, addressing the specific physical, and urban demographic conditions.

The exercise was guided by a set of fifteen end-state objectives describing the features of the sustainable society, which are reproduced here with permission:

1. Ecological limits: Of interest to our own project are the 15 and state goals which the charrette used as a driving force.

2. Ecological capacity: Rates of consumption and waste generation within the region are compatible with the long-term productive and assimilative capacity of the ecosphere.

3. Ecological services: The region’s production and consumption cycles have a net zero or net positive impact on the planet’s long-term ecological productivity and diversity.

4. Municipal ecologies: Natural resources within the National Capital Region provide a framework for land use decisions, ensuring that critical resources are easily accessed, are exploited in a sustainable fashion, and are used to achieve a high degree of regional self-reliance.

5. Cultural assets: The region’s heritage structures, and sites with special historical or spiritual significance, contribute to a strong regional identity and provide a framework for land use decisions, ensuring access to cultural assets for all residents and visitors, and helping to augment the value of local landscapes with a rich overlay of myth, story and artifact.

6. Connectivity: The region is connected at all scales, providing efficient and safe transport of goods and people, offering real choice in transportation modes, and providing frequent opportunities for high quality social interaction, and healthy, affordable lifestyles.

7. Resilience: Natural hazards throughout the region have been mitigated through land use planning, and through disaster-ready design guidelines for buildings and infrastructure.

8. Green infrastructure: Trees, gardens, ponds, wetlands, hedgerows, streams, greenways, green roofs and engineered ecologies have become the elements of a cost-effective ‘green infrastructure’ that cleans and constrains storm water flows, contributes to a quieter and more pleasant micro-climate, shades buildings in summer, improves air quality, and generally contributes to the livability and biodiversity of neighbourhoods.

9. Urban metabolism: The natural resource demand by each neighbourhood is consistent with the long-term capacity of the city’s infrastructure and the region’s resource base.

10. Urban and rural containment: The containment of both urban and rural areas, and an integrated approach to management of the boundary areas, has revitalised urban centres, enhanced the viability of local farming, and increased the quality of life, lifestyle choices, employment and recreation opportunities across the region.

11. Compact, complete communities: The region is a community of communities, where residents can work, shop and play close to home.

12. Adaptive capacity: Neighbourhoods are adaptable and resilient by design, capable of accommodating with ease, both expected and unexpected changes in climate, technology, the economy, resource availability, family size and lifestyle.

13. Housing affordability and choice: Housing meets the needs of the whole community.

14. Security: Neighbourhoods are designed and operated to minimise crime, to quickly respond to and recover from disasters, and to provide residents and visitors with a safe, secure environment in which they have freedom from fear.

15. Everyone has a voice and is heard, and key stakeholders within the region regularly collaborate to set shared directions and align policy.


What makes these end state goals noteworthy is that they cover all the dimensions of society and economy in a given region. They demonstrate clearly that everything in a sustainable society is interconnected. For the purpose of climate change, innovation and barriers to change, our focus will be much narrower and focus on those technologies that relate to energy and greenhouse gas emissions.

Setting sustainability and environmental targets (2): the dimensions of sustainability

Our ongoing exploration of setting sustainability targets for a region like Ottawa Carleton has led us to explore similar exercises in Canada and elsewhere.

The Siemens-McKinsey picture of sustainability for Greater London
McKinsey company, in a study on the transition to sustainability for the greater London area (GLA) sponsored by Siemens, developed this spider web sustainability comparison of London and other major metropolitan areas in the world.




As can be seen in the above diagram, the six metrics for sustainability include CO2 emissions targets from buildings, industry and transportation, as well as municipal waste production, water use and air pollution.


Cities plus and the Greater Vancouver Region
Cities plus, a wide ranging exercise started in 2002 with a grant from the International Gas Union, explored the many dimensions of sustainability for the greater Vancouver region. Its scope for defining a sustainable future to 2100 encompassed many variables, including the end goals illustrated in the blue cinnamon role diagram below:



The end goals for a Greater Vancouver Region in 2100 cover four large categories:

Place:
Natural Habitat and Green Space Systems
Climate
People:
Cultural Systems
First Nations Systems
Health and Well-Being Systems
Social Equity Systems
Infrastructure:
Agri-Food Systems
Communication Systems
Energy Systems
Housing and Buildings Systems
Materials Systems
Mobility Systems
Water Systems
Governance:
Decision Support Systems
Economic Development Systems
Governance Systems
Human Security Systems
Land Use Systems


Some of the quantifiable metrics used include the following:

Developed by the Sheltair Group, http://www.sheltair.com/



QUEST: Quality Urban Energy System of Tomorrow

Another Canadian wide initiative is QUEST (Quality Urban Energy System of Tomorrow) initially led by Lloyd Axworthy, then former BC Premier Mike Harcourt, the in itiative includes a birad range of interested stakeholders, including the following: Canada Green Building Council, Canadian Electricity Association, Canadian Energy Efficiency Alliance, Canadian Gas Association, Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Industry Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Ontario Power Authority, Pollution Probe,

They published their joint report, “Integrated Energy Systems in Canadian Communities: A Consensus for Urgent Action” in March 2008, and just completed their latest meeting in Victoria in November 2008.

Some of the key features of their vision of sustainability include:

The QUEST initiative also recognizes, that based on the 2006 NRTEE’s “Advice on a Long-term Strategy on Energy and Climate Change” scenario of 60% reduction by 2050 shows that close to half of the reduction could come from buildings, transportation and urban form, what they call "the other 50%", i.e. sustainable communities.

Ralph Torrie's "Beyond Kyoto" analysis for the Suzuki Foundation

Lastly, we present the final results of Torrie's model calculations showing that it is not only possible to rech and exceed the Kyoto Targets for GHG emmissions, but also to do it with increasing population and GDP:

We will return in future posts in much greater depth to this analysis and the technologies and changes that need to be deployed to reach these targets in our future posts.

Setting sustainability and environmental targets (1): Recent announcements on GHG emissions

The science, or rather the art, of setting targets for sustainable societies and reducing greenhouse gases depends a great deal on who is doing that and their context. In setting these kinds of targets, governments -- for the sake of their survival -- need to tread carefully and balance the need for addressing the threat and reducing the risks and costs of climate change, with potential disruptions of their domestic economy.

Last week saw two major pronouncements on targets to address climate change: President-elect Obama’s address to the Bi-partisan Governors Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles, and the Speech From the Throne by the Canadian Governor General to open the new session of parliament with the re-elected conservative government of Stephen Harper.

Obama pulled no punches in describing the urgency of combating climate change: “The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We've seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season.”

But for Obama, the challenge of climate change is also closely linked to the US’s dependency on foreign oil, and “if left unaddressed, will continue to weaken our economy and threaten our national security.”

As the largest US provider of oil, the Canadian position is somewhat different. It’s difficult for any Canadian government at this time to set climate change targets and ignore the strong regional and wealth generating dimensions of the oil industry. So this explains the more nuanced approach in Governor General Michelle Jean’s Speech From the Throne of November 19. It states that "economic prosperity cannot be sustained without a healthy environment, just as environmental progress cannot be achieved without a healthy economy."

The speech recognizes that Canadians need “affordable and reliable energy” and that energy “is a source of wealth and Canadian jobs” but that there's also a need for "cleaner energy sources". It talks about Northern natural gas pipelines and nuclear energy. No mention of oilsands or carbon capture and sequestration.

It also reiterates the government's target of "reducing Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020". This position was first announced by then Minister of Environment John Baird in 2007.

Obama on the other hand, promises to “start a federal cap and trade system. We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions totheir 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80% by 2050.”

The Pembina Institute compared several targets for reducing GHGs. With regards to Canada’s targets of reducing GHG emissions “to 20% below the 2006 level by 2020, and to 60-70% below the 2006 level by 2050”, they note that “this would leave Canada’s emissions about 2% above the 1990 level in 2020 and would reduce them to 49-62% below the 1990 level by 2050”, i.e. well above the Obama targets.

They continue: “Other nations have already committed to targets more closely aligned with the science. The European Union's governments have made a unilateral commitment to reduce their emissions to 20% below the 1990 level by 2020. If other developed nations make comparable commitments, the EU says that it will strengthen its 2020 target to 30% below the 1990 level.
“In the longer term, California has committed to reduce its emissions to 80% below the 1990 level by 2050, and France to 75-80% below the 2004 level (which was slightly below the 1990 level). Even more ambitiously, Norway is proposing to be “carbon neutral” – or to make a 100% reduction in its emissions – by 2050.

“Based on a detailed analysis presented in our report The Case for Deep Reductions, Pembina believes that the Government of Canada should adopt targets to reduce Canada's net GHG emissions to 25% below the 1990 level by 2020 and 80% below the 1990 level by 2050. Given the scale of the challenge, Canada must start working towards these targets immediately. Any delay will almost certainly result in greater costs over the long term.”

Now, our study “Making it happen – the transition to a sustainable society” of course is not limited by political constraints. Our approach is to define plausible, hypothetical but stretch targets for reaching sustainability in 50 to 100 years. The idea is to use these to identify and explore the institutional barriers that impede the deployment of innovation and change to reach these targets and reduce the effects of climate change. And that is our major focus.

So in the next few posts, we will further explore various sets of targets and arrive at a reasonable selection of hypothetical but stretch objectives and metrics for a region like Ottawa Gatineau to make it a sustainable society. Stay tuned.

Barriers to innovation and change: wind power (1)

Margaret Wente’s column in today's Globe and Mail “Who could object to wind power?” is a dead-on analysis of some of the institutional barriers facing the deployment of alternative energy technologies, in this case a proposal for a large scale wind farm along the shores of Lake Ontario. Just because a technology is labelled renewable and environmentally benign does not mean that it will be adopted wholeheartedly by society. Wente identifies some of the critical economic and social barriers to the broader acceptance of wind power: costs relative to the yo-yo price of oil (down to $50 from a high of $140 per barrel this summer), hidden subsidies, the variability and unpredictability of electricity produced from wind, questions with regards to possible negative impact on bird flight paths, and NIMBY - not in my backyard. In fact, it was the last factor leading to a citizen’s protest in Toronto that prompted Wente to write the column.

In my view this is not a big oil or pro-nuclear conspiracy, but a normal and expected reaction to the introduction of new technology that causes change. If we are to move to a sustainable society, based on a significant reduction of per-capita energy consumption and the deployment of noncarbon-generating energy sources, these are the kinds of barriers that are inevitable. They should be recognized early on and addressed fully if we are ever to arrive to our end goal of a sustainable future. That is a key question facing our study.

The start of a new project

November 2008

Making it Happen: The Transition to a Sustainable Society

We are pleased to announce the start of a new project, “Making it happen – the transition to a sustainable society”. This project is about exploring a holistic and integrated approach needed to remove barriers and accelerate the transition of our economy and society to a more sustainable model. A transition to a sustainable society is critical to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Over the last several decades, there have been numerous reports and studies advocating change towards a more sustainable society that would be less dependent on fossil fuel, and more conserving of other critical resources such as water and biodiversity. Call it a Conserver Society, Small is Beautiful, Sustainable Development, or a Green Society, these visions have advocated an alternative way of structuring our economy and using less resources in order to reduce our environmental impact, and more recently, our carbon footprint.

There are also many technologies available today that would help move us in this direction. Every year there are thousands of new patents for environmental technologies, and investment in green companies has soared.

So why some 35 years after the first OPEC crisis and the Club of Rome’s report “Limits to Growth”, are we still playing at the fringe? Why have we not made more fundamental progress? Why is it that Canada is so far behind other countries such as Sweden or Germany in becoming sustainable?Some have suggested that we need leadership and political will, or major economic incentives to make this change, like a carbon tax or a cap and trade system before anything significant is likely to happen.

That may well be the case. But our hypothesis is that even with such leadership and macro-economic signals, there are still countless barriers and obstacles that need to be overcome before such a transition happens.

In preparing this study, we have reviewed many studies and reports relating to a sustainable society. What we found to be missing, what is currently not being addressed in a systematic way is how to make the transition to a sustainable society happen. Below the level of the large macro economic interventions, there are countless small institutional obstacles that prevent environmental technologies from being widely deployed. For each plan or innovation, there are inevitable difficulties, obstacles, or institutional barriers that prevent that plan or innovation to be fully deployed. Many of these are unexpected and unforeseen, and have not been considered in the original plans or designs. And most of these are not technical in nature.

These can include legal and regulatory barriers, inappropriate standards, ill-suited labour and skill pools, inadequate training, insufficient consumer education, limited available choices, inhibiting municipal bylaws, and so on. We’re talking here of a whole range of social, economic and institutional barriers, many of which have been designed originally for valid social and economic purposes, but which, in their current state, inhibit the rapid technological deployment and transition to a sustainable society. Perhaps one of the most insidious barriers is the lack of integrated planning in our society, the absence of a holistic perspective in making decisions that affect how we use resources and run our economy.

So our objective is as follows:How might we identify and better understand the social and economical barriers to innovation and change as it relates to addressing the challenges of climate change and the conservation of natural resources including water, as a basis of proposing government interventions to unleash the innovative potential of Canada.

Our approach

While the issues may be daunting and their linkages complex, we will be following a straightforward methodology to map out in a coherent way the different barriers to innovation and sustainability. Our steps are as follows:

1. Identify an ambitious, stretch hypothetical objective for a sustainable society, and derive all the "technological fixes" and changes that need to be implemented to achieve this hypothetical objective in 50 to 100 years.

2. Based on a practical agglomeration of the "technological fixes" and changes, bring together carefully selected panels and focus groups to identify the institutionalbarriers to achieve those rates of deployments. We hope to invite practitioners as well as subject matter experts, to identify the richest possible spectrum of barriers and obstacles.

The end result should be a systematic map of the different obstacles and barriers to the deployment of sustainable technologies and "way of doing things", which will make policy and decision makers at all levels - municipal, provincial, and federal - more aware of what needs to be done to address what is perhaps the single most serious challenge to the survival of our planet.

The project is managed out of the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa, under the direction of Dr. André Potworowski, with the help of an advisory board whose interim chair is Dr. Tom Brzustowski, and is expected to take two years to complete. The initial phase is funded by the Gordon Foundation and the federal government (Natural Resources Canada).For more in formation, Contact:
Dr. J. André Potworowski, potworowski@telfer.uottawa.ca (613) 746-9600 , or
Dr. Tom Brzustowski, brzustowski@telfer.uottawa.ca, (613) 562-5800 , #4759.