Editor’s note: See correction, below.
International scientific conclaves and congressional hearings get the blazing headlines, but much of the work of responding to climate change involves home-grown efforts by local governments, businesses and individuals which take practical steps to change the way they do their work and lead their lives.
In Colorado, some local governments in particular are working to become more energy efficient and to use cleaner fuels.
Last July, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper used his annual State of the City speech to announce Greenprint Denver, a long-term program to promote sustainable development and ecologically friendly practices.
Greenprint hasn’t gotten much public attention since then, but Beth Conover, special adviser for the Mayor’s Sustainable Development Initiative, says, “We’ve been hard at work.”
Perhaps the most tangible signs of progress have been steps toward conversion of the city’s vehicle fleet to less-polluting fuels.
Of Denver’s 2,678 vehicles, 847 are powered by some sort of alternative fuel, ranging from gas-electric hybrids to natural gas. At Denver International Airport, 678 of 1,058 vehicles are using alternative fuels. Ninety-one are electric-powered vehicles.
The biggest change has been in the operation of diesel vehicles. The city had been experimenting with the use of biodiesel before the mayor’s Greenprint Denver announcement, but since then it has been using biodiesel in all of its 1,110 diesel vehicles.
The fuel of choice is B20, which is 80 percent diesel from petroleum and 20 percent fuel processed by refiners from things like old restaurant grease.
Burning biodiesel does not produce greenhouse gases, although it does emit more nitrous oxides than conventional fuels. City vehicles burned more than 1.2 million gallons of diesel last year; 420,000 gallons were biodiesel.
In addition to expanded use of alternative fuels, major Greenprint Denver goals include reducing per capita emissions of greenhouse gases in the city by 10 percent by 2011; increasing Denver’s tree canopy from 6 percent of the city to 18 percent; reducing by 30 percent the amount of material that goes into landfills by 2011; and requiring new city buildings and major renovations to meet green building standards.
(The city had taken some major steps before the Greenprint Denver plan was announced. The Webb office building, which opened in 2002, was designed to be 25 percent more energy efficient than a conventional building. In 2005, the city’s waste recycling program broadened the selection of materials it would take and eliminated the need for sorting, increasing tonnage handled by 18 percent.)
The mayor is scheduled to receive key updates on Greenprint Denver this month and again in April, when the public also will see tangible progress on another of Hickenlooper’s goals, planting a million new trees in the next 20 years. The first 7,000 of those trees will be planted in various parts of the city during April.
Other sites also are starting to get into the act. Last Nov. 14, the mayors of 37 metro-area cities signed a memorandum of understanding that obligates them to review their cities’ energy use and use “best practices” whenever feasible to more efficiently use energy.
In Boulder, voters last November put their money on the line when they overwhelmingly approved a carbon tax that will cost homeowners about $33 a year, businesses $37 and industrial customers $2,832.
Those charges will be based on volume of electrical use. The revenue raised will be spent to improve the energy efficiency of buildings and on other programs under the city’s Climate Action Plan.
Local governments also may get a push from the state legislature. One bill in the hopper, House Bill 1146, would require counties and cities to adopt energy efficiency codes for certain types of buildings. The measure has passed the House and is pending in the Senate.
It’s the little things that count. Pages on the Greenprint Denver website (www.greenprintdenver.org) contain a link that reads, “Before you print … .” Clicking that link takes you to a page explaining options for gathering information without printing it out, thereby saving paper.
While that may seem a little much to cynics, every little bit does help.
A correction ran on this article: An editorial about how local governments are responding to climate change misstated the impact of burning biodiesel on emissions of greenhouse gases. While burning biodiesel does emit carbon dioxide, that gas is essentially recycled from the atmosphere through the plants from which biodiesel is made. So, the net greenhouse impact of burning biodiesel is significantly lower than that of using petroleum-based fuels, according to the National Renewable Energy Lab.
