Local Climate Crisis Rx: Solar On Parking

One of the keys to curbing local carbon emissions amid an ever-worsening climate crisis might just lie in a Newhallville parking lot on Albertus Magnus College’s campus.

So argued mayoral challenger Liam Brennan, as he and a half-dozen campaign supporters stood on the sidewalk on Winchester Avenue near Lander Street Thursday morning.

Brennan, a former legal aid attorney seeking to unseat two-term incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker in the Sept. 12 Democratic primary, hosted the press conference to talk about his campaign’s newly released Green City policy brief.

The six-page plan describes how he thinks city government should act more urgently — through actions big and small — in response to ​“the existential threat represented by global warming and climate change,” and in line with the climate emergency that city government declared in 2019.

“Four years have passed since we made that declaration,” Brennan said on Thursday, ​“and today we have little to show for it.”

While Brennan’s plan includes everything from suspending certain zoning rules (such as parking minimums and high minimum-lot-area requirements) to promote denser residential development to pressing for a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) from the federal government before moving forward with the expansion of Tweed New Haven Airport, the policy proposal that brought Brennan to Winchester Avenue on Thursday had to do with the parking lot behind him.

And, more specifically, with the solar panel canopy standing above this particular Albertus Magnus College surface lot.

“Parking lots are notorious climate criminals,” Brennan said, because of how they increase demand for climate-exacerbating uses like driving and create ​“heat islands” that drive up temperatures in surrounding areas.

With this solar canopy, he said, Albertus Magnus College has converted their parking lot ​“into something of a climate hero.” The solar panels atop this canopy create electricity, while the canopy itself provides shade for the lot.

“This is the future we see in countless homes around the city,” in the JCC’s parking lot, but ​“it is not the future that we see in government buildings around New Haven,” he said.

“We have schools, government buildings, parking lots, parking structures that could act as electricity creators. We see none of that.” Brennan said that his campaign has focused on showing how ​“local government has more power than we often believe that it does.” One such power is pushing for more solar canopies like this one.

Parking Chief: Solar Curious; Lots Of Lots To Develop

City parking authority Executive Director Doug Hausladen, whose quasipublic agency runs publicly owned parking garages and surface lots across the city, said that the parking authority is very interested in climate sustainability measures like putting solar panels atop current garages.

The problem is, some garages, like Temple Street, are too old and can’t handle such a new construction project atop them. Other garages, like Crown Street and 270 State St., could handle such a solar array built atop them. But the parking authority hasn’t been able to find the right private development partner at the right cost to make such a project work so far.

“The parking authority has recently evaluated solar arrays for Crown and State,” he said. ​“We would like to build solar arrays on those garages. … We’ve tried to find the private-sector partners to do that with. So far, the responses to date have not been enough to get us to construct.” However, he said, ​“every year, the economics change. A lot of that has to do with state credits and PURA rulings.” So, as the economics of building solar arrays atop parking garages changes each year, that will likely become more and more viable in the near future.

As for surface parking lots, Hausladen said, the parking authority and the city have worked — quite successfully in recent years — to put publicly owned surface parking lots to better and more intensive use by selling them off to developers who build new housing on them.

“We’ve focused mostly on turning surface parking lots into more productive uses,” he said. ​“For the most part, a lot of our surface lots are slated for development.”

He applauded Albertus Magnus College and Southern Connecticut State University for installing solar canopies on some of their surface parking lots. But, he said, those surface parking lots will likely remain lots for extended periods of time. ​“Our parking lots are not exactly slated to be parking lots forever.”

Meanwhile, Albertus Magnus College Media Specialist Sarah Barr told the Independent on Thursday that the Prospect Hill/Newhallville college started installing solar panels back in November 2018. That includes a ​“a 770-kW carport photovoltaic solar power system located on parking lots throughout the campus. The solar power system is expected to offset approximately 30 percent of Albertus Magnus’ annual electricity consumption. The college will purchase the electricity at a competitive, fixed rate under a 25-year power purchase agreement.”

Down With Highways, Up With Bike Lanes

In addition to calling for more solar on more parking spots, Brennan also weighed in on three other sections of New Haven transportation infrastructure that he believes city government needs to reassess in order to do its part to mitigate climate catastrophe.

One, he said, involves Tweed airport. Brennan called for the federal government to conduct a full EIS — a more intensive and longer environmental review — of the airport’s expansion plans to determine how deleterious the impact might be of having a larger, busier airport.

“If the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] were to say that this has significant detrimental environmental impacts to the local community,” Brennan said, then ​“it’s time to reassess.”

“You can only oppose a EIS in this situation if you are pro-expansion no matter what,” he continued. ​“In the current climate crisis, I don’t think we can be pro-expansion no matter what.”

Second, he said, the city needs to push and push for more highway removal, like what has taken place downtown with the Rt. 34 former mini-highway-to-nowhere. This is a ​“big ambitious long-term goal,” he said, but other cities around the country have done it.

Brennan said that the city, working with the federal government, should try to find a way to remove parts of I‑95 that currently go through the Hill and downtown and along the city’s waterfront. ​“We should consider removing that in the long-term,” ideally replacing it with a bridge going from West Haven to the East Shore. The city should do the same with, for example, the Exit 3 area of I‑91. Removing the highway will ​“give us back more taxable land.,” he said, in addition to reducing air pollution.

“It’s got to be at least something on the table and something we’re talking about and pushing for,” Brennan said. ​“We kind of accept these invasions of our infrastructure into New Haven without thinking whether we need to keep them forever. They weren’t always there. They don’t always have to be there.”

Finally, Brennan pointed to the Edgewood Avenue cycletrack as a frustrating boondoggle that still is not complete nearly a decade after the project was first conceived.

“It’s taken nine years to paint one bike lane from Forest Road to Park Street,” he said, and the city has only painted half of it. ​“It takes people from Forest to Winthrop and then just drops them off in the middle of one of the most dangerous intersections in the city.” He noted that the city finally appears to be painting parts of the eastern stretch.

But, he said, many in New Haven have lost faith that this will ever get finished. ​“We should be doing this a lot faster. Waiting for the lights has been a mistake,” he said about the city engineer’s explanation that many of the recent delays have been caused by supply chain issues with materials needed to install new traffic and bike signal lights along the route.

“If anything could make people lose faith in the ability of local government to get things done,” Brennan said, ​“it’s the Edgewood Avenue cycletrack.”

Elicker: Climate Work Is Getting Done Now

In a follow-up phone interview with the Independent, Elicker pushed back on Brennan’s critique of his administration’s for not acting with enough urgency to address the climate crisis — and characterized his policy proposals as misleading, naïve, and at times anti-democratic.

In regards to using emergency powers to suspend certain rules around development, as Brennan suggested in his policy pitch, ​“it is in extreme situations that such emergency powers could be used,” Elicker said. ​“But the mayor is not a dictator, and the idea that we would supersede all existing orders is just Looney Tunes. We live in a democracy. We have to work with the Board of Alders to get things done. We don’t live in North Korea.”

As for the climate work his administration has done over the past three-plus years, Elicker said, ​“we’ve created a climate office. We’ve dedicated $5 million of ARPA funds to climate.”

He said the city already has ​“3 megawatts of solar” on public buildings, mostly atop Board of Education schools. ​“And we have closed an RFP for additional solar on some Board of Ed buildings, the Q House, the landfill.” He said the city’s been working with the school board to put solar arrays on parking lots, similar to those already in place at Albertus and Southern.

“We’re about to receive the city’s first electric trash truck,” he continued, ​“are working to purchase the first electric police vehicle. Nearly all of our new purchases of light-duty vehicles are fully electric.” And the city landed a major state grant to pursue Bus Rapid Transit.

As for Brennan’s stance on Tweed, Elicker said that calling for an EIS without taking a full stance in support of or against the airport’s expansion is ​“a politician’s way to placate people” who are upset about the airport expansion without taking a real position on it.

“Someone who has been following this process understands that” whether there is an EIS or just the current Environmental Assessment (EA) ​“doesn’t change the environmental impact of the airport.” Rather, this is about ​“slowing down the process.”

Elicker said he is still fully in support of the airport’s expansion plans, and noted ​“multiple improvements” made to the project that would expand the current amount of wetlands in the area to prevent flooding of surrounding neighborhoods, that would remove the old second runway to contain water on the airport property, and that would see the new East Haven-side airport terminal built on stilts and therefore less likely to flood.

“We do need to be real,” he said. ​“Planes are not good for the climate. We are looking at the city’s climate impact as a whole.” He said the city needs to take that holistic approach when looking at Tweed, and not just put a stop to it simply because ​“we can’t tolerate any additional impact on the climate” anywhere.

As for Brennan’s highway removal pitches, Elicker said, ​“It’s good to think big. And it’s good to vision. We also have to be realistic.” The Q Bridge project, which cost nearly $2 billion, was finished less than a decade ago. The state and federal governments have already committed $200 million for an Army Corps project ​“to address sea level rise along the I‑95 corridor. To go back to the federal government and say, you spent over $2 billion, but we decided now to come up with another idea is just ridiculous. I think we need to be big thinkers, but not mislead people to think there’s some kind of magical solution.”

Finally, in regards to the Edgewood cycletrack, Elicker said ​“it’s disappointing to push that narrative” that this is an example of local government not being able to get things done. ​“These things are really hard. There’s been challenge after challenge with supply chain issues, with contractors that have not been able to fully deliver on time. These things are hard.”

“It strikes me as coming from someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience of how challenging it is to get things done,” he said about Brennan’s critique. ​“These things are way harder than anyone would imagine.”

Plus, he said, ​“a lot of really good things around traffic calming” are already done, and not too far from where the cycletrack continues. Example A: the Westville peanut.

Click on the video below to watch Brennan’s press conference in full.