16 Named To Climate Change Task Force

How bout some 'greening requirements' for these anxious developers receiving land and tax largess on the public dime!

The 'fuel cell' at 360 State Street don't count! That HVAC system is a source of obstreperous noise pollution!
One things for sure, The Destefano Administration was great at community theatre!

City Hall could have been setting an example in this regard already -- you don't need no effing committee -- there has certainly been ample 'opportunities' regarding new development, but as we all know, they just don't have the cajones to do something 'real'. Again, it's all theatre....

Hey, how bout that Kensington Park parcel -- you bureaucrats are just hypocrites for giving this valuable green space away to Community Builders..... come together with the community to preserve this valuable resource if you are at all serious about a 'green future' for New Haven.

Has to be better than the impending lawsuit!

Bill, there are some real opportunities for greening new developments. Tracy Zhou (a member of the task force), I, and others have come up with a number of proposals. I would be happy to share them.

The fuel cell is light green. It produces less CO2 and criteria pollutants such as SOx (sulfur oxides) than conventional technologies. But it is powered by natural gas.

Maybe the first committee bylaw should be that all suggestions must be cost neutral to the taxpayer.

Any update on the dirt bike ordinance?

Kudos to New Haven for instituting this forward-thinking task-force and thank you in advance to the members for taking the time to address this pressing matter.

Will there be public forums where others would be able to present and share their ideas?

This is a great opportunity for New Haven to move forward with the ambitious goal to end community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 2030! Thanks to all the task force members. I hope there will be an opportunity for the public to contribute to their work.

A small quibble - I had a hard time making sense out of the last paragraph of the story (which is actually one long complex sentence). Might want to revisit it.

Not trying to be a downer, genuinely curious... When they say ENDING "end community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2030," what does that actually mean? Do they expect every building heated with oil to be retrofitted and every vehicle that enters our city to be electric within 10 years?

KM,

Love to hear what's up your sleeve!

PeterSimon, over what time period? Energy efficiency investments, which reduce greenhouse gas emissions, routinely pay for themselves in four to seven years. If you have a one-year horizon, they would be a cost to taxpayers. If you took a ten year horizon, they would be a savings.

What discount rate should we use to value future costs and benefits? Should a climate related death that happens a year from now be valued less than that happens this year?

And how should value things such as environmental services and equity, which are not bought and sold on the market?

KM. I am fine with any proposal that saves the City money. For example, when the City switched to LED traffic lights and LED streetlights, that made perfect sense. Saved the City money in energy cost, lights last longer and lessened the carbon footprint, even though the City had to float a capital project expenditure to make such investment. So in that case I guess I am good with a five year loan. Presumably, the money saved through the use of LED technology was greater than the capital expense. And after the initial cost is finished, the City keeps on saving. Borrowing money to plant 10,000 trees makes perfect sense. Buying electric vehicles may make sense soon. However, I am not in favor of let say a proposal that prohibits the City from purchasing any energy that is not considered renewable energy. In that case the cost of energy will be much greater than what we are paying now. When you considered the benefits to New Haven residents and taxpayers, there is none.

PeterSimon, the marginal cost of renewable energy is actually modest. Large-scale wind generation is cost-competitive with coal and nuclear power now. In New England, the levelized total cost of the off-shore wind projects under development are competitive with natural gas. In CT, the current premium for large scale zero-emission generation under the ZREC program is 0.5 cents per kilowatt hour (full disclosure, I played a small role in developing this program).

More importantly, markets only capture part of the costs of climate change. For example, they do not capture the public health costs of increasing heat waves. But these costs are real, nonetheless.

KM. I am going to presume on the ZREC you meant 5 cents (.05) per KW and not fifty cents (.50) per KW. Because if the City bought energy at 50 cents a KW, you are talking a significant amount of additional funding needed to buy energy, which I would calculate to be equal to a one mill increase in taxes. I would hate to put together a couple of similar ideas like this and expect taxpayers to pay for such when there is no benefit at all to New Haven Residents. As far as I understand, wind power will only be a supplemental source (ROI is not there) and you can never build enough turbines for demand. And I thought natural gas was not acceptable source of power for the truly green crowd

Tax Breaks for Homeowners making 'efficiency improvements'!

PeterSimon, no, the premium (the amount above the normal cost of power) is 0.5 cents (one half cent) per kwh for this component of the program. The way the program works is that the utilities have to enter into long-term contracts with renewable generators. The generators submit bids to participate in the program and the least cost bids are accepted. By law, the contract price has to decrease over the contract term. The purchasing is done in tranches of varying sizes of generation projects. I gave the premium for large projects. The premium for small scale projects is about 1.0 cents per kwh.

Wind is hardly a "supplemental" resource. The DOE Energy Information Administration estimates that 23 gigawatts of wind generation will be added this calendar year nationally. This is more than ten tines the capacity of the Millstone nuclear power plant. The wind resources in CT are not adequate to meet demand here. But power is routinely shipped across the northeastern U.S. and Eastern Canada, where there are widespread renewable resources.

We will be using natural gas for some time. But methane, the principal component of natural gas, is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Bill, municipalities are "creatures of the state." They can only do what the state permits them to do. This is particularly true with regard to tax breaks. I do not think there is any statutory authority to do as you suggest, sadly.

Thank you KM

KM So the only thing that has bothered me all day is the following: you state that the premium is only Half cent and that generation cost is only 2 cent per KW. Missing from your explanation is the maintenance cost of the turbine and the original financing cost of the turbine of $5 million per turbine. Someone has to pay for the original cost of the turbine, I guess it's through Federal Taxes.( that's the other pocket) Wouldn't there be significant leasing cost to whoever is operating the turbine? That will be passed on to the consumer. I can envision the auxiliary cost in operating the turbine and transmitting the energy to be greater than the auxiliary cost associated with my current United Illuminating bill. You know those costs that make up most of your monthly electric cost, the costs that the State PUC routinely approves increase while claiming that electricity deregulation is the best thing ever. So I am a little cynical about the cost of this energy being less than what it is costing through current production methods. I hope I'm completely wrong. Secondly, when I stated wind as a supplement source of energy you compared the additional generation of power generated from global windmill production to be ten times greater than a regional power facility. Shouldn't you compare it to power potential of all nuclear plants? Thirdly, since wind is inconsistent and traditional power plants generate energy in a consistent manner for basic demand, won't it be more expensive for me when power plants have to "power up" to meet power demands when the wind suddenly dies down. I am all for for renewable energy but I don't believe that New Haven taxpayers should be leading the way for the world and pay more than their neighbors when in comes down to cost of living. This is a reason why the City has a spending disorder. Too much time spent on matters not primarily important to running this City.

PeterSimon, there are operating as well as capital costs for all types of generating technologies. The premium I mentioned is the amount by which the total cost of wind exceeds the total cost of other technologies, averaged over their life-cycle. The capital cost of wind generation is more than natural gas, but this difference is largely offset by lower operating costs (wind is free, natural gas is not).

I cited Millstone to give a sense of scale. In 2020, about 40% of new generating capacity nationally came from wind and another 30% from solar (EIA data). Renewables have a substantially lower availability factor than traditional generation. But going forward, they will be significant sources of generation.

Wind is intermittent. But operationally and economically this is not a problem until wind constitutes a far larger share of power production than it does now. Renewables taken as whole produce 11.4% of the power produced in New England, with substantial amounts of hydropower imported from Canada and New York State. The entity that runs the regional grid has found that wind, by itself, could account for 20% of power production without problems. In the medium- and longer terns, energy storage will be used to deal with intermittency.