Cities Brace for Global Warming – Part 2

  • Cities can expand mass transit, getting more cars off the road and giving people more options to help reduce emissions that contribute to global warming. (Photo by Karen Kelly)

Census figures show that more and more North Americans are now living in cities. For those who want to fight climate change, that means changing the way these urban folks live. In the second of a two-part series on climate change, Karen Kelly has the story of one city councilor who’s made that his mission:

Transcript

Census figures show that more and more North Americans are now living in cities. For those who want to fight climate change, that means changing the way these urban folks live. In the second of a two-part series on climate change, Karen Kelly has the story of one city councilor who’s made that his mission:


“We’re at Bronson and Fifth. It’s a four lane roadway into Ottawa.”


Clive Doucet is a city councilor in Ottawa, Canada’s capital. He’s standing about half a block from where he lives:


“This kind of street is a community killer, it’s a planet killer. It’s the fruit of 5,560 years of building cities for cars and not human beings.”


Doucet loves cities, which is why it pains him to see a once-beautiful neighborhood street become, as he calls it, a traffic sewer. It’s loud, it’s polluted, and it’s not safe. Three pedestrians have been killed near this corner in the past five years, and there’ve been many accidents.


Doucet was an activist for a long time, but after running for city council he realized the city has the power to change the climate. It builds the roads and it controls the public transportation:


“Public transit has, every environmentalist knows is one of the main keys to solving the environmental crisis. I mean, 45 to 50 percent of greenhouse gases come out of our use of land and the tailpipes of cars and trucks. We can get rid of most of that and we can not change our lifestyle one bit; in fact, we can make it better.”


Doucet hops on his bike to show what he means. He winds through the traffic and then stops along Ottawa’s five-mile-long light rail track:


“This runs parallel to the road we were just on. It’s a test line. It carries a hundred and 50 passengers every 15 minutes and when we get the two lines up and running, it will carry three times the traffic or more as Bronson and it’s quiet. We’re standing at the station now. You’re like in a church. See the train’s coming. Do you hear any noise? It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”


Doucet’s vision for his city is a comprehensive light rail system. He says it will reduce air and noise pollution, and make the city friendlier for pedestrians and cyclists, but Doucet is thinking about the bigger picture, too. And there, he’s not optimistic. He’s noticed that the winters in Ottawa are warmer now, and that’s disturbing for people because they really embrace winter.


Almost every park has an outdoor hockey rink, and people ice skate, not just for pleasure, but to get around. Doucet says he’s afraid that climate change will destroy what makes his city special:


“It’s incredibly sad. I mean, I’ve skated to work all my life and I live about a block from the canal I take my skates down and I’d skate to work and skate home. And I’ve seen countless marvelous sunrises on the canal. It is difficult to imagine my life without that. Those experiences have given my life poetry.”


Doucet says he’s pretty much given up hope on the federal government. He says they’re too beholden to big industry to really curb the emissions that cause climate change.
But at the local level? He says a lot can be done.


He recently wrote a book, Urban Meltdown: Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual. In it, he says it’s time for city residents to get tough:


“Go after your municipal politicians and say, you know something, we want to have a city that’s pedestrian-based, that’s public transit-based and we want you to stop building roads. You can do stuff about your local government and the way you live locally.”


Doucet wouldn’t say it’s easy. Last year, Ottawa signed a contract to expand its light rail system. Then, a new mayor came in and the plan was scrapped. Doucet thinks it will happen eventually, but in the meantime, he’s still fighting the rush hour traffic on his bicycle.


For the Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

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State Car Emissions Ok’d

  • Most of the cuts would come from tailpipe emissions, but the UCS says other improvements can be made in engine design as well.(Photo by Mark Brush)

A federal judge has ruled in favor of a state law aimed at cutting greenhouse gases from
cars and light trucks. Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

A federal judge has ruled in favor of a state law aimed at cutting greenhouse gases from
cars and light trucks. Mark Brush has more:


Like 11 other state laws – the Vermont law calls for a 30% cut in heat-trapping gas
emissions by 2016. Automakers sued Vermont saying these kinds of regulations would
hurt the industry and can not be made by individual states. A federal judge disagreed.


Michelle Robinson is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. She says the judge heard
from the group’s engineers. They designed a minivan that would meet these new
standards with technology that exists today:


“There’s no need to change the look of the vehicle or the performance of the vehicle in
any way. So you could maintain the levels of safety and performance that drivers expect
while improving the pollution performance of the vehicle.”


Aside from a likely appeal from the auto industry, the states are also waiting on the
Environmental Protection Agency. They have to get a waiver from the EPA before they
can enforce their laws.


For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Interview: The Future of Water in a Warmer World

  • Peter H. Gleick, President and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, is concerned that without reducing greenhouse gas emissions, global warming will have dire impact on water resources. (Courtesy of the Pacific Institute)

With concern about climate change growing, some scientists are trying to determine how global warming will affect sources of water. Lester Graham spoke with the President of the Pacific Institute, Peter Gleick about what climate change might mean to weather patterns:

Transcript

With concern about climate change growing, some scientists are trying to determine how global warming will affect sources of water.

Lester Graham spoke with the President of the Pacific Institute, Peter Gleick about what climate change might mean to weather

patterns:


PG: Overall, the planet is gonna get wetter because as it gets hotter, we’ll see more
evaporation. The problem is, we aren’t always gonna get rain where we want it.
Sometimes we’re gonna get rain where we don’t want it. And at the moment it looks like
the biggest increases in rainfall will be in the northern regions where typically water is
less of a problem. Or at least water quantity is less of a problem. And we may actually get
less rainfall in the Southwest where we need it more.


LG: Let’s talk about some of the precious areas to North America. For instance, a lot of
people are worried about snow pack in the Rockies.


PG: Yes, well, one of the most certain impacts of global climate change is going to be
significant changes in snowfall and snowmelt patterns in the western United States as a
whole, actually in the United States as a whole because as it warms up, what falls out of
the atmosphere is going to be rain and not snow. Now that really matters in the Western
United States, in the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada where our snow pack really
forms the basis of our water supply system. Unfortunately, as the climate is changing,
we’re seeing rising temperatures and decreasing snow pack. More of what falls in the
mountains is falling as rain, less of it’s going to be snow. That’s going to wreck havoc on
our management system, the reservoirs that we’ve built to deal with these variations in
climate. Incidentally, it’s also going to ruin the ski season eventually.


LG: You mentioned that the farther north you go, according to some models, we’ll see
more rain or more precipitation. At the same time, with warmer temperatures, we’ll see
less ice covering some of the inland lakes, such as the Great Lakes, which means more
evaporation. So, what are we going to see as far as those surface waters sources across
the continent?


PG: Without a doubt, global climate is changing. And it’s going to get worse and worse
as humans put more and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And as it gets
warmer, we’re going to see more evaporation off of the surface of all kinds of lakes,
including especially the Great Lakes. And interestingly, even though we don’t have a
great degree of confidence of what’s going to happen precisely with precipitation in the
Great Lakes, all of the models seem to agree that over time, the Great Lakes levels are
going to drop. And it looks like we’re going to lose more water out of the surface of the
Great Lakes from increased evaporation off the lakes than we’re likely to get from
precipitation, even if precipitation goes up somewhat. And I think that’s a great worry for
homeowners and industry around the margin of the lake. Ultimately for navigation,
ultimately for water supply.


LG: There’s a lot of talk about the gloom and doom scenarios of global warming, but
they’ll be longer growing seasons and we’re also going to be seeing, as the zones change,
more of this fertile ground in as northern US and Canada get longer growing seasons.
That’s not a bad thing.


PG: There are going to be winners and loser from global climate change. And
interestingly, there are going to be winners and losers at different times. Certainly, a
longer growing season is a possibility as it warms up. And I think that, in the short term,
could prove to be beneficial for certain agriculture in certain regions. Interestingly
though, and perhaps a little depressingly, over time, if the globe continues to warm up, if
the globe continues to warm up, evidence suggest that the short term improvements in
agriculture that we might see might ultimately be wiped out. As it gets hotter and hotter,
some crop yields will go down after they go up. We’re going to see an increase in pests
that we didn’t used to see because of warmer weather. Unfortunately, pests like warmer
weather. Furthermore, if we don’t really get a handle on greenhouse gas emissions, if we
don’t really start to cut the severity of the climate changes that we’re going to see, the
doom and gloom scenarios unfortunately get more likely. Over time, the temperatures go
up not just one or two or three degrees Celsius but four or five or eight degree Celsius.
And that truly is a catastrophe for the kind of systems we’ve set up around the planet.


HOST TAG: Peter Gleick is a water expert and President of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, based in California.

Related Links

Polars Bearing Weight of Global Warming

  • These polar bears lives at the Pittsburgh zoo where food is plentiful. In the wild, however, global warming might be making it harder for the bears to find food. (Photo by Reid Frazier)

If global warming is represented by one symbol, it
might be the polar bear. It’s an icon of the North
Polar region. Now, federal biologists have asked that
polar bears be listed as threatened under the Endangered
Species Act. They’re the first species to be considered
for protection because of global warming. Reid Frazier
reports that the polar bear might help connect the
abstract idea of global warming with the concrete
actions of people in their homes:

Transcript

If global warming is represented by one symbol, it
might be the polar bear. It’s an icon of the North
Polar region. Now, federal biologists have asked that
polar bears be listed as threatened under the Endangered
Species Act. They’re the first species to be considered
for protection because of global warming. Reid Frazier
reports that the polar bear might help connect the
abstract idea of global warming with the concrete
actions of people in their homes:


(Sound of kids talking to polar bears)


Parents and children gather around a large window to watch Nuka and
Koda frolick in the aqua water tank. The polar bears are having a
blast. They splash and dive, play with foam toys, and duck their heads
underwater to look around. The young brothers are only two-years-old
and already they weigh 600 pounds each. These bears, born and raised in
zoos, eat about 18 pounds of food a day. But, their cousins in the wild
are finding food much harder to come by these days.


Henry Kacprzyk is a curator at the Pittsburgh Zoo. He wants crowds to
know just how fragile the bears’ situation is. Walking along a
boardwalk near the exhibit, Kacprzyk points to a sign. It welcomes
visitors to “Piertown,” a replica village designed to resemble a
growing Alaska fishing town:


“The thing to note here is the human population has increased from 110
to 1,712, on the other side the bear population has declined, from 1,784
to 368, which, the message there is, as humans increase in population in some
of the bears’ habitat, the bears go down. It’s a sad but true fact.”


The situation for the world’s 25,000 polar bears is increasingly dire.
Besides people crowding them out, overfishing has depleted arctic
waters of fish for seals to eat, and seals are the bears’ main source
of food.


But here’s the biggest problem: the polar ice cap is melting. That’s
depriving the bears of a main hunting ground. The vast majority of
scientists attribute this to global warming. They say the warming is
caused by a buildup in the atmosphere of greenhouse gases from burning
fossil fuels.


Scott Schliebe is a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service. His
team recommended polar bears be added to the protected list because
they’re losing their habitat. Schliebe says the bears need sea ice to
hunt seals. No sea ice means no food for the bears:


“They will wait at a breathing hole for a seal and wait until the seal comes up
and then catch the seal. They’re not effective at hunting seals in open
water, seals have the severe advantage of being able to outpace the polar bears in that environment.”


In areas with receding ice, polar bears are already hurting. Scientists
see the world’s polar bear population shrinking by a third in the next
50 years.


Back at the Pittsburgh zoo, the polar bears are a big hit with
visitors. They helped the zoo break an attendance record last year.
Curator Henry Kacprzyk hopes visitors tie their own behavior with the
plight of the arctic:


“It’s sometimes little things, as a general family, for instance, what you
can do is conservation of fuel and energy, keeping your lights off,
maybe living closer to work is a great idea. By choosing conservation
you can make a difference.”


The bears are popular with Cindy Jagielski, who’s visiting the zoo with
her small grandchild. Jagielski’s worried the bears will one day become
extinct but she admits she doesn’t know much about global warming:


“Maybe it’s just the Earth’s changing. I don’t know that industry has
anything to do with the melting of the ice there. Maybe it’s just a
natural occurrence.”


Despite some lingering doubts over what causes global warming,
polar bears are a popular cause. The Fish and Wildlife Service has
already received 40,000 emailed comments since it proposed protecting
the species. The Service will make its final decision on protecting
polar bears by next January.


For the Environment Report, this is Reid Frazier.

Related Links

Report Warns Insurers to Face Climate Change

Insurance companies are being urged to face the risks associated with climate change. The world’s oldest insurance market says recent natural disasters have shown the need for new pricing and underwriting models for insurers. The GLRC’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

Insurance companies are being urged to face the risks associated with climate change.
The world’s oldest insurance market says recent natural disasters have shown the need
for new pricing and underwriting models for insurers. The GLRC’s Erin Toner reports.


Lloyd’s of London’s new report says the costs of climate change could put insurers out of
business if they don’t make some changes. The report says insurance companies have
been slow to manage the financial risks of emerging threats, such as rising sea levels and
the build-up of greenhouse gases. Rolf Tolle is with Lloyd’s of London.


“You will have maybe certain changes in coverage which is available. You will see
changes in pricing. And you may have for certain, very exposed risks, a situation
that insurance is flatly no longer available.”


Tolle says insurers should take climate change predictions into account when setting
rates, rather than simply relying on historical weather patterns. Last year was the costliest
year ever for the insurance industry – mainly because of hurricanes that hit the U.S.


For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

Capturing Carbon Dioxide From Coal Plants

  • This is an artist's concept of how the FutureGen coal-burning power plant would look. The FutureGen power plant would confine the carbon dioxide that it generates and store it deep underground. (Photo courtesy of the Department of Energy)

We’re hearing more and more these days about global warming and how human activity is believed to be changing the climate. A lot of the blame has gone to pollution from coal-burning plants that produce electricity. Now, the U-S wants to build a plant that would capture and store the pollution… if it can find the right site. The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

We’re hearing more and more these days about global warming and how
human activity is believed to be changing the climate. A lot of the blame
has gone to pollution from coal-burning plants that produce electricity.
Now, the U.S wants to build a plant that would capture and store the
pollution…if it can find the right site. The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports:


The U.S Department of Energy is chipping in 750-million dollars to the
build what’s called the FutureGen coal-burning power plant, and a
consortium of power companies is contributing an additional 250-
million. That’s a billion dollars of investment.


It’s exciting to Craig Stevens. He’s a spokesman with the Department of
Energy.


“FutureGen could revolutionize the way we use coal in this country and
around the world.”


We get most of our electricity from power plants that burn coal and belch
out greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. But Stevens says
FutureGen would be a cleaner coal-plant…


“And that’s important because today, we in the U.S have a 250 year
supply of coal reserves. It is our most abundant fossil fuel. These
electric plants actually burn coal to produce electricity for millions of
Americans. One of the things we want to do is to use this coal in an
environmentally sensitive manner.”


The hope is that FutureGen will capture the carbon dioxide it generates
to store it deep underground. Scientists plan to purify and liquefy the
CO2, so it’s a water-like substance. Then they want to inject it into the
earth. They plan to dig wells 9000 feet deep for CO2 storage. They also
want to use the space left behind from old coal mines, oil and gas wells.


Geologist Neeraj Gupta is with Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus.
He’s been researching what’s known as carbon sequestration since
1996…


“And that time this was just the beginning of an idea that you can take
carbon dioxide emissions from large industrial sources, you know, such
as power plants, and you can purify that, to make like a pure CO2s
stream. And, just like you produce oil and gas from the deep geologic
formations, you can take that CO2 and inject it back into the ground into
those same or similar deep geologic formations.”


Gupta says in the same way fossil fuels are trapped deep in the earth,
carbon dioxide could be trapped underground for millions of years, but
there are a lot of uncertainties.


Dr. Rattan Lal is director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration
Center at Ohio State University.


“Uncertainties are… is there going to be leakage? Either at the place
where it’s being injected or several miles away where there might be a
geological fracture in the rock strata.”


Lal says areas that have the right kind of rock layers and are not prone to
earthquakes, would be the best places to experiment with a project like
FutureGen.


Mark Shanahan is director of Ohio’s Air Quality Development
Authority. He thinks his state might be the perfect place because it has
the right kind of geology. At the deepest levels, the rocks aren’t entirely
solid. They’re porous, like a sponge, but with microscopic holes.
Scientists expect those tiny holes to absorb the CO2…


“The second thing is that that porous geology has to be beneath another
formation that is not porous, so the non-porous formation serves as a cap
on top of your CO2. So, once you put it into the porous formation, it
can’t go up.”


So the CO2 is trapped underground… hopefully permanently. Other
states, besides Ohio, think they also have good places for the plant.


The Department of Energy is currently reviewing proposals and plans to
pick a site by late next year. The agency wants to have FutureGen up
and running by 2012.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Great Lakes Cities Team Up to Curb Global Warming

Nine cities in the Great Lakes region are teaming up to fight global warming. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

Nine cities in the Great Lakes region are teaming up to fight global warming. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has more:


The cities are banding together for two years to come up with ways to cut down on greenhouse gases and air pollution. Each city is aiming to have local projects in place by the end of the second year.


For example, Chicago’s looking at more energy-efficient streetlights, Toronto wants to use more renewable energy, and Duluth intends to upgrade its steam plant. The project’s organized by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives.


Susan Ode is the group’s spokesperson. She says local officials are starting to notice effects of climate change: things like shifts in growing seasons and more unpredictable weather.


“It’s really one thing to understand the damage and the danger, but there has to be an action element or people get paralyzed, and that’s why cities are so important in this: they are taking action.”


Ode says cities across the country have recently stepped up their efforts to cut down on greenhouse gases in response to the U.S. not signing onto the Kyoto Protocol.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Nfl Putting Down Roots for Next Superbowl

  • A surplus of carbon dioxide is created during big events like the Superbowl. To counteract this, the NFL has plans to plant trees in Detroit. (Photo by Sarah Lawrence)

Officials from the National Football League plan to plant acres of trees in Detroit. They’re hoping to offset extra greenhouse gases that will be emitted during next year’s Super Bowl. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:

Transcript

Officials from the National Football League plan to plant acres of trees in Detroit. They’re hoping to offset extra greenhouse gases that will be emitted into the local atmosphere during the upcoming Super Bowl. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:


The U.S. Department of Energy estimated an extra 260 tons of carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere during the last Super Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida. A team of scientists from Princeton University determined three and a half to four acres of trees were required to absorb the extra greenhouse gases. Similar computations are now being done to determine how many trees to plant in Detroit.


Deborah Gangloff is the executive director of American Forests, a group that helps companies design what are called carbon neutral programs.


“We can address a great deal of the excess carbon dioxide issue with trees. Trees are going to sequester lots of carbon dioxide. What matters most is not the type of tree you plant, but whether that tree is well suited to the site, whether it s a healthy tree and whether it’s in its growing climate.”


She says these programs can t solve the problem of excess greenhouse gases unless they re paired with conservation and reduced consumption.


For the GLRC, I’m Celeste Headlee.

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Outdoor Lab Forecasts Global Warming Effects

  • Mark Kubiske checks the valve that controls the flow of greenhouse gases to a stand of sugar maples, birch and aspen. (Photo by Jennifer Simonson)

Scientists from around the world are studying how higher levels of carbon dioxide will affect forests 100 years from now. They’re doing that by pumping higher levels of CO2 and ozone into stands of trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson visited the experimental forests and has this story:

Transcript

Scientists from around the world are studying how higher levels of carbon dioxide will affect forests 100 years from now. They’re doing that by pumping higher levels of CO2 and ozone into stands of trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson visited the experimental forests and has this story:


(sound of “quiet area”)


The north woods of the Great Lakes states are stands of millions of acres of pine, maple, birch, and aspen forests. It’s a perfect place to try to figure out how trees will react to the higher levels of ozone and carbon dioxide scientists expect in the future.


(sound of beeping fence gate)


The first thing you notice at Aspen Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment Project – Aspen FACE for short – is two huge tanks inside the fenced in enclosure. Each one is bigger than an 18-wheel tanker truck. They’re full of carbon dioxide… CO2. So much CO2 is used in this experiment, the tanks are filled twice a day.


(sound of filling tanks)


If you looked at the site from an airplane, you’d see 12 circular tree stands surrounded by 30 foot high pipes. Those pipes pour CO2 or ozone gases or both into the air surrounding birch, sugar maple, and aspen trees. The scientists know that greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere have been increasing. They believe two centuries of industrial pollution has contributed to the problem. And they expect the CO2 and ozone levels to double by the end of this century. They’re raising the level of greenhouse gasses in different mixes to see what the predicted levels will do to forests.


This open air project is different than previous experiments. David Karnosky is with Michigan Tech. He’s the Project Manager for Aspen FACE. He says before these kinds of projects, they just tested trees inside places like greenhouses.


“We needed to get out of those chambers. We needed to have a more realistic, real world sort of situation where we had multiple trees. We wanted real intact forest communities. We didn’t want to have just a small number of trees inside of a chamber.”


The United States Department of Energy launched this experiment in Wisconsin’s northwoods seven years ago. Karnosky says they’re learning how the trees react to the higher CO2 levels, and that could shape the future of the world’s timber industry.


“Who will be the winners? Who will be the losers? Will aspen or birch or sugar maple? In northern Wisconsin here we’ve got probably 40 million acres of those species mixes. What’s going to happen under elevated CO2 in the next 100 years? Will these forests remain as they are?”


(sound of driving on gravel)


Driving to one of the experimental circles, we pull up to a ring of trees. Mark Kubiske is one of the two full-time on-site researchers.


“Now this particular ring is an elevated CO2 plot. CO2 is delivered through this copper pipe. It runs to that fan, there’s a large fan right on the end of that gray building.”


The scientists have found that trees in the CO2 circles grow 30 percent faster than trees without the gas.


“The trees are larger in diameter, they’re straight, they have lots of leaf area, they just look very healthy. That is just in tremendous contrast to the ozone ring. We’ll go up around the corner and look at one.”


Nearby another circle of trees is not doing nearly as well. The trees are skinny, twisted not as tall as the other sites. Higher ozone levels are hurting the trees.


At the sites where pipes emit both ozone and CO2, the tree growth seems normal – except for some stunted maple trees. The leaves of the aspen and birch take in much of the CO2, convert it to sugar which goes to its roots, eventually becoming a natural part of the soil. That suggests forests may help alleviate gases that cause global warming. The Project Director, David Karnosky says CO2 and ozone appear to cancel each other out. But he says it’s too early to draw any firm conclusions. Ultimately, he says governments will be able to look at this glimpse into the future and try to come up with emissions policies that help.


“The whole issue of the Kyoto protocol, our government not signing off on that. There’s been some relaxing of the feelings from what I’ve seen from the President’s report now that they’re beginning to realize that elevated CO2 is having an impact on global warming and could be impacting our plant communities.”


Karnosky says it’s possible that besides reducing emissions, governments might determine that planting more trees might be very helpful in reducing greenhouse gasses worldwide.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.

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Gm and Dow Launch Fuel Cell Testing Site

General Motors and Dow Chemical have opened a test facility designed to make fuel cells more viable. Fuel cells use hydrogen to create electricity, with the only waste products being water and heat. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman reports:

Transcript

General Motors and Dow Chemical have opened a test facility designed to make fuel cells more
viable. Fuel cells use hydrogen to create electricity, with the only waste products being water and
heat. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman reports:


The test site is located at Dow Chemical’s facility in Freeport, Texas. The fuel cell station will
use hydrogen that’s a by-product from the plant’s processes. The electricity that’s generated will,
in turn, be used by the plant. Julie Beamer heads GM’s efforts to make fuel cells commercially
viable. She says, over time, the facility will generate a megawatt of electricity.


“To put that into perspective, a megawatt is really the equivalent of powering about 700 average
size U.S. homes.”


Beamer says GM will learn valuable lessons from the site that will help it create fuel cell cars by
the next decade. The technology is seen as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But a recent
report out last week from the National Academy of Sciences says it will take decades before fuel
cells are widespread in automobiles.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Poorman.