Tag: ice skating

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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Dump Generates Creative Power Solution

Methane is one of the main by-products of landfills. It’s also a
fuel, which can be used to create electricity. In 1978, the federal
government began requiring utilities to buy this methane-generated
power. But as energy prices dropped, methane producers found their
profits disappeared as well. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports, they’re looking for new alternatives:

Transcript

Methane is one of the main by-products of landfills. It’s also a fuel, which can be used to create

electricity. In 1978, the federal government began requiring utilities to buy this

methane-generated power. But as energy prices dropped, methane producers found their profits

disappeared as well. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, they’re looking

for new alternatives:


(sound of blower)


Frank Lavadera stands proudly next to a small, green pipe sticking out of the ground. It’s

attached to a fan, which is sucking methane gas out of this landfill in Saratoga Springs, New

York.


“It pulls the gas from the landfill to this particular point and pushes it across the street to

where the engine system is, to where it’s used.”


(sound of skating)


Where it’s used in the town’s skating rink. The landfill produces enough methane to provide

eighty-five percent of the rink’s electricity. The methane is pumped into a generator. That

produces the power that freezes the ice, keeps the rink lit, and heats the water for the showers.

Lavadera designed the project. He’s an engineer at Cluf, Harbor and Associates in nearby Albany.

He was originally hired to close the city’s landfill, which is filled with horse manure from the

nearby racetrack.


“One of the things we found was that this particular landfill had a tremendous amount of methane

gas, above and beyond what would normally be expected. And as a result, we needed to collect this

methane as opposed to just passively venting gas into the atmosphere. But simultaneously, the city

constructed this ice skating rink, and it was very natural connection that we’d match the two up

together to utilize the gas.”


The city is now saving fifty-thousand dollars a year in utility costs. At one time, they probably

would have sold the electricity to a power company and made a profit. Utilities are required to

buy methane-generated electricity from landfills at the same price it costs the utility to make

it. The problem is, the overall price of producing electricity has dropped drastically. In New

York State, it’s gone from six cents per kilowatt-hour in the 1980’s to about two cents today.


Shelley Cohen is head of the EPA’s methane outreach program.


“Utility prices in many states are still very cheap and they’re not able to offer prices for the

landfill gas that make it economical to develop a project. That being said, the landfill and the

landfill developer generally look for other options for developing gas projects.”


Cohen knows about eighty landfills in the U.S. that have found other ways to recycle their

methane. Many simply use it themselves to heat their buildings and run generators. Others sell it

to neighbors. There are asphalt and paper companies that use methane to run their boilers. And in

Canada, the methane from one landfill heats four greenhouses. Cohen says these projects are making

good use of one of the most potent greenhouse gases.


“The environmental benefits are tremendous. Because you’re capturing the methane from the

landfill. You’re reducing those emissions from the landfill and then you’re somehow utilizing it,

which means you’re also offsetting the need to use other forms of polluting energy, such as coal.

So it has this double environmental benefit.”


But Frank Lavadera says landfills still shy away from these projects. For one, they have to build

a system to convert the methane to electricity. In Saratoga Springs, that cost more than a million

dollars. And two, the farther the methane has to travel, the more expensive it’ll be. So, they

need to have a willing neighbor.


“That’s what made this project work very well, is we had the ice skating rink directly across the

street from the landfill. That probably is what will drive methane gas projects in the future as

time goes on, is matching up landfills with high users that might be close by so they could

effectively utilize the electricity.”


There’s another possibility on the horizon. Environmental groups are pushing for a federal tax

credit to make it easier for landfills to produce electricity. John Skinner is president of the

Solid Waste Association of North America.


“Our proposal is for a federal tax credit for landfills that use the methane gas as a fuel and

that will adjust the economics so that it’s economically feasible to do so. There’s probably

another 250 to 300 that would come on-line that won’t come on-line otherwise.”


Skinner says a previous tax credit helped create more than two-hundred new projects. But it

expired two years ago. The current proposal is expected to come to a vote in the House sometime

next year.


(sound of skating)


Meanwhile, the more creative landfill owners are forging ahead. They have to find a way to get rid

of their methane. But rather than seeing it as a waste product, they view it as a resource. Now,

they just have to find someone who’s willing to use it.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Skating Canal a Unique Winter Experience

Winter can be tough. It’s cold, it’s slippery and it seems to go on
forever. Some people choose to hibernate. But others, like the
residents
of Ottawa, Ontario, try to make the best of it. Ottawa is home to the
longest skating rink in the world. As the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s
Karen Kelly found, it’s a place where young and old come to celebrate
winter:

Skating Canal a Unique Winter Experience

Winter can be tough. It’s cold, it’s slippery and it seems to go on
forever. Some people choose to hibernate. But others, like the residents
of Ottawa, Ontario, try to make the best of it. Ottawa is home to the
longest skating rink in the world. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly found, it’s a place where young and old come to celebrate
winter: