After years of work, Belmont finally has a climate action plan. A draft of the plan, written by the Sustainable Belmont task force, has been released for review online and calls for big changes in both personal and municipal energy use in order to cut Belmont’s net carbon emissions by 80% by the year 2050. Sustainable Belmont is a task force of the Vision 21 Implementation Committee.
The plan, which can be downloaded as a PDF file online, is designed to be a roadmap for the town to reduce its enviornmental footprint — in particular by reducing its emissions of Carbon Dioxide, or CO2, says Sustainable Belmont member Ian Todreas.
The report finds that changes in Belmont’s carbon footprint will require major changes in domestic energy use, as residences account for more than 75% of the town’s carbon dioxide emissions. Automobiles, electricity use and home heating using gas and oil account for almost all of the town’s CO2 emissions. But the draft climate action plan says that the town’s political and municipal leaders will have to take the lead in shaping domestic energy use, with a particular focus on The Belmont Municipal Light Dept. (BMLD).
Among the CAP report’s findings and recommendations:
The town should hire an Energy Manager and establish an Energy Committee to oversee CAP implementation town wide, be a liason for climate issues within the town and with other communities, and act as a reference for all CAP related issues in bids/contracts, etc.
Belmont should take aggressive steps to reduce heat loss and increase energy efficiency in Town-owned buildings. The town should also foster energy conservation in its town fleet of vehicles and by town employees.
At the level of policy, Sustainable Belmont’s CAP recommends big changes as well. The town should make the needs of pedestrians, public transportation and bicyclists a bigger part of road planning and design. The CAP plan also recommends incorporating state zoning exemptions for renewable energy into the local zoning codes.
Trees, which help scrub CO2 from the air and provide a natural source of cooling in hot weather, end up being a frequent target of policy changes. The town is encouraged to restore its street tree maintenance program, require the planting of trees in close proximity to new or substantially renovated structures and require builders of private property (new or substantial renovation) to replace any tree whose removal is required by the construction with a newly planted tree.
For residents, Sustainable Belmont takes a safe path — urging town residents to use energy efficient heating and cooling systems and appliances and to be mindful of energy use in transportation by walking, taking public transit or car pooling to work. A “ten step” program for reducing energy consumption is available here.
CAP authors say that the town’s municipal sector must take the lead in changing behavior. The BMLD is encouraged to implement a rate structure that discourages electricity consumption during periods of peak demand, provide incentives and rewards for BMLD staff to work toward reduced greenhouse emissions in town and do a better job of disseminating of information to the community
Trees are tricky, because (if you currently use fuel oil to heat) solar heat can be kind of handy in the winter, and trees to the south (a good idea in the summer) interfere with that. In our household, at least, we burn many more gallons of fuel oil than gasoline.
probert:
As a flavoring ingredient in the climate action plan recipe to reduce personal CO2 emissions for the citizens of Belmont, perhaps the ‘Sustainable Belmont task force’ should toss-in the promotion of daintily strolling or walking as an alternative to swift running or jogging.
What are your thoughts?
Kind regards,
Wayne Grow or Waingro
Wayne,
If you read the report you would see in Section 3.1.2 it states “promotion of daintily strolling will be addressed after the fee implementation to parents who use brown bags for packing their child's lunch”. I found Section 4.6.1 more interesting… renaming the High School “Albert Gore Sustainable High”. Section 5.8.1 was somewhat groundbreaking “Why Belmont should return to the popular dirt roads of the 1890's” It's good reading but a day late.
On a more serious note… the clamor over the $1.36m seems to be dying down so maybe we escape this year relatively pain free. It also helps that the Dow is back up around 8k which will help with Cap Gains revenue to the State next Q.
And thus the Belmont chapter of Drill Baby Drill Local 182 was formed…
Y'all are a laugh riot. This ought to matter to Belmont — if sea level comes up a meter, how much more often do you think Winn Brook will get flooded? When we rebuild the high school, are we going to take the trouble to raise its foundation an extra meter or two? That'll cost.
If we intend to cut our greenhouse gas production, it won't happen by accident, and 80% in 40 years is an aggressive goal. If we're still driving cars, and still burning fossil fuels in them, an 80% reduction is like improving from 25mpg, to 125mpg — or improving to 63mpg, and driving half as much. Biofuels are unlikely — the entire US corn crop, converted to ethanol, gives us 21% of our current gasoline consumption, and growing corn is not exactly carbon neutral anyhow.
I haven't figured out how the heck we're supposed to deal with heating; fuel-burning heat is a big contributor, and the alternatives are expensive. Back when oil was over $4/gallon, I was looking pretty seriously. Swapping a car for a bike is not that hard, and LEDs will be much cheaper and better in ten years, but freezing in your efficiently-lit house is no fun.
Another big contributor, often not recognized, is what you eat. Not where it is grown, that is a much smaller factor, but what, and how it is produced. If I ride my bike to work, it makes me a little hungrier. If I eat beef (or pork, or lamb) for those extra calories, I might as well be driving an SUV. Mammals convert food to meat very inefficiently, and the food that we feed them (American-grown corn) in turn has its own largish greenhouse gas footprint, as do the manure “lagoons” associated with large farms. Sadly, shrimp is also a poor choice.
(You can look it up, in a not-that-well-written paper:
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~gidon/papers/nutri/… )
And yes, I know, not very popular, to give up beef, drive a dinky car half as much, ride a bike for the rest. Those are at least all cheap, and there are other good reasons to ride a bike. Global warming looked likely 15 years ago when we bought a house here; I remember checking the elevation then. It looks more likely now.
PJ — it's great if we dodge it this year, but the budget problem is inherent in sub-inflationary-sub-wage-growth limits on local revenues; it's either periodic overrides, ever-increasing money from the state, or actual cuts — anything else is fairy tales, not that those aren't popular. A single infusion of money or new commercial development can put overrides off for a bit, but only a limited bit. Economic growth usually exceeds inflation, and it compounds, meaning that it (like inflation) is exponential — and exponential functions always win, and the exponential with the biggest base (median wage growth) beats all other exponentials (inflation, Prop 2.5).
Some of these suggestions seem quite reasonable, but hiring an energy manager? Surely that money could be put to far better use!
Some of these suggestions seem quite reasonable, but hiring an energy manager? Surely that money could be put to far better use!