‘Net zero’ petition critics must understand which form of net zero is proposed for city
On behalf of the Cambridge Committee for Net Zero Buildings, I want to thank everyone who participated in last week’s opening round of public hearings on the Connolly petition, our citizen zoning amendment to promote renewable energy alternatives in the operation of large, new buildings in the city.
The third week of August might have seemed an unlikely time for officials to take up an important policy initiative, but as North Cambridge resident Charles Teague told city councillors last week: “We’re on the clock, because the climate is on the clock.”
At Tuesday’s Planning Board hearing, more than 30 residents signed up to testify during public comment, forcing the board to ask people in the standing-room-only crowd to cut their remarks to two minutes apiece.
In the end, 75 percent of those speaking expressed support for our proposal, but the board didn’t have time to begin deliberations. Another meeting is being scheduled, possibly for Sept. 17.
The following afternoon, backed by another standing-room-only crowd, we made the case for net zero emissions to members of the City Council’s Ordinance Committee at City Hall.
“Exactly the right issue”
Joining our presentation team on Wednesday was state Sen. Will Brownsberger, who told the councillors, “This petition is focused on exactly the right issue.”
“We need to be going very far to reduce our emissions from new buildings,” Brownsberger said.
After all, Cambridge is in the middle of a great building boom, and building operations account for 82 percent of our city’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“So if we’re going to come anywhere close to achieving the reductions that we are aspiring to achieve statewide, we need to be going very far toward reducing emissions from new buildings, because new buildings are going to be here for a very long time,” Brownsberger added.
This sentiment – that we need to act now to reduce emissions – was echoed by School Committee member Patty Nolan, who spoke during Wednesday’s lengthy public comment period.
“I see this discussion as a reality check, because the current path we’re on will not get us to our goals,” Nolan said. “Let’s remember that the goal of a 20 percent reduction from 1990 levels, which was in the original 2002 Climate Protection Plan, was not met.”
The realization that construction has been thwarting our progress on emissions goals helped spur the City Council to declare a Climate Emergency in 2009.
Many speakers at Wednesday’s hearing lamented that bold action to cut emissions has remained elusive, despite a communitywide Climate Emergency Congress that included various institutional stakeholders in 2009 and 2010.
“I view this as putting the Climate Emergency back on the table, and I’m really glad that we’re doing this,” said councillor Minka vanBeuzekom at the tail end of Wednesday’s hearing.
Not everyone has signed on to our proposal to restrict emissions from new buildings.
The Chamber of Commerce worries that our proposal will make the zoning process more complicated for real estate developers, and representatives of organized labor were out in force on Wednesday to warn councillors that our proposal might cause developers to look elsewhere for projects.
Far more flexible
These are very important concerns, but before anyone concludes that our proposal is too bold for Cambridge, we need to make sure that everyone is talking about the same thing.
Critics of our proposal have focused generally on net zero energy, the absolute strictest of efficiency standards, whereby new buildings are designed to produce all of the energy they consume.
Our proposal calls for something far more flexible.
We recognize that in Cambridge, with our focus on smart growth and transit-oriented development, it does not make sense to require every new building to generate all of its own power.
So we are calling for something different: We start by asking developers to strive for net zero energy, but we set the bottom line in a far more flexible place called net zero emissions.
To achieve net zero emissions, building operators can tap into affordable, off-site sources of renewable energy. In Kendall Square, the 350,000-square-foot Genzyme Center has sourced 100 percent of its electricity from off-site renewables for a number of years, and reports indicate that this arrangement has actually saved the tenants money.
In the coming weeks, we look forward to working with all stakeholders to build support for our proposal.
If we work together and focus on all available options for managing our carbon footprint, we will be able to adopt a standard that makes sense for Cambridge – one that allows us to continue with our policy of growth without walking away from the need to cut emissions.
To defend his petition as reasonable and attainable, Connolly cites the precedent of the 2005 Genzyme Center which, as he correctly points out “has sourced 100 percent of its electricity from off-site renewables for a number of years, and reports indicate that this arrangement has actually saved the tenants money.” That’s a formulation which obscures more than it reveals.
It’s perfectly true that the Genzyme Center sources all of its electricity from renewable sources. But that costs its tenant more; it has not “actually saved the tenants money.” Connolly seems to be conflating the energy efficient design of the LEED Platinum building, which has lowered its electricity bills, with the decision to purchase renewable energy – which, while laudable, is more expensive than buying power from an emissions-spewing coal plant. Moreover, the decision to purchase electric power from more expensive sources is made much easier by the fact that the building relies on the Kendall cogeneration plant for the steam that it uses to heat and cool the structure. Cogeneration is an environmentally-friendly technology that reuses steam which might otherwise have been vented into the atmosphere, but it doesn’t meet any definition of net-zero emissions or net-zero energy. So both the claim that purchasing renewable energy saves money, and the use of the Genzyme Center as a precedent for a large development that meets the net zero emissions standards of this petition are demonstrably false.
It’s also worth noting that the costs of building the Genzyme Center were driven up by roughly 20% in order to make the building energy efficient. With a client demanding a LEED Platinum building and promising longterm occupancy, that investment made sense for the building’s developer, and Genzyme itself can recoup a portion (although unlikely all) of that investment in reduced energy bills over the ensuing years. That may not seem a terribly large premium for a profitable biopharma firm, but for a multi-family housing project, raising construction costs by 20% would have a significant and unfortunate impact on affordability.
Think about what this petition means, in practical terms. Imagine a young Cambridge family with two working parents and a new child, ready to move out of their cramped rental apartment and set down more permanent roots in our community by purchasing a home. Their old apartment, like most of Cambridge’s housing stock, was probably built before the Second World War. Its uninsulated walls and single-paned windows shed heat in the winter and cold air in the summer, because the tenants foot the utility bill, leaving the landlord with little incentive to upgrade the unit. The landlord still hasn’t replaced the decade-old appliances with Energy Star models, either, because that would cost him money, and the tenants would reap the savings. If our family is like the overwhelming majority of Cambridge households, it purchases its electricity from non-renewable sources, and heats the unit with carbon-emitting gas. But now, having scrimped and saved for years, they think they’ve finally put together enough for a downpayment in Cambridge’s overheated real estate market, in which demand far outstrips supply. But when they visit new developments, they discover that they’ll need 20% more than they expected, because the Connolly petition has raised construction costs. So they stay in their old, inefficient apartment for another year. Then, when they’re finally ready to buy a new home, somewhat smaller and much more expensive than they’d hoped, they discover that their projected family budget needs another adjustment. While almost everyone else in Cambridge is welcome to purchase their electricity from non-renewable sources, and most do, they and their prospective new neighbors are not only charged a premium to make their units more energy efficient, but also required to buy more expensive renewable energy. Maybe they bite the bullet, and find a way to make ends meet. More likely, they move out to a stand-alone suburban home that meets no energy efficiency standards whatsoever, buy two cars, and commute back to their Cambridge jobs every day, adding to traffic and emissions on our roads. The petition, in other words, places the entire onus for addressing climate change on those purchasing or renting new homes or offices in Cambridge, shielding existing residents and businesses, which are responsible for almost all of our emissions, from taking any action to address them. How is this either wise or fair? And how can it possible be effective?
The challenges of climate change are both real and pressing. It is, in fact, too important an issue to be addressed through petitions that try to solve a complicated issue by focusing on just one piece of a the puzzle. We need to make new construction more energy efficient. We need to make our enormous stock of inefficient residences, offices, and businesses more energy efficient. And we need to make sure that we’re achieving these goals in a way that does not reduce the diversity of our neighborhoods, nor the character of our communities. Those are serious goals. They deserve serious solutions.
I’m sorry, but to debate the individual and speculative impact on a middle class family in Cambridge, is to miss the whole point of the Net-Zero proposal. It’s like arguing about the pattern of the curtains in the lounge on the Titanic. What we need to do is exactly what Mike Connolly and our Green-centric friends are proposing. It’s time to say “Stop!” It’s time to act. And act decisively! Half of Cambridge is projected to be submerged in 50 years if we don’t do something dramatic today to start changing the direction and movement of events. Hurricane Sandy would have smashed and decimated our shoreline had the wind shifted. If that didn’t deliver the message, then maybe we still need the wind to shift, and the wreckage to be indisputable. The only thing we have within our power to change is our own behavior. Hopefully by enacting Net Zero we will ignite a movement and raise the bar on what we collectively demand from ourselves—as only a city with Harvard, MIT and enough aggregated brain power to illuminate the world—can reasonably be expected to do. Let’s not attempt to kill another big idea with the death of a thousand cuts.
It sounds like Mike Connolly is saying, “Yes, Cambridge can do better, we need to work together to cut our emissions right away…” but someone named “Commenter” is saying: “Net Zero? Not In My Back Yard!”
Also, I’ve heard some of the critics complain that the Connolly petition “only focuses on one piece of the puzzle.” What’s wrong with that? Will Brownsberger says this is “exactly the right issue.” And I’m willing to bet that if Green Cambridge came forward with a plan to solve every climate issue, then these same critics would say, “hold on, we can only focus on one thing at a time!”
Oi, I really don’t know how you guys can stand yourselves. “Its exactly the right issue” I bet Brownsberger said these exact same words last Thanksgiving when asked if he liked mashed potatoes. What was he going to say? “Net-Zero? Never heard of him?”
Paul Steven Stone wants to kill development in Central Square, this has been an agenda item since the conversation began. The discussion of Net-Zero development is yet another chapter in the “how can we stop the future” play book that the real NIMBY crowd is pushing. Can you honestly say to me that if we adopted this petition that it would have any impact whatsoever to the melting polar icecaps or the eventual rise in sea level? I dare you; because you know you can’t, because it won’t.
So lets just be honest here instead of passing around the BS. We have a school being built right now in the city that is supposed to be “net-zero” why aren’t those guys speaking at the table lauding the clear benefit? Connolly touts the flexibility of the petition … but as I read it, its just a shell game; cap and trade as a means to say we’re emission free or generating our own energy when we aren’t. Instead you rely on federal subsidy that is bound to shift/change/dissolve as a means to unequivocally suggest that “the math works.”
It doesn’t and you know it doesn’t. I appreciate that some activists truly wish to make the world a better place and with that mandate charge forth in earnest to do just that. What you folks are doing is slowing down the pace of evolution by muddling what should be an important conversation with your sensationalist purposefully obstructive nonsense and its borderline criminal.
The Net-Zero petition won’t stop global warming or reduce the rate at which our oceans are rising. Cambridge is already a leader in environmental design and we are getting better every year. This petition over reaches into the pocket of the developer and the property owner in a way that far exceeds the police power granted in zoning, placing excessive costs on the commercial base that fuels this economy, and for what? So the smug closet conservative NIMBY’s that have kept Central Square locked in amber and have contributed far more to the rise in housing costs in this city than the loss of rent control ever could can sip their fairly traded lattes and say, “We did it first.”