The Cool Current - Conventional Wisdom, Coalition-Style

Global climate change and rising energy costs are issues of enormous magnitude. Today, the Earth’s atmosphere contains 32% more carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gases, than at the start of the industrial era in the mid-1800s, and the result is altered long-term weather patterns.

By reducing energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, we can reduce pollution and dependency on foreign fossil fuels, save taxpayers money, improve air quality, reduce traffic congestion, support job creation through the development and deployment of new technologies – and reduce the threat of global warming.

Recently, through the work of the Carbon Coalition, founded in 2003 by Clean Air-Cool Planet, voters in more than 160 New Hampshire communities passed resolutions urging their towns to take action on reducing GHG emissions. One recommendation of the resolution is for each town to form an energy committee in order to take action. Unfortunately, rural New Hampshire communities have few resources to help them accomplish this, and community-based efforts throughout New Hampshire have struggled to engage community members in making the changes and that achieve reductions in energy and GHG emissions. Read more on our website.

In southwestern New Hampshire, 32 of the 36 towns that are within the district served by the Southwest Region Planning Commission passed the statewide resolution urging towns to take leadership on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Because of this strong commitment, Clean Air-Cool Planet (CA-CP) and Antioch New England Institute (ANEI), in coordination with the Southwest Region Planning Commission (SWRPC), are undertaking an initiative to assist the communities in this district in implementing energy action. This project is called Cool Monadnock (www.coolmonadnock.org).

CA-CP and ANEI will undertake a joint, three-year project to achieve significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by coordinating with the SWRPC to help towns take action to reduce their energy use and energy costs. CA-CP/ANEI will provide the support, tools, and coordination needed to implement an effective model of regional, multi-town climate action. A steering committee has been formed to guide the process, including NH Carbon Challenge, Monadnock Land Conservancy, the New Hampshire EPA, Jordan Institute, and the City of Keene.

CA-CP/ANEI has established a task force of representatives from each community and key people from each town throughout the region. The first Task Force meeting took place on January 28th. CA-CP/ANEI will provide technical assistance, training, and guidance to the Task Force and other community members to develop and help implement energy plans for each town as well as a regional climate action plan. Interns supervised by CA-CP/ANEI will conduct all the inventories for each town in the region. Training topics will include how to engage community members, develop a climate action plan, implement specific greenhouse gas reduction programs, and explore regional approaches to climate change. The goal is for each town to have an energy committee formed, an energy inventory completed, and a plan to reduce energy and greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2008.

The Campus Carbon Calculator has now been downloaded by over 800 colleges, universities and independent schools, and CA-CP is offering support and guidance to hundreds of these campuses. Recent success stories include the University at Buffalo (SUNY), where the UB Green office has just released its Climate Action Report, outlining comprehensive GHG emissions trends from 1997-2004 and offering recommendations for university stakeholders and decision makers in cutting the overall campus carbon footprint. CA-CP worked with researcher Jim Simon and others at UB to help see this report to completion and the UB office has leveraged the report to do extensive outreach and education, hosting a reception and five town hall meetings, and their efforts have been featured in, among other places, a campus newspaper article.

Duquesne University in Pittsburgh not only recently completed its first greenhouse gas inventory, but is already offering the benefit of its “lessons learned” to other local colleges, universities and high schools getting ready to embark on this task. The University’s Center for Environmental Research & Education hosted a workshop earlier this month for students, faculty and staff from other area schools on how to measure and manage institutional carbon emissions (at which CA-CP presented).
Both of these schools are great examples of how simple research can provide multiple benefits – education for students, outreach to stakeholders, and planning and management data for institutional leaders.

On January 30, more than 250 people attended an educational program to learn about investment in climate change. The symposium, the first of three in the series, was organized by the Connecticut Hedge Fund Association together with Clean Air - Cool Planet, the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale, and the Connecticut Departments of Environmental Protection, Insurance, and Treasury. The well attended event brought together insurance and investment management leaders to explore the risks and opportunities in "Investing in Climate Change," and included a discussion of the new Green Exchange trading platform established by a NYMEX-led consortium of leading financial institutions.