I want to get on/off/on the bus

No, I’m not opposed to taking transit. I just want to be able to step off now and then to run some errands.  The TTC, on the other hand, wants to hold me hostage. 

While many other transit systems have payment systems that allow riders to hop on and off during a set travel period, the TTC carries on with an arcane transfer system that completely handcuffs its riders.

Candidates, get hot under the collar about climate!

All politics is local, which may explain the curb-level view of issues being presented in the current municipal election campaign.  No reason to avoid discussing potholes, bike lanes, councillor budgets and garbage pick-up.  But it seems to have escaped the attention of our mayoralty candidates that we just steamed through the second warmest year on record, and a decade of record breaking temperatures are telling us that climate change is not a far off threat – it is happening here and now.

Where does Toronto's air pollution come from?

Running for mayor? Running for council? Running a business? Running a household? Want to develop some smart policies and actions to help our city in the face of dangerous and financially risky climate change?

Then you need to understand where our global warming pollution comes from. Just like the old adage says: "you don’t manage what you don’t measure."

In 2007, Toronto Atmospheric Fund collaborated with the city to compile Toronto’s first greenhouse gas (GHG) and air pollutant emissions inventory (see http://www.toronto.ca/taf/inventory.htm ). I admit, it’s not exactly summer beach reading -- unless you’re trying to figure out how to keep our planet from overheating. Here’s what it tells us:

· Heating our homes and workplaces and making hot water using natural gas is the overlooked elephant in the room, accounting for about 40 per cent of our total GHG emissions.

· Transportation is the elephant we see every day on our congested roads. The gasoline and diesel burned in passenger vehicles and commercial trucks produces another 40-ish per cent, and is growing.

· Landfill sites have been a big source of emissions in the past, but this is being reduced by capturing the potent methane gas produced by rotting garbage and greater diversion of organic waste.

· Emissions associated with producing electricity are about 15 per cent of the City’s carbon profile, and will continue to drop as Ontario’s remaining four polluting coal plants are shut down (by 2014 at the latest) and more renewable energy is added to the grid.

As you can see, Toronto has a whole bunch of small, medium and large sources. That means we need a “silver buckshot” not a “silver bullet” approach to reducing emissions. And that’s why my previous and future postings are about solutions that can be implemented in our city -- ideas for how to heat our homes and water without heating the planet, how to get people out of their cars or to at least share a ride, how to reduce truck traffic, how to use electricity more efficiently so we can use a higher percentage of clean renewable power.

Just as we need to keep track of the dollars, we need to keep track of the carbon – it’s a liability that we can’t afford to ignore. A key promise from any serious candidate would be to screen all major decisions and policies – capital spending, operating budgets, programs, by-laws, job descriptions, etc – for their GHG emissions impact.

About Julia Langer

Solar energy can create a healthier city

Toronto has a gas problem -- natural gas that is. We use it for space and water heating and it is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in our city (after transportation). Thousands of gas-fired water heaters and furnaces release thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide and smog pollution, pretty much at nose level.

If we want a cleaner, greener city, we need to take a cleaner, greener bath or shower. One solution is solar water heating. On warm spring and summer days, the sun will provide all the hot water you need – zero emissions. In the winter, a solar water heater can still give freezing city water a big temperature boost before it hits your conventional water heater, so you use much less gas or electricity. Over a year, a solar water heating system can halve the average Toronto home’s gas or electricity use for producing hot water.

The technology is pretty simple and it technically works: millions of solar water heaters are in use around the world. It would work practically if solar hot water were made a priority. Unfortunately, the federal government cancelled the ecoENERGY incentives (the provincial incentive is still available for now) and with currently low electricity and gas prices (which don’t take into account the real costs of generation or pollution costs), purchasers of solar water heaters now face a long payback on their investment for doing the right thing.

Compare that to the situation for solar hot water’s cousin: solar electricity generation, also known as solar PV. Recognizing the need to get rid of dirty coal power and reduce emissions, the provincial government has established a farsighted program to pay a premium for zero emission solar generated electricity. Called a “feed-in tariff”, these special rates are jumpstarting the creation of a new solar industry in Ontario and driving the cost of components down as demand heats up.

The same approach is needed for solar hot water. Because solar hot water panels actually produce more energy per area, a feed-in tariff rate of less than half of what is currently being paid for solar PV reduce solar water system payback to 10 years, a reasonable investment time frame.

The Solar Neighbourhoods pilot in east-end Toronto -- now the largest community-based solar water heating project in Canada with 100 panels on residential roofs -- proved that installing a solar water heating works for Toronto homeowners; see www.solarneighbourhoods.ca In Germany, Japan and China, the value of using the free energy of the sun to heat their home’s hot water is accepted and the technology is rapidly being adopted.

It’s time we stop questioning investments in clean, renewable energy and instead get moving to deploy a proven emissions reduction technology that can help us meet our emission reduction obligations – and create a healthier city.

About Julia Langer

We need the wind at our backs

The province floated a draft rule last week that windmills need to be more than five kilometres offshore. Frankly, that would sink the proposed Scarborough wind energy project to the bottom of Lake Ontario. Probably other offshore wind projects too. This is not good news for a City that generates less than 2% of its own power and is completely dependent on two long-distance transmission lines to get electricity into its boundaries.

No environmental or health justifications were given for this arbitrary line in the water other than citing possible noise concerns. It is hard to imagine what would be heard from windmills over a kilometre from the shore, or that that they’d be anywhere near the decibels of a lawnmower, leaf blower, air conditioner, speakers, etc -- all perfectly healthy noise sources apparently.

A five kilometre buffer makes little sense here. This is an urban environment, not the middle of Algonquin Park. If we can live cheek-by-jowl with multi-storey buildings and transportation corridors, we can find a way to accommodate wind turbines a kilometre or more offshore. And no one is against careful and responsible the planning and placement of turbines.

The concerns against even putting a wind speed measurement device have to be considered in context. To do anything meaningful to stop accelerating climate change – which unchecked will cause ever-more powerful storms that could pound the Scarborough Bluffs into a new set of offshore islands -- some significant changes are needed around here, and fast. Sticking our heads in the sand is not the answer, nor is drawing simplistic lines on a map.

Toronto’s “Power to Live Green” strategy for reducing global warming pollution requires boosting home-grown renewable energy generation in our city (and definitely not building a third mega-transmission line into the city through neighbourhoods and ravines). In tandem, the strategy also foresees attracting local economic activity and stimulating good green jobs and tax base in our city, facilitated by the Green Energy Act. Not much of a pitch if we can’t even get a few turbines spinning on our own waterfront.

Opponents of wind energy seem to resent the sight of wind turbines to feed Toronto’s appetite for power, but they also oppose the city’s efforts to take some responsibility for its own power needs. It’s not a very coherent or sustainable response to reducing our city’s enormous climate footprint. Arbitrarily cutting off the opportunity for significant offshore wind generation is going to make the job much harder. It’s time for candidates for Council and Mayor to make a stand on this issue.

About Julia Langer

Whack the HST and climate change

Come August, when you open up those hydro and gas bills, you’re going to see an 8 per cent increase since the HST will apply to energy purchases. Some (most?) will just suck it up, but the smart ones will get even. They will get their money back by lowering their energy use by at least 8 per cent. The government will still get its half pound of flesh, but it will be relatively painless for those paying slimmed down bills.

Sounds too easy to be true? Not really. Most residents and businesses can cut their energy use by at least 10 per cent with very little effort. More efficient lighting and appliances, ensuring things are off when not in use including those “always on” devices that suck power 24/7, programmable thermostats, signing up for Hydro’s PeakSaver, caulking and draftproofing, adding insulation. None of this is terribly hard and the investment pays back, especially as the HST adds 8 per cent and energy rates go up.

Prompting some of us to stop wasting so much energy would be an upside. But as a way of getting us to dramatically reduce climate and air pollution, the HST is a fairly blunt instrument. What we need is a clear, significant financial signal that burning fossil fuels and wasting energy are unacceptable. The dominant view among both climate scientists and leading economists is that putting a price on carbon is what it will take to get us to take energy conservation and renewable energy seriously.

Cities are going to take it on the chin from climate change, but the big sticks for quickly and decisively driving down greenhouse gas emissions – taxation and pricing – are generally considered the domain of senior governments. The federal government is sitting on the sidelines on this issue, waiting (possibly in vain) for our neighbours to the south. Ontario made a commitment to carbon pricing (and carbon trading with a several provinces and U.S. states) but seems to have stalled out on this file.

Senior governments are moving glacially while the ice caps melt. Probably a good time for Toronto to pick up the big stick, and get the financial upside for investment in solutions to protect our rapidly unravelling environment.

About Julia Langer

Electric cars need to be rolled out wisely

Ready to plug into the electric car revolution? Having an electric vehicle parked in the driveway is one way to reduce climate pollution. And impress the neighbours. But really, we’d all be better off (and more impressive) if we took the bus or a bike.

Electric vehicles (including plug-in hybrids and all-electric) can definitely play a role in helping Toronto reduce greenhouse gas and air polluting emissions. Given Ontario’s current electricity mix, fully electric vehicles could cut emissions by 87 per cent compared to a conventional car, according to one estimate. As our electricity gets even greener -- as we phase out coal and bring on more renewable power -- this advantage will only grow.

But having commuters simply switch en masse from gasoline powered to electric powered vehicles won’t solve our climate woes. For starters, despite rapid advancements in electric vehicle technology, it will be a decade or two before a wholesale switchover to all-electric cars and trucks could even happen. We need emission reductions now – the ice caps are melting!

Second, in a city with worse traffic congestion than L.A., bumper-to-bumper electric vehicles aren’t going to add anything to our economic efficiency or quality of life. Our love affair with the private car is costly in terms of resources consumed, green spaces paved over and the energy-intensive sprawling development that it encourages.

Electric vehicles do have an important role to play in where there are fewer options for shifting to transit, telecommuting or using other transportation modes (walking, bicycling). Ramping up the use of electric vehicles in fleets -- including corporate service fleets, public works fleets, taxis and car sharing fleets -- is a good way to reduce lots of emissions since these cars get driven a lot, and often locally.

Fleets can also drive the development of supporting infrastructure, like plug-in points and two-way grid capacity because they create a concentrated demand. Toronto Atmospheric Fund has launched EV300 to accelerate uptake of electric vehicles by public and private fleets in the GTA; more information at www.FleetWise.ca

For the rest of us, getting out of our cars is the true solution to climate change, and a key to improving Toronto’s prosperity and quality of life. Cities, provinces and the federal government need to do their part by dramatically increasing support for rapid, frequent and convenient transit -- both capital and operating costs.

We need to do our part by leaving the car at home as much as possible and by encouraging the development of flexible workplaces that support telecommuting, flex hours, and other solutions that take the stress and pollution out of starting and ending the workday.

About Julia Langer

Invest in energy efficiency -- it saves tax dollars

Think your energy bill is a high? You don’t know the half of it.

As a taxpayer, you also help pay the bills of the City, hospitals, schools and other public institutions. The City of Toronto alone spends more than $230 million a year on gas and hydro. Ontario’s hospitals rack up about a $200 million energy bill. Ontario universities and colleges shell out about $90 million per year to keep the lights on and the heat working.

So when it comes to public sector cost control, the real action isn’t in curbing paper clip use or other office expenses, it is in increasing energy efficiency.

We could cut institutional energy use by 10 per cent without even breaking a sweat. Kaaachiing – more than $50 million a year saved from just the folks listed above. With a bit of effort, 20 per cent reductions can be achieved -- now we’re into nine figure savings of more than $100 million a year. Push harder, with a longer payback period, and energy use can be slashed by at least 30 per cent -- anyone like the sound of around $160 million a year not being drawn from our tax dollars?

And there’s a double bonus. When our buildings aren’t leaking energy, our city and our province aren’t leaking money (to Alberta to pay for the natural gas). Those dollars will do a lot more good if we can keep them in our local economy and spend them instead on energy efficiency, renewable energy or combined heat and power systems.

Ontario has had a pretty rough ride in this "great recession" and we could use the jobs that come with improving the efficiency of our cities and institutions. Improving building efficiency creates an amazing 14 jobs for every $1 million we spend, and these are "green" jobs with staying power.

Oh, and there’s a triple bottom line: we stop burning energy, we stop burning money, and we stop climate change pollution.

So how are we going to plug the leaks, save some dough and save the planet? One of the biggest hurdles to implementing efficiency is access to capital – you need to invest to reap those savings and benefits for decades to come.

That’s why we need an efficiency-focused revolving fund – low-interest loans provide the up-front capital, are repaid from the savings, paving the way for the next loan...and so on. It's a specialized bank for public sector energy savers, and it pays dividends: lower draw on your tax dollars.

The City of Toronto has been using its own money and the $20 million Better Building Partnership fund to advance efficiency, and Toronto Atmospheric Fund also provides loans. But much, much, much more capital is needed to achieve anywhere near our efficiency potential, which is why provincial and/or federal financing is key.

Imagine -- schools could replace 50-year-old boilers, hospitals could replace inefficient lighting that is on 24/7, city buildings could get some badly needed insulation, recreation centres could get money- saving solar water heating systems, and we’d all be saving rather than "burning" our tax dollars.

So the next time a candidate comes to your door – during municipal elections, next year during the provincial election, whenever there’s a federal election -- and starts talking about cutting public sector expenses, ask them: what is your plan to ensure cash-strapped public institutions cut energy use?

About Julia Langer

The brighter side of parking garages

There is a deep, dark network of caverns lying under our city and it is hungry for energy. No, this is not the beginning of a bad sci-fi novel, I’m just trying to avoid starting a blog with the words “parking garage.”

Here’s the story: there are several thousand parking garages honeycombing our city and they are energy hogs. These auto lairs have at least 250,000 light fixtures burning 24/7, consuming about 250 gigawatt hours of electricity per year. That’s a lot of juice – about enough to power 20,000 average Ontario homes.

Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to reduce the energy demand of parking garages. New lighting technologies such as Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) can cut energy use by up to 50 per cent. Combine them with advanced controls, such as occupancy sensors that dim the lights when no one is actually using the garage, and you can cut energy use by 70 per cent or more.

Nice, simple technical fix, right?! Wrong: occupancy sensors aren’t currently allowed for use in garages (or corridors) under Toronto’s Municipal Property Standards Code. Fortunately, due to some pro-active thinking and growing interest from building owners, that situation is about to change as Toronto moves its policies in line with its energy conservation goals.

The point is that more enlightened (pardon the pun) policies can make just as much of an impact on energy conservation as new technologies – and the former often needs to be adjusted to accommodate and advance the latter.

Another example: Toronto Atmospheric Fund is piloting LED fixtures in two Toronto Community Housing underground garages, and comparing them against the existing high-pressure sodium lighting system (see www.toronto.ca/taf/lightsavers.htm#lightsavers)

Early feedback from the building’s residents is that the LEDs are far brighter – maybe even too bright. Yet, measurements show that the LEDs are actually producing about 30 per cent LESS light than the high pressure sodium lamps. It turns out that perceived brightness, and more importantly visibility, has as much to do with light quality as light quantity. In this case, standards will need to catch up to the technology by paying more attention to things like “colour temperature”, “colour rendering” and light distribution.

With the right combination of technology and policy, we have the opportunity to save an enormous amount of "underground" energy while enhancing public safety and light quality. Efficiency is not about doing without, it is about doing things smarter.

About Julia Langer

Should energy efficient renos be a part of tax bill?

For the second time since 2006, the federal government has closed the doors on the program that helps homeowners improve the energy efficiency of their homes by providing incentives for things like insulation or installing a high-efficiency furnace. Ironically, the feds actually cited the popularity of the ecoEnergy program as part of the reason for its demise.

This is no time to be abandoning energy conservation. Homes are a major source of Toronto’s greenhouse gas emissions. Energy efficiency is our cheapest, fastest way to reduce these emissions. Using less energy helps us avoid the need for new electricity and gas generation facilities. Being more efficient improves our energy security and productivity, and stimulates green jobs. Yes, actions like improving insulation are cost-effective on their own -- especially with rising energy prices -- but there are still very real barriers that we need to help residents overcome.

Here is how I would revive the ecoEnergy program and give it the staying power of a double-brick century-old Toronto house.

First, provide no- or low-interest financing, particularly for larger-ticket items with relatively quick paybacks. This recognizes that a key reason people don’t tackle jobs like insulating the attic is the upfront cost.

Second, tie that financing to the house instead of the owner. This removes the “what if I sell and never realize the savings” barrier to home retrofits -- the new owner simply takes over the payments. This could be done via the property tax or utility bills that stay with the house from owner to owner. And if planned properly, utility-cost savings can cover the cost of servicing the loan.

Third, keep the incentives flowing for longer payback, high upfront cost items. For instance, solar water heating is a very effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and is a technology that is in wide use around the world. In Canada, however, the industry has had supports yanked out from under it time and time again, de-stabilizing a fledgling green sector. If we really want to develop green businesses, we need to provide some consistent, long term support to develop both markets and industry capacity.

Fourth, one of the most useful parts of the ecoEnergy program was the home assessment that helped homeowners develop a clear plan to improve the energy performance – and reduce the climate impact – of their homes. This expert assistance should be expanded into a one-window service for help with conserving gas, electricity and water as well as to provide access to all incentive programs.

Ten years ago, the Toronto Atmospheric Fund supported pilot testing of an energy efficiency incentive program, which was so successful it went national and has helped hudreds of thousands of Canadians go green. We need more, not less, support for efficiency – it’s an investment that will make Toronto greener and richer.

About Julia Langer