DENVER - On the heels of this week's U.S. Supreme Court decision temporarily blocking implementation of the Clean Power Plan, Gov. John Hickenlooper says Colorado still is committed to having the cleanest air in the nation and will continue to work to reduce emissions.
The high court's move comes after industry groups and 27 state attorneys general, including Colorado's Cynthia Coffman, filed suit to block the measure.
Jill Ryan, an Eagle County commissioner, said more than two-thirds of Coloradans support the Environmental Protection Agency's plan.
"It's really in our best interest to move forward," she said. "We have so many sunny days in Colorado that solar power just makes sense, and green industry is just starting to boom in Colorado."
Opponents of the plan claim that power plants would have to make big investments to comply with rules that might be overturned, depending on the outcome of the next election. Ryan said the Supreme Court already has upheld the EPA's authority to limit carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. A federal appeals court is expected to rule on the case later this year.
Most states in the lawsuit, which claims that the new rules are an overreach of executive authority, have close ties to fossil-fuel production. Atlantic Council senior fellow Heather Zichal, a former climate-policy adviser for the Obama administration, said she's confident the court ultimately will uphold the plan.
"States are in a position to be true leaders, despite the dysfunction of Washington around climate policy," she said. "We're certainly expecting to see a lot of action at the state level - and I, for one, am very encouraged by that."
The plan calls for reducing emissions from existing coal-fired power plants - the largest contributors to climate pollution - by 32 percent below their 2005 levels by 2030. The EPA has estimated the move would cut 870 million tons of carbon pollution and bring $54 billion in health and climate benefits.
get more stories like this via email
By Marianne Dhenin for Next City.
Broadcast version by Edwin J. Viera for New York News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration
The new schoolyard at PS 184M Shuang Wen, a grade school in Manhattan’s Chinatown, features new play equipment, a yoga circle, a stage and basketball and tennis courts.
It also has a porous turf field that can capture an estimated 1.3 million gallons of stormwater runoff, according to New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
The turf field sits atop infiltration basins, reservoirs capable of holding large volumes of stormwater. These basins, paired with a grass-roof gazebo, a student-run rain garden and a slew of new trees, can help New York City better absorb extreme precipitation, which is becoming more frequent and severe with climate change.
“Green infrastructure intercepts stormwater before it can reach a catch basin and allows it to be naturally absorbed into the ground,” explained a representative from DEP. “This creates additional capacity in the sewer system and helps to reduce flooding.”
Urban planners, architects and designers around the world are looking to make cities spongier — using nature-based solutions to better absorb water. In dense cities like New York, where open space is scarce, officials are rethinking a neighborhood mainstay: the school playground.
“Carving out the space, the actual acreage to create a new park can sometimes be cost prohibitive,” said Danielle Denk, director of the Community Schoolyards Initiative at Trust for Public Land (TPL). “But if there’s a schoolyard, that’s land that is often not used to the greatest advantage, and when it can be transformed … it becomes a really smart strategy for park creation.”
Cities across the country have begun to uproot asphalt in favor of lush, green schoolyards — or at least porous turf. TPL has helped transform more than 200 schoolyards — upgrades including adding play spaces and shaded areas — in New York City over the last 30 years with financial support from various city agencies and nonprofits. The Berkeley, California-based non-profit Green Schoolyards America has been collaborating with schools on similar projects around the globe for over a decade. And last year, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) introduced the Living Schoolyards Act, a bill that would direct federal resources toward greening school grounds. Several states, including California, Colorado and Maryland, have introduced similar legislation or guidelines.
According to TPL, most of the 90,000 public schoolyards — spanning some two million acres — nationwide are covered in asphalt, a combination of petroleum products that creates runoff when it rains and bakes in the sun.
Concrete and asphalt contribute to urban heat islands, increasing average daytime temperatures by as much as seven degrees in hot weather. Green plots of land in cities do the opposite, reducing surrounding temperatures by up to seven degrees. That can mean the difference between life and death during heat waves — which are increasing in severity and frequency as the planet heats up.
Shuang Wen Public School was a perfect candidate for an update. Located in a floodplain near the East River, its schoolyard was underwater after Superstorm Sandy struck in 2012.
Nine years later, when Hurricane Ida tore through the city, “there was not even a puddle after the tremendous amount of rain that we had,” said Mary Alice Lee, TPL’s New York City Playgrounds Director.
Schoolyards can do more than absorb rainwater and cool neighborhoods. They can also help close the park equity gap nationwide: One hundred million Americans, including 28 million kids, do not live within a ten-minute walk from a park or green space. Communities of color and low-income neighborhoods have even less access to green spaces.
“Schoolyards are an important way to create access to a park,” said Denk. “When they’re open to the community after hours, they can serve so many needs.” Studies show that access to green spaces supports physical and mental health.
Officials appear to be taking note. According to TPL, in 2022, at least 73 of the nation’s 100 largest cities opened schoolyards after hours to the general public, up from just 44 cities in 2018.
Schoolyard improvements are good for students, too.
Studies have linked vegetation in schoolyards to better school-wide academic performance, even after controlling for significant confounding factors like student poverty and minority status. Researchers suggest these improvements in academic achievement may be thanks to green schoolyards’ ability to decrease stress and mental fatigue, increase physical activity, and foster more creative play during recess.
Shuang Wen principal Jeremy Kabinoff said the new playground has allowed administrators to create clubs and host events that would not have been possible before: new tennis and track programs, a soccer league and an outdoor Halloween festival that drew more than 1,000 attendees last year.
When COVID-19 restrictions forced classroom closures, Shuang Wen was able to move classroom learning and other events outside into a still-comfortable learning environment. Kabinoff said the new facilities, including the stage, “gave students the opportunity to experience an authentic graduation experience as well, especially since COVID-19 eliminated many in-person events.”
Shuang Wen students helped design the new schoolyard through discussions, surveys and votes. Denk from TPL, who has worked with dozens of schools to upgrade yards, said students get just as excited about green infrastructure as new playground equipment. She fondly remembers an example from a group of 4th-grade students in Philadelphia.
“We learned all about water quality issues, flooding in the city, combined sewer overflows, and how the city is working to address it and how it’s a big challenge,” she says. “The students came back feeling very empowered to work on a solution in their schoolyard.”
When the time came for students to decide between expanding their playground or building a rain garden to help manage stormwater, the students chose the rain garden. “That is exciting to me,” says Denk. “When students are given the chance to do the right thing for their environment and their community, they will choose that, and that motivation carries forward in terms of how they see themselves as environmental actors and in relation to climate change.”
Marianne Dhenin wrote this article for Next City.
get more stories like this via email
By Caleigh Wells for KCRW.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration
LA is betting its clean energy future on a giant hole in the ground.
That hole next to Dockweiler Beach is large enough to fit a Macy’s department store. It’s at LADWP’s Scattergood Generating Station, and it used to be filled with one of several gas plant units until it was demolished in 2017. It’s been empty ever since.
“At the time, we said, ‘Well, why are we going to rebuild a unit that would be totally dependent on natural gas, when we are planning to be 100% clean energy in the future?’” says Jason Rondou, LADWP’s director of power system planning.
In February, LA City Council unanimously decided to spend $800 million to turn Scattergood from a methane gas plant into a hydrogen plant. The city is trying to meet an ambitious goal to run on 100% renewable energy by 2035. The first phase of that plan will be built in this hole.
t’s the latest example of Scattergood’s history of adaptation. The oldest units in the middle of the plant were built in the 1950s and take 12 hours to fully turn on. The units behind it from 2015 are cleaner, and they turn on in 10 minutes.
Decades ago, this plant used to run all the time. But with so much energy coming from solar and wind now, the plant is mainly used for backup in major heatwaves.
“Over the course of the year, we use it about 20 or 30% of the time,” says Rondou. “In the future, we estimate that we'll probably use it between 1 and 5% of the time, meaning it's rarely used. But when it's used, it's needed.” In an emergency like a wildfire or an earthquake, LA needs a power source that can turn on with the flip of a switch. Today, natural gas does that. But now, the plant is adapting again.
“Based on what we know, today, the way to provide that renewable emergency backup power is with green hydrogen,” says Rondou.
The plan is pretty simple: Instead of heating up methane gas to create electricity as it has done for the past 70 years, the plant will heat up hydrogen.
Once the hydrogen unit is installed, the plan is to decommission the original gas units next to it installed in the 1950s.
“Combustion is just like any combustion as far as hydrogen goes, but we’ve got to remember that hydrogen doesn't have any carbon in it. So that's the beauty of it,” says LADWP Director of Power System Engineering Louis Ting.
The hydrogen the plant generates will be “green,” meaning it’s created by clean sources like wind and solar energy.
But carbon-free doesn’t mean it’s completely safe for people living nearby, say environmental activists.
“What we're concerned about is the combustion of hydrogen,” says Alex Jasset from Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles. “Because that's where the [nitrogen oxides] emissions come from. It's where a lot of the explosion risks come from.” Nitrogen oxides, or NOx emissions, are some of the notorious ingredients in smog. And since hydrogen combusts at higher temperatures than methane, that chemical reaction is more likely to happen with a hydrogen plant, leading to an increased likelihood of air pollution from the plant.
But Rondou says LADWP shouldn’t be the focus of Angelenos’ smog concerns. Its plants make up about 1% of NOx emissions. By 2035, he estimates it’ll be 0.1%. “That's very different from the airport across the street,” he says, referring to nearby LAX International Airport. “The jets coming in and out have uncontrolled NOx.”
Another concern environmentalists have raised is leaky pipes. That’s a risk that comes with anything combustible traveling through a pipeline, and the risk is higher with smaller molecules like hydrogen, which can fit through smaller leaks. Plus, hydrogen explosions can make bigger booms.
“It's very hard to detect once it does leak. And so we're concerned about the possibility of these leaks forming due to embrittlement,” says Legal Fellow Theo Caretto with Communities for a Better Environment.
In response, LADWP’s Ting says hydrogen as a fuel technology is decades-old. The space shuttles have run on hydrogen. The hydrogen-fueled Toyota Mirai first launched almost nine years ago. Scientists have gotten good at minimizing that risk.
“I don't think Toyota would be producing hydrogen vehicles if that is an issue,” Ting says. “And they're the ones that actually have customers go into hydrogen fueling stations [and] plug the hydrogen pipeline into a vehicle.”
The city is hoping to complete phase one of the project by 2029. The plant will continue burning gas for several years after that, but the end goal is eventually to burn hydrogen entirely and use 100% renewable energy by 2035.
Caleigh Wells wrote this article for KCRW.
get more stories like this via email
By Caleigh Wells for KCRW.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration
Many Angelenos have noticed a major difference in the county's air over the past few years. It's hotter, more humid, less toxic. And Southern California's marine layer is shrinking. But how much?
It's hotter than it used to be.
Of course, it's hotter almost everywhere. Heightened greenhouse gas emissions have warmed the planet by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit. But LA is warming faster than most places, averaging more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit higher than it was in the 19th century.
We're heating up more than almost anywhere else in the country.
That's thanks to the urban heat island effect.
Compared with rural areas, cities have more black asphalt, more buildings, more car exhaust, and less tree canopy. That makes cities better at soaking in heat from the sun.
Los Angeles is especially prone to this problem because of its notorious urban sprawl. "If we just keep replacing more and more open space with impervious stuff, we're going to keep increasing the geographic extent of anything that could contribute to the heat island," says UCLA Urban Planning and Geography Professor Kelly Tuskin.
The problem is greatest in parts of Southern California that have seen more development, such as Santa Clarita, which over the past 50 years has transformed from a rural community into the third-largest city in LA County.
It's more humid than it used to be.
The air is wetter too, which means the heat index has increased even more. That difference is heightened in Los Angeles, which was a traditionally drier climate.
"Over the past 25 years in LA, the temperature increase was about ... half a degree [Celsius]. But if you include that humidity effect, it is more like ... 2 degrees," says UCSD Meteorologist Guang Zhang.
That converts to about a 1 degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature that actually feels more like a 4 degree rise - just since the mid-90s.
Rising temperatures contribute to rising humidity. As the ocean gets warmer, it evaporates more. And as the air gets warmer, it's able to hold more moisture.
That's especially bad news for night time temperatures, which have continued to increase as well, eliminating some of the overnight relief Angelenos rely on during heat waves.
The marine layer is disappearing.
June gloom might be the bane of beachgoers, it also serves as California's natural air conditioner.
But since the 1970s, about half of the marine layer
"Summertime clouds in Los Angeles have been rising -- that is, the base of the cloud is getting further away from the ground. But the tops of the clouds aren't rising. And that means the clouds are getting thinner and they're burning off earlier in the day," says UCLA Geography Professor Park Williams.
Williams' research
has found that the average day in Santa Monica 50 years ago saw about four hours of marine fog. Today, it's more like two hours. And even just two hours per day of direct sunlight has made a noticeable difference in our temperature.
"In a place like Santa Monica, where we've cut the ... number of cloudy hours per day almost in half," he explained, "this has caused about a 2-degree Fahrenheit warming."
The air is cleaner.
Not every change to LA's air has been bad. There is less air pollution than there used to be. A lot less.
South Coast Air Quality Management District says ozone levels are at less than half of what they were in the 1950s.
USC Professor of Clinical Preventive Medicine Ed Avol has been studying air pollution's effects on children for three decades, and experiencing them firsthand for more than seven. "I remember going to school here, when it was so smoggy, some days, they wouldn't let us out to play on the playgrounds," he says. "Those days mostly are gone now. And so that really is a success story."
A lot of that success was thanks to things like mandatory catalytic converters in the 1970s that drastically reduced car emissions, and requirements from the Clean Air Act that took effect in the 1990s.
But air pollution continues to plummet today with the adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy sources. Between 2017 and 2018, air pollution dropped 10%. In 2019, it dropped another 12%.
But after some of the worst fire years on record occurred just in the past five years, decades of progress has been undone by smoke pollution, according to new research from Stanford University. Future progress will depend on less fire and more renewable energy sources. "Kids are growing up with better respiratory health than they did 10 or 20 years ago. There is documentable evidence that things are getting better," says Avol. "But we are still in violation, under the Clean Air Act, of what the national and the state standards are set at to protect the public's health. It's not over. We're not done."
Caleigh Wells wrote this article for KCRW.
get more stories like this via email
Contact
