A pedestrian waits at 14th and U St. NW, Washington, D.C. Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Two stories you need to know about sustainable transportation in the United States this week:

Vehicle Emission Rules to Tighten
Washington Post
May 19, 2009

The Obama administration today plans to propose tough standards for tailpipe emissions from new automobiles, establishing the first nationwide regulation for greenhouse gases.

It will also raise fuel efficiency targets to 35.5 miles per gallon for new passenger vehicles and light trucks by 2016, four years earlier than required under the 2007 energy bill, sources close to the administration said.

Congressional Climate Bill Includes ‘Complete Streets’ But Not CLEAN TEA
Streetsblog
May 18, 2009

Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has just struck a deal on his long-awaited climate change bill — and though the agreement makes a number of concessions to polluters, it also takes a step forward towards popularizing the cause of “complete streets”.

The House climate bill requires every state and metropolitan area with more than 200,000 residents to devise plans for reducing transportation-related carbon emissions. The bill directs states and localities to draft plans that “consider transportation and land use strategies” that encourage transit use, walking and bike riding, as well as equal access by all users.

The world’s first Urban EcoMap combines the social networking capabilities of Facebook with the geographical data of Google Maps to help urbanites reduce their carbon emissions. Image via Urban EcoMap.

Just in time for Earth Day last week, Cisco IBSG and San Francisco’s Department of the Environment unveiled Urban EcoMap, a Web-based tool that “provides urban communities with relevant data regarding the primary [greenhouse gas] contributors—transportation, waste, and energy.”

Working off the idea that knowledge is power, the tool intends to build awareness about climate change so that urban dwellers will take action to reduce their carbon emissions, as well as to support decision-making for policymakers, businesses, and other people involved in urban design and development. J.D. Stanley from Cisco describes this process as “digital swarming,” or “an approach that blends elements of social networking with human networking and with emerging capabilities provisioned through digital fabrics.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Obama on wheels. Photo by Scorpions and Centaurs.

Great news from the White House: Fuel standards for vehicles will be tighten up soon, improving the outlook for states like California , which pushed for stricter limits without success during the last administration.

This is good progress, but as we have said in the past, “increasing fuel efficiency is good, but it is not everything.” (For similar blog posts, click here and here.)
Read the rest of this entry »

Los Angeles smog. Photo by Infinite Wilderness.

The California Air Resources Board voted unanimously yesterday to adopt “the most comprehensive roadmap to date to cut the amount of heat-trapping emissions in the United States.” (via Associated Press.)

From an ARB press release:

The Air Resources Board today approved California’s plan to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

An important component of the plan is a cap-and-trade program covering 85 percent of the state’s emissions. This program will be developed in conjunction with the Western Climate Initiative, comprised of seven states and four Canadian provinces that have committed to cap their emissions and create a regional carbon market.

Additional key recommendations of the plan include strategies to enhance and expand proven cost-saving energy efficiency programs; implementation of California’s clean cars standards; increases in the amount of clean and renewable energy used to power the state; and, implementation of a low-carbon fuel standard that will make the fuels used in the state cleaner.

The ARB will begin developing detailed strategies to implement all of the recommended measures that must be in place by 2012.

Read the rest of this entry »

Power lines and pollution in northern China. Photo by AdamCohn.

Man-made clouds of pollution, stretching from Beijing to New Delhi, are threatening the water and food security in Asia, according to a recent report from the United Nations Environment Programme.

These massive brown plumes of smog - known as atmospheric brown clouds or “ABCs” - consist of soot, sulfates and other aerosol components resulting from the burning of fossil fuels and biomass. Particles and pollutant gases trapped in the atmosphere, snow and ice both absorb and reflect the sun’s radiation, wreaking havoc on regional climate patterns. Countries like India and China are dimmer at the surface than they were before the industrial era. Glaciers and snow packs are retreating. And the atmosphere is heating up. Read the rest of this entry »

Suburban sprawls California style. Photo by pbo31.

In September, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a piece of ground breaking legislation promoting transit oriented development in the state. The Bil, SB 375, focuses on reducing green house gas emissions by changing land use patterns. While cities like San Francisco offer dense, walkable communities to their residents, many Californians live in sprawling suburbs where cars are essential for accomplishing the most basic task outside the home.
Read the rest of this entry »

Electric railway system in Bangkok. Photo by SpAvAAi.

Lew Fulton of the International Energy Agency made a very compelling presentation at the most recent BAQ Asia Conference.

Here are some of the most important messages from his data-intensive presentation:

1. Asian developing countries exert large pressures on energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, mainly due to motorization in China and India.
2. Changes in the transport sector are necessary to reduce global CO2 emissions. These measures could include things like modal shift from private vehicles to public or non-motorized transport, or developing cleaner fuels and vehicles, which are estimated to contribute to reductions of about 10 Gigatonnes per year.
3. Biofuels will play a relatively small role. Therefore, efficiency is key in conventional and hybrid vehicles.
   Savings from avoiding motorization are gigantic. If the modal share of transit is kept above 60 percent on average, CO2 emissions will reduce by 5 Gigatonnes per year, as opposed to the business-as-usual scenario, where transit will account for only 30 percent of total trips by 2030.
4. New fuel standards take time to generate benefits, and given that motorization rates are rising quickly, the net result is a very high increase in fuel use and emissions. Simply creating and enforcing efficiency standards will not do the trick.

See Fulton’s presentation here:

Flickr photo by katieandmichael

Article originally published on HowYouCanSavetheWorld.com

Much has been made of rising aspirations of the middle class in developing countries, with the implication that this must mean literally hundreds of millions of cars — and hundreds of millions of tonnes of oil use and a resulting CO₂ emissions increase. Last month the Asian Development Bank held its first “Transport Week,” hosting key stakeholders from most Asian nations from Turkey eastward, including several pacific island states. Not surprisingly sessions on CO₂ attracted a large audience on the first day. At the next big confab, “Better Air Quality ‘08” in Bangkok, in November about 1,000 Asian experts and decision makers are expected to develop policies and techniques to transform the discussion into real policies to change how Asia develops.

Getting real stakeholders to the table is the only way to clear the air and reduce CO₂ emissions from transport. With the lack of any real initiative matching the national level programs in the US, engaging the leaders of nations representing close to three billion people in Asia may be a more viable strategy since, with few exceptions, Asia has only started to bury itself in CO₂-intensive development — yet. But time is short. The exceptions — the hopelessly snarled mega-cities of the continent — are attracting more and more people to perennial gridlock. Since so few people in Asia own cars, it may not be too late to change course.

I was asked to prepare much of the background material on such a strategy, based on my 20 years working in India, China and Viet Nam, as well as Mexico and other developing countries. Common wisdom is that unless Indians, Chinese, and everyone else get cars they won’t have the same opportunities of mobility we had as we developed.

Read More >>

Related TheCityFix.com stories on technology solutions:
California Dreaming
Easing the Pain Caused by High Fuel Prices
Increasing Fuel Efficiency is Good, But It’s Not Everything
Will Technology Save Us?

Related TheCityFix.com stories on Tata’s Nano:
Is There a Third Way to Think About Low-Cost Cars?
The Tata Nano: Transport Revolution or More of the Same?

From WSJ Article: A Big Sum of Small Differences

According to the Wall Street Journal, new analysis from McKinsey & Co. suggests that U.S. consumers have more control over U.S. greenhouse gas emissions than conventionally believed.

Through what and how they eat, drive, and consume, Americans are directly and indirectly responsible for over 65% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. This goes up against the belief by some that GHG reductions are primarily the responsibility of industry. According to McKinsey’s numbers, 17% of U.S. GHG emissions come from driving passenger cars while an equivalent amount came from residential buildings appliances.

While this demonstrates that individual consumers need to make moves to reduce their GHG emissions, it is also important to recognize that often they are constrained by the options they have available to them, which is one critical area where industry needs to take action.

CO2 and air pollutant emissions can be greatly reduced by improving cities’ transportation systems, but accurately measuring these reductions can be a challenge.

Maria Cordeiro is Environmental Projects Manager at EMBARQ - the WRI Center for Sustainable Transport, and the author (along with several other colleagues) of a recent report entitled “Measuring the Invisible: Quantifying Emissions Reductions from Transport Solutions“.

As transportation demand continues to rise at unprecedented rates, the need to compare alternative transport policies and their impacts on both CO2 emissions and local air pollution is becoming more and more critical. However, the challenge of quantifying these impacts has often hindered transparent and well-informed decision making.

To help address this barrier, EMBARQ/WRI has just released a new publication entitled “Measuring the Invisible: Quantifying Emissions Reductions from Transport Solutions”. The new report is composed of a series of case studies that examine how three developing country cities (Queretaro, Mexico, Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Hanoi, Vietnam) can quantify emissions reductions from transport interventions. Importantly, we found that in each case, there is a large potential to reduce transport-related CO2 and air pollutant emissions at the city level through implementation of smarter transportation policy.

We hope that this research contributes to efforts to develop reliable and cost-effective approaches for estimating greenhouse gas and criteria pollutant emissions from various transport interventions.

Click on the links below to read the full reports:
- Queretaro case study
- Porto Alegre case study
- Hanoi case study

Below, you can also watch a video of a presentation that I gave on this project at last year’s Transportation Research Board annual meeting.