Mon Sep17 630p Daniel Lerch, Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty

Monday September 17 630 to 830pm
Starbucks, 1301 Conecticut Ave NW (triangle with 18th and L Streets NW)
near DuPont Metro south, red line
Daniel Lerch author of
Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty
see: www.postcarbon.org/guidbook

Daniel is coming in from Vancouver for the www.ifg.org conference at Lisner on Sept 14-16
then staying in DC a few days.


Interview with Post Carbon Cities Program Manager Daniel Lerch
see: http://postcarbon.org....
Post Carbon Institute will soon publish Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty. Written specifically for municipal officials, managers and planners in the United States and Canada, Post Carbon Cities is a guidebook will help decision-makers understand and respond to the challenges that world oil supply uncertainty is already creating for local government.

We spoke with Daniel Lerch, Manager of our Post Carbon Cities program and author of the guidebook, about the research being done to develop it and the benefit municipalities might expect to gain from it.

Post Carbon Institute: Let's start off with a quick overview of what's in the book.

Daniel Lerch: Sure. The Guidebook will explain in a very fact-based, sober way what "peak oil" is, and what kinds of challenges it's creating that cities and local governments need to be thinking about. It'll dig in to the complexity of these problems --and the problems associated with climate change-- so that readers can really understand the depth of response that's needed. Then it will take a look at what some governments have done already and what can be learned from that. And finally --and this was really important for everyone who advised on this project-- the guidebook will give the reader a clear set of 'next steps' and a set of suggestions and tools for local governments to start developing their own responses to energy and climate uncertainty.

What's meant by "Energy Uncertainty"? Why do you use that term, and not "Peak Oil"?

"Peak oil" is a useful shorthand for the peaking and gradual decline of world oil production, but it doesn?t really tell us anything useful about the possible consequences. The problem is not that we?ll run out of oil. The problem is that we?re facing a future of increasing uncertainty in our oil supply and volatility in oil prices and as oil markets adjust to the changing fundamentals of the oil market: namely, that global demand is continuing to rise while global supply is leveling and will quite soon start to fall.

Why should governments try to address this at the local level? Most local governments have nothing to do with the distribution of electricity or fuels.

In both the U.S. and Canada, municipal governments can have an enormous range of responsibilities, from providing basic services like water, police and schools to implementing long-term plans for future land use and transportation patterns. All of these responsibilities are affected, in the short run or in the long run, by energy supply and price.

For example: Nobody knows if the price of oil will steadily increase by 100% over the next five years, or spike next month for just a week, or stay right where it is for a decade. But each scenario will have different implications for municipal responsibilities, and municipalities need to think through what?s possible, what the ramifications may be, and what they should do about it. This can be from as simple as, yes, "How might this affect the municipal budget for vehicle fuel," to as complex as, "How might this affect regional goods movement, and thus the local economy? How might this affect demand for municipal services?"

Nobody has really had to think about these issues since the oil crises of the 1970s because the global system of oil production and distribution has ensured the availability of oil and a relatively stable price. As a municipal leader, this has meant that you could do everything you needed to do, from updating the annual operating budget to getting multi-million dollar transportation projects into the federal funding process, without needing to consider the price or availability of energy in your community as a significant variable. That global oil system is now fundamentally changing, so municipal leaders and planners need to change their assumptions.

If "energy uncertainty" could have such broad implications, what can local government leaders possibly do to address such as complex problem?

I think the key question is how to approach it systematically. It?s one thing to pursue energy-substitution initiatives, like putting the city bus fleet on biodiesel, or promoting renewable electricity purchasing and investment. But because oil and natural gas volatility is ultimately a system problem ?that is, the inputs of oil and natural gas effect a system of complex relationships that change as those inputs change? it?s really important to take a very broad view and do a broad assessment of vulnerabilities.

I interviewed over 40 elected officials, planners, engineers and scholars across the U.S. and Canada to get a sense of the current thinking out there about what local governments can do to approach peak oil. The consistent message I got was that energy vulnerability is an enormously complex issue that municipalities simply cannot approach it as a mere resource problem or an economic problem. It is a complex system problem that will require systems thinking to address in an adaptive, iterative process. We?re actually thinking of including a kind of ?Systems Theory for Planners? crash course section in the Guidebook, just to introduce people to some of the analytical tools available for approaching these kinds of problems.

Are there any examples of cities that are already addressing peak oil?

Over the last two years there has been a steadily growing number of municipalities that have begun to address energy vulnerability in some formalized way. Willits and Sebastopol in California were early starters in doing systematic energy vulnerability assessments. Denver, Colorado and Burnaby, British Columbia are two that have done exploratory studies. Portland, Oregon seems to be the largest city taking a systematic approach in an official capacity, with its Peak Oil Task Force. There's nothing complex about starting the process: many of these places simply began going through the list of their responsibilities and functions and asking, "How might this change if the oil/gas input changed? What do we need for energy on a day-to-day basis to run critical services?"

The systematic approach is such a key aspect of this. One of the communities I've talked with found in an energy vulnerability assessment that their town water supply is at risk because it's 100% dependent on electric pumps - none of it is gravity-fed. They knew, of course, that they used electric pumps; but from this system vulnerability perspective they've now realized that there is a direct link from the availability and price of natural gas, to the gas-fired turbines that provide a good portion of their electricity, to their water distribution system. And this is in California, so the threat of future blackouts is very real. It?s a perfect example of how taking energy availability for granted can mask a vulnerability.

Here?s another example: A colleague of mine is doing a study of the pipeline shutdowns in the U.S. Southeast following Hurricane Katrina. It turns out that a huge amount of finished motor fuels was distributed through those pipelines, and when they were damaged in the hurricane, many municipalities on the receiving ends faced a shortage. And in North Carolina, for example, when local leaders asked for access to the State fuel reserves, they found that the State didn?t really have a plan for municipal energy shortages and was holding on to the fuel for their own needs. So they were left on their own.

Prior to the hurricane, probably no one in any of those local governments would have thought to ask such a big picture question as "How does our community?s motor fuel get here?" because it was reasonable to assume that the sophisticated national and regional systems of fuel production and distribution were taking care of themselves. But clearly, municipalities now need to be asking those big picture questions, and looking closely at their dependencies on State, Federal and private support systems. Certainly that was --and continues to be, unfortunately-- one of the big lessons from the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year.

Certainly it would make more sense for energy and energy emergency issues to be coordinated at state/provincial or federal levels. Why not just work for change there instead of at the fragmented local level?

The higher levels of government are extremely important for this, of course, and some energy emergency coordination infrastructure does exist in both the U.S. and Canada. But there are a few big reasons why municipalities still need to look out for themselves.

For one, the views from these different levels of government are at very different scales. To use the previous example, there was no state/provincial or federal body actively looking out to make sure that Smalltown, North Carolina would have the fuel it needed immediately following an emergency. And in some ways, you wouldn?t really expect them to ? at those levels they?re thinking about hundreds or thousands of municipalities, and larger scale supply chains.

Also, because of that scale difference there?s a clear time lag for higher level responses. Municipal governments are a kind of "first responder" to local problems, whether the problem is within their realm of actual responsibilities or not. For example, a growing concern among municipalities in colder climates is the rising cost of heating fuel. Higher level programs exist to help people heat their homes, and to help local agencies run winterization programs. But in any given winter month, if a family suddenly can?t afford a new delivery of fuel oil, or there?s a problem with natural gas distribution (which has started to happen in other countries because of shortages), it?s the local government that will be the first to deal with the repercussions. It?s also often the local government that?s best placed to undertake preventative measures, such as opening temporary cooling centers during a heat wave.

What's the basic message? What will readers walk away from the guidebook with?

The basic message is this: to truly deal with the challenges that peak oil and climate change pose to your city, you to understand the full complexity of these challenges, identify the vulnerabilities those challenges are creating in your city, and then mitigate those vulnerabilities by --ultimately-- building local resilience: building up your capacity to cope with the uncertainties of the future.

Vulnerability and resilience are such a useful concepts for dealing with peak oil and climate change! They've been developed quite a bit in the natural resource management field, and city planners have very recently started to apply them to human settlements, to urban areas. All that building local resilience means --for cities-- is that you're developing the capacity of your community to withstand outside shocks and deal with outside problems on its own terms and with its own resources.

You can apply this to land use and transportation planning by, for example, encouraging urban development patterns that can function whether oil is $30 a barrel or $120 a barrel -- that is, land uses that aren't completely dependent on cars. But in a more general sense, community resilience is built from the social and economic networks that make up every community, from neighborhood associations and local faith communities to business associations and local supplier-distributor-retailer relationships.

The stronger these networks are, the more their members (whether households or businesses) can share information, help each other out, and respond collectively to problems. Such relationships create flexibility and foster innovation in ways that more linear or bureaucratic relationships cannot. Some large corporations have known this for years, and of course countless communities around the world have been living this for milennia.

also

Sept 14-16 www.ifg.org LISNER Auditorium Confronting Triple Crisis - Climate, Peak Oil, Extinctions

large number of top speakers (too bad the weather is great this weekend, choice)

see www.ifg.org

cost $35 for 3 days, or individual day tickets $10/$15
student rate $20 for 3 days,
Event starts Friday 7-10pm at Lisner Auditorium at GWU
Event ends Sunday night at 7pm