This is the fifth in a series of articles on implementation of BC's Greenhouse Gas Action Plan. Action Item 20 in BC's Greenhouse Gas Action Plan states that the government will "implement a coordinated provincial transportation demand management program." Previous subjects include energy codes, the BC Motor Vehicle Emission Reduction Regulation and Integrated Resources Planning for Utilities.
Although the Province has repeatedly recognized the importance of transportation demand management (TDM) to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing the deterioration of local air conditions and improving quality of life, it has yet to begin real implementation of TDM.
The importance of TDM
The importance of TDM to reducing BC's greenhouse gas emissions cannot be understated. Emissions from light duty vehicles account for 21 per cent of provincial carbon dioxide emissions. These emissions grew by 18 per cent from 1990 to 1994.
The rapid increase in vehicle miles travelled is the cause of this increase. The other two determinants of vehicle carbon dioxide emissions fuel efficiency and the fossil carbon content of fuel have not changed significantly in the last ten years. And only modest changes can be expected over the next ten years under current federal and provincial policies. (see Issue 19:13 of WCEL News).
This leaves transportation demand management or a change to provincial and federal policies on fuels and fuel efficiency as the key to slowing the current growth in emissions. BC Environment projects that current trends will lead to a 60 per cent increase in light duty vehicle carbon dioxide emissions from 1990 to 2020.
Rather than constantly building new roads to accommodate increasing numbers of vehicles travelling increasing distances, TDM means taking actions that reduce vehicle miles travelled and demand for more roads. Employers encourage ride sharing, reduced work weeks and telecommuting. High Occupancy Vehicle lanes make car pools and buses more appealing. Transit is improved.
Financial incentives
Financial incentives are also an essential element of TDM. Paying insurance on a per kilometre basis and reducing the subsidization of motor vehicles through road tolls and parking fees will all help shift commuters away from the single occupancy vehicle. Current subsidies are significant. In 1992, expenditures on Greater Vancouver highways exceeded revenue from fuel taxes and motor vehicle licences by approximately $200 million. If costs of subsidized parking, the land used for highways, traffic policing, and damages from air pollution and motor vehicle accidents are factored in, each car in the GVRD receives a $2,600 subsidy per year.
There has been consistent support for TDM in a slew of government
plans and strategies. As well as being identified in the
BC Greenhouse Gas Management Plan, TDM has
been identified as essential in the September 1995 Provincial transportation
strategy (Going Places), the September 1993 Greater Vancouver
transportation strategy (Transport 2021) and
the GVRD's 1993 Liveable Region Strategy. The repetition of the TDM
mantra gives the impression of progress, but so
far implementation has been slow at best.
But government commitments have not yet translated into action. Going Places called for completion of a TDM plan for the Lower Mainland by the Spring of 1996. The Transportation Financing Authority released an interim report in January which simply listed a menu of transportation demand management options. It is currently undertaking a series of studies that examine policies such as road tolls, parking management, automobile pricing and employee trip reduction programs. A more detailed discussion paper will be released in the fall of 1996. An actual plan will come some time later.
It is important for the government to move beyond the stage of studying transportation demand management alternatives and begin actual implementation. Going Places and the Greater Vancouver Liveable Region Strategy both stated the government will support employee trip reduction programs for large employers. Unfortunately, the Province cancelled its own employee trip reduction program in early 1995. Reinstatement of a government employee trip reduction program is essential to encouraging private sector programs. These are first steps that can be taken without further analysis. From 1985 to 1992 the number of trips by drivers in the GVRD increased at over twice the rate of population growth. To even slow these trends the province and GVRD need to put words into action. It is doubtful if that modest goal entailing a huge increase in greenhouse gas emissions will be met given the current lack of action. Road pricing, insurance based on kilometres driven, employee trip reduction programs, support for transit are all essential to meeting that goal.
-- Chris Rolfe
"Increased use of renewable fuels is a good thing: reducing the demand for fossil fuels is an important step towards sustainability. But global warming is caused (simplified) by an increase of greenhouse gases. The relevant question is: do biomass fuels produce significantly less CO2 when burning than regular gas? No. They may burn cleaner, reducing local pollution and they do reduce the demand on fossil fuels but it is misleading to consider fuel from biomass as a way of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions."
Well, yes and no... Yes, fuels produced from
biomass and fossil fuels (gas, oil and coal) do release more or less the same
amount of carbon when they burn.
A key difference
But there is a key difference. The grain or woodwaste used to produce renewable fuels absorbs carbon when it is growing. This carbon is released when the grain decomposes or is consumed, or when the woodwaste is burned. The amount of carbon released when these renewable fuels are used is the same as the amount absorbed by the plants and trees when they were growing. So, the burning of the fuel results in no net increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
For fossil fuels, on the other hand, carbon dioxide was absorbed eons ago in the primordial swamps and seas in which the coal, oil and gas was formed. That carbon dioxide is stored in the coal, oil and gas. It will stay there forever, unless and until it is burned for fuel.
This does not mean that fuels produced from biomass are a panacea, however! In some situations, using grain or woodwaste for fuel makes environmental sense. In other situations, it does not.
Extra energy
What makes the difference? One of the factors is how much extra energy is needed in order turn the grain or woodwaste into fuel. This can be quite large, especially where crops are grown specifically for fuel. For example, at least one study shows that in the American Midwest, where corn is grown to make alcohol as a fuel, the energy used to grow the corn (e.g. energy from oil used by farming machinery and energy from coal used in fertilizer production) is responsible for the release of as much carbon dioxide as is absorbed by the growing corn.
On the other hand, this does not appear to be true for the same fuel produced from western Canadian grain, which would otherwise be treated as a waste. (It is originally grown for food but for various reasons is not later usable for food.) Similarly, much woodwaste in BC could be used for energy without requiring excessive amounts of extra energy. The woodwaste is produced anyway, as a byproduct of lumber and paper production.
This is not the end of the story, however. We'll have more on energy from woodwaste in BC in a future issue. Meanwhile, it is definitely clear that the first priority must remain reduction of energy use.
-- Chris Rolfe & Bill Andrews
Reprinted with permission from the US Climate Action Network's June 1996 newsletter, Hotline (Vol. 3:2) For more information, contact the US Climate Action Network, 1200 New York Ave., NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC, USA, 20005. Fax (202) 289-1060, email uscan@igc.apc.org.
By Dr. Daniel A. Lashof, Senior Scientist, National Resources Defense Council
In its Landmark Second Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that "the balance of evidence suggests
a discernible human influence on global climate." This conclusion is based
on examining the best available long-term record of global mean surface
temperature, which shows a warming of between 0.5 and 1.1 degrees
Fahrenheit during the last century. This warming trend is considerably larger than
various estimates of natural variability, leading to the conclusion that it is unlikely to
be entirely natural in origin. Furthermore, comparing the geographical,
seasonal and vertical patterns of temperature change with model predictions based
on increases in greenhouse gases and sulfate particles revealed a
highly significant and increasing correlation, buttressing
the attribution of observed changes, at least in part,
to human influences.
In contrast to the IPCC's conclusions that the observed pattern of climate change is consistent with climate model predictions and "suggests a discernible human influence," a small, but oft-quoted, group of global warming "skeptics," such as Patrick Michaels and Fred Singer, have focused attention on a satellite-derived temperature record that shows a slight cooling over the last 17 years. What is going on here? Are the satellite and surface temperature records inconsistent? Does the satellite record prove that climate models are wrong?
The ground-based global temperature record comes from thousands of weather stations and ship records and extends for more than 100 years. It shows a clear statistically significant warming trend, as discussed above. The satellite-derived temperature record begins less than 20 years ago, in 1979, a year that was substantially warmer than the 1950-1980 mean. It measures an average temperature from the surface to about 20,000 feet high in the atmosphere. Given the short period of the satellite record, it is strongly influenced by events such as the Mt. Pinatubo volcanic eruption in 1991 and cyclic changes in ocean temperatures (the El Nino-Southern Oscillation). When corrected for these effects, the satellite data do reflect a warming trend of 0.09 degrees Celsius per decade, according to John Christy, one of the lead scientists who developed the satellite record.
Nonetheless, the trend observed in the satellite record does differ from the trend in the last 17 years of the surface record (which shows a warming of 0.17 degrees Celsius per decade since 1979 when corrected in the same way as the satellite data). Skeptics, such as Michaels, have claimed to prove that the satellite measurements are correct and that the ground-based thermometer-derived temperature record is therefore wrong. But the ground-based and satellite records measure different things. The satellites measure a weighted-average temperature centered in the middle of the atmosphere. The results, therefore, can be strongly influenced by changes in the pattern of heat transport through the atmosphere and would not be sensitive to surface warming if the heat were retained near the ground. This happens when temperature inversions isolate the surface from higher elevations in the atmosphere. Temperature inversions _ warm air on top of colder air _ are particularly common at night over land and in those parts of the tropics and subtropics that are not experiencing strong thunderstorm activity. Temperature inversions reduce atmospheric mixing (a well known factor in severe pollution episodes) and prevent changes in surface temperature from directly influencing temperatures in the overlying layers of the atmosphere. Similarly the satellite record will be more strongly influenced by stratospheric ozone depletion and volcanic eruptions than will the surface record.
Over longer periods one might expect trends in atmospheric temperature and trends in surface temperature to converge, as the differences in the short-term influences on each record begin to average out. This appears to be the case. While the satellite record of atmospheric temperature is only available for the last 17 years, a longer record is available from balloon-borne instruments called radiosondes, which extend the record of atmospheric temperature back to 1959. The balloon and satellite observations agree that the atmosphere cooled from 1979 to 1995, but the balloon data also show that over the full record atmospheric temperatures warmed at an average rate of 0.09 degrees Celsius per decade. The warming trend found in the balloon data agrees closely with the surface temperature trend over this nearly 40 year period. The remarkable correspondence between the balloon and satellite data during the period of overlap suggests that the satellite record is just too short to reveal the warming trend found in other data sets.
The IPCC has concluded that there has been significant global warming during this century, based on a careful review of all of the available data, including ground-based temperature records, satellite data, balloon-borne temperature profiles, bore hole temperature profiles, and retreat of mountain glaciers. The IPCC has also rigorously compared observed changes in climate with expectations due to changing concentrations of greenhouse gases and sulfate particles and found that the balance of evidence suggests that a discernible human influence has been detected. Claims that the satellite temperature record implies that global warming is not happening or will not be significant may continue to be effective rhetoric for skeptics and vested interests, but they have no scientific foundation.
For more information see: Hurrell, J.W. and K.E. Trenberth, 1996.
Satellite versus surface estimates of air temperature since 1979. J. Climate, In
Press. Available on the World Wide Web at
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu:80/cas/papers/jclim96/
This is the sixth in a series of articles on implementation of BC's Greenhouse Gas Action Plan.
Action Item 21 of the province's Greenhouse Gas Action Plan is to provide funding for infrastructure for the Cycling Network Program. Given the rapid growth in carbon dioxide emissions from light duty vehicles, encouraging the bicycling alternative by improving infrastructure is essential. $2 million of provincial funding was allocated to the program last fiscal year and another $2 million is allocated for this year. Because the Program calls for 50/50 cost sharing with local government, the total money spent will be $8 million.
All of this compares poorly to the $700 million capital budget of the Transportation Finance Authority, but it represents a significant improvement in funding to improve cycling networks. Moreover, the Program has spurred a number of municipalities to hire cycling coordinators to look into improving the cycling infrastructure in their communities.
The Cycle Network Program is a small success in the province's Greenhouse Gas Action Plan. Additional steps are necessary such as steps providing BC Transit buses with bicycle racks and allowing bicycles on the Skytrain. These steps would greatly increase the attractiveness of cycling and busing for suburb-to-suburb commuters.
-- Chris Rolfe
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