Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Topics

Topics

Green Is Gold (Though Not Yet In NYC)


Those attending an event known as the Green Trading Summit in midtown this month had two unshakeable convictions, one backed by science, the other by finance: Global warming is doing damage to the environment, and efforts to reduce its severity have proven lucrative; green, they say, is gold.

Michael Liebreich of a financial information company called New Energy Finance who traveled from London to give a presentation at the conference, calls it the "Kyoto Effect.' After most of the world's nations signed the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement calling upon industrial nations to reduce the emission of harmful 'greenhouse' gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, there was a surge in European investment in technology companies working to help reduce consumption of the fossil fuels that produce these gases, or, failing that, to boost fuel efficiency.

The United States did not sign the Kyoto Treaty, and, Liebreich pointed out, it shows: There has been a 68 percent drop-off in investment in clean energy on this side of the Atlantic.

Had the Senate chosen to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, U.S. manufacturers and utilities would face the same pressure as their European counterparts to switch to low emissions energy sources such as solar, wind, and nuclear power. As things currently stand, however, American companies have a free pass from Congress and the courts to dump as much carbon dioxide as they wish into the atmosphere, leaving the investment in clean energy to a handful of risk-tolerant companies.

In a global marketplace where businesses and industries often flock to the friendliest stock exchanges, that spells bad news for New York City. However, there was optimism at the conference. Citing a 50 percent surge in registrations for this year's conference, Green Trading Summit organizer Peter Fusaro credited post-Katrina anxiety over bad weather and high energy prices for forcing a mood change on Wall Street. Throw in the success of European investment markets and you had the sentiment that, ratification or no ratification, the world's money is already voting in favor of Kyoto compliance.

"Everybody and his brother knows the U.S. will have a greenhouse gas regime sooner rather than later," Fusaro said, meaning he believes the federal goverment is certain to create a policy that attempts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. "And when that happens, New York will be the center of financial trading.'

Of primary interest at the conference was the proven success of the European Emissions Trading Scheme, a direct outgrowth of the Kyoto Protocol. Since January 1, 2005, the European utilities and manufacturers that invest in clean energy have been able to recoup the costs through the sale of 'credits' to their dirtier peers. In other words, for every ton a European company falls under its government-imposed emissions target, that company can sell a credit that knocks a ton off the total net emissions target that another company is required to meet.

Similar to the 'cap and trade' programs used to curb acid rain pollution here since the 1980s, the European trading scheme focuses primarily on carbon dioxide, the chief byproduct of fossil fuel combustion. For decades, scientists have seen a linkage between rising global temperatures and rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. While agreement on carbon dioxide's role in climate change may not be unanimous, European nations have been enthusiastic supporters of reduced carbon dioxide emissions and have passed strict regulations.

As a result, the price for each ton of carbon dioxide eliminated at the smokestack has risen from $10 last year to $34 now. Last year's market participants bought and sold more than 360 million tons of carbon dioxide credits, giving the market a conservative value of $3.6 billion.

So far, the only place where U.S. traders enjoy a home field advantage is in Chicago, where the Chicago Climate Exchange has been offering U.S. utilities a chance to recoup their own clean air investments. Unlike the European system, however, the Chicago Climate Exchange is voluntary. To qualify, companies need only reduce their emissions by four percent between now and 2012, a little more than half the seven percent target requested by Kyoto. As a result, Chicago's activity, 6 million tons, is less than two percent of European volume. The average price per ton of carbon traded is less than one-tenth the European price.

'The bottom line is carbon trades for $3 in Chicago and $30 in Europe,' says Fusaro. 'That's what's known in the business as an arbitrage opportunity and companies are already moving to take advantage of it.'

So are state governments. Noting federal inaction on Kyoto, New York's Governor George Pataki in 2003 issued a challenge to fellow governors to set up a regional cap and trade system for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Last December, Pataki joined six counterparts in signing the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI.

Pronounced 'Reggie' by market participants, the initiative applies only to utility companies but aims for the Kyoto-worthy target of a 10 percent greenhouse gas reduction between 2009 and 2019. New York's 2002 State Energy Plan already calls for similar reductions, so the initiative is in many ways an attempt to broaden state policy to the entire region and give local businesses a head start on credit trading should Fusaro's prediction of a federal greenhouse emissions policy prove correct. Under the terms of the now eight-state agreement, utilities who do business in New York must cap their carbon dioxide output at a collective 64 million short tons (roughly 58 metric tons) in 2009 and reduce that output at a rate of 640,000 tons each year thereafter. Overall, the regional program covers roughly 121 million tons, which means that New York utilities who invest in alternative fuel sources and clean air technologies now would conceivably control half of all trades in the marketplace once trading starts. That type of situation would give Con Edison and other local companies the chance to set the market price for carbon credits and would give brokers working with Con Edison a distinct early advantage.

Charles Fox, New York's deputy secretary for energy and the environment and an attendee of the Green Trading Summit, said the governor's office has yet to decide on where that trading will happen. Noting that the Chicago Climate Exchange recently opened a New York subsidiary, the New York Climage Exchange, Fox hesitated to say anything that might indicate favor for that exchange or the New York Mercantile Exchange, the city's 132 year-old hub for commodities trading. He did, however, affirm the governor's commitment to make New York City the regional center for new energy trading, if not the world center.

'We want to see these trades being made by people who are sitting at desks in Lower Manhattan,' Fox says. 'New York City is the world's financial capital, and this is a financial market that's growing. It's important that the city not miss the boat.'

Yankee Stadium Parkland Swap


What if the city decided to put a stadium in the middle of your local park?

Don’t worry, though. The city would rebuild most of the displaced athletic facilities in several other places. Your old park is dilapidated, and the new one would have a sparkling new running track and state-of-the-art fields.

But instead of being set inside a large, green space surrounded by hundreds of mature trees, the fields would be scattered on separate parcels, including the tops of parking garages. The new recreational spaces would be closer to the highway and train tracks and an additional five-minute to half-hour walk from where people live. Most of the trees would be cut down. The new stadium would go smack in the middle of the community’s current park, next to a residential area.

That’s the parkland trade the city agreed to in the South Bronx, allowing the New York Yankees plan to build their long-desired new stadium in Macombs Dam Park. If this were to happen on the Upper East Side of Manhattan or in a middle-income neighborhood of Queens, there would be a howl of protest louder than when the Red Sox beat the Yankees in 2004.

New York State common law requires that when parkland is taken away from the public’s use, it must be replaced by new parkland nearby of equal or greater value. The parks department says that in return for losing Macombs Dam Park and part of John Mullaly Park, residents would end up with more acres of parkland and far superior playing fields. Residents say they would be shortchanged.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, and state legislators have fast-tracked the plan, which includes a stadium with fewer seats but with luxury boxes and wider concourses, as well as four new garages to hold about 5,000 cars. In June of 2005, the state legislature swiftly passed the necessary approval to take the park, before most residents were aware it was happening. Last month, the City Planning Commission, whose members are appointed by the mayor, voted unanimously in favor of the plan. The plan will be final if the City Council approves it in April.

Opposing the plan are park advocates, fiscal watchdogs, and mass transit supporters, as well as residents of the neighborhood and nearby South Bronx communities, who were not consulted when the Yankees and the city worked out the deal. The local community board voted two to one against the plan in November of 2005, but the board has only an advisory role. Tony Costa, a long-time resident and member of Save Our Parks, one of the groups fighting the stadium, said, “The Yankees made the plan and then said, ‘Come on, why don’t you love it?’”

The taking of parkland for the stadium and parking garages raises a number of public health and environmental justice concerns. The area’s residents are mostly black and Hispanic, including many recent immigrants from Africa and Central America. It has some of the highest rates of asthma and obesity in the city, yet the lowest ratios of parkland to 1,000 residents. With public funding for four new parking garages -- but not for a stop on the Metro North line that goes right through the area -- the plan seems guaranteed to increase traffic and pollution.

There are other problematic aspects to the plan, including the taxpayers’ contribution to its financing and overblown projections of economic returns to the city and neighborhood, which are addressed in a recent report by Good Jobs New York and Tom Angotti’s Gotham Gazette article, Yankee Stadium Without Tears. But let’s leave those issues aside and look more closely at the parkland exchange.

WHAT WOULD BE LOST

Macombs Dam Park and a third of the adjacent Mullaly Park. The stadium and a VIP parking garage would go in the middle of a long rectangle of recreational space that residents consider their Central Park. Nearly 400 mature trees, which beautify the neighborhood and filter pollutants, would have to be chopped down. The apartment buildings across the street, which were designed to be opposite the park, would face directly onto massive stadium walls to be built right up to the sidewalk.

The part of Macombs Dam Park that now wraps around the existing stadium would be replaced with parking garages, decked over to allow athletic facilities on top. The garages would be built on land that slopes down, so the playing fields would be level with the adjacent land.

The park space slated to be taken contains four baseball diamonds, one soccer field, 32 handball courts, two basketball courts, and 16 tennis courts. One of the most popular features is the Joseph Yancey Track and Field, used by school teams for practice and meets and by residents of all ages for exercise.

The plan pushes the recreational space away from the community and toward the waterfront, the Metro-North tracks, and the Major Deegan Expressway. The tennis courts, which also draw people from Manhattan and other parts of the Bronx, would be on the waterfront and a greater distance from the subway stop.

Macombs Dam Park is a community park where residents come to toss a football, take a stroll, and just enjoy the grass and trees. Families often gather on weekends to picnic while watching the men play soccer in the middle of the track.

During the three- to five-year construction period, residents would lose the use of most of the athletic fields. The parks department says it would try to minimize the disruption by phasing in construction and creating interim fields and by helping teams find other places they can play, giving youth teams priority for the easier-to-reach fields. According to the Environmental Impact Statement, a temporary running course in one location or another would be available throughout construction for walking, jogging and recreational running, but would not be suitable for competitive track meets.

WHAT WOULD REPLACE THE LOST PARKLAND

The current version of the project, called the “Alternate Plan” in the Environmental Impact Statement, provides 27.5 acres of replacement recreational space to the south of the existing parkland. It would include three ball fields on the current Yankee Stadium site and a track, a soccer field, and basketball courts on the roofs of parking garages. The rest would be in bits and pieces, including tennis courts about a half mile away on the waterfront and two tiny pocket parks, including one next to the spot where the subway emerges from the tunnel.

The swap provides a few additional acres of open space with pretty much the same recreational uses as the existing park. The details would be adjusted to meet the needs of the community when a final design is created, said Joshua Laird, assistant commissioner of planning at the parks department. He said the department is also considering building a special “destination” playground, the kind of place around which parents would plan a weekend outing with their kids. The department also hopes to bring more maintenance to the area through the community benefits agreement being negotiated with the Yankees.

Residents are particularly unhappy with the garage-top facilities. With the high rates of childhood asthma in the area, one concern is exposure to exhaust. Laird said that there will be no stacks or grilles in the park and that exhaust will be vented so as not to affect people using the space.

Residents also don’t like the replacement of natural fields with artificial ones. Synthetic turf is more durable than grass, which is quickly worn to dirt with the hard use city ball fields get, and the parks department is installing the artificial stuff in fields all over the city. But because synthetic turf is much hotter than grass, the rooftop fields, which would lack the trees of the existing park, would likely get steaming in the summer. Laird said that trees would be planted between playing fields in pockets where the soil could be deeper, although it’s hard to believe anything could grow successfully except small ornamental trees. There is also a possibility that security concerns would make these spaces off limits on the team’s 80-plus game days.

The tennis courts would be moved to the Harlem River waterfront. At present, that is a 30-minute walk through a run-down, deserted area, across a scary covered pedestrian bridge over the Metro North tracks and then underneath the elevated expressway. (The Yankees rejected this area for the stadium because of its limited public access.) The area immediately surrounding the courts would be landscaped and include a pedestrian esplanade, but it would remain isolated along an industrial stretch. There is a construction demolition debris plant a pier away on one side; stadium parking would go on the other.

According to Laird, however, plans are in the works to transform the area. “Part of the reason people have been skeptical about the waterfront is that they have in their minds’ eye the conditions today,” he said. The parks department would replace the pedestrian bridge and make it handicapped-accessible. The city is backing a developer’s proposal to replace the nearby Bronx Terminal Market with a million-square-foot mall of big-box stores, a large project whose environmental impacts have not been considered in conjunction with the Yankee Stadium plan.

As for the trees, there really is no way to give the neighborhood back what would be destroyed. The environmental impact statement said the city would mitigate the loss of the 40-year-old trees by planting “from between 8,356 trees of a 3½ inch caliper to 29,248 trees of a 2-inch caliper within the replacement recreational facilities and along streets.” Laird said that the department figures on planting between 8,000 and 12,000 street and park trees, but many would have to go outside the area that would suffer the loss. Some would even be planted outside the neighborhood. In addition, newly planted street trees have a very low survival rate due to the city’s hot, dry conditions and to errant trucks and automobiles.

THE TRADE-OFF

The main benefit for the community to the parks swap is that it will replace the old track, fields, and courts, which are in poor condition because the parks department hasn’t had the maintenance funding to care for them properly or capital funds allocated to replace them. Given enough money, the parks department can undoubtedly design beautiful new recreational facilities.

But a park is more than the sum of its fields and courts. It is the breeze under the spreading arms of a tree, the fresh smell in the air after a rain, the feeling of being in the middle of a green space apart from brick and concrete. It is a place close by where neighbors come together and community is formed. It makes city life a little easier when you can see a bit of green and sky across the street or down the block. Are these luxuries only for people in affluent neighborhoods?

Even opponents of the plan want the Yankees to stay in the Bronx and to get a modern stadium. But especially in a neighborhood that is already short on green space and long on health problems worsened by the lack of exercise and fresh air, taking a tree-lined community park and replacing it with artificial playing fields farther from where people live should be the last resort, used only for something that has a clear public good.

It is a dangerous precedent to take land held in the public trust for the benefit of a private corporation. Supporters say the new stadium will bring jobs to an economically stressed community. If a few hundred new minimum-wage and temporary construction jobs (that may or may not go to local workers) justifies giving away parkland to baseball’s wealthiest team, then why not let businesses build in every park?

In the rush to get approval, the city and the Yankees have dismissed alternatives that would let the team have its stadium and at the same time allow the community to keep its park. Elected officials need to subject the plan to greater scrutiny and to negotiate a better deal for the neighborhood and the city. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, going forward with the current plan would be making a wrong mistake.

Articles on the Yankee/park swap

How The South Bronx Lost Its Parks To Yanks (Metro, 3/14/06)

Two Stadiums. No Waiting. Yanks and Mets plans leave little room for public debate (Village Voice, 3/14/06)

Yanks Get City Bonds (Metro, 3/15,06)

Bloomberg Boots Yankee Stats City's own figures show that the new Bronx stadium would be a money pit (Village Voice, 1/13/06)

Anne Schwartz, in charge of the parks topic page since its inception in 1999, is a journalist who specializes in environmental issues. 

Wind Power In NYC


The Statue of Liberty, our nation’s 119-year-old national symbol of freedom, will soon become a symbol of something else as well – wind power.

Last month, the General Services Administration, the U.S. government agency that oversees management of federal buildings and federal monuments, announced that it will be purchasing 100 percent of the electricity needed to light up and power the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and 22 other federal buildings -- a yearly electricity demand of roughly 27 million kilowatt hours --- from so-called windmill farms located in western New York, Pennsylvania and three other states.

While the source of this power will be largely invisible to city dwellers, the deal fills a major symbolic void at a time when city and state officials, and even President George W. Bush, are singing the virtues of alternative energy sources.

Remember The Freedom Tower Windmills?

Only a short while ago, there promised to be a far more visible symbol of wind power in New York – Freedom Tower at the site of the World Trade Center. Architect David Childs, in a modification of Daniel Libeskind’s high concept plan for a 1776 foot tall Freedom Tower, unveiled a design that would embed a series of 30 vertical windmills at the top. More than just eye candy, the windmills would provide much-needed local electricity in a city that, only four months earlier, had experienced a major blackout.

Child’s attempt to harness the wind has been forgotten. A May 2005 redesign, while primarily responding to New York Police Department security concerns, quietly jettisoned the windmill stack in an attempt to give something a little closer to the original World Trade Centers 1 and 2 profile. (The new design still has some environmentally-friendly elements, such as clear glass to allow more natural sunlight into the building, and a system to collect rainwater, probably for use in the restrooms and the fire sprinklers.)

The General Services Adminstration power purchase, while lacking in the showpiece visibility of the 2003 Freedom Tower design, more closely reflects the reality of the current wind power marketplace. Despite state and federal tax credits for suppliers and purchasers alike, wind energy requires exploitation on a large scale in order to be cost competitive with coal-burning and other, traditional electricity generation methods. The kind of windmill often used to generate electricity (a 750-kilowatt turbine) costs roughly $800,000 yet generates only $80,000 to $100,000 in salable electricity per year.

Wind companies have learned to locate dozens of turbines on “wind farms” -- remote facilities that take advantage of steady predictable wind currents, low land-leasing costs and an additional helping of subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture which currently encourages farmers to exploit this secondary revenue source. Added together the resulting cost savings have brought wind-powered electricity generation down to the market-critical four to six cents per kilowatt-hour, the same wholesale cost range for electricity that comes from burning coal.

“Essentially a wind farm operates like any other power plant,” says Paul Copleman, spokesman for Community Energy Inc., a Wayne, Pennsylvania company whose wind farms in the mid-Atlantic region are supplying the electricity that will eventually power the Statue of Liberty’s lantern. “When businesses or homeowners are choosing to purchase wind energy, they’re not taking the step of putting a windmill on their home. It’s just as easy as purchasing any grid-connected power source.”

Still, in New York, a city that has added six natural gas-burning power plants over the last half-decade, some are looking to make wind power more visible to the local energy consumer.

Windmills On The Fresh Kills Landfill

Currently the most ambitious plan of this type is the Fresh Kills Landfill redevelopment plan. At the urging of Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, BQ Energy, a Pawling, N.Y. company which has a cost-sharing agreement with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), is investigating the feasibility of installing at least five windmill towers atop the closed landfill’s tallest mound.

According to the Staten Island Advance, BQ Energy engineers already believe the winds that buffet the former landfill could sustain up to five large turbines, generating enough electricity for 5,000 nearby homes. The process must first clear FAA regulatory hurdles to make sure the windmills don’t interfere with the Newark Liberty International Airport flight path. It will also most likely face a challenge from environmental groups who want to protect the migratory waterfowl that currently use the recovering Fresh Kills waterway and could be threatened by the spinning turbine blades. Finally, there is the risk that Staten Island residents near the facility, much like their counterparts in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, will balk at losing their rapidly-improving view to a series of industrial windmills.

Despite such challenges, Molinaro sees the turbines as a chance to make Staten Island the “renewable energy capital of New York City” while at the same time deflecting complaints over the New York Power Authority’s new natural gas-burning power plant on the northeastern corner of the island.

“Our plan to erect a wind energy facility at the Fresh Kills landfill will tackle tomorrow’s energy challenges today, right here on Staten Island,” Molinaro said in a statement issued immediately after the president’s State of the Union address.

The Windy City

Meanwhile, with the passing of the Freedom Tower wind turbine design, the struggle to marry wind turbine efficiency and aesthetic design moves west to Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley is an enthusiastic supporter of green building design, especially those designs that take advantage of Chicago’s “windy city” reputation. In January, city officials announced plans to integrate two wind turbines into the structure of the Richard J. Daley Center in The Loop and eight turbines into the still-unbuilt Ford Calumet Environmental Center on the north side. Unlike the propeller-shaped windmills that had been proposed for the Freedom Tower, these newer windmills, developed by University of Illinois at Chicago professor William Becker, will employ a tube-shaped corkscrew design. As Becker noted in an interview last year with the trade magazine Building Design and Construction, the design is intended both to minimize the industrial look of turbine fans and increase turbine efficiency.

The Kidwind Project In The Bronx

While New York City has yet to match that creativity, Dr. Reid Strieby, a professor at the Bronx Community College Center for Sustainable Energy, has been working with local teachers to get students thinking more about the next generation of turbine design. Strieby’s program, which is in partnership with a small nationwide non-profit called the Kidwind Project, is part of an effort to give high school and middle school teachers (mostly earth science and environmental science teachers) the lesson plans and wind turbine kits to explore wind energy as a concept.

The next Bronx installment of the Kidwind Project will be in the fall. Strieby sees this as more than just a lesson; to him it’s a mission. With so little apparent enthusiasm currently for wind energy among governments and public utilities, he hopes to help create a new generation of energy consumers who will see things differently: “One of the ways to get the word out is to tell the teachers," he says, "and the teachers can tell the kids, and the kids can become advocates.”

 



Print Friendly and PDF

Editor's Choice


Gotham Gazette: New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
Gotham Gazette: 
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
Gotham Gazette: 
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Gotham Gazette: 
City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years