UK Blue To Go Green

The University of Kentucky is going to cut their utility bills. This should be great news for the Commonwealth and will probably be another financial burden for Lexington residents.

The University's Board of Trustees has voted to approve a $25 million energy savings performance contract in order to slice about $5 million from their annual utility bills. That would include approximately $2 million in savings in their coal fired electricity usage and that after they showed their support for all of those coal operators of eastern Ky.

One of the ways proposed for implementing the savings is what is called "behavioral modification." This is the same tactic used in clearing the air around campus by eliminating smoking from the entire campus, indoors and out. If you are going to smoke, take it off campus. Just like you did with drinking and partying. After four years of education these students will not be the smoking, drinking, partying animals they came here to be.

Another way of saving on utility bills is the installation of new plumbing facilities. Probably the "low flow" type that will trim their water usage and their sanitary sewer user fee. This will then cause the fee structure to be recomputed for the surrounding residential areas, compounding the existing neighborhood problems that we have seen lately.

What I see missing from this contract is the University making an effort to either reclaim energy from the normal loss points or to capture any solar or wind energy that is readily available on the campus proper. How many of their large flat roofed building are capable of handling solar panels and which of their campus breezeways could be fitted with mini wind generators?

This contract is only the first phase of what they say is an ongoing effort. We will see.

Our Growing Footprint

I have been a little pre-occupied this past week thinking about things other than this blog. Maybe, tonight I can get back to what is going on here.

I saw over on Steve Austin's Bluegrass reVISIONS that we have five years before our carbon emissions should peak or we have reached the tipping point of our slide into doom. Well maybe not that bad, but we need to adjust our lifestyles to make less of a carbon footprint than we do.

He states that Put simply, this means either that we must rapidly scale up renewables or we must reduce economic activity. I wonder if that could not say that we rapidly scale up AND modify our economic activity so as to achieve the same gain from alternative sources. I am not sure that it has to be an either/or situation.

Steve does ask what this means for Lexington, but he seems to be the only one asking out loud. Since the end of May 2008 the people of Lexington have thought about a lot of thing that they could be doing, but none of them concerned our carbon footprint. Football, basketball, horse racing, whether or not a new energy efficient building should be built downtown, downtown traffic patterns of one-way vs two-way, these all made the list, but not "can I live closer to my job?" or can I find an alternate mode to get to work?". These thoughts maybe made the fleeting moment list and were quickly dismissed as Lexington does not do this kind of thing.

Some thoughts that should have been making the rounds are:

• Do I need the fenced in yard that I hate to take care of every weekend of the summer and fall?
• Do I need to run the HVAC all year round just because the house/apartment is designed to prevent flow through air ventilation?
• If the bus(or other transit mode) came by my house would I take it on a regular basis?
• If the grocery was closer to my house would I need such a big refrigerator to store things , or such a big car to haul them or would I need to buy so much in one trip?
• Would my carbon footprint be smaller if I put more of my own on the ground?

On a city-wide level, has there been any discussion of what we can or should do to encourage people to modify their lifestyles to reduce their carbon footprint? In terms of meaningful discussions, I would have to say NO and in many instances the city leaders actions have done exactly the opposite. The government, on a regular basis, encourages those living in the outer reaches of the urban sprawl to boost the idea of downtown living by adding to the carbon footprint and coming downtown on the off traffic days. The Farmers Market, the weekend festivals throughout the year, the Second Sunday events to promote a cleaner healthier lifestyle, these all add to the overall carbon footprint, not take away from it.

Don't get me wrong, I think that all of these activities are worthwhile, but in places that make ecological sense more than economic sense. I can remember when some of the city's biggest events started out as neighborhood style happenings. The Shakespeare plays were held originally in the grassy field of Bell Court, until it grew too big and moved to Woodland Park. Now it NEEDS the setting of the Arboretum and the associated parking spaces to make a profit. What future does this bode for the new amphitheater in Beaumont Centre? Does this mean that there should be more of these play productions in more neighborhood settings?

I have already posted about the Second Sunday events and the city has responded with monthly escorted bike rides in various sectors of the city, but these all will originate downtown where the participants will have to drive with their bikes, to ride out to the suburbs and return to their cars to take their bikes home. Would it not make more sense to start where the people ARE and go to where some other people ARE and return, then next time start at the previous destination and go the where other people ARE, working your way around the suburban rings of Lexington? There is NO NEED to increase the pollution on an off traffic day all for the name of clean living and exercise.

Has the city encouraged the owners of our downtown buildings to install some type of passive solar collectors on their roofs, or cylindrical wind generators on the upper floors of our high rise structures in an effort to lessen their use of carbon generated electricity. I know that the upper floors of modern building are designed to handle the unseen air movements of the urban climate and that there are several natural wind tunnel like area in the downtown area. Has the city, with its power of granting zoning and development opportunities, sent a clear suggestion of its intent to combat our negative carbon footprint image with some of the proven methods of urban design? Quite the opposite, up until the bursting of the housing bubble, our Urban County Council has continued to send the signal that the current "status quo" will still work in Lexington.

That is about enough for tonight. Maybe we will have more to think about tomorrow.

Power Lines, What Can We Really Do About Them

I have disliked high voltage powerlines and the gashes they make through the countryside for a long time. They don't follow any natural features nor do they define any logical areas and only in urban areas do they follow streets or property lines and that because they were there first. They do have their good points, or so my father said, when they paid him a fair price and a decent yearly fee for an easement across the family farm back in the early '60s.

The smaller urban trunk lines can also be fairly ugly when they spring into view along some our major roadways like those being built on Euclid Ave to service the new UK hospital. I would think that they could place them underground on some stretches, but they say that it is cost prohibitive. A truly "green" building could help generate some of its own power so as not to require such a massive trunk line as they are building. As a follow up to one of my earlier posts, why does the University not lead in the development of alternative energy sources on all of its new building and the retrofitting of its existing ones?

This was all brought to mind because of the new plan for the property along Angliana Ave with the 12 cinemas, the bowling lanes and the 80,000 sq. ft. commercial structure(possibly a big box grocery, though they really haven't done well in the area). There is a major trunk power line right at the street edge and these building do sit a lot closer to the road than a suburban model would place them, the development would look a lot cleaner if the lines were buried. Then there is the situation with the "iconic" tower and restaurant near those same power lines. If natural alternative energy sources were used for this project would such a major trunk still be needed? Alas, if the old streetcar/interurban line still ran down Angliana would all that parking be needed?

I am not so naive as to believe that individual buildings can supply all of their energy needs from alternative sources, or even a major portion. I am just saying that any reduction in the need to move massive voltages through urban areas, and especially above ground, will make our city a much cleaner city.

Some Solar Follow-up

On the heels of my entry about solar prospects in Lexington and the thoughts on moving forward with a "smart grid" for Central Kentucky, I read some very interesting posts this week.

First, an announcement of a solar powered car to be made available in the Spring of 2010. This is how the European auto companies are doing better than our own auto industry. The innovations that used to emanate from Detroit are now claimed to be "unfeasible or too expensive" for our companies to produce. This is one new that I can see myself getting, too bad they will just be introduced in Europe. A few of the details include:

The BLUECAR is a compact and elegant town car with four seats, five doors and an automatic transmission. Its L. M. P. battery gives it a range of 250 km between charges, well in excess of the 40 km clocked up on average by a driver in an urban environment. To recharge the BLUECAR, simply plug it into a public power outlet or a standard power socket at home. It takes six hours to recharge the car’s battery from a standard power socket, and only two hours on the future fast-charging outlets. If need be, the batteries can be fast-charged for five minutes, giving the car enough power to run 25 km. In big cities, car parks are already being fi tted with electric power outlets, demonstrating the commitment of leading private operators and local authorities to promoting and fostering the development of electric cars. In terms of performance, the BLUECAR will feature a top speed that is electronically capped at 130 km/h and enough acceleration to get it from 0 to 60 km/h in 6.3 seconds.

I would also NOT park this in a garage during the day so as to gain as much solar charge as possible, although I guess that the garages could add solar collectors and/or charging stations as part of the hourly fee for use of the space. At home the garage may then become a more usable space for living and not for auto storage.

Secondly, a post that I saw by way of Planetizen. This piece speaks to the need for the architects, designers and builders to lead the way in changing how our structures fit into our desire for a sustainable lifestyle. There is no reason why we cannot design some of the wind or solar power generating technologies into our new buildings, or even retrofit some our existing buildings to reduce our carbon footprint.

And lastly, a piece that ties both the European mindset and the design of a sustainable city together. The city of Amsterdam is moving ahead to implement a smart grid in which individual houses may install some sort of power generating device (wind or solar) and be able to sell the extra power to the system. In effect making the electric grid a community effort. Here in Lexington we can't even keep the power connected in a high wind and our electricity comes from destroying the natural beauty of our state.

When is Lexington going to make a move in this direction? As always , 20 years after the rest of the nation, and they will probably be 20 years behind the rest of the world.

Let me know what you think.

The Case For Solar Power in Downtown Lexington

I read several days ago about San Francisco's first solar bus shelter. It seems to me that a city as advanced as San Francisco would have done this already. I have seen reports from other cities and their efforts to add signage and notice boards announcing the next bus using some radio and tracking system. These things take power and solar just seems like the thing to supply it.

Lexington's new parking meter system uses solar collectors to power the units, but I suppose that they are running on very low voltage, yet they operate year round.

The one real nice thing that I liked about the San Francisco shelter was the ability to feed into the regular power grid. Just think of the usage of the technology on an "art style" bus stop in Lexington. Oh wait, they did include a solar panel for the Bottle Stop location so as to make it a really green project. The Newtown Pike shelter is also to be solar powered.

When these individual projects are designed as stand alone shelters and off the grid, then the solar panels are scaled to the needs of the stop itself. Now if these are to be a series of stops as needed for say the downtown circulator or some themed area such as Hamburg, as I have posted of before, then the solar collectors could be incorporated into more of the shelter's surface (a la San Francisco's).

By incorporating these series of shelters into the electrical grid the city could help these stops pay for themselves. I understand that in doing so there would have to be a meter through which to connect and for which there is a minimum monthly charge, but that could be offset by what the solar panel feeds back into the grid. This is one more way that the City could show encouragement for a green initiative.

But wait a minute, just what are those green initiatives that the City is working on? A check of the LFUCG website shows that they want to take their buildings green, although they have left out adding solar panels or wind generators for the building roofs.

A new stadium in Taiwan is being built that will supply 100% of its needed power from solar with enough left over to add to the grid to take care of 80% of the neighboring area's needs. The roof of Rupp Arena at Lexington Center is easily the largest area of rooftop in the downtown district and could easily accomodate an array of solar panels to offset the power needs of the arena. And if another arena is built, then there is another roof space.

Each and every tall building in the urban area has updrafts and wind currents that could be used as a source of wind power and while they may not meet all the power requirements of the individual building they could put a dent in the utility bill, if not the carbon footprint.

There is so much else that can be done, so why don't you tell me some of your ideas?