Ten ideas and many more in the Policy Greenhouse

This morning, the DC Policy Greenhouse discussed innovative ideas for making DC more environmentally sustainable.

GWU President Steve Knapp, Councilmember Mary Cheh, and District Department of the Environment Director George Hawkins introduced the event. Hawkins told us that he grew up in Cleveland, and went downtown on a school field trip in the fourth grade. That’s when the lake river was burning, and triggered his lifelong commitment to the environment.

Steve Offutt was first up. We discussed his idea yesterday for a market-based Portfolio Standard program for tree canopy. All of you brought up many good, specific comments and suggestions, and many worried that unless properly implemented, this plan would discourage denser development. I think we could tweak the system by making the rules account just for the non-built land, for example, or create a combination of FAR and tree canopy formula.

Richard Layman ran through a long list of suggestions:

• Implement a “transportation withholding tax” to take money from paychecks given in the District, and dedicate that money to transit. DC can’t charge a commuter tax, but might be able to do this. Oregon does, for example.
• Develop a comprehensive transportation plan.
• Build a unified regional passenger railroad system.
• Take another crack at streetcar and light rail planning. Previous plans were too “parochial” and focused on DC.
• Charge more for the privilege of storing vehicles on public streets. Residential permit fees are only $15 a year, and he suggests we also raise vehicle registration fees.
• Put HOV-2 requirements on major streets into DC during rush hour, like Alexandria does.
• Provide better bus service within neighborhoods.
• Tunnel New York Avenue from New Jersey Avenue to the DC line.
• Chop up and reuse trees when they come down.

Kristina Van Dexter, a GW student, suggested a policy to create a garden at every school. This would educate children about food issues, reduce child obesity, improve students’ relationships with the land and community, stimulate students’ minds to think outside the classroom, and could be an integral part of the curriculum.

John Christmas of the Energy Efficiency Partnership of Greater Washington presented a policy to stimulate more energy-efficiency retrofits. Most retrofits come from the Federal Government or “MUSH”: municipalities, universities, K-12 schools, and hospitals. The other 85% of buildings have no real financing mechanism to raise capital for green retrofits. His solution? “Tax lien financing,” aka “property assessed clean energy financing.” A building owner could go to a bank to get a retrofit loan. The District would create a property tax assessment to pay back the loan, which ensures that banks get paid back. The loan would also be recorded as a tax lien, meaning that the lender comes at the head of the line if the property is sold. Bekeley, CA, Boulder, CO, Babylon, NY, Palm Desert, CA and other municipalities are using this system to catalyze energy efficiency.

John Lasky suggested giving every secondary student (grades 9-12) a free bicycle. The student would have to take a course on bike safety, maintenance, and locations of bike trails. Students would have to maintain good academic standing and complete an annual safety course. He suggests that the funding could come from a public-private partnership, though he didn’t have anything more specific. This would reduce traffic congestion, child obesity, and emissions from automobiles.

Mark Buscaino of Casey Trees presented “Tree Suitability” technology, a Web site that shows a home, the lot, the open space and the trees and shrubs. The homeowner can virtually drag various trees onto spots in the lot, and see the effect on stormwater retention, energy savings from shading, and so on. The homeowner can move the tree to another location or try a different tree, and see the effect.

Three presenters from the “Emerging Green Builders,” professionals and students in the USGBC passionate about sustainable building, discussed their idea for a “self-sustaining hotel for the homeless,” a hotel that employs homeless people and whose profits sustain training programs for the homeless.

Chuck Cushman and other presenters from the GW College of Professional Studies talked about creating a Sustainable Community Development masters’ program at GW, a certificate in Sustainable Urban Planning, and a follow-on certification in Sustainable Climate Change Technology and Policy. They also talked about adding green projects to the existing DC Neighborhood College community organizer program.

Anacostia Riverkeeper Dottie Yunger suggested “linking what you drink to your impact on the river.” Each jurisdiction should footprint their water use and output of stormwater, sewage outflows and runoff into the river. Each should make this information public, and use the numbers as a benchmark to improve upon. Potomac Riverkeeper Ed Merrifield introduced the issue by talking about how much of our bodies include material from the water in our rivers, and the importance of clean water.

Lily Russell talked about ways to improve individual properties’ carbon footprints.

• The first step needs to be computing your carbon footprint, then understanding specific methods to improve it.
• A special excise tax on the sale of electricity and natural gas would cost about $1/month for residential customers. In Boulder, that raised about $1 million a year for energy programs.
• A loan for homeowners to implement energy efficiency.
• An ESCO Guaranteed Program would have the city guaranteeing loans for smaller commercial buildings to improve their energy efficiency.
• The city could also recruit smaller buildings to bundle together to get better costs on retrofits.
• A residential energy conservation ordinance would set energy performance standards for sales or rentals.

After the formal presentations, members of the audience got to give shorter pitches for their ideas.

• Law professor Deborah Jacobson gave a list of solar power ideas.
• Developer Michael Keefe made an interesting suggestion of helping condo boards band together to get good information and vet potential contractors for green improvements.
• Cindy Olson, from Eco-Coach, suggested the “extreme neighborhood makeover,” to completely green a single block or neighborhood.
• Recent Statehood Green Council candidate David Schwartzman suggested congestion charging in downtown DC. He also recommended making sure revenue sources are progressive and not regressive; some in the earlier presentations would have disproportionately impacted lower-income residents.
• Karen Greenwood went back to the basics and suggested recycling bins across the city.
• Pat Schriers talked about water resources research.
• Reese, whose last name I missed, suggested the DC government organize workshops to reach out to people and educate them on ways to be green and save money at the same time.
• Tdani Mbukce (whose name I’ve almost certainly misspelled) talked about community-based partnerships with government. Much of the funding for green programs goes to people no familiar with the local communities. He’s from Ward 8, which has the most environmental needs, and the government needs to do more to work with and involve people in the community.
• Mike Alonzo, also from Casey Trees, talked about their program to use bikes more and trucks less as they go around to water and maintain trees.
• Tim Mason runs 350 Green. (350 is the level of carbon in the atmosphere we need to reach to stop global warming). They’re installing electric car charging stations in California right now.
• John Johanson is with the Energy Efficiency Partnership. He praised John Christmas’s tax lien program to generate capital investment. He also suggested policies to allow tenants to pay the costs as long as they get the benefits of retrofits; right now, property owners pay, and have fewer incentives to green their buildings since tenants pay utility costs.
• Andrea Dean, a Ph.D. student at UCLA, is working on a “Green Business Certification Program” for businesses. Certified businesses can better reach customers, and create a network to learn from each other.

George Hawkins praised the “embarrassment of riches” of all the ideas presented today, and showed off the new reusable grocery bags DDOE will be distributing to needy residents, calling DC’s the “greenest council in the entire world.”

The biggest challenge, Hawkins said, was how to “operationalize” these ideas, to make sure they actually can work. He told a story of going to a building with new, green technology, only to see maintenance workers taking a new part out and reinstalling the old system. They were doing that because they knew how to maintain the old technology but not (yet) the new.

Which of these ideas do you think have the most merit?