This week, Provost Mark Schlissel P’15 announced the launch of an Environmental Change Task Force at Brown. He described the group as “charged with recommending actions that members of the Brown community might take, beyond campus-based sustainability efforts and discussion of divestiture, to work toward mitigating the consequences of environmental change.” If the community decides it wants to work towards mitigating the consequences of environmental change, then it’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work. There is no shortage of local actions that we as a community, city and state could take.
Rhode Island is already taking many serious steps toward sustainability. The Department of Environmental Management regulates carbon dioxide emissions, and our state is part of a regional greenhouse gas cap-and-trade initiative. We have a state law that requires electric and gas utilities to purchase all available cost-effective energy efficiency technologies — such as providing incentives for insulation and efficient heating and lighting — before buying additional energy from power plants. The state has signed on to the most stringent vehicle emissions standards in the country, and recently, Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 P’17 signed a multi-state pact to increase production of zero-emission vehicles. Finally, we have a host of incentives and standards to promote renewable energy.
But there is ever more to do. The New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers have adopted a goal of an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and they re-committed to these goals in Montreal in September. But still, there are no reduction goals expressedly set by state statute. State law mandates that 16 percent of energy purchases come from renewable sources by 2019. But the vision after 2019 remains foggy. New England’s Independent System Operator is planning on infrastructure for electrical transmission to be capable of providing a minimum 5.5 gigawatts of wind from northern New England and an additional 1.5 gigawatts of Canadian hydropower to the region by 2030. But we need to be ready, willing and able to purchase the power before such investments can take place.
There are many more innovative ideas that we could take up as a state or a region. As an example, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo P’17 just announced the creation of a “Green Bank” in New York this fall. The idea behind the concept is to mature financial markets for energy efficiency and renewable energy products so that significant private capital can be deployed for these purposes. In New York, the state government plans to use public money to seed the bank with about 16 percent of its total investment. The fund will eventually become 100 percent private. There are few reasons why loans for clean energy projects that could provide a positive return on investment should be more difficult to get than are loans for automobiles and heavy equipment that rapidly depreciates. Such a mechanism should be watched, studied and potentially implemented here.
Since 2006, our state has had some of the country’s most robust incentives for energy efficiency. But these incentives only go to homes that heat with natural gas and electricity. Nearly 40 percent of homes in Rhode Island heat with oil or propane. These fuels are not regulated, so there are few existing mechanisms the state can use to incentivize efficiency in homes that heat with them.
This is true even if spending money on generic insulation would save money and provide a net economic gain over spending money on additional heating oil. Developing policies to incentivize energy efficiency in homes and businesses that heat with fuel oil and propane would go a long way toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions here at home.
There are additional areas where market incentives do not align with climate change goals. As any Brown student who has rented an old, drafty, un-insulated Providence apartment knows, landlords do not often have much incentive to make their properties energy efficient. When tenants pay the heating and electric bills, landlords do not see much return on investment for taking energy efficiency measures. And even if tenants would see benefits in reduced utility bills, they are unlikely to want to spend the capital to improve a landlord’s home.
These are not insurmountable problems. But they are problems to which we may give thought and propose solutions. The prudence of involving ourselves in state and local affairs is questionable at best. But if the new Environmental Change Task Force truly seeks to mitigate the consequences of environmental change beyond campus sustainability efforts and divestment, then working out concrete proposals for new state and local initiatives to cost-effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions is a reasonable thing to do.
Daniel Carrigg GS thinks this task force could make a real difference. He may be reached at daniel_carrigg@brown.edu.
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