BailOut
04-20-2007, 03:15 AM
I attended the City of Reno's first Green Summit this afternoon. It was held at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center and was hosted by the Mayor and City Council members. The keynote speaker was Bill Becker (http://www.cityofreno.com/res/climate_protection/keynote.php) and I brought along a friend that's a Resource Conservationist from the WasteNot office of the Incline Village General Improvement District (IVGID) (I work with that office on all things recycling at work and volunteer with them for things like tomorrow's "Kids for Conservation" festival).
Mr. Becker's presentation was the same one Al Gore gives in the first part of "An Inconvenient Truth" (he was trained to present it by Al Gore), but it was expanded to include some pictures of things like more disappearing glaciers, some extra composite shots of things like visible night lights from space, thermal imagery of the Gulf of Mexico in 2005, etc. and some data sets and goals from the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Control - the U.N.'s environmental outfit). I enjoyed the extra information and it was neat to see this presentation first-hand after seeing it in the movie. After his presentation there was a general Q & A session, and I was quite happy that the majority of the questions surrounded electric vehicles, PHEVs, solar power and why the Federal government is so slow to get on the green bandwagon, sometimes even being anti-green.
No formal information on the Summit has been released yet but I think there were about 300 attendees. After the presentation we had four break-out sessions to choose from on the topics of zero waste, renewable energy, mass transportation/urban planning (hosted by a fellow from the city government of Portland, Oregon) and building green. I chose renewable energy and my friend chose zero waste, and we gave each other questions to ask in the other's session.
I was thoroughly surprised in my break-out session, both pleasantly and unpleasantly so.
What was unpleasant was that no City Council members attended it, and other representatives of the city government flitted in and out. Not one of them stayed the 2 hours or got the full picture.
What was pleasant, however, was that a lot of key players were in the room. The head honcho of Environmental Protection: Northern Nevada (a commission of the State Legislature), an executive from Sierra-Pacific Power, some high-power folks that work against Sierra-Pacific and/or travel around to different events like this and sue power utilities over coal plants, representatives from the local wastewater and geothermal plants, etc. were all on hand, and the host of the session was a fellow from the city government of Albuquerque, New Mexico that started them on and has carried them through to becoming the second greenest city in the country, second only to Portland, Oregon.
We had about 50 people in the room and a moderator was on hand to try and keep things on track, which worked for the most part, but some folks had their own agenda and kind of rambled a bit. Overall it went pretty smoothly, though, and we touched on a lot of neat - and sometimes loaded - topics like:
- Getting generators to take advantage of biogas (human-produced methane) for electricity production at the wastewater plant
- Stopping Sierra-Pacific from building the coal plant they are trying to shove down the State's throat (in the Reno area we are powered solely by geothermal turbines right now, and there is a strong movement to keep it green)
- The planned Solar 1 project down near Las Vegas (a 5MW solar array - yay!)
- That the Federal government hasn't approved any geothermal permits since 2005 but rubber-stamps coal burning plants (doodyheads!)
- That there's only a single biodiesel pump available in all of northern Nevada (it's at a private-label station in Carson City and offers both B20 and B100)
- That there's neither a carrot nor stick to entice individuals and businesses in our area to conserve energy or resources
My two favorite parts of the session both involved the guy from Sierra-Pacific getting stuffed. :flag:
When I got the microphone I forced the topic of the planned coal plant and he began his response by selling the idea that it was going to be a "next-gen, clean, post-burn (sic)" plant and one of the fellows that apparently has a hobby of stuffing Sierra-Pacific interrupted him and basically said that no, it's not, because the clean part of it was planned for phase 2, and in the previous so many coal plants SP has built not one of them has ever actually gotten to phase 2, and that they haven't even submitted their plans or for the permits for a phase 2.
The next fellow that got the microphone stuffed that poor guy even further by starting on a well-spoken tirade regarding the cost of coal burning going up while the cost of renewables is coming down, and that he already has a briefing in to the State legislature advising them to sue for an injunction against he plant, and that if the State declines or fails to get the injunction he already has the team and clout lined up to do it on his own, making it so delayed and so costly for Sierra-Pacific that they may as well just give up and go renewable right this minute. :D
While all this was going on a guy up front had been sketching all of this out into objects on a wall-length sheet of paper, and we were each given 5 little sticker dots to place on the objects we wanted the city to get going on... an issue vote of sorts. This way while no city representative got the complete picture of our session they will all at least have the final data points of it.
All in all I'd say it was a well-spent 4 hours of my life, and I hope we can do it again next year.
Mr. Becker's presentation was the same one Al Gore gives in the first part of "An Inconvenient Truth" (he was trained to present it by Al Gore), but it was expanded to include some pictures of things like more disappearing glaciers, some extra composite shots of things like visible night lights from space, thermal imagery of the Gulf of Mexico in 2005, etc. and some data sets and goals from the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Control - the U.N.'s environmental outfit). I enjoyed the extra information and it was neat to see this presentation first-hand after seeing it in the movie. After his presentation there was a general Q & A session, and I was quite happy that the majority of the questions surrounded electric vehicles, PHEVs, solar power and why the Federal government is so slow to get on the green bandwagon, sometimes even being anti-green.
No formal information on the Summit has been released yet but I think there were about 300 attendees. After the presentation we had four break-out sessions to choose from on the topics of zero waste, renewable energy, mass transportation/urban planning (hosted by a fellow from the city government of Portland, Oregon) and building green. I chose renewable energy and my friend chose zero waste, and we gave each other questions to ask in the other's session.
I was thoroughly surprised in my break-out session, both pleasantly and unpleasantly so.
What was unpleasant was that no City Council members attended it, and other representatives of the city government flitted in and out. Not one of them stayed the 2 hours or got the full picture.
What was pleasant, however, was that a lot of key players were in the room. The head honcho of Environmental Protection: Northern Nevada (a commission of the State Legislature), an executive from Sierra-Pacific Power, some high-power folks that work against Sierra-Pacific and/or travel around to different events like this and sue power utilities over coal plants, representatives from the local wastewater and geothermal plants, etc. were all on hand, and the host of the session was a fellow from the city government of Albuquerque, New Mexico that started them on and has carried them through to becoming the second greenest city in the country, second only to Portland, Oregon.
We had about 50 people in the room and a moderator was on hand to try and keep things on track, which worked for the most part, but some folks had their own agenda and kind of rambled a bit. Overall it went pretty smoothly, though, and we touched on a lot of neat - and sometimes loaded - topics like:
- Getting generators to take advantage of biogas (human-produced methane) for electricity production at the wastewater plant
- Stopping Sierra-Pacific from building the coal plant they are trying to shove down the State's throat (in the Reno area we are powered solely by geothermal turbines right now, and there is a strong movement to keep it green)
- The planned Solar 1 project down near Las Vegas (a 5MW solar array - yay!)
- That the Federal government hasn't approved any geothermal permits since 2005 but rubber-stamps coal burning plants (doodyheads!)
- That there's only a single biodiesel pump available in all of northern Nevada (it's at a private-label station in Carson City and offers both B20 and B100)
- That there's neither a carrot nor stick to entice individuals and businesses in our area to conserve energy or resources
My two favorite parts of the session both involved the guy from Sierra-Pacific getting stuffed. :flag:
When I got the microphone I forced the topic of the planned coal plant and he began his response by selling the idea that it was going to be a "next-gen, clean, post-burn (sic)" plant and one of the fellows that apparently has a hobby of stuffing Sierra-Pacific interrupted him and basically said that no, it's not, because the clean part of it was planned for phase 2, and in the previous so many coal plants SP has built not one of them has ever actually gotten to phase 2, and that they haven't even submitted their plans or for the permits for a phase 2.
The next fellow that got the microphone stuffed that poor guy even further by starting on a well-spoken tirade regarding the cost of coal burning going up while the cost of renewables is coming down, and that he already has a briefing in to the State legislature advising them to sue for an injunction against he plant, and that if the State declines or fails to get the injunction he already has the team and clout lined up to do it on his own, making it so delayed and so costly for Sierra-Pacific that they may as well just give up and go renewable right this minute. :D
While all this was going on a guy up front had been sketching all of this out into objects on a wall-length sheet of paper, and we were each given 5 little sticker dots to place on the objects we wanted the city to get going on... an issue vote of sorts. This way while no city representative got the complete picture of our session they will all at least have the final data points of it.
All in all I'd say it was a well-spent 4 hours of my life, and I hope we can do it again next year.