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Sierra Club NYC Report Prepares City for Higher Fuel Costs

Building on New York City’s PlaNYC 2030, the Sierra Club NYC report, “Sustainable Energy Independence for NYC,” prepares for sharply higher fuel prices, and their local impacts on transportation, heating, shipping and food costs.  Download at www.beyondoilnyc.org, or read an online version with links to all references.  Those wishing to join the list of endorsing organizations, or to arrange a presentation, may contact author Dan Miner, Sierra Club NYC Chair, at beyondoilnyc@yahoo.com.

Endorsing organizations to date:

Asthma Free School Zone * Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment * Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine * Clearwater * Earth Day NY * Galapagos Art Space * Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility * Neighborhood Energy Network * Nos Quedamos * NYC Apollo Alliance * NY Divinity School * NY Interfaith Power & Light * NY Solar Energy Industry Association * Orange Environment * vision42  * SAVIA Associates International * Sixth Street Community Center  * Sustainable Flatbush * The Gaia Institute

PlaNYC, the City’s sustainability plan, talks about reducing our carbon emissions 30% by 2030.  However, climate change is accelerating and many scientists say we need to reduce emissions further and faster. These actions are politically possible. Opinion polls show that public support for global warming action is widespread but shallow, but when combined with concern about energy independence and higher prices, it becomes a top voter priority, even surpassing national security. 

Beside climate change, we must also respond to the parallel challenge of increasing energy price volatility.  Oil demand keeps rising, while world oil production will soon peak and go into permanent decline. That guarantees greater volatility in the price and supply of oil.  Even though its extensive public transit system makes NYC less vulnerable to oil price spikes than other cities, short-term consequences of higher prices may not be immediately obvious. (Fuel depletion is still not widely discussed, but it is no longer controversial, having been covered in the Wall Street Journal, Time magazine and CNN. It will be addressed at Regional Planning Association’s annual conference.) How would a prolonged increase in oil prices affect trucks bringing groceries to supermarkets?  Winter heating fuel prices?  The earnings of restaurants and theaters dependent on tourists?  Budgets for fire, police, and sanitation services?  Would commuters still choose to drive into Manhattan, or would they flock to mass transit? 

Government sustainability initiatives may have greater success when framed as responses to energy volatility than to climate change.  In the short term, expanding capacity margins through energy conservation will make the City more resilient to volatility, while expediting PlaNYC initiatives.  In the long term, we need to push discussion far past PlaNYC’s current goals, and start building a post-petroleum economy now.  The good news is that a national project to make clean energy cheap can restore domestic manufacturing, create millions of jobs that can’t be outsourced, and stimulate the economy, while improving our quality of life and mitigating climate change. NYC leadership can help make such actions a reality, and benefit our citizens.

The most effective way to accelerate NYC’s response to both climate change and energy volatility is the formation of a City Energy Volatility Task Force.

Form a NYC Energy Volatility Task Force

• form a Task Force to study potential impacts and mitigations of energy price and supply volatility – not currently considered within PlaNYC.
• require consideration of energy volatility and future energy prices in all City agency budgeting and planning decisions, including PlaNYC revisions
• universities, civic, business and advocacy groups should form their own Task Forces
• bottom-up voluntary sustainability actions should be accelerated simultaneously with top down incentives, mandates and legislation

Other report recommendations

Transportation:

• implement congestion pricing
• remove hidden subsidies for driving and parking cars
• increase regular and express bus services
• increase alternative fuel and electric vehicle fleets
• implement electric streetcar and light rail systems, as in Vision 42
• implement Auto Free NY plan to maximize use of subway and rail
• build more intercity passenger and freight train capacity
• restrict suburban sprawl
• encourage urban infill development around mass transit access points
• support and expand use of bicycles and pedicabs

Regional production:

• include energy volatility and fuel depletion in City and State economic development policy
• encourage production and procurement of regional farm products
• support agricultural production within cities and suburbs
• enable residents to find farming and gardening jobs
• encourage schools to establish gardens on their facilities
• open additional retail farmers markets, a wholesale farmers market, year-round public markets, and a regional product distribution center
• explore entrepreneurial ways to make private land available to new agricultural workers

Energy efficient building:

• increase mandates and incentives for energy efficiency retrofits
• mandate energy efficiency standards for equipment
• encourage solar heating systems
• design buildings for maximum cost-efficient energy performance
• discourage acceptance of relentless growth in personal electricity consumption

New York City and State energy policy:

• set timetables for PlaNYC’s many good energy initiatives
• expand net metering to 2 megawatts per site for all customer classes
• distribute smart meters/time-of-use meters  
• raise the NYS Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard to 30% reduction of 2006 electric and gas usage rates by 2015
• update the State Energy Plan to account for energy volatility