The Commonwealth is an interesting place to see through the prism of sustainability. The densely populated East is home to the emerging players in the Eco-Tech Field with Spire in Bedford and Konarka in Lowell making strides in photovoltaics. Framingham is home to Ameresco which could play a very valuable role here in waste water treatment conversion I'll describe in more detail below. Gloucester faces the sea well with hydrokinetic turbines at Free Flow and organic soil enhancement from Neptune's Harvest.
And as for wind, there are clusters of wind works in the South Coast and Cape including Aerostar in Plymouth, Aeronautica in Westport and Turning Mill Energy in Sandwich. Two others are in the Boston urban core, Second Wind, in Somerville and the brand new Wind Pole in Lexington.
There are many more in a growing array of fields and it looks to be the earliest break of a new manufacturing wave that well fits the area's legacy infrastructure. And this reborn manufacturing base should be here to stay as the cost of container shipment from the Far East rises with the cost of fuel.
The Eastern Half is correspondingly more problematic and Massachusetts Smart Growth published some findings for major improvement areas in conjunction with a report by the Brookings Institute.The following italicized segments are from that paper by Smart Growth Executive Director Andre Leroux.
"The Brookings report quantifies the most significant sources of carbon emitted by the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas in 2000 and 2005. Those sources are fuels burned by vehicles (personal and freight) and the energy used in residential buildings. The per capita figures for metro residents do not include emissions from commercial buildings and industry.""In recent years, state and local governments have taken steps to improve energy efficiency and curb carbon emissions. The federal government, however, has been slower-moving, the Brookings report contends. Federal funding formulas favor highway construction over rapid transit and federal policy fails to promote energy efficiency in its housing policies."
“While many metro areas are taking the lead on climate action, they will be hard pressed to shrink their carbon footprints in the absence of supportive federal policies,” added Mark Muro, policy director of the Metropolitan Policy Program and the co-author of a forthcoming Brookings policy agenda to be issued as part of the institution’s Blueprint for American Prosperity, a multi-year initiative to promote metro-friendly federal policy stances."
“Metros can’t go it alone in solving as vast a problem as global climate change,” Muro said.
The more rural West is home to the more advanced inroads to sustainability and grassroots sustainability organizing. It will increasingly see the rebirth of farming and food production and its housing stock has less of a footprint than the vast urban messes of the East. There is substantially more room to decentralize waste and energy streams and also it has sleeping potential to see its own manufacturing restoration.
Housing Stock Retrofitting.
This may well be the most urgent and rewarding endeavor to get the Commonwealth in condition to minimize exposure to peak oil impacts and it is long overdue. The vast inventory of urban legacy rental property, the hundreds of triple deckers and multi unit residences built before World War Two, are often major energy burners.
Because the heating and cooling costs are traditionally passed along to tenants, the property owners rarely have the inclination or incentive to make sufficient efficiency upgrades, The long standing depreciation allowance elements of the tax codes probably further exacerbate the situation. The recent spate of condo conversion during the housing bubble had a useful role in upgrading the impacted properties so some efficiency churning is underway.
But with the collapse of the housing market, the rental sector rises in importance without any corresponding improvement in quality.
"Making our homes more energy efficient, André added, can also have a huge positive impact. Our older housing stock and long winters put Massachusetts cities near the bottom in terms of carbon emissions from residential fuel use."
"The Legislature should complete its work on comprehensive energy legislation before the end of the session and include strong provisions to help homeowners make the state’s older housing stock more energy efficient."I haven't yet discovered any Eastern Mass. equivalent to the Center for Ecological Technology with offices in Pittsfield and Northampton. It also maintains affiliation with the ReStore in Springfield.
The Boston Metro area within the 495 donut is poorly served by a transit system focused on Boston while seemingly oblivious to the vast population, fully half of the Commonwealth, that doesn't live or work in Boston. It is a wheel without a rim. And within the urban core there has been a significant increase in bicycle use that will only continue without much corresponding accommodation for this bike load on menacing motor congested streets.
The city of Cambridge has taken some baby steps toward addressing the bike load. Certain arterial streets are marked with white lined bike lanes that put bicyclists in across fire between street traffic and the ever present hazard of the parked car door openers. And, from repeated direct observation, it is fairly clear that significant numbers of motorists are fairly oblivious or indifferent to the presence of these white lines.
It could be noted that few of the emerging manufacturers mentioned above are located in the urban core. Few of the conventional manufacturers, retail centers and service sector employers that drive the Commonwealths economy are located in the urban core. Some of the high potential South Coast cities such as Fall River and New Bedford utterly lack robust and cost effective public transportation links to Boston despite an avid interest in promoting these areas for future development.
"According to the Boston Indicators Project coordinated by the Boston Foundation in partnership with the City of Boston and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (www.tbf.org/indicators2004), the number of registered cars rose by 29.7% in Metro Boston, and by 37.4% in Massachusetts between 1990 and 2004. Furthermore, growth in vehicle miles traveled (VMTs) in Metro Boston and statewide has continued to increase faster than the growth in population."
"We need to maintain existing transportation infrastructure and increase investment in expanding transportation choices. The goal is to improve mobility, not restrict it, and increase our options for getting around, such as walking to a park or a school, making it possible to take a bike to work, and offering bus and rail service that is pleasant, clean and reliable."
Source Reduction and Biomethane.
The high public infrastructure costs of the Metro Region form a significant barrier to entry for many start ups. The MWRA is a substantial cost element of locating within its jurisdiction. While significant strides have been made in water use efficiency and source reduction there is room for improvement. Perhaps a reason why water efficiency exceeds energy efficiency in legacy rental property is that property owners traditionally pay the water bill and they are impacted by cost spikes.The MWRA could readily become a net energy producer by making its sprawl of water treatment facilities into biomethane production facilities. This could be a significant cost offset and contribute to source reduction.
Food and Farming.
This element of the Commonwealth's sustainability potential finds its principle home in Western Massachusetts where bottom up grass roots ventures have much lower barriers to entry and where some of the very finest soil rests on a vast glacial lake bed that extends from Northern Connecticut to Southern Vermont and New Hampshire. The regions many other watersheds often hold extensive pockets of quality farm soil.
The region also has reliable water from seasonal weather patterns that are unlikely to change to arid as climate change drifts where it will. This is a valuable contrast from many regions of the country with depleting water resources.
The Local Harvest Massachusetts search page cites 419 listed entities with a significant grouping in Western and Central Mass. The Berkshires have a dedicated entity in Berkshire Grown.
NESAWG and The New England Small Farm Institute both have a robust presence in the Connecticut Valley and the Central Connecticut River Valley Institute in Shelburne Falls has the proliferation of sustainable farming as its core mission. Touchstone Eco Village is an example of a sustainable farm community in Easthampton.
Eastern Massachusetts hasn't as much room for sustainable farming but Essex County and the South Coast are significant growth areas. The glacial lake soil that first supported farming in the Concord River watershed still carries a few farms and they are likely to be increasingly valuable community assets in days ahead.
This concludes an introductory overview of some of the salient elements that contribute to the Green sector of the Commonwealths economy. Over time I will provide research in detail for a number of these facets and they will become themes in the ongoing run of scribblings.
May it also be a useful exercise in other biomes as much of the transformation to sustainability will see displacement of ponderous fossil fuel Multi Nationals with the more subtle place specific mosiac of Multi Locals.
