The state of green: college campuses, buses & an inn
Today's Baltimore Sun offers a trifecta of local news items that should warm the hearts of environmentalists, though maybe not everyone else (or even all environmentalists, for that matter):
- The state's moving to buy enough wind and solar energy to provide 23 percent of the power used to light state government offices and university campuses;
- The state's ordering 18 'clean diesel' buses to ferry commuters along the controversial Intercounty Connector highway when the first leg opens next year, and
- A new inn and marketplace under construction in East Baltimore is aiming to to be a "platinum-level" green building, with geothermal heating, aerated concrete walls and, naturally, a 'green' roof to soak up rainfall and reduce polluted runoff.
There's a common thread in all three stories - the role of the government in promoting environmentally friendly businesses and products. Even the inn, which is being built by the owners of the city's popular Black Olive restaurant, is being helped with a low-interest loan from the state energy administration.
Environmentalists and the O'Malley administration view such moves as investments in a cleaner, healthier community which also should yield dividends in terms of providing needed jobs in emerging green energy, transportation and building technologies.
But the state's expenditures on such initiatives trouble fiscal conservatives like state Senate minority leader Allan Kittleman from Howard County. He's not anti-environment, he says, but thinks government should be more concerned with stretching scarce taxpayer dollars, especially while so many Marylanders are unemployed and the government is slashing programs, services and jobs to cope with plummeting revenues.
The Sun's business columnist, Jay Hancock, blogs today that while he's inclined to support the state's big buy of "clean" energy, he wants to know what it's costing us. "The deals may be worth doing even if the price is a lot more than slightly higher," he concludes. "But taxpayers need to see the numbers."
What's your view? Are you okay with the government using your tax dollars to promote the development of environmentally friendly buses, energy and buildings, even if it costs a little more up front? Or do you think government should be pinching pennies, especially in hard times, and spend no more than absolutely necessary - even if that means the energy, buses and buildings pollute more?
Comments
What this article, and Senator Kittleman fail to acknowledge are the payback realized from building LEED certified (platinum-level) and the benefits of a cleaner environment - human health and related health care costs, larger seafood harvests from a cleaner bay, etc. Very difficult to quantify, but none the less economically beneficial.
A LEED certified building, or even a LEED designed building (opting out of the costly certification process) costs approximately 2 - 4% more, but those costs are recovered within 5 - 10 years.
Greater demand for renewable energy will get more renewable energy online and produce jobs - maybe not Maryland jobs, but at the very least American jobs. Global warming aside, we still have pollutants from coal fired power plants in Ohio and West Virginia that end up in Maryland.
The ICC is a step backwards - a sellout to developers. We will never be able to build enough roads to keep up with demand and cannot afford to maintain the ones that we already have.
That said, clean diesel buses are not some kind of super futuristic technology, unfortunately they probably aren't built here, because of Detroit foot dragging.
Posted by: Chris M | December 10, 2009 6:51 AM
Hi Tim, I don't believe your story or blog piece adequately conveys what's involved with the "deal" to buy wind energy from a patron of the Governor - Synergics' Wayne Rogers. This part of the deal should cause heartburn and not warm the hearts of true environmentalists!
Adding insult to injury, Gov. O'Malley plans to sign a contract which would have MD Government agencies and U of MD system buy 20% of the electricity generated by the Synergics windplant - which the Public Service Commission only last month gave permission for construction of up to 20 huge wind turbines along the crest of Backbone Mtn in Garrett County. Sadly, this industrial wind energy facility was approved by the PSC despite the public knowledge that the project's construction and operation would harm the only known occurrence in MD of the state-endangered Mourning Warbler, which the wildlife experts working for the MD DNR officially testified before the PSC that Synergics' desired layout of this windplant would put at risk the continued existence of this endangered nesting bird.
By giving financial support to the Synergics windplant, the Governor and his Energy Secretary Malcolm Woolf, as well as the heads of the University of MD system, are further failing to comply with our State's Nongame and Endangered Species Act - which requires them to protect state-listed endangered species - i.e., "...by taking any action necessary to insure that actions authorized, funded, or carried out by them do not jeopardize the continued existence of the endangered species or threatened species...(fide ยง10-2A-06(c) of this Act)"
PS - I'd like to read the rationale behind the claim you repeated that wind or solar energy projects will result in healthier communities.
Posted by: Dan B | December 10, 2009 8:38 PM