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By Eva Thaddeus

From Rio Grande Sierran, Jan./Feb. 2008

It’s ready! “It” is the Bernalillo County Green House Gas Emissions Inventory, and you can read it at http://albuquerquegreen.com. Or, you can read this article instead. I have tried to explain the inventory as clearly and simply as possible. If, after you read this, you want more, I recommend you read the inventory itself. It’s about 60 pages, and nicely presented with graphs to make the information accessible.

Why Is the Inventory Important? The City of Albuquerque is a signatory to the U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement. Cities signing this agreement pledge to reduce their global warming emissions 7% below 1990 levels by the year 2012. This reduction goal is the same as the goal of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement that our country has not yet adopted. It is also the goal of the Sierra Club’s Cool Cities campaign. Basically, we want our cities to undertake what our federal government has avoided doing – committing to a significant reduction in global warming pollution.

In order to reduce 7% below 1990 levels, we must first know what the 1990 levels were and what the current levels are. This is why the City needed to produce a baseline emissions inventory. The inventory quantifies all the carbon dioxide, methane, and other global warming gases produced within city limits. It offers a snapshot of the City’s carbon footprint in 1990, 2000, and 2005. It also projects how emissions will change (read: “grow”) in the future if the city continues its current practices.

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Conducting an Inventory. Conducting an inventory is no small feat. Emissions from different sources must be measured differently. Vehicle fuel use, for example, is not easy to measure. While buildings are “stationary sources” that sit still, vehicles are “nonstationary sources” that make capturing data on them difficult. The Mid-Region Council of Governments has a whole system for counting traffic on Albuquerque’s major roads. According to their website, “Most traffic counts are performed using portable traffic monitoring devices with rubber tubes that stretch across the roadway.” The data is then captured and compiled on a regular basis to get a picture of traffic patterns and Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) in the city. To get a snapshot of on-road transportation emissions, one estimates the amount of fuel that must be burned in order to produce Albuquerque’s VMT.

Meanwhile, natural gas consumption can be simply measured by getting PNM’s data on usage in homes and businesses. However, the city was not able to obtain PNM’s data prior to 2005. Anything earlier had to be estimated by other means, and there was no adequate way to do that. Consequently, the city’s 1990 and 2000 data on natural gas consumption is almost certainly inaccurate. Unfortunately, this makes the 1990 baseline highly speculative. However, we have to work from something, and this is the best we are going to have.

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Our City’s Inventory Results. Albuquerque’s inventory was done for three entities: Bernalillo County (biggest), City of Albuquerque (slightly smaller), and City Government (smallest.) I will summarize the 2005 findings for the City of Albuquerque – which is the entity our Sierra Club Cool Cities campaign is interested in. This data gives us a snapshot of our city’s current carbon footprint:

• Total Albuquerque footprint for 2005 was 4.6 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions.(Footnote 1)
• On-road transportation was responsible for 57% of the total.
• Off-road transportation (primarily airplanes taking off and landing) was next with 21% of the total.
• Industrial fuel use (primarily oil and natural gas) was next with 9% of the total.
• The remaining 13% was attributed primarily to residential and commercial heating (4%), electricity generation in power plants (2%), and decomposition from landfills (3%).

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Important Points.

• If you think something big is missing from the carbon footprint above, you’re right. Our electricity consumption is not there. This city inventory only counted emissions that were produced within city limits. So you will see that “electricity generation in power plants” accounts for 2% of the total above. There are two small, natural-gas fired power plants within city limits, and that’s what’s being counted here. What is NOT being counted are the two huge, coal-burning power plants in Four Corners which produce most of the electricity used in Albuquerque.
    Whenever we flip on a light, a TV, or a computer, a little coal is burned in northwestern New Mexico for our sake. But because it isn’t burned within city limits, it doesn’t count in Albuquerque’s inventory. It does count in the statewide inventory, though, and looking at that inventory, I quickly estimated Albuquerque’s 2005 electricity use to produce about 5 million tons of CO2 equivalent, which is larger than all the rest of our emission sources combined (4.6 million tons). (Footnote 2)
• Transportation, specifically Vehicle Miles Traveled, is the source of most of the emissions produced within city limits. You probably could have guessed that without an inventory, but it’s useful to have the numbers to prove it. If we want to reduce our city-based emissions, VMT is where we have to focus. What might help with that? More walkable neighborhoods, mixed-use zoning, better public transit systems. . . smarter development!
• Air travel is significant. What might help reduce that? Maybe a revival of a good national network of railroads? Could it still be done, or is it too late? Trains are a much more energy-efficient form of travel than cars or planes.
• Natural gas usage, although it may be the biggest part of your energy bill, is probably not the biggest piece of your personal carbon footprint. Look to your transportation and electricity use for that.
• City government’s carbon footprint is only 3% of Albuquerque’s total footprint. City government has halved its footprint since 2000 by putting a system in place to capture and burn the methane that comes off its landfills. In terms of global warming pollution, it is much cleaner to burn methane than to allow it to escape into the air. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas.

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Business as Usual – Not an Option! The projections for business as usual assume continued population growth in Albuquerque (growth projections are made by the Department of Energy). We know how much our city has grown and have no reason to think the growth will stop by 2012. So, if we are to reduce our emissions, we have to do so IN SPITE OF higher population. This means that our per-capita emissions must drop meaningfully. And 2012 is just the near-term. As we get closer to that date, it will be time to start thinking about the next set of reductions, which must be even bigger.

Does it sound difficult? Sure. But think of the bad news we’ve gotten about the climate just this year. The Northern Passage is ice-free for the first time in recorded history. The alarming report just released from the International Energy Agency warns that business as usual could result in 6 degrees of temperature rise by the end of this century, with up to 70% of the world’s species extinct. So which is the better choice? Changing our patterns of energy use, or allowing this devastating future for our children, grandchildren, and fellow species to unfold?

This is why the Sierra Club has made a clean energy future its top priority. Business as usual is not an option – we have to create a sustainable world. Here in Albuquerque, it’s time for us all do our part.

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Footnotes

1. Emissions are reported in terms of “carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions,” meaning that some are weighed more heavily than others. Methane, for example, is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 by 23 times. So each ton of methane is worth 23 tons of “CO2 equivalent.” That is why methane leakage from landfills is a significant source of emissions.

2. The statewide emissions inventory can be found at www.nmclimatechange.us. It is Appendix D of the NM Climate Change Initiative’s Final Report. I used the table on p. 35 ( NM Greenhouse Gas Emissions - Consumption Based) and divided the 2000 electricity use by 4, because according to the 2000 census, Albuquerque had one-quarter of the state’s population. Because this was 2000 data, not 2005 data, it is a rough estimate.

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From Rio Grande Sierran, March/April 2008

All of us in Albuquerque have noticed the streets being torn up over the last year or so for the installation of new pipelines, most recently in the area around Carlisle south of Coal. This is part of the final phases of the San Juan-Chama Drinking Water Project being implemented by the area’s water utility, the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority (ABCWUA). The $400 million project is due to be activated later this year and will eventually supply up to 70% of the metropolitan area’s water supply.

Currently, Albuquerque draws its water by pumping groundwater from the Albuquerque Basin Aquifer. USGS studies conducted in the mid-1990s showed that, contrary to prior studies, the aquifer was being depleted at a rate two to four times the rate of recharge, and groundwater levels were dropping over 150 feet below historic levels, making continued reliance exclusively on groundwater pumping unsustainable, particularly in light of the Albuquerque area’s rapid growth.

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The Drinking Water Project was devised to provide a sustainable alternative water supply. The Drinking Water Project will divert about 94,000 acre-feet per year, half of this composed of San Juan-Chama water (at a rate of 65 cubic feet per second, or “cfs”), and the other half, native Rio Grande water from the new Paseo del Norte Diversion Dam south of the Alameda Bridge. This water will be pumped east through a massive pipeline along Paseo del Norte and then south along the North Diversion Channel, to a new water treatment plant under construction near Montaño and I-25. The purified water will then be blended with groundwater and sent to consumers through the City’s new pipeline system.

Although the San-Juan Chama water mingles with Rio Grande “native” water once the Rio Chama joins the Rio Grande near Española, a complicated accounting system attempts to ensure that withdrawals or diversions of San Juan-Chama water do not deplete any of the native water essential to maintaining the Rio Grande’s surface flows. These flows are essential for the survival of the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow, the Southwestern willow flycatcher, and other constituents of the Rio Grande ecosystem. A minimal native flow of 100 cfs at the Central Bridge in Albuquerque is mandated by a 2003 Biological Opinion produced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Of particular concern is that withdrawal of a massive quantity of water just as the Rio Grande makes its way through central Albuquerque could jeopardize the survival and recovery of the silvery minnow. Local residents are also concerned about long-term impacts on domestic wells and the water table around the Rio Grande below the diversion, and effects on the bosque as reduced surface flows result in diminished localized aquifer recharge.

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To alleviate silvery minnow concerns and satisfy the requirements of the federal Endangered Species Act, the Drinking Water Project includes a complex “curtailment strategy,” as well as several other measures. The curtailment strategy would kick in when flows above the Paseo Diversion fall below 260 cfs, at which point the ABCWUA would begin reducing the amount of its diversion, suspending it altogether when native flows fall to 130 cfs. At such times the ABCWUA would switch to partial or total reliance on the previous groundwater pumping. The project further seeks to accommodate silvery minnow needs by including on the Diversion Dam’s east side a fish passage channel and fish screens within the intake structure.

The ABCWUA has funded studies on silvery minnow recovery and a captive breeding program at the Albuquerque BioPark. It has participated in efforts to remove non-native species like salt cedar and Russian olive, and restore native bosque ecosystems. And its investment of millions of dollars in water conservation education and incentives has achieved its target of a 30% reduction in per capita water use since 1995. The Authority’s 2004 Long Range Water Conservation Strategy has now increased the reduction goal to 40%.

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The Sierra Club remains concerned that the sudden availability of outside water may create a false sense of water security and prompt a fresh push for population growth and development. Water availability and a balance between human imperatives and instream flows for wildlife and ecosystem health continues to be a fundamental and overarching priority for conservation advocates throughout the arid West. The Central Group remains vigilant and involved with City officials to press for more forward-looking policies on sprawl, climate change, and energy efficiency, all of which are interrelated with water issues.

For more information on the Drinking Water Project, visit the ABCWUA’s website (www.abcwua.org). For information on ecological restoration and management efforts for the Middle Rio Grande, see the Middle Rio Grande Bosque Initiative website and its many links (www.fws.gov/southwest/mrgbi/).

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Are you a teacher or a parent in an Albuquerque elementary public school? We have a great energy-efficient light bulb campaign and we NEED YOUR HELP getting it into Albuquerque's elementary schools.

Sierra Club has a program to

• Provide several hundred dollars worth of energy-efficient light bulbs, which will be donated to your school community.
• Offer an educational assembly for students grades 3-5 educating students about energy use and efficiency, and addressing state science benchmarks.

We need people who will bring our program to the attention of the school principal and ASK FOR IT TO COME TO YOUR SCHOOL.

For more information, please contact Mary Westerlund at 505/294-7588, westmmjs2@hotmail.com. Thank you!

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