Providence

Hello all,

Thank you, Anne, for setting up this blog as I think this will be a great tool for exchanging ideas, collaborating and for keeping in touch.

Life in Providence has been interesting.  Being from California, I’m used to drought in the summer–while here in Providence I’m either clutching at an umbrella in a lightning storm or dripping sweat in the humid heat.  A lovely combination for biking to work.

Besides surviving the elements, I have been connecting with the greater Providence environmental community over iced coffee in any number of hip cafes.  From a latte with the Sierra Club to iced chai with Clean Water Action, I’ve had some great conversations while also savoring a nice beverage.

It took a bit of time to figure out how to focus my work as I only recently glimpsed the GHG inventory done by Brown last week.  During the lag time, I began researching best practices and climate action plans from across the U.S. with a focus on New England.  Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve been narrowing down the options to about 4 or 5 key programs that the city might be able take.

I’ve also made some great contacts in the community, while other folks whom I thought would be more helpful have tended to be more focused on PR campaigns.  Clean Water Action and the Sierra Club have been extremely helpful in formulating ideas in relation to transportation.  I’m planning a proposal requiring all city contracts be made with with Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD) and DPF Filters to cut down on air pollution, particularly PM.  We’d like to combine this with an anti-idling campaign as well.  Additionally, school buses should also be able to be retrofitted with federal funds.  The verdict is still out about the amount of improvements this would make for CO2, but is a great public health and air quality issue.

I’m also looking into energy audits and/or contracting an ESCO, involving the use of Portfolio Manager for city government, working to expand Green Certification for Businesses to include Energy Star standards and collaborating with grad students at Brown for a boiler and furnace replacement program for city residents (based on San Francisco’s Solar Rooftops initiative).  If anyone has any ideas or leads on this, please let me know–esp. with the ESCO.

My final goal is to line-up the involvement of an undergraduate class at Brown to help out on these intiatives, whether it be in research, data entry or public outreach and to polish up the ever-elusive GHG inventory.

If you’re around Providence, check it out–it’s a cool little city.  Music festivals all summer and also magical waterfire (although it’s hard not to think about GHG’s when I see it…)

I hope you all are well and having a great summer.

~Ryan

What I’ve Been Working On…

Hey All!  Welcome to our blog!

I wanted to let you all know what I have been working on so far, so that hopefully there are some opportunities for collaboration or advice sharing, or at least to feel like we know what others are doing.

Energy Action Coalition

So far I have done a lot of work as a liaison between Clean Air-Cool Planet and Energy Action Coalition (the huge youth climate organization of which CA-CP is a partner).  CA-CP (specifically Anne, and now me too) is on EAC’s Green Jobs working group.  The working group is developing a Green Jobs Toolkit that focuses on ways that youth can work to create green jobs, especially through their campus campaigns.  For the toolkit, I wrote (and Anne helped me revise) on the ways in which Greenhouse Gas Inventories (like those done through CA-CP’s Campus Carbon Calculator) and Energy Efficiency campaigns on campus can create green jobs for the broader community.  I also wrote about how higher education curriculum can promote green jobs.

Planning Tool Outreach

Also, I have begun my primary focus for the summer, which is to help Jenn and Anne with outreach for the new Planning Tool that is part of the latest version of the Campus Carbon Calculator.  Basically, the calculator helps schools enter data about their campus emissions and does the calculations on how many tonnes of emissions they are releasing. The calculator, therefore, helps schools understand the largest sources of their emissions.  The new Planning Tool, which is my focus, helps schools consider the options they have available to them to reduce their emissions.  For each reduction option (i.e. purchasing higher capacity buses) the Planning Tool indicates the cost of the reduction and the amount of emissions that will be reduced.

To think about outreach for the Planning Tool, Anne and I worked together to create a matrix describing vital groups to outreach to, messaging, and venues for reaching these audiences.  I then created a 15 slide powerpoint presentation, with a student activist focus, on the value of the Planning Tool.  Jenn will likely use this powerpoint in presentations that she often gives at schools and conferences.  We will also be creating a video of me giving this presentation (and perhaps of Claire talking about the actual calculator), which will be embedded on the CA-CP website, facebook, YouTube, etc.  I also created basic text advocating for the Planning Tool, and text focusing on each of our specific audiences, so that we can effectively communicate the value of the tool.  This text will be used in various venues (journals, e-mails, articles, CA-CP website) going forward.

The Climate Fellows Blog

After this initial post saying what we’ve been doing for the last few weeks, I guess it sounded like the idea was a quick weekly post to update us all on what you’ve been doing for CA-CP.

I can’t wait to hear what you all are working on!