The Possible

By Scott Lewis | Brightworks Founder and CEO

Earth Day seems like a good moment to pause and reflect on possibility.  I find inspring the following excerpt from Lester Brown’s brilliant 2009 work, Plan B.

[For a free pdf or a purchased hard copy of Plan B, visit the Earth Policy Institute web site.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From “Plan B 4.0, Mobilizing To Save Civilization,I” (Earth Policy Institute: 2009) Pages 259-261.

 A Wartime Mobilization

The U.S. entry into World War II offers an inspiring case study in rapid mobilization. Mobilizing to save civilization both parallels and contrasts with this earlier mobilization. For the war, the United States underwent a massive economic restructuring, but it was only intended to be temporary. Mobilizing to save civilization, in contrast, requires an economic restructuring that will endure.

Initially, the United States resisted involvement in the war and responded only after it was directly attacked at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. But respond it did. After an all-out

commitment, the U.S. engagement helped turn the tide of war, leading the Allied Forces to victory within three-and-a-half years.

In his State of the Union address on January 6, 1942, one month after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the country’s arms production goals. The United States, he said, was planning to produce 45,000 tanks, 60,000 planes, 20,000 anti-aircraft guns, and several thousand ships. He added, “Let no man say it cannot be done.”

No one had ever seen such huge arms production numbers.  Public skepticism was widespread. But Roosevelt and his colleagues realized that the world’s largest concentration of industrial power at that time was in the U.S. automobile industry.

Even during the Depression, the United States was producing 3 million or more cars a year. After his State of the Union address, Roosevelt met with auto industry leaders and told them that the country would rely heavily on them to reach these arms production goals. Initially they wanted to continue making cars and simply add on the production of armaments. What they did not yet know was that the sale of new cars would soon be banned. From early February 1942 through the end of 1944, nearly three years, essentially no cars were produced in the United States.

In addition to a ban on the production and sale of cars for private use, residential and highway construction was halted, and driving for pleasure was banned. Strategic goods—including tires, gasoline, fuel oil, and sugar—were rationed beginning in 1942. Cutting back on private consumption of these goods freed up material resources that were vital to the war effort.

The year 1942 witnessed the greatest expansion of industrial output in the nation’s history—all for military use. Wartime aircraft needs were enormous. They included not only fighters, bombers, and reconnaissance planes, but also the troop and cargo transports needed to fight a war on distant fronts. From the beginning of 1942 through 1944, the United States far exceeded the initial goal of 60,000 planes, turning out a staggering 229,600 aircraft, a fleet so vast it is hard today to even visualize it.  Equally impressive, by the end of the war more than 5,000 ships were added to the 1,000 or so that made up the American Merchant Fleet in 1939.

In her book No Ordinary Time, Doris Kearns Goodwin describes how various firms converted. A sparkplug factory was among the first to switch to the production of machine guns.

Soon a manufacturer of stoves was producing lifeboats. A merry-go-round factory was making gun mounts; a toy company was turning out compasses; a corset manufacturer was producing grenade belts; and a pinball machine plant began to make armor-piercing shells.

In retrospect, the speed of this conversion from a peacetime to a wartime economy is stunning. The harnessing of U.S. industrial power tipped the scales decisively toward the Allied Forces, reversing the tide of war. Germany and Japan, already fully extended, could not counter this effort. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill often quoted his foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey: “The United States is like a giant boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate.”

This mobilization of resources within a matter of months demonstrates that a country and, indeed, the world can restructure the economy quickly if convinced of the need to do so.

Many people—although not yet the majority—are already convinced of the need for a wholesale economic restructuring. The purpose of this book is to convince more people of this need, helping to tip the balance toward the forces of change and hope.

 Mobilizing to Save Civilization

Mobilizing to save civilization means fundamentally restructuring the global economy in order to stabilize climate, eradicate poverty, stabilize population, restore the economy’s natural support systems, and, above all, restore hope. We have the technologies, economic instruments, and financial resources to do this. The United States, the wealthiest society that has ever existed, has the resources to lead this effort.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute and Author of Plan B, Mobilizing to Save Civilization.  Thanks Lester!

Really? {Senate majority leader tells governors to flaunt federal climate change rules}

By Scott Lewis | Brightworks Founder and CEO

Last week, U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell urged governors to defy new federal regulations aimed at regulating the greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

These regulations are designed to reduce national CO2 emissions 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 30 percent by 2030.  This isn’t enough to stop climate change, but it’s an important step in the direction of a renewable energy economy.

Of course, McConnell doesn’t believe in climate change, so we shouldn’t be surprised.

Climate Change Denier McConnell

Some do though.  The worlds leading body of scientists studying climate change is called the IPCC.   Last year, the IPCC issued it’s fifth assessment of climate change  causes, risks and impacts.

That report is called the Fifth Assessment Report, or AR5.  Some findings from AR5 include:

• Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.
• Observed changes in the climate system Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.
• Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems. Limiting climate change would require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions which, together with adaptation, can limit climate change risks.
• Surface temperature is projected to rise over the 21st century under all assessed emission scenarios. It is very likely that heat waves will occur more often and last longer, and that extreme precipitation events will become more intense and frequent in many regions. The ocean will continue to warm and acidify, and global mean sea level to rise.
• Without additional mitigation efforts beyond those in place today, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally.

So in deciding how to act, we have to choose.  Between the world’s leading scientists, or people like McConnell.

When it comes to mitigation options, a couple of professors (Jacobson and Delucchi) from Stanford and UC Davis have documented how we could power the world’s economy on renewable energy at comparable cost to the current energy infrastructure.  They state:

We suggest producing all new energy with WWS by 2030 and replacing the pre-existing energy by 2050. Barriers to the plan are primarily social and political, not technological or economic. The energy cost in a WWS world should be similar to that today.

Path to Net Zero – Into the Necessary Zone

By Scott Lewis | Brightworks Founder and CEO

Averting catastrophic impacts of climate change requires us to shift to a zero-carbon economy as quickly as possible.  Responsible for about thirty percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, our building stock represents a big opportunity in that economic transformation.  Recognizing this, the state of California’s building code is moving toward a code-minimum  that requires all new residential buildings achieve Zero Net Energy (ZNE) by the year 2020, and all new commercial buildings ZNE by 2030.

Difficult to achieve in any but the smallest buildings at the single-building scale, net-zero has certain advantages at the campus, portfolio or community scale.  At scale, heat and cool can be moved from a waste source in one building to an input in another (i.e. waste heat from a kitchen or lab can pre-heat hot water in a residence hall, etc.), and parking garages and walkways can accommodate photovoltaic panels to help power nearby buildings.  At the community or regional scale, generation can happen offsite, and wind, geothermal, and small-scale hydro can enter this mix.  At scale, net-zero becomes more exciting (because scale drives results that matter), and more possible.

Results of a Path to Net Zero analysis for a campus; click for a larger view

For the owner of a large campus, key initial questions include “where should we start, what should we do next, and why?” Brightworks in 2014 began helping two large clients – one, a university campus, the other, the campus of a large medical provider – to address these very questions.  The approach was straightforward – create an inventory of the entire building stock in the portfolio, figure out which buildings were slated for demolition and when, which were slated for upgrades, and when, and what new construction projects were planned for the next 20-30 years.  Line that up with a careful building performance and engineering evaluation of the existing buildings, and then map out the greatest opportunity for impact for each building typology – Academic, Office, Lab, Assembly, Athletic, Food Service, and Parking.  The result: a campus-wide energy use roadmap to net zero that clearly reveals the gaps, barriers and opportunties along the path.  The report provides a baseline reference for infrastructure and building planning into the future.

 Not Just for Campuses

While portfolio and campus owners may benefit from economies of scale, most buildings do not fit into that model.  From the bleeding edge of experimental projects like Seattle’s Bullitt Center, to larger government buildings like the National Renewable Energy Lab’s Research Support Facility – Zero Net Energy Buildings are going from theory to reality across different markets.  To help designers, developers and public agencies understand the nuances and details of what it takes to start designing and building Net-zero Energy Buildings, Brightworks has been providing free in-house presentation to architects and daylong workshops to the design community and municipal governments.  We find this among our most interesting and exciting work; at its core, it begins to get from the “this is really good” or “this is better than code” to the “this is necessary” zone.  We all need more of that.

Farewell to a Friend

Ken Lewis, former President of AC Martin, one of Los Angeles’ top architecture firms, was a close friend and colleage.  We remain inspired by his commitment to excellence and to sustainability, and by his passion for life.

We shall miss him dearly.

 
photo courtesy ac martin

 

 On the Henry's Fork, June 2014

 

 

Severe, Pervasive, Irreversible

by Scott Lewis, Brightworks Sustainability founder and CEO

May and June were the hottest on record for the planet.  The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says if we don’t soon and rapidly curb emissions, the effects of climate change would be “severe, pervasive and irreversible.”

This follows on the heels of  a July report from NASA that 2013 was the driest year on record – dating back 119 years – for California.  NASA climatologist Bill Patzert, commenting on the situation, said “the Amercian West and Southwest are definitely on the ropes.”

Good article here from the New York Times on common myths that impede our effective response to the situation.

The challenge is not technical.

August 8 2014 : Drought conditiions in US west

It is political.

At Brightworks, we’re trying to help.

You can too.

 

Carbon Neutral

by Scott Lewis, Brightworks Sustainability founder and CEO
Those of us who spends our days (and nights and weekends…) advising others on how to improve their ecological imprint and the associated social and economic imprints that go along with it, have a mandate to walk our talk.  Our credibility and our ability to understand our clients’ perspective depend on it.

So, we here at Brightworks made a commitment to operate as a Climate Neutral business – to offset the CO2 emissions associated with our commuting, office energy use, workday travel (to and from meetings, etc.) and procurement, to the best of our ability.  We do this by (1) trying to track and measure our CO2 impacts, and (2) buying 2x offsets for that CO2 impact.

Why 2x?  Two reasons.  First, we have to assume that the offset system probably isn’t perfect, and second, we assume our tracking and measuring system for our carbon impact is probably imperfect as well, so we err on the side of conservative, and buy 2x.

So, how does this work?

First, we track our Air Travel, Commute to and from work, Work Car Travel, Office Energy Use and Procurement.  We convert all those numbers to CO2 using industry references.  Then we buy (2x) offsets from the most credible offset source we can find, the Bonneville Environmental Foundation.

Below is the summary of our carbon footprint. If you are curious about the underlying data that supports this analysis, it is all here.

Brightworks’ Carbon Footprint-2013
Source	Metric Tons
Commuting	6.39
Air Travel	128.39
Work Car Travel	5.33
Office Energy Use	77.64
Procurement	6.99
Total Metric Tons	217.75

Brightworks By The Numbers | 2014 Update

by Scott Lewis, Brightworks Sustainability founder and CEO

Thanks to our ex-staffer,  great friend and lampmaker Billy Ulmer, we have updated our famous Brightworks Metrics with end-of-year 2013 data.

The results are as follows:

Numbers Behind the Numbers
Total Built Environment (Buildings, Campus, Master Plan, Infrastructure) Projects Completed:	> 325
LEED Projects Certified	>175
Total Square Footage	>35 million
Total Cost	$9.26 billion
Projected Impacts
Energy Cost Savings	$26,056,579 per year
People We Touched in 2013	64,583 people
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emission Savings	134,341 metric tons per year
Water (H2O) Savings	104,455,041 gallons per year
Waste Diverted from Landfills	797,325 tons

As always, our data as of December 2013 largely reflects our LEED® projects in the rating systems of New Construction, Core & Shell, Commercial Interiors and Schools. To learn more about how we think about the people we touch, read our post on the subject.

Acceleration and Scale

by Scott Lewis, Brightworks Sustainability founder and CEO

Twenty-Thirteen recedes in the rearview mirror.  The year in which the CO2 concentration of the Earth’s atmosphere passed 400 ppm, for the first time in 2.5 million years. And coincidentally (maybe), an article from Geophysical Research Letters recently reported that the Arctic is now warmer than it has been in 440,000 years.  Hmm.

For those who may consider it unwise to experiment blindly with the planet’s climatic systems, the urgency of enabling the rapid transformation to a post-carbon economy has never been greater.  And yet we see a fossil fuel extraction frenzy sweeping from the Bakken shale oil reserves in North Dakota to the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta, Canada to thousands of hydrolic fracturing sites from Nova Scotia to California.   It would be difficult to argue that momentum has shifted even tentatively towards a fossil fuel free future.

 So what do we do with this?

For those of us working for a sober approach to natural resource stewardship and a rational approach to ecological risk, the answer has to be “make change at larger scale, and make change happen with greater speed.”  Without scale and speed, we don’t have a chance.  Instead of making change one building at a time, let us intensify our focus on developing solutions that can be deployed across portfolios of buildings.  Yes, at Brightworks we are doing that now, as are many others.  But we need to, and will, do much more of it.  Instead of making change one company at a time, we will be looking with greater scrutiny for opportunities at the industry scale, seeking trade associations and informal alliances to support in their efforts to become truly sustainable.  Acceleration and Scale.  That is my mantra for 2014.  Looking forward, to the opportunities before us.  Informed by what we see and know, from what has come before.

On A Positive Note [Always a Good Way To Start A New Year, I feel]

• In July 2013 the US installed capacity for solar energy for the first time surpassed 10 gigawatts (source).
• In October 2013, the 150th U.S. coal plant to be retired or prevented from opening was announced (source).
• Also in October 2013, France’s highest court upheld the government’s ban on fracking (go France!) (source)

*                    *                    *

Lastly, here at Brightworks, we have a supercharged passionate committed team helping our clients create real value by discovering how sustainability can help them become more succesful.  When asked what gets them excited, some of their comments:

• Exciting new ideas that allow new ways of doing things or thinking to happen.  Often these involve technology, but sometimes they can just be a new way of thinking or a new paradigm I haven’t known yet (like reading The Four Agreements, or Ishmael).
• Water conservation. As we head into another dry year in Southern California I feel that water conserving strategies will play a prominent role in our discussions about sustainability. I’m excited about current technologies making their way into the mainstream and I am hopeful that we will be seeing them integrated into our future projects.
• I get excited by interesting projects with unique challenges and my ability to solve them. I get excited by motivated coworkers who spread their own excitement to those working with them. I get amped up hearing about new technologies and strategies for approaching different challenges. I love this industry, and really enjoy networking and hearing  from the different individuals who work in the wide range of services that are involved in this industry. Our work makes an impact in the world, and I am glad to play a part in that and be proud of the work I do. I believe we strive to do our best in the world of sustainability and are continually looking for opportunities to increase our impact.
• Inter-office collaboration, COFFEE, pro bono work for a cause, harmony between nature and the indoors, Less is More mentality, learning from nature, crowdfunding, Pantone color of the year, product transparency, Snøhetta, placebased design.
• The opportunity to help our clients learn and execute on real changes that have environmental impacts.

And there you have it.  Happy 2014 everyone.

Aim High

by Scott Lewis, Brightworks Sustainability founder and CEO

The idea of Triple Bottom Line sustainability may be somewhat new in the popular vernacular, but the idea of social equity – the “P” piece of the People, Planet, Prosperity triumvirate – traces back for millenia (it as, after all, a core concept in many of the worlds wisdom traditions and ethical teachings). However, in a historical moment when government approval ratings are at record lows, it seems more than appropriate to reflect on the role the People factor played in our own nation’s history.

Last Tuesday was the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. On my way to work that day, I happened to catch on the radio one of more moving stories I’d heard in a long time. I’d like to share it with all of you – please feel free to pass it along. It’s worth hearing and remembering.

To me at least, remembering the high aspirations of those who came before us, and remembering the impacts and outcomes that followed from their commitment to what then seemed like impossible ideals, can help inspire us today to not lower our sights or be content with incremental change, but instead, commit to create the change we want and know to be necessary.

Remember.  And Aim High.

[If the audio link above doesn’t work on your computer or tablet or phone, the full story can be found here…]

Worth Noting [Shale Oil and Tar Sands]

by Scott Lewis, Brightworks Sustainability founder and CEO

I quote:

In terms of the quantity of oil potentially available, ultimate Canadian oil sand reserves are thought to be in the region of 1.7 trillion barrels, with 315 billion probable barrels accessible using technology currently under development. US oil shale deposits are estimated at 1.5 trillion barrels of reserves there are currently only estimates as to what proportion may be recoverable, but the figure used by the US government is 800 billion barrels.

 If all 1,115 billion barrels of these recoverable unconventional reserves in North America were exploited, it would result in estimated well to wheel emissions of 980 Gt CO2, equating to an estimated increase in atmospheric CO2 levels of between 49 and 65ppm. This could be catastrophic given that our atmospheric levels are already at 430ppm CO2e and we risk a new global extinction event if we pass the 450ppm CO2e stabilisation target and trigger global mean temperature increases above 2°C.

 As Jim Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute and Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, has said, “squeezing oil from shale mountains is not an option that would allow our planet and its inhabitants to survive”.

Source: WWF

Formerly Boreal forest in Alberta, Canada. Now, a tar sand extraction site.