03 April 2009
Virginia Learns Energy Innovations from Abroad
By Dale Medearis
For more than a decade, local officials from Northern Virginia and counterparts from Europe have traded regional environmental planning innovations. The partnership is expanding its focus to climate change mitigation and adaptation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and “green” buildings policies.
Dale Medearis, Ph.D., is the senior environmental planner with the Northern Virginia Regional Commission (NVRC), where he manages climate, energy, and international programs. Prior to working with the NVRC, Medearis spent approximately 20 years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of International Affairs, managing the agency’s programs for Europe and international urban environment.
Hundreds of thousands of times a day, travelers on the Metropolitan Washington Metrorail system stand on the platform and stare expectantly down the tracks for an oncoming train. Their eyes frequently shift upward to a constantly updating electronic sign hanging above the platform. It tells passengers how many minutes until the arrival of the next train, and the train after that.
In the past, commuters in the 170-kilometer system had little information about when the trains might come and go. Now, commuters have real-time information about the travel status of trains and buses because transportation planners here borrowed some ideas from cities such as Berlin and Stockholm.
The display of these signs at Metro stations, the adoption of traffic-calming measures to reduce speeds, and the convenience of car sharing have become permanent parts of the commuting routine for travelers in the region. When residents and pedestrians in Fairfax County wanted greater safety on neighborhood streets, they looked to the traffic circles and street designs from Stuttgart, Germany. The plan now in development will transform a deadly intersection into a walkable, pedestrian-friendly streetscape.
The citizens of Alexandria, Virginia, enjoy car-sharing programs patterned after those in Berlin and Zurich, which offer reliable, clean, and affordable access to cars without worries of storage, maintenance, or pollution. The success of these schemes not only improves mobility in a transportation-stressed region, but also represents the evolving influence of “soft diplomacy” and the ascendance of state and local governments as laboratories for the transatlantic transfer of innovations into the United States.
Sharing Solutions
The Northern Virginia Regional Commission (NVRC) is a council of local governments for the approximately 2.5 million residents of a state on the southern boundary of the nation’s capital. Its regional counterpart in Stuttgart, the Verband Region Stuttgart, is a comparable council for 2.5 million residents. The two bodies have developed a model partnership focused on the sharing and application of innovative regional environmental, planning, and transportation plans. Since 1998, the Verband and NVRC have brought together professionals and policymakers to learn from each other in the areas of land-use planning, water infrastructure, transportation, “green” design, and stormwater management policies. As a result, environmental planning in Northern Virginia has been transformed.
Our work with Stuttgart ― and other European regions― is easy to justify. By most energy, climate, or environmental benchmarks, European regions such as Stuttgart outperform the United States. For example, since 1990, Germany has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions nationwide by more than 8 percent. Over the same period, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, greenhouse gas emissions in the United States increased by more than 10 percent. Moreover, Germany’s renewable energy sector overall accounts for more than 12 percent of total electricity production and has created more than 250,000 jobs since 1998. By comparison, in the United States, renewable energy accounts for less than 3 percent of all energy production. It is estimated that the total installed solar photovoltaic capacity in Northern Virginia does not exceed 50 kilowatt hours (kWh) — less than that of the train station in Freiburg, Germany.
As Northern Virginia looks ahead to the challenges of confronting climate change, balancing economic growth, and providing housing and mobility for the 500,000 new residents expected in the region by 2019, the imperative to draw lessons from Stuttgart and other European regions will become even stronger. More than two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions in our region, as in the rest of the country, emanate from the “built environment.” This includes the heating and cooling of houses, apartments, and commercial and public buildings and the fuels consumed shuttling commuters to and from their jobs. State and local governments in the United States exercise huge influence over the built environment — with the power of building codes, energy efficiency standards, permits for renewable energy, and the building and maintenance of roads and public transit. Simply put, state and local governments are at the center of global energy, climate, and sustainable policies. As the world’s attention turns to the challenges of energy and climate, the exchange of knowledge about the built environment will become vital.
Northern Virginia and Stuttgart have taken a number of new steps to support the transfer and application of innovations in climate and energy policy. A 2008 meeting with German counterparts in Hamburg, Erlangen, and Stuttgart reaffirmed that a broad range of practices and policies can be shared from Germany to Northern Virginia over the short and long term. These include:
• Community Energy Planning. Climate and energy planning in Virginia requires widespread adoption of energy-efficient design in buildings and housing, efficient generation and distribution of renewable and conventional energies, along with mixed and compact land uses frequently built around transit centers. These measures must be supported by clear, short- and long-term energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. Hamburg’s HafenCity and Stuttgart’s Scharnhauser Park are models of community energy planning with plenty of lessons for Virginia cities such as Alexandria and Arlington, and also in the greater metropolitan area of Washington.
• Renewable Energies. Development and expansion of renewable energies (wind, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, and geothermal heating and cooling) in Northern Virginia can be enhanced through governmental incentives, such as “feed-in tariff systems.” Feed-in tariff systems in Germany encourage the production of renewable energies through a government guaranteed purchase rate, generally set above conventional rates.
• Energy Performance Building Labels. The promotion of energy efficiency can be accelerated in Northern Virginia, especially in the process of retrofitting buildings. The display of energy labels on a structure to record and broadcast its energy efficiency and performance is a further strategy to step up efficiency efforts.
• Building Retrofits and Financing. Local governments in Northern Virginia should consider development of a publicly administered capital fund that administers low or zero interest loans for renewable energy applications, insulating or weatherizing private homes and commercial businesses.
Shared Challenges
The ongoing work and achievements of international partnerships at the local level are often overlooked. U.S. and international media give disproportionate attention to the differences within multilateral policy debates on climate change. But state, local, and regional governments have played, and will continue to play, an equally significant role in affecting sustainable energy and climate policies. The overwhelming convergence of shared challenges among local authorities creates fertile ground for the search, exchange, and transfer of innovative energy and climate solutions. The transfer of innovative policies from abroad to the United States should accelerate and become more focused and persistent.
The globalization of the economy also will sustain and expand ties between cities and states — especially between Europe and the United States. The mutual trade and financial investments between the United States and Europe exceed $4 trillion annually and account for millions of jobs. The powerful economic interdependence between Europe and the United States will sustain learning and exchanges among state and local authorities. These issues give officials in the United States motivation to work with counterparts in other countries in search of solutions to mutual problems. These exchanges are a form of soft diplomacy that can only help improve international relations and mutual understanding among nations.
Conclusion
President Obama’s chief environmental and climate advisor, Carol Browner, affirms that climate change is the “greatest challenge we have ever faced.” The science that has emerged clearly suggests that Northern Virginia will not be immune from these challenges. In that context, the partnership between Northern Virginia and Stuttgart can demonstrate to leaders facing similar challenges in other communities around the world that international partnerships and cooperation — especially between local authorities, business interests, and civil society organizations — are not only valuable, but critical to the search for and implementation of long-term global climate and energy solutions.
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
