Public Affairs

The capstone paper that almost wasn’t

During Spring 2019 I took the final required course for my Master’s in Public Administration at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs – PUBAFR 7900, the capstone research paper. In this course, students write a structured capstone paper on a project of their choice. Although the projects vary a lot, the papers all follow the same format:

    • Title Page
    • Executive Summary
    • Table of Contents
    • Introduction
    • Background, including Stakeholders
    • Literature Review
    • Methods
    • Data
    • Results
    • Conclusions
    • Appendices
    • Works Cited

As chair of the Sierra Club’s Ready for 100 Columbus campaign, I wrote my paper on how three cities that have committed to 100% renewable energy are getting there. At the time of my writing, 120 cities had made this commitment, including Cleveland and Cincinnati in Ohio, as well as several other major cities. I wanted to figure out a possible road map for Columbus.

Although I wrote about a topic I am extremely involved with — how cities can get to 100% renewable energy — the amount of rewriting and frankly unreasonable demands from the professor almost led me to withdraw from the course. No matter what I produced, it wasn’t right. If something was in a bulleted list, she wanted it in a table, but if it was in a table, she wanted a bulleted list. Even when I made the revisions asked for, it seemed she didn’t read them and said I hadn’t done the work. Halfway through the semester, she wanted me to change my topic!

Exemplary Community Service Award

I got the Exemplary Community Service Award from the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at its pre-graduation ceremony in May.

But after encouragement from my Glenn College advisor, I stayed in, earning barely enough points to pass with a B, but I did get the B. And it’s a good thing because I not only learned a lot despite the difficulties, I also was able to graduate. Even better, during the Glenn College pre-graduation ceremony, I was given the Exemplary Community Service Award.

In writing the paper, the first thing I had to do was identify which cities I was going to look at. I got a list of all cities that had made the commitment, then identified which ones are in the top 100 cities in the United States by population. Those included San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, Washington D.C., Portland, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Cleveland, St. Louis, Saint Paul, Cincinnati, Orlando, and Madison, Wis. Of these, most had made the commitment within the past year, and only about half had published energy plans for how they would get there.

Of the cities with published energy plans, I picked three: San Francisco, the first city to make a commitment to 100% renewable energy in 2010; Atlanta, the only city to include a full consideration of policy alternatives in its climate plan; and Cincinnati, which has the most comprehensive plan of all large cities that have committed to this transition.

I also consulted the academic and think tank literature. On the academic side, I found that most people who study this question believe cities, states, and countries can transition to 100% renewable energy, but there’s a debate between those who think it can be done using only sun, wind, hydro, and geothermal, and those who believe it must include nuclear energy. The 100% renewable energy side is led by Mark Jacobson of Stanford University, founder of the Solutions Project who mapped out how states, cities, and countries can get to 100% renewable energy.  The critics include 21 scientists who published an evaluation of Jacobson’s work in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The dispute was covered by David Roberts in Vox here and here.

I also found a lot of think tank and advocacy group literature on how cities can transition to 100% renewable energy. The two best sources were the Carbon-Free City Handbook, published by Rocky Mountain Institute, which looked programs cities could implement by sector such as buildings, transportation, and energy supply, and Pathways to 100, a primer for how cities can use legislative, financial, and structural practices to transform their energy supplies.

I found that by instituting best energy practices on the city level, rather than depending on state or federal action, cities could take control of their energy supplies and significantly lower their carbon emissions. San Francisco, which has been working on programs to get to 100% renewable energy since 2011, has significantly lowered its emissions.

I was also able to put together a high-level blueprint for how cities can get to 100% renewable energy:

STEP 1: ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Buildings are the top source of carbon emissions in most cities. Making energy efficiency upgrades helps by reducing the amount of energy being used, which both lowers emissions and saves money. Also called retrofitting and weatherization, energy efficiency includes activities such as installing LED lights and EnergyStar appliances, adding insulation, sealing windows, and using low-flow plumbing. This needs to be done on both the residential level, particularly in low-income areas where housing is often very inefficient, and in large commercial buildings, financed through the Property Assessed Clean Energy program. Cities can also require or incentive new builds to be LEED-certified or net zero, and they need to address the split incentive in which which tenants pay for energy, so landlords don’t want to pay for upgrades. This can be done by requiring landlords to list energy costs with rent or by providing incentives for landlords to make needed upgrades.

STEP 2: RENEWABLE ENERGY
To run on 100% renewable energy, we need more renewable energy! This includes building out solar generation on city property, and helping residents and businesses to install more solar. Cincinnati is building 25 MW of solar to run its water treatment plans, and Cleveland has a solar farm on a capped landfill. San Francisco has incentives for purchasing solar equipment as well as a solar equipment leasing program, which has lowered costs and spread solar panels on homes and businesses across the city. In Ohio, Solar United Neighbors runs bulk purchasing programs.

STEP 3: TRANSPORTATION
Transportation is the second large source of carbon emissions in cities. Cities have a lot of options for tackling transportation emissions, such as converting their own fleet to electric vehicles, encouraging residents to drive EVs, rolling out charging infrastructure, supporting biking, walking, and scooters, offering bike share and car share programs, and building bus rapid transit and light rail. City form is also important. Channeling development into the city center rather than urban sprawl lowers emissions from cars and makes getting around by public transportation, biking, or walking easier.

STEP 4: ENERGY SUPPLY
The most effective way to lower carbon emissions from energy use is to ensure that the energy supply is generated from renewables. This can be done in two ways: building more utility-scale solar and wind generation, and using renewable energy certificates to offset fossil fuel use. In Ohio, we have a third option: Aggregation. This is when a city pools together its customers and uses them to bargain with utilities for more renewable energy at a lower price. Cincinnati is aggregated for 100% renewable. Aggregation is legal in only eight states, and we are lucky Ohio is one.

STEP 5: FINANCING
Whenever renewable energy comes up, the first question is usually “But how will you pay for it?” Fortunately cities have lots of financing mechanisms to choose from, including programs like Property Assessed Clean Energy, bulk purchasing, power purchase agreements, green banking, and more. For example, Los Angeles allows low-income residents to “rent” their rooftops to the city electric utility, which installs solar panels that put clean energy on the grid. Atlanta offers a “round it up” program for people to pay a little extra on their utility bills; the money funds energy efficiency upgrades in low-income areas. New York has a Green Bank that works with private-sector banks to fund clean energy developments.

Here’s a link to my Glenn College capstone paper: Getting to 100: How Cities are Transitioning to 100% Renewable Energy (pdf)

Here’s a link to my capstone presentation: Getting to 100: How Cities are Transitioning to 100% Renewable Energy (ppt)

 

Setting program goals

In Chapter 8, Guy Peters discusses program evaluation and policy change.  Peters says program evaluation is difficult for a number of reasons: goals may not be measurable, the time frame for meaningful goals may be too short, measures may not include all outcomes, targets may be difficult to identify, measures may look more at procedure than performance, outcomes may be valued differently by different constituents, or evaluations may be rigged.

One way to be more transparent in what you are measuring and why is to state the goals and evaluation measures as part of creating the program.  An example of this is the EPA’s Clean Power Plan proposed on June 2.  In this plan the EPA sets the goal of lowering carbon emissions from power plants 30% by 2030.  Lowering carbon emissions from power plants is necessary because power plants are the largest contributor in the nation to carbon dioxide emissions that drive climate change. Lowering emissions will not only mitigate the worst effects of global warming which cost over $100 billion in 2012 alone, but the reduction in particulate matter and ozone also carries up to $93 billion in public health benefits through avoiding up to 6,600 premature deaths, 150,000 child asthma attacks, and 3,300 heart attacks.

Under the plan, each state is given a goal for emission reductions by 2030, with interim goals to meet by 2020.  However, states have broad flexibility in how they meet these goals.  Four building blocks are laid out: making fossil fuel plants more efficient, using more low-emitting power sources such as natural gas or nuclear, using more renewable energies such as solar and wind, or using electricity more efficiently.  States can also implement these building blocks in a variety of ways such as investing in energy efficiency programs, upgrading aging infrastructure, passing new regulations, setting policy to encourage more renewables, or working with other states to create a regional strategy.

The goals of the EPA Clean Power Plan are modest, common-sense, and highly achievable.  Although this plan is the most our government has ever proposed to address climate change, it’s the least we can possibly do, and only the beginning of what needs to be done to address this urgent issue.  Yet incredibly this plan is being challenged in court by 12 states, including Ohio, which have sued to stop it.  Although the Supreme Court has ruled three times, including most recently in June, that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, these states argue that the EPA does not have this authority because it is already using the Clean Air Act to regulate other emissions from power plants such as mercury.

To make this argument, which on the face of it sounds ridiculous, the states are relying on an anomaly in the law.  During the lawmaking process, the House and Senate each pass their own version of the bill, which is then reconciled in a joint committee before being sent to the president for a signature.  Unfortunately, part of the Clean Air Act pertaining to what the EPA can regulate as pollution did not get reconciled before signing, so it contains language from both the House, which is more restrictive, and the Senate, which grants broad authority.  When such failures of reconciliation have been challenged in court, the courts have generally given discretion for interpretation to the agency doing the regulating, as the Supreme Court did in ruling that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon pollution.

Moreover, the House version may not say what the states think.  Although one section of the Clean Air Act states the EPA can regulate specific emissions such as mercury, the section of the act that the states are suing under says the EPA can regulate any other source of pollution, to cover sources the first section might have missed.  The House language prevents the EPA from regulating states twice under this section, but that’s not what the EPA is doing.  It is regulating mercury under the first section of the Clean Air Act, and carbon under the second section.

Most observers expect the state’s challenge to the EPA Clean Power Plan to be thrown out of court.  So why are states pursuing this?  Two words: politics and money.  The lawsuit is led by West Virginia and joined mostly by states where coal and oil are big business.  Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people and money is speech, these industries have the green light to pour more money than ever into elections, installing politicians who fight every possible regulation on fossil fuels tooth and nail.  It is a waste of taxpayer funds, and it burns precious time we need to address climate change, which threatens to tip the environment into something totally different than the one human civilization and most current species evolved in.

Scientists tell us that our window to mitigate climate change is closing fast – as in the next 10 to 15 years – and if the environment does reach a tipping point, it may not be something we can adapt to.  Humans are dependent on a healthy environment, and we cannot choose our economy at the environment’s expense.  On the contrary, moving toward a healthy environment would strengthen the economy with investments in clean energy, innovation, and public health.

Climate change is happening now, but we also have the tools to address it.  The EPA Clean Power Plan is a good first step.  We cannot allow the iron triangle of the fossil fuel industry, the politicians it puts into office, and the courts that allow them to do this, to put an entire civilization at risk.  People must make their voices heard, whether through votes or protests.  There is now a true social movement on climate, and it won’t stop until this problem is solved.

 

Getting on the agenda

This week’s reading looks at agenda setting and policy formulation.  Peters says a problem gets on the government’s agenda if 1) it affects a lot of people or has intense or visible effects; 2) it parallels or expands on previous issues; 3) it can be linked to a national symbol; 4) it is beyond the private sector and can only be solved by government; 5) there is a policy or technology to solve it.

Right now climate change is such a problem.  On September 21, along with 400,000 other Americans, I participated in the People’s Climate March.  The purpose of the march was to demonstrate popular support for putting climate change at the top of the agenda.  Climate change meets all of Peters’ requirements.  It affects large numbers of people, and the effects can be intense.  Carbon pollution is similar to previous environmental challenges such as DDT or the ozone hole.  For a long time climate change was symbolized by a polar bear, but the EPA is now using the symbol of a boy with asthma in a doctor’s office for its carbon pollution standards.  Carbon emissions are a prime example of an externality, as oil and coal companies pollute the air and water basically for free. And there are both engineering and policy technologies to solve it: renewable energy such as solar and wind, and a carbon tax.

Right now the country is in the policy formulation stage of putting climate change on the agenda. There are four major approaches to lowering carbon emissions: cap and trade; regulation; subsidizing alternative energy; and a carbon tax.  Of these, cap and trade has already been defeated in Congress, and alternative energy subsidies don’t seem viable despite the fact the oil industry is heavily subsidized.  The EPA has proposed regulations for power plant emissions, because this is something the Obama administration can do without going through Congress.  The fourth proposal is a carbon tax to correct the externalities. Some groups are proposing a tax and dividend, in which oil and coal companies would pay the tax, with proceeds refunded to taxpayers. That would be popular, but whether it could pass Congress is another question.

Stages model of policy making

Peters’ discussion of the Stages Model of policy making was very interesting.  This model sees policy as going through five stages: agenda setting, formulation, legitimation, implementation, and evaluation.  Peters’ main point is that the model does a better job of describing than explaining, and that it doesn’t reflect the degree of conflict at each stage.

I completely agree with that analysis.  Over the past four years, I had the opportunity to work with the Ohio staff of The Humane Society of the United States as it contributed to several laws and regulations regarding animals in the state.  The law I worked on most was to regulate ownership of dangerous wild animals.  That law passed through all the stages that the model predicts.  Agenda setting started years previous as Ohio had become known for its exotic animal auction and large private menageries.  Several incidents occurred such as when a man’s tiger killed his 2-year-old grandson, and another man’s bear killed his teenage caretaker.

But nothing was as high profile as the case of Terry Thompson in Zanesville, who released 60 big cats, bears, and primates before committing suicide, leaving police to kill all but six animals.  This triggering event set the agenda to finally push through legislation.  The formulation was done mainly in the Senate Agriculture Committee by Sen. Troy Balderson, and legitimation provided by directors of Ohio’s five accredited zoos.  The law gave implementation to the Ohio Department of Agriculture advised by a board of stakeholders that negotiated recommendations for standards such as cage size and veterinary care for the animals.

The entire process was wracked with conflict. Hundreds of exotic animal owners filled the chambers at every hearing.  Once the law passed, this group sued the state twice to have it declared unconstitutional and lost both times.  They clearly felt themselves to be the losers.  But the fact is, societies change, and laws must change with them.  There are more tigers in captivity in the United States than in all of the wild, and too many suffered in horrible conditions under private ownership.  Most people feel animal welfare counts, and I am very proud to say that my contribution to this law helped dozens of exotic animals get moved to accredited sanctuaries.