Vote “Yes” For Sustainable Sudbury
The following column was published in last week’s Sudbury Town Crier.
By Members of the Sudbury Earth Decade Committee
On Tuesday, October 16, Sudbury residents will have an opportunity to weigh in on the future of the Town when we vote on the new Police Station.
This is a chance to make a decision that has long-term consequences for the character and financial structure of the town. Confronted with this decision, we need to take a long-term view of the benefits and costs.
A long-term threat to the financial stability of Sudbury is the prospect of unpredictable, rising energy costs. When these costs rise too fast, there is fiscal pressure for an override budget.
Knowing that this problem exists, we must not sit back and wait for it to hit us. We must get ahead of the curve and minimize the problem.
For several years, the Selectmen have aggressively pursued goals from Sustainable Sudbury, the town’s 2001 Master Pan; implementing many energy efficiency policies to reduce the energy costs of our existing infrastructure.We applaud the Selectmen for their work to date; however, the most dramatic savings come when we construct a new building considering energy efficiency from the ground up.
The new Police Station provides a great first opportunity for us to build in long-term savings.Inspired by the principles set forth by the United States Green Building Council under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, the design of the new station includes over twenty passive design elements focused on sustainability that will not increase maintenance costs including:
- Construction designed to minimize the costs of winter and summer climate control
- Access to daytime natural light to reduce the use of electric lighting
- Landscaping using native plants that do not require extensive use of water and fertilizer
- Use of construction materials that do not outgas unpleasant and potentially harmful odors.
The design also keeps the future in mind. From the beginning, it provides support for other active LEED elements that may have maintenance issues such as photovoltaic (solar) panels and ground source heating and cooling. In addition, room for expansion allows for growth of the facility. Building in these supports up front will save tens of thousands of dollars in the future as Sudbury grows and technology improves. Even better, they add little or nothing to the immediate cost of the building.
Sudbury needs a new Police Station. This design for the new police station is well thought-out, is environmentally friendly and is an important part of the long-term plan to reduce Sudbury’s overall energy consumption.Build it correctly now and save money in the long and short run.
On October 16, please vote to authorize the new Police Station.
The
on October 20th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
So, how’d the vote turn out?
on October 21st, 2007 at 5:28 pm
It lost pretty badly. I suspect that the defeat was due to the Selectmen walking into allegations of “shady” politics and not being able to recover in time. It’s a shame, but that’s the way it goes in small towns sometimes.
on October 30th, 2007 at 3:13 am
This post looks so sad! The vote was almost two weeks ago and the motion lost!
So, let me start something in comments.
According to this Christian Science Monitor article, there may be as much as 6,000 square miles of pavement devoted to parking lots. That’s a lot. And there’s a couple of ways they can be transformed to help stem global warming.
1) Chalk them to increase the albedo and prevent heat islands.
2) Line them with solar panels, the kind used to run traffic lights in many places now. Plenty of room for electricity generation. Plus, free shade!
These won’t stop people from driving, but they might make driving–and its effects–work for the environment.
on October 30th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
I like the idea of lining parking lots with solar collectors. It makes a lot of sense
on November 1st, 2007 at 12:19 am
Cool! There’s one other person.
And I’ll add on–another good place for solar panels: highway medians. Those, in fact, might work better since, afaik, they are already owned by the public. ownership might be a problem in re: parking lots–maybe someone more familiar with the issue can discuss easements?
on November 13th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
My personal view is that PVs are just too expensive currently for these sorts of mass scale installations. The ROI on them is just not there for anyone other than businesses. Business can get a nice tax credit by writing off the depreciation of the panels and can use that to make a very good ROI. But for municipalities or residences, the costs are just too high.
My hope is that in the coming years there will start to be some good breakthroughs in PV technology that allow the price to come down into a reasonable range.
I think if we start to see that happening, then all sorts of new doors will be opened that just aren’t available today.
on November 14th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Interesting. Thanks!
on December 28th, 2007 at 1:23 am
And now the prices are coming down:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/23/2919/8613
on December 30th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Yup, the Nanotech panels are definitely a very interesting development.
However, I think the article on Grist is probably overstating the accomplishment by claiming that solar is now cheaper than coal.
There are all sorts of caveats that need to be considered when looking at the price of PV.
First you need to look at whether this is just the price for the panels or the “installed price” that includes the price of the inverters, mounting racks, installation, etc. The “installed price” can be about double the price of the panels themselves.
I think they allude to this in the article where they talk about the possibility of $2 per watt systems.
Secondly, you need to consider the whole issue of geography and available sunlight, etc. to figure out how appropriate PVs are for a particular area.
I don’t want to dismiss Nanotech — I think they are a very important part of the overall trend. And I definitely do think that within the next decade we will hit a very interesting point where the installed cost of PV starts to be very competitive with other electrical sources. But I am just skeptical that we have already hit this point.
I am in the process of reading an interesting book that talks all about this. The book is The Clean Tech Revolution and in it they say, Watch out for a current or emerging player that can bring the cost of an entire solar PV system to around $2 per peak watt — the equivalent of $5,000 for and averaged sized 2.5 kW residential rooftop system, for example. Systems priced at this level would provide electricity at less than 10 cents per kWh beating out most customers retail utility rates throughout the United States. Someone, we believe, is likely to break this price barrier by 2015 — paving the way for a low-cost, ubiquitous solar future.
So, I do think we’ll get there. I just don’t think we are there just yet.