City team focuses on cutting CO2

Newberry defends Lexington's green policies

By Andy Mead - AMEAD@HERALD-LEADER.COM

In a meeting room in a government building on Main Street, four people sat down last week to start figuring out how Lexington could help save our planet.

Their specific task: Measure how much energy Lexington uses, then, together with anyone willing to help, find ways to lower that number.

The meeting had been planned for months, but it took on added interest because of what had happened a few days before: A major study by the Brookings Institution tagged Lexington as the nation's worst metropolitan area for its per-person contribution to global warming.

The average Lexington area resident's carbon footprint -- how much carbon dioxide he or she causes to be put into the atmosphere in a year -- was calculated at 3.46 metric tons. The national average for a metro dweller: 2.24 tons.

The study shocked people who think of Lexington as a smallish city with plenty of trees and few nasty smokestacks.

What about the pioneering plan to preserve horse farms by restricting development to an urban services area? What about the program that pays farmers to never allow subdivisions to replace their fields? And, hey, what about that Popular Science article just a few months ago that picked Lexington as the nation's 25th-greenest city?

Cheryl Taylor, the city's new environmental quality commissioner, had a short answer for the last question: "Different measurements."

Popular Science looked at things such as recycling, where Lexington shines.

The Brookings study zeroed in on how the six counties that make up the Lexington metro area contributed to greenhouse gases.

It looked at the multi-county sprawl that leads to a lot of commuting, and noted there is little mass transit.

It counted the pollution caused by using electricity in a state where 92 percent of the juice is produced by burning coal (the national average: 49 percent).

It considered that Lexington is in a part of the country where there are cold winters and hot summers -- and both extreme incur energy costs.

It also looked at building codes that don't require a great deal of energy-efficiency, and at interstates that produce a crossroads of pollution.

Paul Bertsch, a University of Kentucky environmental chemist who was not involved with the Brookings study, said calculating carbon footprints can be useful and raise awareness. But, he said, comparing one metropolitan area to another "can be a little bit dangerous."

That's because an area such as Lexington can, just because of where it is located, produce a large carbon number.

No matter what the area does, he said, there still will be cold winters and hot summers, coal-fired electricity and those major east-west and north-south interstates.

Mark Muro of Brookings agreed.

"To some extent, places are not really in control, or can ever be in control, of their emissions," Muro said.

That's why the study recommended a series of federal actions to lower carbon emissions. The actions included putting a price tag on carbon emissions, increasing money for energy research, and setting nationwide renewable energy standards.

Taylor, the Lexington official, noted that virtually all government movement to reduce greenhouse gases has been at the state and local levels.

On Friday, Republicans in the U.S. Senate blocked a global warming bill that would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases. The bill also had been opposed by some environmentalists, who thought it was too weak.

But some kind of climate change legislation looks inevitable.

No matter who is elected president in November, Taylor said, the issue will come back next year.

Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry, meanwhile, said last week that the national attention attracted by the Brookings study was bad for his city.

Newberry put on the best defense he could. The study used accurate data, he said, but came to misleading conclusions.

"If you ask a hundred people which of the metropolitan areas has done a better job or a worse job with their environment, I expect Lexington would fare very well," he said.