035 (3) 12/05/2016 Reducing Natural Gas Use in Acton WHY: Making the Case HOW: Making it Happen
WHY: Making the Case __________________
2015 Porter Ranch, CA gas leak (via infrared imaging)
Methane (“Natural”) Gas Leakage by System Sector Methane leak rates specified in the paper, “Methane Leaks from North American Natural Gas Systems.” Credit: Stanford University/Science
High Temperatures and Ice Melt at Poles
Acceleration of Warming Temperatures
Pakistan, 2016
Targets to Prevent the Worst Climate Impacts ● 350 ppm (parts per million) of CO 2 in the atmosphere (currently 400+ ppm) (Hansen, et al., 2009) ● no more than 2º C. (3.6º F.) above pre-industrial levels (IPCC: International Panel on Climate Change) ● no more than 1.5º C. (2.7º F.) above pre-industrial levels (Paris Accord) ● in MA: reduction of GHG emissions by 25 percent below statewide 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent by 2050 (Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act, 2008)
Acton Carbon Footprint, 2010 (via Acton 2020)
The 3-Step Carbon Reduction Plan HOW: with examples for residential heating and cooling Making It Happen 1) Reduce energy use ___________________ Example: air sealing and insulation 2) Switch remaining energy use to electricity Example: air source heat pumps for heating and AC 3) Clean up / “green” up electricity supply Example: Community Choice Aggregation programs, such as Acton’s “Acton Power Choice”
Air Source Heat Pump with Ductless Mini-Split
How Heat Pump Systems Work
Many Kinds of Heat Pump Solutions ● air source heat pumps ● ground source heat pumps ● heat pumps for hot water ● retrofits using existing ducts
Heat Pumps: Financial Overview ● operating costs are always lower than for other options ● incentives are available to cushion capital costs ● payback is immediate for new construction with AC + heat ● from propane, oil, coal, or conventional electric systems payback is rapid ● worst-case is for an upgrade from an existing gas system (up to 30 years) ● payback is far better at the point when an existing system is facing an expensive repair or needs to be replaced
Operating Cost Comparison: Heating With typical fuel prices, heat pump systems are the least expensive to run. Source: http://www.efficiencymaine.com
Operating Cost Comparison: Cooling SEER: S easonal E nergy E fficiency R atio ● the higher the SEER rating of a system, the less expensive it is to operate ● a typical central AC system: SEER = 8 to 22 ● a new heat pump AC system: SEER = 20 to 30 ● all older AC systems are more expensive to run than new heat pump systems
Financial Incentives $$$ ● MassCEC (Clean Energy Center) rebate of $625 per 12K BTU ● Mass Save rebate of $250 (or $500 for high-efficiency / performance units) ● Mass Save HEAT loan: 0% interest for up to 7 years ● federal incentive (until 12/31/2016 unless extended) of 30% tax credit
Recommendations ● Direct Town staff and boards to encourage heat pump systems wherever feasible, esp. in new construction; Green Acton can help with preparation of training and print materials ● Continue working with Town Manager and Town Counsel to understand how the Town might discourage new methane (“natural”) gas lines and connections, and encourage use of heat pump technology ● Explore whether the Green Advisory Board (or another group) can: ○ update and improve carbon footprint metrics for Town ○ prepare a greenhouse gas reduction plan that would meet or exceed Global Warming Solution Act targets (as other MA towns have done) ● Continue to support Acton Power Choice with the “greenest” possible options
Q & A
Thanks for listening and deliberating! — Jim Snyder-Grant and Debra Simes for Green Acton
BoS 12.5.16 Presentation Notes: Thanks for having us back to help start off your conversation about natural gas use in Acton. There are a lot of health and safety reasons for reducing the use of a combustible gas traveling through underground pipes and into people's homes, but tonight we want to focus on an additional reason: Climate Change. A quick refresher: the temperature of Earth's atmosphere is the result of many forces, including the effects shown in this diagram: the visible light from our sun travels through our largely transparent atmosphere. The energy that gets radiated back out is largely in the form of infrared heat waves. When the energy coming in matches the energy going out, Earth's energy is in balance. When we add additional infrared-blocking gases — greenhouse gases — to the atmosphere, more energy gets trapped, and things heat up. This is why methane, the main ingredient of natural gas, is such a problem. Here's an infrared photo of the gas leak at Porter Ranch in California last year. The black cloud is methane. The International Panel on Climate Change rates methane as having more than 80 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
Methane leaks into the air during every stage of natural gas processing, from the original drilling, to its delivery under the streets of Acton. How much methane leaks? We don't know. This diagram shows recent EPA estimates, along with the mostly higher estimates of other independent studies. Attempts to mandate reporting of leaks, let alone regulations to control them, are stalled at the national level; we are having a bit more success here in MA, but it will be a slow process. At many of these estimated levels, natural gas used for home heating has an even larger global warming impact than coal or oil. Climate change is a complex process, with many contributory factors not shown in this simple diagram. There are negative feedback loops that act to stabilize the system, such as the way that the increased growth of some kinds of plants, under some increases in CO 2 , causes more CO 2 to be absorbed from the atmosphere. There are positive feedback loops, such as the way that melting sea ice increases the “square footage” of surface water. Water absorbs more heat than the reflective ice, thus creating more heat that melts more ice . . . and on and on. It's very tricky to correctly model when the positive feedback loops start to dominate over the negative feedback loops. When that happens, there can be a rapid increase in global warming. We may have entered such a period recently.
One of the positive feedbacks — melting sea ice revealing more energy-absorbing water, causing less heat to be reflected back out to space, seems recently to have entered a scary new phase, where both Arctic and Antarctic ice extent are falling at the same time. That's especially strange for the Arctic as winter begins, which is normally when the extent of sea ice grows quickly. After a much slower and more-chaotic rise in average temperatures in the last few decades, each of the last 12 months has seen higher average global temperatures than ever before in the era of modern record-keeping. Record-breaking high temperatures are now happening more than 20 times as often as record-breaking low temperatures. And the harmful effects are real. Record-breaking high temps in Pakistan in 2015 caused more than 1,200 deaths. This photo shows a worker creating new mass graves in anticipation of the next round of heat waves. We've hit the era of
anticipatory mass graves. We need to do what we can to stop the use of fossil fuels, the main source of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. How much do we need to do by when? Because of the difficulties in understanding climate change, a wide variety of types of targets has been listed in scientific papers and in our laws and treaties. Achieving these targets would involve large-scale changes starting now, including mobilizing no new sources of fossil fuels: no new natural gas fracking sites, no more coal mines, no more drilling for oil. We don’t know how much we need to do, but we know that the scale of the effort is large, so we all need to do what we can as soon as we can. So, what can we do here in Acton? Here's the rough carbon footprint for Acton, circa 2010, taken from the Acton 2020 Plan. What we can do locally is to shrink each of these slices as quickly as possible. To do that we must head toward a fossil fuel–free, clean energy economy. Any investment in new fossil fuel/natural gas infrastructure locks us into using it for decades to come. And continued creation of fossil fuel infrastructure, even at a small, local scale, thwarts our Town and 2020 goals. A simple carbon action plan would involve the same general steps for every pie slice.
Here’s a 3-step carbon reduction plan, with examples for the pie slice of carbon associated with residential heating (and cooling). [go through the text of the slides]. So, let's learn more about heat pumps, which are good carbon-reducing tools in the heating and cooling sector — even in our chilly Northeast winters and the typical couple of hot weeks in our summers. Here's what a typical installation looks like. One or more outdoor units, and one or more indoor units, connected with small flexible pipes that carry refrigerant. Town hall uses this technology in the new wing. You can see the indoor mini-split unit in Conference Room 9. How do these units work, and why are they good solutions for heating and cooling?
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