The United States may not have agreed to an international treaty to fight global warming, but Salt Lake City hopes to embrace one?the Kyoto Protocol.
The city plans to draw from U students expertise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in accordance.
On Friday, a semester of work culminates at the City County Building for a class of materials science and engineering students.
They will discuss energy sources, their consumption and pollution before government officials and others.
“A lot of the information they have pulled together would have taken staffers an incredible amount of time,” said Lisa Romney, environmental affairs coordinator for the mayor. “Most of the knowledge does come out of the universities.”
The Kyoto Protocol calls for nations to stabilize their greenhouse gas emissions at 7 percent below their 1990 levels.
The target date for the reduction was set around 2010.
However, progress has been far from stellar so far.
“Nothing has stabilized. It’s going up at a linear rate. By the year 2010, it will be something like 35 percent above the 1990 level [in the United States,]” said Dave Richerson, the materials science and engineering professor who teaches the class.
His students divided into groups to tackle aspects of the problem.
About 94 percent of Utah’s electricity comes from coal burning plants?which emit large amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
If wind and geothermal power were fully developed, they could account for about 9 percent of Utah’s total electricity consumption?and produce less pollution, according to Dave Poslusny and Joel Jensen, students who teamed up to explore alternatives to coal-generated electricity.
Poslusny developed an interest in geothermal energy through his work at the Energy and Geoscience Institute in Research Park.
“It’s fascinating that you get so much energy out of the Earth,” he said. The problem is locating and accessing heat within the Earth.
Utah has two plants that use the Earth’s heat to produce electricity, but neither produces as much as it could.
According to Romney, the city will purchase wind generated electricity from Wyoming and encourage residents to do the same thing.
The city’s efforts to reduce pollution are worthwhile, according to Jensen, especially in light of Salt Lake Valley’s air quality.
Inversion and gridlock are the major problems the city faces, according to Romney.
At this point the city is assessing its emissions.
Because the city got a late start, it will probably shoot to stabilize emissions at 7 percent below the 1999 level, Romney said.
Adjustments to improve efficiency have already begun. Starting in July, the city put in more energy-efficient lighting fixtures at the City County Building.
Although they will be substantial, all the financial benefits will take up to a year or two to materialize, Romney said.
A plethora of new technologies that could help the city and the country improve efficiency and reduce pollution stand ready for use.
The latest natural gas generators are twice as efficient as coal-powered ones. Fuel cells have been built into cars and could be used to power individual homes. Plants could be re-distributed so they were located closer to the electricity users?reducing the amount lost through long transmissions.
But like changing the light fixtures, switching technology requires a financial investment with a delayed return.
Convincing utilities to make the switch is also a challenge.
“It goes against what our whole infrastructure is designed for,” Richerson said.
Much energy-efficient technology is ready for introduction, he said. Within 10 to 20 years, the bugs will be worked out, “but that may not happen if the barriers are too great,” he said.
“If we go the way we are going, things will continue to get worse. Right now, the only solution I see is using advanced technology,” he said.
Salt Lake City is not the only city to adapt the Kyoto Protocol. Seattle and other members of Cities for Climate Protection also hope to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“When everyone heard that Bush had pulled the nation out, there were several city leaders who didn’t agree,” Romney said.