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Ann Arbor’s A2Zero Plan: Estimating the Improbable

May 26, 2020

The logo for the A2Zero campaign

The A2Zero Plan looks to reduce emissions drastically in the next 10 years. But what are the probabilities that this will succeed? A review of some of the contingencies.

The A2Zero Plan, which is scheduled to come before the Ann Arbor City Council on June 1, is a rambling complex of objectives and strategies that ostensibly was devised to meet the requirements of a Council resolution (November 4, 2019) that called (alternately and confusingly) for a “climate neutrality plan” and a “carbon neutrality plan”. In reading it, evidently what Council was trying to achieve was to map out a strategy to reach “net zero”.   This appears to be the operative phrase:

Whereas, Creating a climate neutrality plan is necessary to identify, plan for, budget, and work towards implementing the actions required to achieve community-wide carbon neutrality.

No other principles or directives are found in the resolution. The staff is being directed to figure out (a “draft plan” is actually mentioned) how Ann Arbor can reach “carbon neutrality”, i.e., net zero carbon produced, by 2030. That is all. No mention of sustainability, equity, or anything else. Just “get us to carbon neutrality”.

The Goal: Taking Our Net Emissions to Zero

Although it is not exactly stated, evidently the purpose is to achieve a net zero carbon dioxide balance (or better, CO2 equivalents [CO2-eq]), though that term is used only once in passing in the resolution. The term can be used in different ways, but I’m pretty sure that the net operating energy is the definition here. “Net Zero” installations typically produce much of their own energy onsite using non-emitting technology, and this balances their carbon cost otherwise. A famous example in Ann Arbor is Matt Grocoff’s Netzero House. Presumably a net zero Ann Arbor would reduce emissions and also bend energy generation toward non-emitting technology such as solar energy generation. The Introduction to the Plan says (p.12):

Simply defined, carbon neutrality is reducing the emissions our community puts into the air down to zero, through actions that minimize output and/or by purchasing greenhouse gas emissions offsets.

Precision is important here because the aim is to counter a climate emergency, which Council has declared. The name of the game in climate is GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions. But there are many GHG and they have different climatic effects. Therefore a standard has been devised which states all GHG emissions in terms of the effect of CO2. (Explanation of the term and its uses here.) Happily, the Plan does state results in terms of CO2-eq. Note that the units shown in the lead figure are metric tons of CO2-eq. The number does not appear to reach zero by 2030 except for the electricity contributions.

Lead graphic in A2Zero plan showing carbon load reduction

The Main Points

  • Why are we concerned about the output in CO2-eq? Because we have all heard the dire predictions. I reviewed some of them in this post, Climate Change in Ann Arbor: Investing in the Future, where I linked to and quoted the IPCC report of 2018. And then there was this, Ann Arbor and the Climate Crisis: Policy and Outcomes. Along with many others, I have been anguished (for years, actually) about the vision of the future of the Earth and its children – all because we produce too many Greenhouse Gases. Ann Arbor committees and Councils have expressed a hope that we could mitigate this output for years. Success has been elusive. Apparently Council decided it was time to get down to business.
  • Since this is our objective (reduction of GHG), it makes sense that any plan to address it would have a strict accounting of CO2 emissions and how we expect to address them. It is a matter of arithmetic. Count the emissions. Figure out how to subtract the needed amount. The A2Zero plan does have a number of proposed approaches. But unfortunately most of the proposals have low probability of succeeding.
  • The approaches to carbon neutrality used by other institutions fall into several categories, especially low-carbon energy and heat generation, energy efficiency, and green building approaches. The University of Michigan has a task force addressing this goal (see most recent report). Note that the final report from this group, President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality (PCCN) is due this fall. So far the recommendations are aimed at reducing emission levels.
  • Another method to become “carbon neutral” is to use offsets, meaning that we send money elsewhere to reduce carbon emissions elsewhere in the globe.The spirit of the Council’s directive is, I believe, aimed at reducing emission levels in the City of Ann Arbor. As an environmentally conscious community, we would like to believe that we are doing our best to reduce our own contribution to the CO2-eq burden of the planet. This Plan instead makes liberal use of offsets and other means of essentially shipping our obligation to reduce carbon pollution to other locations, while continuing to add to the emissions with our own activities.
  • The Plan also has many, many proposals aimed at different policy objectives that have little or nothing to do with carbon sparing. While “equity” is a high value and something we should address as a community, it is not related except remotely to addressing CO2 emissions.
  • Just to add to the problems, the actual math in the Plan is defective.  I have no idea how the original database (I assume there was a spreadsheet at some point) looks, but there are so many typos and inconsistencies in this document that it is impossible to analyze. I have sent some detail to the City Council and the Administrator, but here is just one sample: one proposal (Offsets) has two different numbers in the document vs. the summary table. One is 13.2% of the GHG needed and one is 45%. That is not a rounding error. It was my intent (and I built a table) to compare the strategies based on their contribution, but it is impossible with the mangled condition of the report. Numbers do not add up.

State Law, Ann Arbor Regulations, and the Art of the Possible

As noted by the Ann Arbor News, several items are dependent on changes in state law. This
(1) Assumes that state law can be successfully amended to make certain actions impossible under current law possible. They include community solar, building code changes, and community choice aggregation. This seems to be oblivious to the actual steps and political barriers between anything Ann Arbor requests and our majority Republican legislature. Have the drafters of the plan determined which committees will take up a measure, and have they determined that there is a lawmaker who is willing to carry the issue forward?

(2) Assumes that these changes can happen almost instantaneously. Several show timelines that assume state law can change in 2020. Enforcement is to begin in 2021. An example is a proposal to change State building codes to require that all new buildings be built to net zero energy standards. This would likely mean full electrification, among other changes. It would be a substantial change in the way building is done across the State of Michigan.

About dates: Ann Arbor and many others have a fiscal year that begins in July of the preceding year. Thus, though we are currently in the calendar year 2020, our Fiscal Year 2021 (FY21) budget was just approved and in July 2020 we will be transported to the future, or at least to 2021 for the purposes of our civic operations.

Some units (like Washtenaw County) have a calendar year budget. So while the City of Ann Arbor is living in 2021, the County will be comfortingly at home in 2020, until January 2021.  Meanwhile, any agency that lives mostly on Federal funds (like AAATA) uses the Federal fiscal year (beginning in October). So for purposes of Federal grants, we are in 2020 until October.

Effects of Building Code changes

One question that arises from these differences in how dates are used: when the plan says “2020” or 2021″, what does it mean? Will a number for 2021 be as of July 2020, January 2021, July 2021 (midpoint of the calendar year), or December 2021? If we expect to start measuring the outcomes and there will be regular reports, presumably a particular date will be used from year to year. The timeline for “Building Code changes” is a straight-line reduction of emissions, starting in 2021. But that over-simplifies any such course of changes, since even the rate of building new structures is likely to vary. The basis for this estimate is not shown.

Presumed effects of a regional transit system in the Ann Arbor area by 2022.

Other proposals indicate very poor information about the actual status of an issue. There is a blithe assumption that a Regional Transit system will be in place and functioning in 2022. It appears that there was not even a cursory Google search because this story has been all over the place for the last couple of years. We have every detail you could wish in this post, Governance and Transit and Taxes, Oh, My.  If you scroll down to updates 21-25 you will see that the supporters of the RTA tried two separate attempts at revising State law to make a RTA without Macomb County work. The RTA will not be on the ballot this year and possibly never. A lot of reworking in back rooms is probably going on, though maybe not during the pandemic.

Supposing that the RTA does get on the ballot in, say, 2022, it would then have to get the approval of the voters. (There was a prior failure.) The likelihood that anything at all from the RTA will be reducing the carbon load in the next two years is vanishingly small. (Note: the RTA is a functioning authority and has done many good things in the Detroit area. They also collaborated with the AAATA for a Ann Arbor-Detroit bus, sadly discontinued for the pandemic.)

Let’s Rethink

Council asked the Administrator and thus the Office of Sustainability and Innovation for a draft plan. This is indisputably a draft. Like all drafts, it needs a lot of markups. The many errors of estimation and addition do not belong in a finished plan. (The Plan does not show the work used to arrive at these estimations. I assume that there was some. It is impossible to analyze or evaluate without showing how the numbers were derived.) It also needs some project management expertise so that each strategy can be tracked and evaluated over time. I haven’t even begun to address the budgetary implications (the amounts requested would consume nearly our entire City budget over 10 years and are simply infeasible).

I earnestly hope that Council will not be asked to adopt it as a Plan, but will ask the staff to continue fine-tuning the strategies and present them as they are mature and completely calculated with the best information possible. Clearly more work, and more time to do it, are needed.

Categories: civic finance, Sustainability

Comments: 3 Comments

Ann Arbor’s A2Zero Plan: the Challenge

May 21, 2020

On June 1, 2020, Ann Arbor’s City Council is scheduled to consider (for the third time) an expansive proposal that has the capability of significant impact on many aspects of life. It is the A2Zero Plan. There is a public hearing scheduled, and numerous explanatory documents are also attached. (See the Legistar link for that list.) It is time for all of us to pay attention.

This plan was launched by a Council resolution. It had a remarkably short timeline for production of a complex plan, and was amended to allow only ten years to make Ann Arbor “carbon neutral”, that is, to generate no net CO2.  It was a bold statement of support by Council to make Ann Arbor a leader in fighting climate change.

The Sustainability staff (led by Missy Stults, Sustainability and Innovations Manager) gamely pitched in, starting with several surveys, holding large town halls, and other invitations to public comment.

Climate_Voter_Yard_Signs_Final-02

Yard sign made available by the Ann Arbor Climate Partnership, based in the Ecology Center

A version  of A2Zero was presented to Council on April 20, but as reported on MLive, Council simply “received” it (this is an acknowledgement, not an approval) and asked for more information. Rather surprisingly, it reappeared on the agenda at the same time as the annual Budget resolution (May 18). The plan calls for considerable investment (about $1 Billion over 10 years) at a time when the City is facing a considerable revenue shortfall. But it was also the subject of an extensive lobbying campaign by a group based in the Ecology Center which has many nonprofit and institutional signatories. The Ann Arbor Climate Partnership is distributing campaign-style signs. The major point of the campaign appears to be adoption of the A2Zero plan. It is not clear who is paying for the expense of the signs, but donations go directly to the Ecology Center. There were many pleas on social media and doubtless Council was inundated with messages supporting the plan. Who is not for conquering global warming?

After a Council session which went on into midmorning of the next day, the item was postponed to the June 1 Council agenda. There is now also a public hearing scheduled. (This had not been made available earlier.) And there is now an updated version of the Plan (remarkably, this was not made available until hours before the Council meeting on May 18, and few people were aware of it). It can be downloaded from the A2Zero website (not the City website). It has been a real effort to obtain current and meaningful information, in spite of the many documents made available. For example, though consultants were employed in preparing this, to my knowledge those reports are not available, or at least not identified as such.

Interim Summary

In my view, this plan has many flaws, apart from the price tag and the current uncertainty about the City’s financial condition. It needs to be scrapped and reconsidered in its entirety. I will be laying out my analysis and commentary on the plan in a series of blog posts. Here are just a few summary points.

  • On examination, many of the points are not really about climate and CO2 emissions. They are really about rather wispy “sustainability” concepts. We all love sustainability. We’ve heard about it for years. I’ve even preached it. But this is supposed to be a plan targeted to a specific objective, namely reducing our carbon load on the planet.
  • Another major theme is called either “justice” or “equitability”, depending on which version you read. Again, we all love the concept of making our society more equitable, but that should not be what this is about. We are trying to reduce carbon emissions.The insertion of affordable housing (another uncontestable good) is not to the point.
  • And in relation to the first two points, much of the plan seems to be pointed at the objective of obtaining policy directives that have been a subject of debate but are not related to climate change. A prime example is the promotion of “density” via changing the zoning map to allow more intense development of formerly single-family zoned areas. This was also a theme of a Master Plan revision previously proposed and stalled in Council. (See The Master Plan and Ann Arbor Emergent.) That debate should be argued out on its own terms.
  • Where are the genuine metrics on CO2 generation? This is poorly explained and every action in this plan should be oriented to that solution. More about this later.
  • Reading the plan and the explanatory notes in detail reveals a depth of unproven assumptions and extrapolations that are startling to find in a document presumably produced by professional staff. Here is one I found at random.

In the Investment Plan, a City expenditure of $35,000 for emergency kits is balanced by a $210,000 annual savings. The note says “Estimated savings from a FEMA report showing that for every $1 invested in prevention, we save $7 in emergency management and response costs.”  Note that the $210,000 savings, which are used in the budget for the plan, actually do not exist. They are based on an assumption (that prevention and the emergency kits are the same) piled on an assumption (that this extrapolation is more than that but is an actual estimate). Is this the quality of all the budget calculations? Careful reading will be necessary.

  • Some aspects of the plan are not possible under current state law. The plan’s “vision” supposes that this will magically change. Anyone who is familiar with the history of Michigan state politics would not make a leap like this for an important fraction (> 38%) of the CO2 generation.
  • Many aspects of the plan are dependent on actions of entities outside the City or the City’s influence and reach. Some of them should be simply excluded as likely probabilities. For example, a regional transit system is postulated, apparently without the information that it has been defeated politically yet again for the near future and the resolution does not appear likely. (For extensive updates on the Detroit Metro RTA, see this.)
  • The plan seems to assume that as long as we can make sure carbon load is incurred outside our actual City borders, we don’t have to count it. Even if our policies cause carbon emissions in themselves, just keep them outside the borders. An egregious example of this is the proposed Park and Ride expansion. This proposes building a substantial acreage of parking lots outside the City and letting commuters park there and take buses in. But the emissions are not ours! And the parking lots will have a carbon effect by themselves, not included since they are outside our borders.
  • In a similar vein, we are not considering the issue of embodied carbon that buildings represent. In fact, this plan is building-friendly. But a growing recognition of the contribution that buildings (third in the worldwide contribution to carbon emissions) make to our global load has meant that many architectural professionals are now considering this to be of primary importance.
  • Simply put, this is an ineffective plan if the point really is to be a carbon-neutral city. The numbers will not add up if calculated honestly.

I hope to elucidate more of this in detail in future posts. It would be reassuring to believe that our leaders are trying to execute this intelligently and honestly. Unfortunately, it seems that the intent is simply to forge ahead regardless of any impediments. It is being characterized as an “opportunity” in the face of the pandemic and the financial barriers.  We are in essence being issued a challenge. As Missy Stults has said,

“This idea of being okay with failure, or failure positive as we call it, is a total paradigm shift in most situations, but so is climate change,” Stults said. “So, we have to be comfortable with trying something and being okay coming back and saying, ‘You know, that was not as successful as we thought it was going to be.’ The ultimate objective is a safe climate, it’s a high quality of life. Basically, a bunch of things can fail for different reasons, and we have to be okay with that.”
(more…)

Categories: Basis, civic finance, Sustainability

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