West Coast developer Gerding Edlen Development has set an ambitious five-year corporate objective of building real estate projects that produce more energy than they consume. With the $2.2 billion mixed-use Portland South Waterfront brownfield redevelopment that they are co-developing with Williams and Dame Development, they started with the goal of saving 50 percent energy usage relative to conventional construction. One of the lead buildings in the new district, the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) facility, is certified LEED Platinum with energy savings pegged at 60 percent due in part to solar sun shades integrated into the south facade. The building also features onsite power generation from a gas-fired cogeneration (Combined Heat and Power, CHP) plant. The OHSU facility alone is estimated to save 2,100 metric tons of CO2, annually.

In Redding, Connecticut, Georgetown Land Development is changing the way outer fringe growth is accommodated, featuring unique energy-saving elements. The project, a redevelopment of the old Gilbert & Bennett Wire Mill, will accommodate 1,000 to 1,200 new residents and 1,500 permanent jobs, centered on a reopened commuter train station. The developer is reinstalling the turbine on the site’s 18-foot waterfall that powered the wire mill for many years. The resulting hydroelectric dam will provide electricity for one of the commercial buildings. Photovoltaics and a fuel-cell system, which relies on chemistry rather than combustion and results in fewer emissions than even the cleanest combustion process, will generate clean electric power.

Location and VMTs
These two projects are examples of sustainable redevelopment reaching beyond the 30 percent energy savings usually attributed to green buildings. And these building-related energy savings might be just a small part of each project’s contribution to lowering greenhouse gases and battling climate change.

While it’s laudable that the buildings are using energy-saving technologies and alternative energy production, the truth is that most urban redevelopment projects save energy, quite substantially, when compared to more sprawling suburban development patterns. These large-scale “new urbanist” redevelopment projects, which combine density, mixed uses, a location close to the urban center, and good transit connections, are at the high end of the energy-savings spectrum.

Many of the keys to this development and energy equation are described and quantified in a new Urban Land Institute and Smart Growth America report, “Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change.” The report, which reviews over 100 previous studies on transportation, energy and development patterns, finds that “compact urban development” saves between 20 and 40 percent of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) relative to less-dense suburban development, with almost parallel reductions in greenhouse gases. For particularly dense mixed-use transit-served neighborhoods, VMTs saved increase to 75 percent.

These findings do not rest on theoretical models. The conclusion is that with well-planned compact communities, people drive substantially less. Further, the case for sustainable urban redevelopment as a climate-change solution does not end with green buildings and lowered VMTs.

• It takes less energy to build and maintain urban infrastructure than to extend it to new developments in the suburbs.
• Rehabilitation of old buildings takes less energy than building new ones.
• There is less “line-loss” in distributing electricity to already-serviced urban centers than to the far-flung exurbs.
• Dense multi-story buildings, typical of urban infill, are more energy efficient because they have fewer exposed walls.
• Some urban downtowns are serviced by waste-to-energy plants and district heating systems that further lower greenhouse gases and reduce oil dependence.

In downtown Baltimore, The Atrium (118 apartments replacing a former department store) might be about as close as you can get to zero-carbon footprint living. The preservation and redevelopment of this historic structure combine energy-saving characteristics at every turn: it was one of the city’s first green buildings; it is within blocks of the city’s main office district (about 120,000 jobs) as well as shopping and restaurant outlets; it is adjacent to the city’s light rail line and one block from the subway; and its electricity is generated from the city’s waste-to-energy district heating system. You can even walk to baseball and football games, should the Orioles and Ravens ever field teams that warrant a 10-block hike!

Policy Implications: The End to Pod Thinking
These kinds of projects are commonly viewed in separate pods: Portland South Waterfront is in the brownfields pod; Georgetown Land Development is in the transit-oriented development pod; and The Atrium is in the historic preservation pod. Each has its own set of program justifications, accompanied by glowing impact numbers. But now there is an over-arching common purpose—climate change. A large part of the solution can be placed under the umbrella of sustainable urban redevelopment, that is, development that is green and energy-saving both within the building envelope and externally in the larger context of the site and its relationship to the city.

There is a need for a new perspective, which is fairly simple in concept: energy policy needs to be seen through the lens of development policy, and development policy needs to be seen through the lens of energy policy.

The energy pod is a case in point. In the U.S. Congress, the primary vehicle for greenhouse gas reduction is the Warner-Lieberman Climate Security Act, S. 2191, which passed out of committee in December 2007 but did not make it to a Senate vote this year. Far-reaching and visionary in many respects, the cap-and-trade bill does little to offer any incentive for sustainable urban redevelopment. In fact, a call for the reduction of VMTs threatens to thwart the bill’s primary objectives. The problem, described in detail in the Urban Land Institute report, is that VMTs are growing at a rate that more than counterbalances fuel efficiency gains, leading to the conclusion that greenhouse gases cannot be reduced without also reducing VMTs.

The projections are that S. 2191, if adopted, would involve $100 billion in allocations by the year 2050. But none of those revenues are currently slated to support sustainable urban redevelopment, arguably one of the most direct and least painful ways to achieve energy savings. Wouldn’t it make sense to dedicate a portion of those revenues to incentives that will help reshape our cities as sustainable and energy-efficient?

Back in the development pods, there are similar omissions that might now be presented as opportunities to make the connections with climate change. For several years, there has been a proposal in Congress to establish a brownfields tax credit, but the proposal has gone nowhere. What if that credit were recast as a “climate change/sustainable redevelopment of brownfields” proposal? The reformulated credit proposal would assist only brownfield projects that meet sustainability criteria: that they are green, transit-oriented developments, and/or meet an energy-efficient location criterion.

Similarly, there is a proposal to boost the funding available for brownfield cleanups in the EPA Brownfields Program from the current $200,000 per site to $1,000,000 per site. This also runs into fiscal concerns, but what if the higher cleanup amounts were linked to similar sustainability standards?

Parallel thinking might lead to incremental increases in historic tax credits and New Markets Tax Credits, but the higher credit would be linked to sustainability criteria.

At the state and local level, governors and mayors are similarly determined to put their states and localities at the head of the climate-change charge. However, they tend to view the energy pod as separate from development, and few proposals or strategies recognize that sustainable urban redevelopment can and should be central to the strategy. The redevelopment industry, environmental advocates and communities need to develop a common voice to connect the dots and make these essential points. The result could be a powerful combination: revitalized communities that are energy efficient, environmentally responsible and livable.

Evans Paull is senior policy analyst with the Northeast-Midwest Institute in Washington, D.C.