Green transportation takes a kicking but is still ticking, this week in CIB:

• Legislative Watch: Green Transportation Down but Not Out
• Education & Resources: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report

Legislative Watch: Green Transportation Down but Not Out

It could have been worse. You know it’s been a bad legislative session when that statement ranks as good news.

In this case, we’re talking about the Senate’s version of HB 817, “Strategic Transportation Investments”, which it approved last week. This is the bill which revises state transportation funding policy, a stated priority of the McCrory administration. Much of the bill amounts to a reshuffling of the deck chairs in determining which road projects get an advantage in competing for the limited pool of state transportation dollars. There are some meaningful policy questions involved, but for the most part they’re fairly environmentally neutral.

Unfortunately, elements of the legislation also incorporate the pro-roads, anti-alternatives mentality of the pseudo-libertarian thinking represented by the Art Pope/John Locke Foundation power center in today’s state politics. For example, the bill prohibits using state transportation dollars to underwrite bike-pedestrian projects, even when they’re supported by local governments or regional transportation planning organizations. The bill also kicks public transit or rail projects out of the opportunity to compete for transportation funding priority at the state level.

As we noted at the start, however, the final Senate version could have been worse on both counts. Originally, it went so far as to yank back all state funding for bike-pedestrian (including greenway) projects which were not under construction by October 1. That would have killed state participation in greenway projects across the state which had already been approved. As revised, the bill permits already-approved greenway and other bike-pedestrian projects to retain their state funding, so long as they get under construction in the 2013-14 or 2014-15 fiscal years.

On funding for transit projects and programs, there was also a compromise. They’re still not allowed to compete for statewide priority funding, but they can compete for regional and district priority funding. That will help keep alive the financial prospects for public transit projects in the Research Triangle and Piedmont Triad regions, and possibly elsewhere. This is significant because of the way the bill carves up the allocation of state transportation money: The ‘statewide’ level gets 40%; the ‘regional’ level gets 30%; and the ‘district’ level gets 30%. The ‘districts’ involved are the 14 multi-county N.C. Department of Transportation planning and administrative districts. The ‘regions’ are larger combinations of two or more ‘districts’.

The bottom line result is that green transportation funding from the state is depressed from the previous administration–a disappointment when considering that this is coming under the watch of Gov. Pat McCrory, considered a champion of passenger rail as the mayor of Charlotte. However, meaningful state funding for public transit at least is not out of the picture altogether. This means that there is still a visible path forward in North Carolina for public transit investments that reduce air pollution and promote compact development instead of greenspace-devouring urban sprawl.

In other legislative news, the Senate last week also rejected the revised House version of SB 76–the latest faster-track fracking bill. The House version of the bill, while continuing to push the state in the wrong direction on energy policy, removed a number of the worst specific provisions of the original Senate version (like authorizing underground injection of fracking wastewater). Now the competing versions will go to a House-Senate conference committee, and we will see where new state energy policy ends up on the spectrum between bad and worse.

Education & Resources: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report

The International Energy Agency (IEA) last week released a report finding that global emissions of carbon dioxide from energy use rose by 1.4%. That sets a record and if continued would mean an eventual global average temperature rise of catastrophic proportions (a temperature increase over pre-industrial times of 9 degrees Fahrenheit).

Masked within that big bite of bad news, however, were some more encouraging trends. United States’ emissions actually fell by 3.8%, and European emissions declined as well. Chinese emissions rose by 3.8%, a principal driver of the overall rise–but the Chinese rate of emissions growth declined from recent previous years, and was only half of the 2011 rate of climb. It was the Japanese emissions jump of 5.8%, as that nation substituted more fossil fuel use for its idled nuclear reactors, that drove much of the record overall jump. That increase could be regarded as a one-year change, however, rather than a continuing trend. The world community has options available for action to reverse greenhouse emissions growth.

Environmental advocates can review the data and make their own evaluations. For a Washington Post summary story, go here.

For the IEA site with links to the report itself, “Redrawing the Energy-Climate Map”, go here.

That’s our report for this week.