Is it a shopping mall or more about being mauled?

I finally got around to heading over to Biddeford, Maine's newest addition, a shopping mall. According to the City:

"A 500,000 s.f. shopping center project is under construction on an 80 acre site on Rte 111 just west of the Maine Turnpike's Biddeford Exit. The $50 million project is being developed by Packard Development, Newton, MA.

"The Shops at Biddeford Crossing" will be anchored by a Lowe's Home Center and a Target and will include 4-5 restaurants and nearly 20 other retail and service businesses.

The project is expected to create 700-800 new jobs and generate an estimated $700,000 in property taxes to the City. Conpletion is scheduled for fall of 2006."

It is bad enough that another pristine field has been turned into a man-made jungle, but this mall, like many others popping up around Maine, is made up of several separate shopping plazas scattered around the 80 acre site. I am sure the developers have some rationale for this kind of layout, but such a design is bad for people's health and the environment.

First, there is no easy way to walk between the different plazas. This will force people to repeatedly move their cars between parking lots. This limits the amount of exercise people can expect during their shopping trip. In comparison, older malls such as the Maine Mall, has 140 stores under one roof and is used by many as a venue for logging walking miles when the weather is less than friendly. A large majority of people around Biddeford (and the nation as a whole) are struggling with excess weight. Every effort should be made to design new shopping developments so that they encourage walking.

Similarly, the added low speed driving between the different stores is going to lead to higher auto emissions. This will increase carbon emissions and increase the ground level air pollution in the vicinity of the mall.

Also, I know traffic congestion is a problem around any shopping mall and that the location selected is convenient to the highway, but I wished there had been some way to locate all of these shops and restaurants at the vacant mills located in the center of the city. Such an investment into these old buildings would have helped clean up this part of the city and surely would have resulted in a more walkable project. And image how much more character this space would have as opposed to the modern buildings.

Finally, do we really need 3 Lowe's building stores within 15 miles of each other? And what about a Target or Wal-Mart every 6 miles? And yet more fast food restaurants which serve food which furthers the obesity problem?

I think there is way too much easy money out there. I am no financial wizard, but I think the house of cards is due to crumble within the next year or two. The US Government keeps printing more money which is not exactly guaranteed by anything of value.

Enough ranting.

On the climate change front, here it is, December 14th and the temperature has topped out at 54F. The existing record of 50F was set in 2001. I will summarize the year to date in a bit. Another warm year is about to come to a close.

Maine ozone cutbacks praised

The following appeared in the Bangor Daily News on December 12, 2006. Although I would agree there has been forward progress in regard to ozone levels in Maine, I think the EPA needs to tighten the standards. New evidence is coming out almost daily about the adverse health effects resulting from our continued use of fossil fuels to drive our society. The bottom line is that no amount of air pollution should be considered acceptable.

Bangor Daily News


The federal government recognized Maine’s efforts to reduce smog on Monday by removing nine midcoast and Portland-area counties from a list of locations with ground-level ozone problems.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision means that all Maine counties now meet federal air quality standards for ground-level ozone.

While not necessarily a clean bill of health, the re-designation shows that Maine is making progress with its air pollution programs, state officials said.

The nine counties removed from the EPA’s "non-attainment" list are: Hancock, Waldo, Knox, Lincoln, Kennebec, Androscoggin, Sagadahoc, Cumberland and York.

"While Maine is now meeting the federal ozone standard, there remains room for air quality improvement," David Littell, commissioner of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, said in a statement. "We need to continue working with [the] EPA and upwind states to further reduce emissions of ozone precursors and other pollutants, including mercury from power plants."

Ground-level ozone is a component of smog formed when pollutants from vehicles, smokestacks and other sources react chemically with intense sunlight. High levels of ozone, which occur most frequently during summer, can harm the respiratory system or exacerbate existing breathing problems.

The dangers of ground-level ozone are most acute for the very young, the elderly or the sick but can also affect healthy adults working or exercising outside on hot summer days.

In 1988, Maine reported 34 days when ozone levels were considered unhealthful to sensitive groups. But the number of unhealthful days have steadily dropped, with just two days reported during the summer of 2006.

Jim Brooks, head of the DEP’s Bureau of Air Quality, attributed the improvements to more stringent emissions levels in Maine combined with pollution reductions in upwind states.

Brooks said ozone problems were so severe during the 1980s that he never thought the state would come into attainment of the EPA standards before he retired.

"I’m very pleased. This is a milestone," Brooks said.

Mainers will likely continue to see warnings about unhealthful ozone levels on some hot summer days despite the federal designation, however. That is because ozone levels can rise above healthful levels for several hours without violating the 8-hour standard used by the EPA.

The EPA is also considering whether to lower the current air quality standard, now set at 84 parts per billion, to reflect new scientific evidence on the health effects of ground-level ozone.

The American Lung Association and other health groups have argued that the 84 parts-per-billion standard is much too high.

A lower standard could affect Maine’s attainment status, Brooks said.

State lights way toward lower electricity costs

Portland Press Herald

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

KENNEBUNK - Medical researchers rely on the molded polystyrene laboratory plates coming off the line at the Corning Inc. manufacturing plant here, so they have to be free of cracks and scratches. New lighting recently installed in the factory makes it easier for workers to spot those flaws, but there's another benefit.

The high-efficiency fluorescent lamps chosen by Corning, combined with other improvements, have cut electricity use for lighting by roughly 40 percent.

It's part of Corning's corporate goal to increase productivity by up to 30 percent within five years while using the same amount of energy as in 2005.

Corning's experience here was highlighted Tuesday as an example of how Maine businesses can save money and cut energy use with the help of the state's Efficiency Maine program. Nearly 1,000 companies have tapped into the no-cost, four-year-old program, which offers up to $50,000 a year in rebates for lighting and appliance upgrades.

The Corning plant represents the third-largest project aided by Efficiency Maine. The other two are Jasper Wyman & Son in Milbridge and Sysco Food Services in Westbrook.

Along with lighting improvements, the Corning plant is in the midst of three other projects, focused on cooling water and running pumps and motors more efficiently. The work will qualify for $59,000 in cash incentives from Efficiency Maine. The investments are expected to pay for themselves in less than three years and cut total electric usage by 1.8 million kilowatt hours.
The company declined to say how much power it uses a year or how much money it will save in electricity costs.

New York-based Corning may be best known for its Pyrex heat-resistant bakeware, but today it's more heavily involved in making glass for laptop computers and LCD television screens. The company has 26,000 employees worldwide, working in market segments including display and environmental technologies, telecommunications and life sciences. The Kennebunk plant, which has 300 workers, is part of the life sciences division.

Corning started getting worried a couple of years ago about the long-term costs of energy and managing the so-called greenhouse gas emissions that scientists associate with climate change, among other issues. These concerns led the company to undertake a global energy management plan. Corning also figured that reducing energy and greenhouse gas production will make it more competitive.

In Kennebunk, the company ripped out 35-year-old lighting, replacing 1,630 fixtures. The results are dramatic on the factory floor. Light output has nearly doubled, according to David Blunt, the facility manager, who pointed out the improvements Tuesday during a brief media tour. The lights also run cooler, so there's less need for air conditioning in the summer.
In the warehouse, occupancy sensors turn on the lights only when someone enters. These lights used to blaze 24/7 because they took time to warm up.

In another part of the manufacturing floor, high-efficiency lights were lowered closer to the workstations.

"We can use fewer fixtures," Blunt said. "We don't need as much lighting anymore."
Corning's Kennebunk plant got some of its energy-saving ideas by sending engineers to a Building Operator Certification training course run by Efficiency Maine. Kurt Adams, chair of the Maine Public Utilities Commission, said these programs are filling fast, as more companies look for ways to trim energy bills. New technology, typified by the latest generation of high-efficiency fluorescent lights, produce more light output for less electricity.

"Technology has really defined a new standard, and that's higher performance for reduced cost," he said.

Staff Writer Tux Turkel can be contacted at 791-6462 or at: tturkel@pressherald.com

Mileage from megawatts: Study finds enough electric capacity to "fill up" plug-in vehicles across much of the nation

December 11, 2006

RICHLAND, Wash. – If all the cars and light trucks in the nation switched from oil to electrons, idle capacity in the existing electric power system could generate most of the electricity consumed by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A new study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak" electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 84 percent of the country's 220 million vehicles if they were plug-in hybrid electrics.

Researchers at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory also evaluated the impact of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs, on foreign oil imports, the environment, electric utilities and the consumer.

"This is the first review of what the impacts would be of very high market penetrations of PHEVs, said Eric Lightner, of DOE's Office of Electric Delivery and Energy Reliability. "It's important to have this baseline knowledge as consumers are looking for more efficient vehicles, automakers are evaluating the market for PHEVs and battery manufacturers are working to improve battery life and performance."

Current batteries for these cars can easily store the energy for driving the national average commute - about 33 miles round trip a day, so the study presumes that drivers would charge up overnight when demand for electricity is much lower.

Researchers found, in the Midwest and East, there is sufficient off-peak generation, transmission and distribution capacity to provide for all of today's vehicles if they ran on batteries. However, in the West, and specifically the Pacific Northwest, there is limited extra electricity because of the large amount of hydroelectric generation that is already heavily utilized. Since more rain and snow can't be ordered, it's difficult to increase electricity production from the hydroelectric plants.

"We were very conservative in looking at the idle capacity of power generation assets," said PNNL scientist Michael Kintner-Meyer. "The estimates didn't include hydro, renewables or nuclear plants. It also didn't include plants designed to meet peak demand because they don't operate continuously. We still found that across the country 84 percent of the additional electricity demand created by PHEVs could be met by idle generation capacity."

"Since gasoline consumption accounts for 73 percent of imported oil, it is intriguing to think of the trade and national security benefits if our vehicles switched from oil to electrons," added PNNL energy researcher Rob Pratt. "Plus, since the utilities would be selling more electricity without having to build more plants or power lines, electricity prices could go down for everyone."

Lightner noted that "the study suggests the idle capacity of the electric power grid is an underutilized national asset that could be tapped to vastly reduce our dependence on foreign oil."

The study also looked at the impact on the environment of an all-out move to PHEVs. The added electricity would come from a combination of coal-fired and natural gas-fired plants. Even with today's power plants emitting greenhouse gases, the overall levels would be reduced because the entire process of moving a car one mile is more efficient using electricity than producing gasoline and burning it in a car's engine.

Total sulfur dioxide emissions would increase in the near term due to sulfur content in coal. However, urban air quality would actually improve since the pollutants are emitted from power plants that are generally located outside cities. In the long run, according to the report, the steady demand for electricity is likely to result in investments in much cleaner power plants, even if coal remains the dominant fuel for our electricity production.

"With cars charging overnight, the utilities would get a new market for their product. PHEVs would increase residential consumption of electricity by about 30 - 40 percent. The increased generation could lead to replacing aging coal-fired plants sooner with newer, more environmentally friendly versions," said Kintner-Meyer.

"The potential for lowering greenhouse gases further is quite substantial because it is far less expensive to capture emissions at the smokestack than the tailpipe. Vehicles are one of the most intractable problems facing policymakers seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," said Pratt.

Finally, the study looked at the economic impact on consumers. Since, PHEVs are expected to cost about $6,000 to $10,000 more than existing vehicles - mostly due to the cost of batteries -- researchers evaluated how long it might take owners to break even on fuel costs. Depending on the price of gas and the cost of electricity, estimates range from five to eight years - about the current lifespan of a battery. Pratt notes that utilities could offer a lower price per kilowatt hour on off-peak power, making PHEVs even more attractive to consumers.

Adding "smart grid" communications technology to ensure the vehicles only charge during off-peak periods and to provide immediate, remote disconnect of chargers in event of problems in the power grid would make them attractive to utilities.

PNNL is a DOE Office of Science laboratory that solves complex problems in energy, national security, the environment and life sciences by advancing the understanding of physics, chemistry, biology and computation. PNNL employs 4,300 staff, has a $750 million annual budget, and has been managed by Ohio-based Battelle since the lab's inception in 1965.