Workshop in Applied Policy Analysis Spring 2009 Midterm Briefings

On Wednesday, March 4, students in the MPA Program in Environmental Science and Policy presented their midterm briefings for the spring semester of the Workshop in Applied Policy Analysis course.  The presentation topics ranged from retrofitting older NYC apartment buildings for energy efficiency to long-term ecosystem management under climate change conditions to assessing a national organization's impact on global climate change.

The Spring Workshop in Applied Policy Analysis is the culminating project of the yearlong MPA program. It is designed to integrate the scientific knowledge acquired with the analytical tools developed throughout the program: students and faculty work to address critical issues in environmental management. Spring Workshop offers students the opportunity to work with public agencies and non-profit organizations on real-world environmental problems.  Descriptions of the Workshop briefing topics and presentations are below.

Assessing the Effectiveness of Payments for Environmental/Ecological Services
Faculty Advisor: Kathleen Callahan

Professor Callahan, the former EPA Deputy Regional Administrator of Region 2, has been advising the group working on Payments for Environmental Services (PES).  PES aim to support the positive incorporation of environmental externalities through the transfer of funds from beneficiaries of those environmental services to the service provider.  The Wildlife Conversation Society (WCS), in partnership with the Earth Institute of Columbia University, Enterprise Works/VITA, Forest Trends, the Land Tenure Center of the University of Wisconsin, received a 5 year grant from the U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID) with the objective of enhancing social, economic and environmental benefits that may be achieved through sustainable natural resource management.  Key goals in this effort, which is known as TransLinks, include poverty reduction and equitable governance.

Students in this group worked with the WCS and its partner, Forest Trends (FT).  FT is a public/private, non profit organization that works to expand the value of forests to society and promote sustainable forest management and conservation.  In the TransLinks program FT has taken a lead role in using PES for forest preservation.  However, WCS and Forest Trends needed an update on broad PES efforts to date.   The MPA ESP students evaluated PES efforts in areas that included carbon markets, water accessibility markets and biodiversity markets.  Using case studies of ten PES projects and five interviews of experts such as Julio Tresierra, Global Coordinator of the WWF, this group put together a cross project analysis paper which helped inform Translinks on topics such as carbon sequestration, watershed protection, and biodiversity preservation. 

Retrofitting Older Apartment Buildings for Energy Efficiency: Practical Proposals for Public Housing in New York City
Faculty Advisor: Steven Cohen

Professor Cohen, Director of the MPA-ESP program as well as Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of the Earth Institute, has been advising the team that is working with the New York City Housing Authority has embarked on an effort to scale up its energy-efficient building retrofit efforts to an "enterprise" level.  This workshop group was asked to describe and assess comparable efforts to enhance the energy efficiency of older multi-family residential buildings in order to provide a benchmark study of current potential technologies. The issues facing the NYCHA are technological, organizational, financial, and behavioral.  Students analyzed the questions surrounding these issues and determined the impact of these factors on energy efficiency programs.

Changing variables in the financial plans of NYCHA threaten the viability of initiatives which was only exacerbated in 2008 by the intense variability in energy costs. These government energy efficiency projects are generally financed with the promise that the debt service costs are the same or lower than the avoided energy costs resulting from the improvement.  Cost of capital, volatile energy prices, poor project management, and unrealized energy savings make energy efficiency initiatives risky enterprises. Due to these risks, agencies and other contractors generally play it safe. Only easy energy-efficiency measures are implemented and the cost of the more promising technologies remains too high for wide adoption. Students researched case studies in the Chicago, Holland, China, and Brazil in order to identify strategies that have been successfully implemented. The group has surveyed and developed a set of comparative case studies and concrete examples of successes and failures and then organized the information into four chapters: current technology, best management practices for reducing energy consumption, behavior, and methods for financing. 

Gateway's Long-Term Ecosystem Management Options under Changing Climate Conditions
Faculty Advisor: Tanya Heikkila

Professor Heikkila, Associate Director of The Earth Institute's Water Center and SIPA professor who was recently awarded a three-year grant by the National Science Foundation to study interstate river basin compacts in the Western United States, is working with her to deal with developing a report that discusses environmental policy implications for Gateway National Recreation area using conceptual models and comparisons to other urban centers' reaction to climate change.  A conceptual model must be created to describe the response of Gateway's major ecosystem types to the various components of climate change and human impact such as sea level rise, subsidence, urban growth, and eutrophication. Gateway requested that a long-term ecosystem management plan be drafted as well as visual representation of the impacts of climate change. In order to address these requests, the group split into two teams: one for science and one for policy. 

The science team compiled existing information and developed an ecosystem catalog along with climate change scenarios and impacts and ecosystem responses to climate change.  Pulling from a variety of resources, the policy team reported on existing legislation, global adaptation policy, and the adaptation policy at Gateway.  Together, these two teams have provided the research which is necessary for their next step: making policy recommendations and providing conceptual models.

Quantifying and Reducing a National Organization's Impact on Global Climate Change and Developing a Model to be Replicated
Faculty Advisor: Gail Suchman

Professor Suchman, lecturer at SIPA and Columbia Law School, and Senior Legal Advisor to the Urban Design Lab for Sustainable Development at Columbia's Earth Institute, has been advising the team working with the National Audubon Society.  National Audubon's mission is to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, wildlife, and habitats, for the benefit of humanity and the earth's biological diversity. Audubon has a national network of over 50 community-based nature centers (some as old as 70 years and newer ones that are LEED certified), runs many scientific, educational and advocacy programs, and publishes Audubon Magazine. National Audubon has a history of leading by example and desires to further enhance its organization's impact and influence.  Therefore, National Audubon requested the services of the student group to provide a comprehensive evaluation of its own carbon footprint and recommendations for how to reduce it by at least 10% in four years. All of National Audubon's facilities and property holdings were covered in this analysis.

Defining the possible scope to be electricity, heating, magazines, mailings, lands, employee commuting, and business travel, the team started in on defining the footprint of the whole operation.  Over 90 facilities and 700 employees make up the business side of the National Audubon and the students found that energy, heating, and travel could all be made more efficient.  The magazine and mailings alone make up a huge portion of the carbon footprint and finally the protection of the landholdings could be improved.  The next steps are to deliver mitigation recommendations and educational materials based on all of the findings.

Renewable Energy Payments (REPs) Policies for the United States
Faculty advisor:  Sara Tjossem

Professor Tjossem, Lecturer and Associate Director of Curriculum for the MPA-ESP program, worked with the team to evaluate Renewable Energy Payment (REP) policies (aka Feed-in Tariffs) in place in over 40 countries and are being called 'The World's Most Effective Renewable Energy Policies'.  Research will strengthen the Alliance for Renewable Energy's (ARE) ability to engage in a full scale, multi-track campaign to bring REPs to the USA.  The clients were ARE and EarthAction and in order to address the specific needs, the team broke into two groups. One worked on a promotional campaign to promote the benefits of REPs to key stakeholders and the other worked on a policy campaign to provide specific policy tools for target states.  The two groups produced materials for their target audiences including fact sheets, memos, models for REP policy, and analyses of the current policy framework.  To synthesize the findings, the groups identified strategic opportunities for overlap between stakeholders' interests and policy recommendations in key states.  They have produced weekly web postings for the ARE website and hope to provide the groundwork for REPs in this country.