Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Last week, I reported that Vancouver’s Mayor Sam Sullivan says that we need density to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Similarly, Salt Lake City’s Mayor Rocky Anderson says that his region should build more light rail in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Both of these ideas are wrong. Building light rail is increasing greenhouse gas emissions in Salt Lake City. Building high-rise condos instead of single-family homes is increasing greenhouse gas emissions in Vancouver.

Let’s start with light rail. According to the National Transit Database, Salt Lake City’s light-rail lines consumed 17.4 million kilowatt hours of electricity in 2005, which works out to 2,676 BTUs per passenger mile. Salt Lake’s buses consumed 4.6 million gallons of Diesel fuel, which works out to 8,527 BTUs per passenger mile.

That makes light rail look pretty good. The catch is that the light-rail system would not work without a supporting bus system. So we can’t compare today’s light rail with today’s buses. Instead, we have to compare today’s light-rail and bus system together with the bus system that existed before light rail was built.

When considered together, Salt Lake’s transit system consumed 5,574 BTUs per passenger mile. But before light rail was built, Salt Lake’s bus system was consuming less than 4,300 BTUs per passenger mile. By cherry picking the best bus routes and draining passengers away from bus lines, light rail led to an increase in energy consumption.

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Running these numbers through, it turns out that Salt Lake’s transit system today emits .9 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile. By comparison, the transit system before light rail was built produced less than 0.7 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile. (The average automobile emits about 0.56 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile.)

Now, someone might argue that light rail has reduced CO2 by taking people out of their cars. But my argument is that improvements in bus service would take as many people out at a far lower cost. Mayor Anderson’s argument is that, in spite of this, the city should build light rail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He is wrong.

Mayor Sullivan says that density reduces greenhouse gas emissions. But you couldn’t prove it by Vancouver. Over the last decade, the region has steadily increased its population density by more than 1 percent per year. Yet a travel survey conducted by the regional transportation authority found that auto trips per capita have also been increasing by more than 1 percent per capita.

How about housing? I’ve haven’t yet found data showing whether the construction of high-rise housing uses more energy per housing unit than single-family homes. However, a study from Australia finds that operating high-rise apartments produces more greenhouse gases than single-family homes. Moreover, because high rises tend to attract smaller households, emissions per capita are almost twice as high as for single-family homes.

So more work is needed, but as usual it turns out that the density advocates are probably wrong. Unfortunately, by the time we prove that density is bad (or at least no better than suburbia) for global warming, they will come up with some other lie to support their social engineering.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

4 Responses to Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

  1. JimKarlock says:

    which works out to 2,676 BTUs per passenger mile.
    Car, efficient…..2,488 (2006 KIA Rio)
    Car, hybrid……..1,326 (Honda Insight)

    It doesn’t even beat a new small car and a hybrid uses 1/2 the energy. see http://www.DebunkingPortland.com/Transit/BusVsCarTEDB.htm

    Looks like we should shut down that system and get people into hybrid cars. Probably could buy one for every rider for the cost of building the system.

    Thanks
    JK

  2. msetty says:

    The Salt Lake City LRT system could buy their electricity from wind power providers, like the LRT system in Calgary has been doing since 2004.

    Perhaps Salt Lake (and Portland, too) could jump start the Oregon Coast wind energy industry; there’s lots of wind coming off the ocean around Bandon, and from the TI offices, too!

  3. laplante says:

    The figures you are looking for about high-rise housing vs single-family home energy use can be found here:
    http://reversezone.blogdns.com/blosxom.cgi/Which_is_Greener_Houses_or_Apartments.html

    High-rise units consume more per square foot than houses, but less per person and per household. That is because units tend to be less efficient but smaller. They also house a different population so it’s difficult to compare directly.

    When it comes to the environmental effects of density, too low is bad but too high is also bad. It is not a simple “more is better” , but a high density of houses is generally good while a high density of apartments is generally not.

  4. jgzeger says:

    I’ve seen the Australian figures myself and they show that high rises use more energy and emit more green house gases than other housing types on both a per capita and per dwelling basis.
    http://www.sos.org.au/new_docs/from_ppt/guzzlers.htm

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