[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: NLC committee report

[kohls at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Appelbaum, Matt

Colleagues,

A bit late, but here's a quick report on this year's second of four meetings of the National League of Cities Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources (EENR) Policy Committee, of which I'm a vice-chair this year.  We met last month in Kansas City, and while Lisa may be a fan, one needed a knife to cut through the hot, soggy air.

I've attached a summary report of the meeting written by NLC staff.  At this meeting, we mostly hear presentations of the key issues we'll be discussing at the next meeting, get a chance to ask questions, and generally give direction for policy recommendations.  Here are my additional comments:

-- The most important item deals with fracking (hydraulic fracturing for natural gas), particularly since it is so important in Colorado.  NLC currently has no policy on this issue, and I expect EENR to generally take a fairly strong environmental/health protection stand.  The presentations were good, although the EPA speaker was, shall we say, constrained by agency policy.

-- The electric vehicle issue is really not about the vehicles themselves but about how to provide the electricity to them.  The talk by KC's fleet manager, which I figured would be pretty boring, was a rather remarkable riff on climate change and how essential - and cost-effective - it is to decarbonize the fleet.  KC P&L's  SmartGrid efforts are - surprise - yet another "demonstration" project (paid for by the feds) - although to be fair, this one is targeted at a very low-income neighborhood.  And they will be testing a variety of energy generators/storage, automation, etc., with an emphasis on education.  And - another non-surprise - the system will communicate via wireless, not fiber optic cable.

-- For incomprehensible reasons, up until this year NLC has ensured that the various policy committees not discuss issues together, even though there are unavoidable overlaps.  EENR and Transportation are most at odds, with EENR generally supporting environmental regulations and Transpo. complaining that those regs are getting in the way of "progress."  That said, there is agreement (even in Boulder) that some of the federal regs/rules are way too complex/constraining and should be modified, but not to the freewheeling extent some on NLC would prefer.  These discussions will certainly continue and promise to be quite important in the long run.

If you want any additional info or links to the presentations, just let me know.

--Matt
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Meeting Summary Spring 2011.doc
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 42496 bytes
Desc: Meeting Summary Spring 2011.doc
Url : http://list.ci.boulder.co.us/pipermail/bouldercouncilhotline/attachments/20110701/887066cc/attachment.obj