Climate Action: Policy and Practice

The first part of this article focused on efforts to inform and guide regulation and policy for mitigating and adapting to climate change. In the second part, we look at practice, from design, to program management, to engineering, that puts policy into reality.

New Edge for Rising Tides
In anticipation of the 2010 Winter Olympics Games, the City of Richmond, British Columbia, is revitalizing the City's downtown urban waterfront on Frazier River.  Although the project was initially conceived as a trail connecting a new transit station to the Olympic speed skating venue, the project evolved to include a visionary urban park that creatively addresses several technical engineering challenges. The design gracefully plans to accommodate sea level rise resulting from climate change, anticipating a rise of two meters over the next 20 to 30 years.  

The AECOM team proposed a green corridor and park with graceful, undulating landforms protecting low lying areas along the river and extending and opening views out to the surrounding landscape. The edge of the river and the existing dike will be sculpted, deviating from the standard straight line of the existing dike and responding to the natural flow and forms of the river. The landforms embrace a series of plazas and landscapes. These attractive spaces are connected with multiple pathways that will give attendees of the 2010 Olympic Games views to the river, delta and site ecology. Eventually, the waterfront park will become the community's central gathering space; a place for recreation, celebration, remembrance, and acceptance of changing times in our world environments.

The proposed waterfront park will store water from large spring runoffs, floods, and tidal events while providing passive recreation during the dry season. The master plan for the park recognizes that sea level rise will slowly modify the river and its environs and will become part of the overall island flood management solution in the delta. As the urban core of Richmond expands outward, the master plan proposes that the river extends into the landscape, with city and water meeting at a new waterfront edge inland from the current engineered site, thus presenting a new solution for sea rise and climate change in our urban environments.

The AECOM team consisted of urban designers, landscape architects, civil and structural engineers, and environmental and ecology specialists working together to create a unique and innovative vision for the Olympic Games, the future of Richmond's Urban waterfront, and a long-term climate change strategy.

The park will be constructed in phases. Construction has begun on the river's edge with completion scheduled for January 2010.

Renewable Energy + Economic Security
Power is expensive. Any large nonprofit institution, like a school, a hospital, or a museum, knows that all too well. At the same time, institutions face the challenge of adapting to new standards of sustainability. Reducing carbon emissions in the effort to mitigate climate change is now regarded as a crucial task. That means increasing energy-efficiency of buildings and campuses as well the installation of renewable energy technologies. But all that is even more expensive. What are institutions to do?

Now tax-exempt entities can implement renewable energy systems and secure their power costs at the same time. AECOM has assembled a consortium of tier 1 financiers that will enable any tax-exempt entity to install renewable technology at no out-of-pocket expense. Qualified institutions will have a fixed rate for their power costs for 25 plus years, securing them against both inflation and the instability of energy markets. At the same time, they will be future-proofing their facilities for the age of climate change.

AECOM's program managers now have hundreds of millions of dollars behind them to enable tax-exempt clients to implement their renewable energy programs. It began with the Los Angeles Community College District Bond Program. Seeking to manage annual costs of $12 million for their power, our client approached AECOM. They also had plans for new renewable technologies, but the program was going to cost $450-525 million dollars, a sum far beyond what the District could generate. That sent Ruben Rojas, AECOM Program Manager, to Wall Street. Through a competitive bid process, he assembled the 3rd party financiers—major American banks—needed to fund the program.

Phase 1 will provide the capacity to generate 36-40 megawatts of zero-carbon power through photovoltaic technology. And this is a program that can be repeated indefinitely for other tax-exempt entities, helping them fund energy solutions that mitigate climate change and lending them some economic security at the same time.

Buildings as Mitigators
The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 defines a high performance building as a building that integrates and optimizes on a life-cycle basis all major high-performance attributes, including energy conservation, environment, safety, security, durability, accessibility, cost benefit, productivity, sustainability, functionality, and operational considerations. By conserving energy, high-performance buildings serve as mitigators of climate change. Dr. Get Moy, an AECOM engineer, is Chair of the National Institute of Building Sciences' High Performance Building Council Executive Committee. His work for the Executive committee is helping to advance the practices of planning, designing, constructing, and operating high-performance buildings, as he lends his expertise to AECOM.

AECOM combines architecture, building engineering, landscape architecture, urban design and planning, and program management to create communities, facilities, and urban form that will act as organs for a climate-stable world.

Todd Bronk, Jake Herson