City making progress
Michael Bloomberg praises Orlando’s clean energy efforts in climate fight
in Orlando to praise the city’s clean energy, billionaire philanthropist and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday that he will decide this month whether to run for president.
Bloomberg has previously said he would announce his decision on whether to run president before the end of February. “The last time I checked my calendar, I still have 20-plus days to go,” he said.
He also went off-topic to recognize the 2016 Pulse massacre in the context of gun-safety reforms.
“The Pulse nightclub shooting was a dark day for the city and for our whole country, and next week marks the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting in Parkland,” said Bloomberg, speaking during what was billed as a personal appearance to congratulate Orlando as one of 25 cities that last year won a Bloomberg Philanthropies $2.5 million Climate Challenge grant.
“We have a lot more to do and I think everybody knows that, but cities and states are showing that on gun safety and climate change, we are not waiting for WashingAppearing
ton,” said Bloomberg, who has been a major contributor to gun-reform advocacy.
Bloomberg described how Orlando was selected from among the largest 100 cities in the U.S. for cleanenergy progress.
“We went around the country trying to find cities that are really doing innovative things and particularly things that are transferable to other cities,” Bloomberg said. “If it works, we would love to see other cities copy it.”
With the $2.5 million grant, Orlando will install 150 electric-vehicle charging stations by 2020, accelerate the transformation of the city’s cars and buses to electric, boost efficiency initiatives for buildings and expand solar energy.
Bloomberg said the 25 cities that won grants will in the next six years cut carbon emissions from coal, oil and natural gas fuels by an amount equal to taking 8.5 million cars off the road for a year or equal to shutting down 10 coalpowered electric plants.
Just 15 miles east from the speaking event are two coal-powered plants rising 50 stories that are owned and run by the city’s Orlando Utilities Commission. Until December, the city and OUC have never considered publicly how or whether to retire the plants. The utility is now pursuing two studies, costing a combined $1 million and taking 18 months.
“You can’t just flip a switch on these plants that we’ve invested a lot of sunk cost into,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said before he went on a stage with Bloomberg. “We are studying how we can effectively and efficiently rotate them out of service.”
Linda Ferrone, OUC’s Chief Customer Officer, confirmed that the studies are about determining the economics of retiring the Stanton Energy Center coal plants. “It’s a question of when and not a question of if,” Ferrone said.
Susannah Randolph, a senior representative in Florida for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, said Orlando has the opportunity to stand out nationally as a climate leader.
“OUC for years has been very proud of and touted the Stanton plants as a big asset,” Randolph said.
“Everybody knows you can’t just turn off a coal plant. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow,” Randolph said. “Setting a date, whether this year or the end of 2020 or something reasonably ambitious would signify that they are serious.”
In 2017, Dyer and the City Council agreed to the goal of running all of the city’s homes, businesses and government facilities on renewable energy by 2050. The city also has targeted 2030 as a deadline for powering municipal vehicles and buildings entirely with renewable energy.
Since then, more ambitious goals have begun to emerge on a national setting. Democrats in the House and Senate now are rallying behind a “Green New Deal” goal to eliminate the nation’s carbon pollution by 2030. A rising voice leading that charge is New York’s freshman U.S. Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez.
What’s at stake was highlighted this week in a report from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which states that Earth’s global surface temperatures last year were the fourth-warmest since the late 1800s.
Also from the federal agencies’ report, last year’s temperatures were lower than those of 2016, 2017 and 2015 but the past five years now stand as the warmest in the modern record.
Gavin Schmidt, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said 2018 is yet another “extremely warm year on top of a longterm global warming trend.” Schmidt attributed the warming largely to increased emissions of greenhouses gases, particularly carbon dioxide, from human activities.
Casting doubts on climate change, President Donald Trump has scrapped key components of former president Barack Obama’s efforts to reduce the nation’s output of greenhouse gases.
Warming temperatures are fueling fears of rising seas and coastal flooding, more severe drought in the West and wetter, more powerful hurricanes for Florida and the Southeast.
As a “Guest Columnist” for the Orlando Sentinel Friday, Bloomberg alluded to the coming campaign for the 2020 presidential election. “And whether or not I decide to run, I will work to ensure that climate pollution is front-and-center during the 2020 campaign,” he said in the column.
Speaking with Dyer, Bloomberg said “leadership matters, and we are not getting the leadership out of Washington that I think we deserve.”