Sustainable: Pilot adds greenhouse gases to project assessments

Listen to this article

A state agency will begin a voluntary pilot program next year to collect greenhouse gas emissions data on land use developments.

The Environmental Quality Board will ask developers and government agencies to assess greenhouse emissions in projects requiring an “environmental assessment worksheet,” or EAW, before their construction. Around 100 projects annually require an assessment due to their size and potential impact on the environment, ranging from housing developments to golf courses, from manufacturing plants to agricultural facilities.

During a time when the climate crisis has captured the attention of global and local leaders, Minnesota state officials have been looking for ways to fine-tune assessments to better reflect their long-term influence on the state’s environment. The pilot project will help the EQB determine whether carbon emissions should become part of a new and improved EAW that assists the state in reaching its clean energy goals.

Developers, or “project proposers,” as the board calls them, must conduct EAWs when projects may have significant impacts. The EAWs then get reviewed by “responsible government units,” including counties, cities, state agencies and soil and conservation boards. For the pilot the agency will maintain the existing EAW and offer the revised EAW to government agencies interested in the pilot.

Composed of nine state agency heads and eight public members, the EQB mainly ensures compliance with state environmental policy through studies and agency coordination. For the EAW draft pilot every state agency and the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis have signed on. The board plans to recruit other counties and cities to the initiative to capture a wider range of input and create a web page for more information.

Denise Wilson, who directs the EQB’s Environmental Review Program, said the organization’s board overwhelmingly approved the pilot in mid-September after months of study and stakeholder participation. The pilot, which starts in January 2022 and runs for nine months, could result in a revised EAW by the end of next year.

Environmental reviews “provide usable information to project proposers, government decision-makers, and members of the public about the potential environmental effect of proposed projects,” Wilson said.

After seeing the projected emissions, proposers could decide to make changes to reduce them even though the pilot does not require it. “Information can inform action,” Wilson said.

St. Paul sustainability director Russ Stark said the pilot fits in with the city’s long-range plans for carbon reductions. “It would certainly be consistent with all of our other efforts to try to make sure that developers are doing everything they can, within reason, to reduce those emissions impacts, particularly in the way energy systems for buildings are designed,” he said.

The city has leverage on developers who have accepted more than $200,000 in public financing through the sustainable building ordinance. For example, if an EAW showed excessive energy consumption or a lack of efficiency measures, the city could ask a developer to change their plans, he said.

Knowing a project’s emissions will be an essential data point. “In general, think it makes a lot of sense that when we’re looking at the overall environmental impact proposal that the greenhouse gas emissions are part of that picture,” Stark said.

Environmental assessment worksheets sometimes conclude that projects need a deeper dive of detail known as an “environmental impact statement” (EIS). More rigorous and forensic, developers prefer to avoid them because they can slow projects and increase costs. The fear of a more involved study could be a bargaining chip toward seeing cleaner projects, said Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy regulatory attorney Amelia Vohs.

If projects score high on emissions, she believes they will “look to creative ways to mitigate” pollution to avoid an EIS. Permitting authorities also can say the emissions pose too significant a threat and nudge projects toward less environmentally damaging practices.

Government agencies cannot force developers to improve air quality because the EAWs gather information. “I think there are ways that what happens in environmental review can direct behavior, both from the project proposer and from the permitting authority, to make better decisions,” Vohs said. However, she conceded that “might be wishful thinking.”

The EQB’s pilot met with opposition from the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, farm associations, and a handful of government officials. Tony Kwilas, the chamber’s director of environmental policy, said the state’s environmental review process is slower than other states and the pilot adds “cost and uncertainty.”

The carbon measure could add anywhere from $3,000 to $30,000 to a project proposer’s costs, he said, citing the EQB’s research. “Any time you’ve put further restrictions and what we think is already kind of an onerous review process, it gets concerning,” he said.

Companies may decide to avoid carbon disclosure by moving projects to adjacent states to prevent having to endure Minnesota’s allegedly challenging regulatory process. Government agencies overseeing EAWs already have “tools in the toolbox to do this, they can ask if they want, in my opinion,” Kwilas said.

The Association of Minnesota Counties raised several questions regarding the pilot. Brian Martinson, environment and natural resources policy analyst, said the greenhouse gas calculations remain unclear for project proposers and the governments reviewing EAWs. In addition, not all that many standardized tools exist for assessing and reviewing greenhouse gases through the life of projects, he said.

Martinson would prefer a narrower pilot that only measures the EAW projects likely to have significant greenhouse gas emissions. He warns that if the greenhouse gas data goes beyond the pilot and becomes part of the EAW the state may have to step in to provide training and offer financial resources or technical capacity to agencies for conducting assessments. Despite some misgivings, the association is “happy to see that Environmental Quality Board opt to go with a pilot as an option for communities that feel they’re ready or able to do these (EAWs) at this level of assessment,” Martinson said.

For Wilson, the pilot is just a start on making the EAW more responsive to the climate change crisis. It’s a baseline measure of future emissions rather than a full accounting for all pollution that may be involved in a project. The EAW does not, for example, ask for a thorough accounting of all the emissions created by the production, transportation, and onsite construction of projects. The documentation focuses mainly on operations and emissions going forward.

To help project sponsors and agencies, the EQB has a 30-page guidance document that offers detailed descriptions of carbon footprints. An entire section outlines how proposers should respond to climate change questions in the EAW, including climate trends, land use, contamination, waste and water use.

Since it’s a pilot, Wilson expects some future tweaking.  “We’re going to bring people together as they go through the form and as they go through the process,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for us at Minnesota Environmental Quality Board to work with those folks to gather information and understand where there might be challenges.”

Like this article? Gain access to all of our great content with a month-to-month subscription. Start your subscription here.