Tag: climate change

  • Ain’t No Sunshine: Trump’s tariffs on steel, aluminum stall Newton’s solar plan

    Construction of a solar canopy in the Memorial Spaulding Elementary School parking lot has been halted after Trump’s tariffs caused steel prices to soar.

    The city has made a consistent effort to stay at the forefront of the Commonwealth’s sustainability efforts, with initiatives like the Climate Action Plan, a five-year timeline to introduce sustainable practices into the city, and Newton Power Choice, a city-funded program that enables citizens to easily invest in clean energy.

    As of 2022, the city had 18 solar projects online, which generate 5 million kW/hr a year, equal to 25% of the city’s total electricity use. Now, it has one additional project completed, two more under construction and six planned.

    Since 2022, Newton has also planned to install solar canopies at the Education Center, the Wheeler and Meadowbrook Road corner parking lot, and Memorial Spaulding Elementary School. However, the construction at Memorial Spaulding suddenly shut down when the developer was looking to do the last round of purchasing, specifically for steel.

    As of June 4, Trump raised the tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25% to 50%, causing steel prices to climb from $700 to $900 per ton.

    “With recent uncertainty around tariffs and the tariffs that were already in place on steel coming in,” said Sam Nighman, Newton’s co-director of sustainability. “The project was no longer financially viable for them.”

    Construction had not started, but the project was in the final planning stages.

    “With canopies, those end up involving a lot more steel compared to, like, your overall roof system or a ground mount system,” Nighman said.

    There is still hope that the project will resume at Memorial Spaulding. There are no barriers besides tariffs preventing construction.

    “I think everyone agrees it would be a good location for a solar canopy,” Nighman said. “If we can, in the future, find a way for that to work financially. We’ll pick that up and try to make that happen then.”

    The remaining canopies are larger and are predicted to produce more energy, which makes them more financially viable. As of now, construction for these areas is still planned for the summer, but Newton is not certain of the exact outcome for the other canopy projects.

    “Ones where we are looking at canopies, this could be impacted,” Nighman said.

    The solar projects are conducted under power purchase agreements with Ameresco, a New England-based solar developer, which means the company owns and maintains the projects and the city leases the space to them, Nighman said. Ameresco pays for the panels, the installation and all the upfront costs. The city buys the electricity produced by these panels.

    The solar projects allow Newton to mitigate some effects of climate change and save money on energy because solar is less expensive than other energy sources.

    “So I think if we look at our overall portfolio, the amount annually that we save is somewhere around $1 million in electricity costs from all of our solar projects,” Nighman said.

    The plan includes solar installation on municipal property as a big part of their plan to mitigate climate change.

    The issue is seen not only in Newton but in construction projects across the country. Even the talk about tariffs before they were implemented was enough to disrupt the supply chain that was still reeling from the pandemic.

    “There’s been a lot of disruptions,” said Gilbert Michaud, an assistant professor at the School of Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University Chicago and the policy division chair at the American Solar Energy Society. “It’s definitely not just in Massachusetts or New England or a regional thing, like it’s all across the country.”

    A report published in 2021 by the Newton Citizens Commission on Energy, a citizen-run group that creates renewable energy policy, found that residential homes and cars were responsible for 61% of the greenhouse gas emissions created in Newton. Commercial properties accounted for 37% and municipal uses 2%.

    Philip Hanser, the commission’s chair, said the group will set its sights on finding ways to encourage more solar adoption in residential areas.  

    “I think our next sector to tackle is residential homes and buildings, particularly less than 20,000 square feet, because they represent over a third of the emissions in the city,” Hanser said. “That’s the kind of next big frontier, and that’s where things need to be concentrated.”

    The biggest hurdle is motivating more of Newton’s 31,730 households to participate.

    “There are state and national mandates to help do that, but a lot of it is getting the word out and convincing people it’s a good idea,” said Michael Gevelber, a member of Newton’s Energy Commission since 2012 and an associate engineering research professor at Boston University.

    “How do you get more of them to put solar panels up, buy electric cars, put in heat pumps to provide heat during the winter?” Gevelber said. “That’s the question we’re contemplating, and that’s what goes into the climate action plan.”

    The same 2021 report revealed that Newton was not on track to reach any of its 2025 goals regarding EV ownership, residential heating emissions, commercial heating emissions, and heat pump installation.

    “Five years later, you measure, ‘Where are we?’” Gevelber said. “We barely scratched the surface, unfortunately.”

    To combat this issue, the commission urges the government to educate residents about their energy consumption.

    “The commission right now is putting forward that the city needs to think about putting into place an ordinance for homes to know what their energy use intensity is, and to use that data in the long run to develop decarbonization plans for everybody’s homes,” Hanser said. “And part of the decarbonization plans could be to supplement the energy sources with solar panels.”

  • ‘To the People Like Us’ — Students tackle community changes through opera

    From left  – Katelyn Geary, Nina Evelyn, Timothy Steele (piano), on the floor is Cerise Jacobs and Kayla Faccilongo, Linda Maritza Collazo and Jesús Daniel Hérnandez. Miu Tung Rong photo

    Daniela Martinez, a graduating senior at the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, joined 826 Boston in the fall of 2023, thinking she’d be writing plays, not the libretto for a new opera. But for six months last year, Martinez worked alongside other students at the writing nonprofit brainstorming, scene writing, and creating the text for the opera “To the People Like Us.”

    A year later, on June 28, the opera is set to premiere at the Strand Theatre in Uphams Corner.

    “To the People Like Us” follows three teens living in an unnamed city neighborhood. Costanza and Malakai, who are native to the area, confront the possibility of displacement when Indigo, whose mother is the developer responsible for the pressure, moves onto the scene.

    The opera was created by a dozen students from 826 Boston’s Youth Literary Advisory Board — a program that offers students stipends for their work as writers and editors — in collaboration with White Snake Projects, an activist opera company.

    Above: Nina Evelyn. Miu Tung Rong photo

    “White Snake came to us with the idea of students writing the libretto,” said Asiyah Herrera, a teaching artist for the Youth Literary Advisory Board. “I was cautious and hesitant because I’ve never written a libretto before.”

    Herrera said there was a steep learning curve for everyone involved, herself included. The writing they had worked on together previously was done on a much smaller scale, she said.

    She split the students into three groups, assigning each team specific scenes in the story to work on. Two individuals from White Snake Projects came to the sessions to guide the students through the writing process.

    “It was mainly just us and the writers at White Snake,” Martinez said, “making sure the plot points would be something that White Snake would want to represent, or the characters would be something that they would want on the stage and be okay with.” 

    Mezzo-soprano Kayla Faccilongo. Miu Tung Rong photo

    Each season, White Snake Projects assigns a social justice issue as the focal theme of their shows. The organization chose climate change for 2025.

    While students centered the opera on climate change, they used the opportunity to adapt the story into a real-life issue they’ve seen firsthand: gentrification.

    “They wanted a story that was about themselves and their own experience, like all of the places they’re talking about are real places in Boston,” said Pascale Florestal, the opera’s director.

    “The 826 Boston location is in Jamaica Plain, and Jamaica Plain is currently being gentrified,” Martinez said. “A lot of us — including myself [because] I live in East Boston, which is also being gentrified — had experience with it, so that came from ourselves.”

    Jorge Sosa, who composed the music for the opera, said it was important for him not only to stay true to the students’ vision but also to use art as a tool to explore related social issues.

    “I think that music is speech. Art is speech, and we can use it to say whatever we need to say,” Sosa said. “For me, I use my right to free speech to talk about the issues that are important to me.”

    Even though Sosa has never met the students in person, he said he shares their vision and concerns, and though the music may not change the world, he thinks that it still has the potential to create an impact.

    He said the music needed to reflect the characters and the world in which they lived. He jokingly describes the opera as an “electronic zarzuela,” a Spanish operetta style that alternates between spoken and musical scenes. He also included references to salsa and bolero in the show.

    Florestal acknowledged that opera has a reputation as a higher-class, elitist activity. She said it will be interesting to see how typical opera-goers react to the performance.

    “My job is to show people in opera who may not think about what it means to tear down this building and build a skyscraper, to the families who live in that building or the families who rely on that corner store for groceries,” she said. “Those people, oftentimes, who are affected by these larger implications of the system that we live in don’t get an opportunity to have their voices heard.”

    Martinez said she wants this opera to motivate people “to open their ears and listen to each other and have actual conversations, instead of just yelling back and forth at each other and sticking by their stubborn ideals.”

    “To the People Like Us” will have two performances on June 28, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Ticket prices are “pay what you can.” RSVP information is available on the White Snake Projects website.