Original Post by Jarrett Vigil:

Citations:

City and County of Denver. 2021. “Denver’s Net Zero Energy (NZE) New Buildings & Homes Implementation Plan.” Denvergov.org.https://www.denvergov.org/files/assets/public/climate-action/documents/denver-nze-implementation-plan_final_v1.pdf.

City and County of Denver. 2021. “Denver Ordinance 21-1310.” Denvergov.org. https://www.denvergov.org/files/assets/public/climate-action/documents/energize-denver-hub/21-1310_recorded_bill_energize_denver.pdf.

City and County of Denver. 2018. “Denver 80 x 50 Climate Action Plan.” Denvergov.org. https://www.denvergov.org/files/assets/public/climate-action/documents/ddphe_80x50_climateactionplan.pdf.

Group14 Engineering, PBC. 2020. “Electrification of Commercial and Residential Buildings.” Communityenergyinc.com.https://www.communityenergyinc.com/wp-content/uploads/Building-Electrification-Study-Group14-2020-11.09.pdf.

Howarth, Robert W. 2014. “A Bridge to Nowhere: Methane Emissions and the Greenhouse Gas Footprint of Natural Gas.” Energy Science & Engineering 2, no. 2 (June): 47–60. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ese3.35.

Leung, Jessica. 2018. “Decarbonizing U.S. Buildings.” C2es.org. Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.https://www.c2es.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/innovation-buildings-background-brief-07-18.pdf.

Mac Kinnon, Michael A., Jacob Brouwer, and Scott Samuelsen. 2018. “The Role of Natural Gas and Its Infrastructure in Mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Improving Regional Air Quality, and Renewable Resource Integration.” Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 64 (January): 62–92.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360128517300680.

McKenna, Claire, Amar Shah, and Leah Louis-Prescott. 2020. “All-Electric New Homes: A Win for the Climate and the Economy.” RMI.org. Rocky Mountain Institute.https://rmi.org/all-electric-new-homes-a-win-for-the-climate-and-the-economy/.

Nordhaus, William D. 2017. “Revisiting the Social Cost of Carbon.” PNAS. National Academy of Sciences, Last updated February 14, 2017.https://www.pnas.org/content/114/7/1518.full.

Rocky Mountain Institute, n.d. “Residential New Construction Denver: Single-Family Homes.” RMI.org.https://rmi.org/insight/the-new-economics-of-electrifying-buildings.

Economic Costs of Natural Gas Inclusion in Denver Climate Action Policy Planning Process Including natural gas infrastructure into the Denver Climate Action Plan building policy process will be less cost effective and more problematic than policy focused on all-electric infrastructure energy planning.

Annotated References:

Denver’s Net Zero Energy (NZE) New Buildings & Homes Implementation Plan

The source for this reference is the City of Denver’s Office of Climate Action Sustainability and Resiliency’s Buildings Team. The Buildings Team’s main focus is to help meet the goals of the Denver Climate Action Plan by lowering overall emissions in the built environment and building code. Part of the policy design for lowering carbon emissions in the built environment is to find ways to reduce future emissions. The Denver NZE Buildings and Homes implementation plan outlines the ways in which future emission reductions will be met in the built environment. The primary goal of the plan is to incorporate all-electric building policy into future policy planning and explain the feasibility of all electric. This source is beneficial to my research because it provides supporting evidence for a future possibility without fossil fuel in the buildings sector. I chose this source because it was drafted and published during my time with the CASR Office. I am also a contributor to this report, I mainly assisted by providing supporting research and analysis to the main author Amber Wood.

Denver Ordinance 21-1310

The source for this reference is a City of Denver council bill passed by Mayor Hancock in November 2021. This reference is important because it provides the legal language for the sustainable changes being made in the city of Denver. Legal language like this is important because it is the basis for writing any kind of policy, especially climate policy. I chose this document because it provides legal definitions that I feel will be crucial to explain points made in my argument. One of the main definitions I plan to use from this document is the City of Denver’s legal definition of the “Social Cost of Carbon”. This definition is one of my biggest supporting points because it quantifies the impacts of carbon emissions that go unnoticed. The SCC considers issues like the costs of poor air quality on health, the costs of mitigating the impacts of carbon in the atmosphere, and issues like that. These are all very serious issues that have gone unaccounted for and can no longer be ignored. Taking these costs into account provide a better cost summary of what using fossil fuels really costs.

Denver 80 x 50 Climate Action Plan

The source for this reference is the City of Denver’s Department of Public Health and Environment. Before the Denver Office of Climate Action Sustainability and Resiliency came to be the DDPHE existed to handle environmental issues around climate in the City of Denver. In 2015, the Denver Climate Action Plan was put together to lower the City of Denver’s emissions and create the CASR office. This resource is important because it provides the full plan for carbon reduction policy in the City of Denver. Information like this will provide good evidence and support well-rounded solutions for the emissions issues on hand. This resource is also very valuable to my research because it provides a lot of data related to climate change. By using the emissions data from Denver and the Social Cost of Carbon I can begin to quantify carbon emissions into economic costs. This is going to be the primary support for my argument.

Decarbonizing U.S. Buildings

The Center for Climate Energy Solutions is non-profit organization focused on supporting policy based around climate issues, clean energy, and environmental issues related to those areas. Some ways the CCES supports these initiatives is by conducting extensive research into climate or energy issues and publishing the data in hopes it will support related policy. I chose this resource because it provides data on building emissions and ways to reduce the emissions from buildings. This source gives different projections for emission production based on different energy efficiency strategies followed. Information like this will help to support my arguments because it can use the different emission levels alongside the Social Cost of Carbon to quantify emissions costs. Being able to quantify these changes into monetary costs will allow the reader to put a price on the severity of the issue. This will allow the reader to build a perspective framework to the true severity of the situation and the reader will have a better ability to compare the issue to something they understand.

Residential New Construction Denver: Single-Family Homes

The Rocky Mountain Institute is a non-profit organization that is focused on promoting clean energy to help reduce carbon emissions. RMI aims at assisting policy production based around clean energy and emission reduction. I have been in stakeholder groups and climate groups with members from RMI and from my experience with them I have found them all to be very analytical. I chose this resource for my paper because it provides direct cost differences experienced by people in the local Denver area. This is important because the audience for my report are local Denver stakeholders that will experience these costs firsthand. Being able to bring these costs to realization for Denver residents will show them the true savings they can see from these changes in their lives. To me this would be the biggest persuasion because it shows residents a direct benefit.

My Comment:

Hi Jarrett,

Great idea to use multiple sources from the City of Denver considering the thesis and the audience. Specifically, Denver’s Net Zero Energy (NZE) New Buildings & Homes Implementation Plan explains the feasibility of all electric infrastructure which supports the argument that it is cost effective. I recommend focusing on how the plan is cost-effective rather than emphasizing its ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because the former is less obvious than the prior. Great point in the second source annotation that it’s important to incorporate legal language given the audience. Putting the argument into a legal context puts pressure on the audience to take action. Great point that the data-focused element of the Denver 80 X 50 Climate Action Plan source is going to strengthen your argument. Once again, the audience will be intrigued by the economic costs of continuing to be reliant on fossil fuels. That’s awesome that you’re including a reference from the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES). The organization is the audience I selected for my report. It is an extremely reputable entity. It is definitely a valid, credible and reliable source. Although it is a non-profit, the organization highlights its ethos on its website. A lot of C2ES solutions are focused on the renewable energy sector. You can find valid data from its reports and also build knowledge regarding the industry’s context by reading its blog posts. C2ES also gets creative because one of the key principles of their solutions is being innovative. So, I highly recommend dissecting its website along with reading the article from the annotated reference list. Finally, amazing idea to bring the opinions of Denver residents into the picture. Homeowners care about the bottom line, and it is important to illustrate they are taking on the costs of other entities continuing to use fossil fuels.

Are the references in correct author-date format? Why or why not?

I recommend getting rid of the blue font and underlined section of all the reference entries. You’re able to do so by clicking on the letters and then hitting “edit” and then “remove link”. Also, according University College Format and Style Requirements, the term “References” should be centered at the top of the page and in bold. Amanda put a link to the University College Format and Style Requirements document as a comment to my post in this discussion thread. I also recommend double-spacing the reference entries in the final report. Also, make sure to italicize the name of the journal in the reference entries that are peer-reviewed sources. Here is a guide I used to determine how to cite sources that were not peer-reviewed journal articles. It has a bunch of sample citations:

https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/turabian/turabian-author-date-citation-quick-guide.html