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The Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) for Ashby and North Berkeley Stations Transit Oriented Development Zoning fails to apply its own methodology correctly and violates the CEQA guidelines regarding the emissions associated with construction, especially at the proposed heights. As a result, the FEIR falsely claims that the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the proposed zoning do not pass a threshold of significance. 

In fact, with errors corrected, the project's GHG impact will exceed the threshold of significance by quite a bit, requiring a fresh analysis of possible mitigation strategies. Fortunately, mitigation is feasible - but requires corrections to the FEIR. 

Council should not approve the existing FEIR. 

CEQA requires counting GHG emissions of building materials 

The manufacture of building materials, especially steel and concrete, also including the technical infrastructure of a building (pipes and conduits) is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions are counted as "embodied" in the resulting construction materials. 

Emissions are accounted as embodied in construction materials by adding together: 

• The emissions spent extracting raw materials. 

• Emissions for energy used while manufacturing materials. 

• Emissions from the chemical transformation of materials during manufacturing, particularly in cement manufacturing. 

• Emissions transferred to the material by the depreciation of the industrial machinary consumed during manufacture. 

There is an abundance of literature, including surveys of primary research, regarding the embodied costs of construction materials. There are no practical obstacles to estimating these costs in an EIR. The CEQA guidelines say, in fact, that those costs should be reported: 

"Energy consuming equipment and processes which will be used Energy consuming equipment and processes which will be used during construction, operation and/or removal of the project. If appropriate, this discussion should consider the energy intensiveness of materials and equipment required for the projectduring construction, operation and/or removal of the project. If appropriate, this discussion should consider the energy intensiveness of materials and equipment required for the project." – CEQA Guidlines Appendix F 

What the report found while ignoring construction materials 

The Final EIR ignores the GHG emissions associated with building materials (the flawed reason for this is given in the Final EIR and is critically examined later in this document). 

Even while ignoring a significant source of GHG emissions resulting from the project, the report claims that the project just scrapes by at, and not exceeding, the "threshold of significance" (meaning, the amount of emissions that would require deeper analysis of mitigation strategies in the EIR). 

First, the report calculates that if the amount of project emissions per year, per resident or employee, falls at 1.2 metric tons per year, the emissions do not cross a threshold of significance. 

Next, the report calculates (while ignoring building materials) that the projected emissions impact, amortized over 30 years, happens to be exactly 1.2 metric tons per year per served person (resident or employee). What a coincidence. 

Emissions from construction materials are significant 

If the 30-year amortized emissions associated with construction materials, per served person, on an annualized basis, exceed 100 kilograms (0.1 metric tons) , the project would imply a total 1.3 metric tons per person served per year: above the threshold of significance. 

In fact, for structures whose primary structural elements are steel and concrete, low end estimates of embodied emissions in construction materials start around 200 kilograms per square meter of floor space – twice as much as what it would take to drive the project past the threshold of significant emissions. 

Assuming a total 30 square meters of floor space per person served (including occupied space, common areas, and space associated with technical services), at 200kg per square meter, and amortized over 30 years, the project's annual footprint would rise by 200kg to a total of 1.4 metric tons per person served per year: 17% above the threshold of signifcance for almost 5,500 people. 

The identified threshold of significance is too high 

The report also fails at its own declared methodology by mistaking a 2030 emissions rate target with the target of emissions over 30 years. For example, project related emissions of even only 1.2 metric tons per person served, per year, is not at all compatible with the goals of the city and the state to lower emissions further every year thereafter, reaching approximately 0 in 2045. 

This is to say that even at the 1.2 tons per year estimate that's in the report, the project crosses the threshold of significance. 

Mitigations may be practical 

Emissions reductions are frequently touted as one of the promary aims of the project and of so-called "transit oriented design" in particular. 

BART and the city could require that specific proposals for the site, when applying the same emissions models as the EIR (though also correctly adding GHG emissions from construction materials) demonstrate footprints at or below 1.2 metric tons of emissions per served person per year by 2030, and fall appropriately quickly in subsequent years. This would lead to proposals making more appropriate (saner) selections of materials, heights, foundation requirements and so on. 

A glaring problem in the FEIR replies 

Comments on the Draft EIR included comments about the ommission of embodied carbon. These are discussed in "Topical Response C" of the FEIR, which begins: 

Recurring comments on this topic are summarized below, with responses following each. 

Some commenters suggested that the Draft EIR does not include an analysis of embodied carbon in building materials and other project components. 

The FEIR responds with a flood of nonsense. It asserts that project evaluation does not require analysis of the impact of resources consumed citing CA Code of Regulations title 14, section 15126.2 which in fact says the opposite. It asserts that changes to the global scale concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere has no local ecological impact. It even asserts that since the emissions inventory for Berkeley in 2005 did not include amortized costs of the emissions of earlier construction, therefore no analysis should be performed of the emissions costs proposed new construction. The response, dressed in obscure citations and misleading language, is simply nonsense: a bluff. 

In addition to that, if our goal is to implement existing law in a way that is consistent with protecting the survival of species, including our own, the embodied emissions of construction materials must be considered as it is known to be a very large portion of global emissions generally. 

Is the 12+ story alternative environmentally superior? 

The report fails to note the inevitable, large increase in per square meter embodied emissions costs of projects 12+ stories in height compared to alternatives such as high density, low rise alternatives. The per capita differences between low rise and high rise structures is very significant due to changes from lower carbon to higher carbon intensity construction materials. 

The main finding of the EIR in advising Berkeley's choices must be rejected. 

Conclusion and further issues 

I've focussed on one critical but narrow issue: the omission of consideration of omissions embedded in construction materials. I've pointed out that the omission is significant. 

The report also fails to consider critical climate adaptation concerns regarding heat islands, air flow, greenscape total area, site permeability, alternative uses of space in relation to improving sustainable transit access for all Berkeleyans, and timing relative to advances in efficiency. 

If council wants a (tenuous) legal excuse to encourage development without a care in the world for its impacts on human survival, they ought approve the FEIR. Otherwise, they ought not.