No Need to Say Goodbye: Retrofitting Historical Sites
Carlsbad is a beautiful coastal city nestled in between farmland and the Pacfic Ocean which I am so privileged to call home. When driving along our shoreline, there is nothing but dazzling ocean views for miles and then, suddenly, a power plant comes into view.
This seemingly out of place 400 foot smoke stack and power plant rise far above any other buildings for miles and are an odd addition to our classic beach town. The Encina power plant sits directly across the 101 Coast Highway from the sandy banks of Terramar Beach as it has since its construction in 1954. While visitors may see the plant as an eyesore, residents of North County look to it as a welcome sign. Whether we are driving up the 5 freeway, flying into McClellan Palomar Airport, or sailing along the coast, a glance of the powerplant reassures us that home is near. Of course, Carlsbad’s citizens complain about the “blight on our city” that is the Encina plant, however we all know our city would not be the same without our landmark.
So it was with great shock to many residents over the past weeks when we noticed our beloved plant was slightly shorter, and then even shorter still. It turned out plans which the city council made with the owners of the plant, Natural Resources Group (NRG), to demolish the structure finally began. Admittedly, we all knew an arrangement was in the works to remove the plant for many years, however I, and many others, never thought it would come to fruition. Yet, before our eyes over the past month, workers began incrementally removing our coastal landmark.
NRG officially retired the Encina plant in 2018 after the construction of their new, more environmentally conscious, energy plant was finished. In the interim, the Carlsbad city council finalized their demolition negotiations which were almost eight years in the making. The Encina plant which powered the North County energy grid by burning oil and cooling with ocean water was to be deconstructed from the top down by the second quarter of 2021, just in time for summer.
NRG claims their part in the removal is a move towards more environmentally friendly energy production as their newer plant runs on natural gas and cools with the use of air instead of the nearby ocean water. This protects small sea dwelling creatures from being sucked up into the plant’s inner workings and prevents harmful waste products, such as toxic metals, from being pushed back out into the ocean. Furthermore, this new system turns on much quicker than the Encina plant (just ten short minutes compared to eighteen hours) and runs only when the grid is in need of extreme amounts of power.
As the power plant is a staple characteristic of our city and a historical structure due to it being over half a century old, many Carlsbad residents attempted to preserve it as a cultural landmark. Plans proposed retaining solely the smoke stack or integrating the entire structure into the neighboring Cannon park, but to no avail. The city denied all propositions and petitions due to their contract with San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) which mandates the removal of the entire building, no exceptions. Residents, myself included, feel angered at the lack of compromise and mourn the loss of our landmark with no hope of its preservation.
Like Carlsbad, many cities worldwide struggle when attempting to preserve their historical structures. These landmarks face widespread criticism for their outdated emissions, waste processing, and power solutions which often negatively impact their surrounding environments. As new green legislation mandates structures and their internal systems to reduce their carbon footprint, many companies choose to demolish historical sites rather than face the constant updating which is required to keep their historical function in times of such environmental awareness. This is not to say that all historical sites are being removed or left to fall into disrepair, but that people fail to see the importance of maintaining them when they will likely need recurrent modernization to keep up with new policies. Nonetheless, these historical buildings hold significance for their communities who would do anything to see them remain for future generations.
There is, however, an often overlooked alternative solution that may be the answer to this problem worldwide. Retrofitting, or the repurposing of an existing structure into usable space, allows for historical buildings to be preserved. Of course, reusing available historical structures is important, but retrofitting itself can be reduced to simply modernizing a building that would induce the same pattern problems they currently have once its new adaptations become dated. Therefore, what must be done, is green retrofitting which focuses on turning these sites into environmentally friendly usable spaces which help to counteract the effects of climate change and ensure the survival of historical sites in an ever changing world.
An example of this process is currently in action in Tompkins and Niagara counties of New York where two coal run power plants (Cayuga and Somerset) are being greenly retrofitted into data processing centers. After operating for nearly seven decades, these historical plants shut down in early 2020 to meet the new New York state environmental laws regulating carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to make the state more environmentally conscious. The new data centers will use the existing structures altered to fit their new purposes, and create “a viable new business and jobs in their place, using renewable energy”. With the money saved by skipping the demolition process, architects of the new data processing centers invested in a 15 MegaWatt solar energy array which provides energy for the plants without needing backup sources such as fossil fuels. Once completed, the retrofitting of Somerset and Cayuga will allow for the data processing centers to be fully sustainable while maintaining the look and feel of the power plants they once were for their surrounding communities. Furthermore this process will save nearly 30,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere and significant levels of toxic chemicals from being released into Cayuga Lake by skipping the demolition process.
But what makes green retrofitting specifically so important? Doesn’t any retrofitting in general accomplish the same goals? To answer that simply, green retrofitting not only reduces the need for energy now, as simple retrofitting does through repurposing, but creates a system that enables historical sites like the New York power plants to be sustainable for the rest of their existence. This is important because as the world’s energy sources grow scarcer the need for sustainable solutions will rise, and what better way to ensure the survival of our beloved historical sites than to make them sustainable structures with a multitude of purposes. While some may claim retrofitting historical structures, such as the Cayuga and Somerset power plants, removes all historical significance to make them environmentally friendly, this could not be further from the truth. The point of these projects is not only to create a usable space out of an older one to mitigate the effects of climate change, but to also save communities beloved historical sites. With such a goal in mind, architects nearly always include core features of the original in their finished designs.
Though there are many proponents for green retrofitting as a means of making environmentally conscious progress, some critics claim that this is a wide scale form of greenwashing. “Greenwashing”, as defined by Business News Daily, is when a company spends more time marketing their practices and products as environmentally friendly than actually minimizing their carbon footprint. Some claim that green retrofitting is a way for owners of the original structure to rebrand as “environmentally conscious” and therefore gain a larger customer base without changing much about the structure’s carbon emissions (Bechtold et al,. 2020). These claims are unfounded as the green retrofitting process saves the company doing the work so much money from skipping demolition and rebuilding that they have plenty to invest in environmentally friendly solutions for the structure. Furthermore, the companies who take on repurposing projects are often environmentally motivated and therefore put effort into making their projects environmentally conscious.
Though the American government outwardly supports the idea of green retrofitting, there is little legislation to back up these attitudes. The Obama administration’s “Recovery Through Retrofit” plan focused on retrofitting as a means to to boost the economy, help solve the housing crisis, and make our country in general more environmentally friendly during the 2008 recession. This system was pushed to the wayside by former President Trump’s climate change denying policies which still have a strong hold on our country . In an attempt to fix this, current President Biden introduced a two trillion dollar infrastructure proposal which includes plans to retrofit commercial and residential buildings nationwide on March 31st. However, it remains to be seen whether these plans will be fulfilled as the constant battle between political parties over the climate crisis leaves retrofitting underfunded and under-promoted as a viable solution to reduce the harmful effects of human involvement. This is not to say there is no government recognition of green retrofitting, there are minimal resources on how to accomplish this on the website for the Department of Energy, yet these are not significant enough as they merely address the bare necessities for residential and commercial retrofitting. What our government should be focusing on is investing in green retrofitting efforts, and more specifically protecting our historical sites with this process.
Presently, wealthier nations greenly retrofit at a higher rate than others due to their increased access to resources and renewable energy sources. However, if this process was promoted and taken up worldwide, we would not only see the preservation of historical sites that might otherwise be lost but also a reduction of the impact of humans on climate change.
