ELi ON EARTH: Greenhouse Gases from the Public Fireplace

Image: The Ann Street Plaza public fireplace

This week, Eli on Earth takes a look at one contributor to the City of East Lansing’s carbon footprint: the outdoor public fireplace in the Ann Street Plaza.

First, some background: “Ann Street Plaza” is the name given to the downtown public space on the north side of Albert Avenue just west of MAC. It includes the clock tower, the performance space used for summer outdoor concerts, and the large gas fireplace enclosed with heavy metal grating (see above photo) just outside of Peppino’s sports/pizza lounge.

Over the last three years, Ann Street Plaza has changed dramatically through the addition of two major buildings—“St. Anne Luxury Lofts,” which includes Peppino’s on the ground floor, and “The Residences,” which includes HopCat—and the addition of the permanent performance platform (near the clock tower) and the gas fireplace outside Peppino's.

St. Anne Luxury Lofts and the public plaza have been somewhat controversial because they have been beset by safety concerns, legal issues, a city bailout, First Amendment constitutional issues, and a settlement involving tax increment financing (TIF).

Now to the item of interest to us today: The outdoor fireplace built as an amenity for the public sits in the plaza in front of St. Anne’s Luxury Lofts, and it burns natural gas. The fireplace cost the city about $50,000 in construction costs in 2012 and 2013 based on invoices obtained by ELi through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

In 2014, the first complete calendar year of use, the Ann Street Plaza fireplace burned 149,100 cubic feet of natural gas releasing about 17,880 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

This analysis by ELi is based on the Consumers Energy gas bills for the fireplace as obtained through FOIA. Those records show that in 2014 the City of East Lansing paid $1,110 to Consumers Energy for natural gas feeding the Ann Street Plaza fireplace.

Here is the monthly gas usage of the Ann Street fireplace as documented on a recent Consumers Energy bill (November-December 2014):

To put into perspective how much gas is being burned by the public fireplace per year, here are some other activities that would generate about the same amount of greenhouse effect:

• burning 910 gallons of gasoline;
• driving 36,500 miles in a 2015 Ford C-MAX Hybrid FWD;
• driving 16,400 miles in a 2015 Chevy Suburban K1500 4WD;
• using up 17,900 kilowatt-hours of electricity (more than one typical household for a year);
• using up 803,000 Bic lighters;
• burning through 16 of those 20-pound grill propane tanks if each began filled with 20 pounds of propane;
• supporting 1 to 3 cows for 1 year, depending on how you count the inputs into the cow and outputs from the cow. 

The natural gas from Consumers Energy used to feed the Ann Street fireplace is a fossil fuel extracted from the ground. According to Consumers Energy, the majority of its natural gas comes from the American midwest, Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico. About twenty-five percent comes from Canada and fifteen percent from Michigan natural gas fields. Natural gas can be extracted through a technique called hydraulic fracturing and produces less of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels.