By Kevin McCarty
July 2, 2012

Carmel (IN) Mayor Jim Brainard and Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch convened members of the Energy Independence and Jobs Task Force to review key energy initiatives at a June 13 session during the Conference's 80th Annual Meeting in Orlando.

Task force co-chair Brainard reminded mayors that tough economic conditions persist, making progress on energy and climate protection more challenging for local leaders. "As I and others have said, the climate protection movement has been all about local action. It was never about ideology, and it was never about the heavy hand of federal dictates."

Touting the value of funds to cities under the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) program, Brainard said, "Thanks to the energy block grant program, many of us have built a stronger foundation. This was an initiative of the Conference of Mayors. Yet, until the federal government commits to helping us — with more energy block grant funds and the like — we are largely on our own, trying to solve a pressing global problem with local resources."

Citing "freakish" weather events, task force co-chair Finch reported to his colleagues that the U.S. Navy is telling him that three to six-foot sea level rise is on the horizon, threatening his coastal city. "In this red meat environment, we must find ways to calm the voters and get people to figure out how to act."

Finch explained that his analysis of city emissions indicated that city operations represented a relatively small share of all emissions, explaining why he has worked to engage his entire community in taking actions to reduce energy use in homes, buildings, highways and power plants, among other emitters.

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn led a special panel presentation on the benefits of LED streetlights, telling task force members that "you don't have to care about climate but this is about an efficient city." In shifting to LEDs, he cited cost savings and the public safety implications of improved lighting.

McGinn was joined for the presentation by Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting Director Ed Ebrahimian, and Seattle City Light Streetlight Engineering Manager Edward Smalley, who also serves as Executive Director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Municipal Solid'state Street Lighting Consortium. This group's purpose, Smalley explained, is "to increase knowledge and accelerate adoption of this technology." Ebrahimian discussed Los Angeles' efforts to convert more than 100,000 streetlights to LED technology, a massive retrofit effort which garnered a 2012 Mayors Climate Protection Award for the city.

Des Moines Mayor T.M. Franklin Cownie cited the many economic benefits, in addition to better-understood environmental outcomes, of investing in urban trees and green infrastructure. Speaking also as the local representative on the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council to the Secretary of Agriculture, Cownie urged his colleagues to review "i-Tree," a state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed software suite from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service providing urban forestry analysis and benefits assessment tools.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Better Buildings Challenge Director Maria Vargas provided an overview of Administration initiatives to increase building energy efficiency, citing the vast potential to reduce energy use in the nation's building stock. Among these, Vargas explained, is DOE's Better Buildings Challenge whereby partners pledge to achieve energy savings of 20 percent in participating buildings by 2020. Private sector companies and cities, including the cities of Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Seattle and Washington, DC, have already made commitments to achieve these reductions. Vargas emphasized that DOE and others in the Administration are working to develop replicable models as well as betters tools and information to further local efforts to improve the energy efficiency of buildings.