City of Savannah Reduces Energy Consumption in Buildings

Savannah, the “Hostess City of the South,” is known for its southern hospitality and charm, but it is also making a bid to be known as environmentally friendly. Already, the city has implemented a number of initiatives, including converting all of its traffic lights to more energy-efficient and long-lasting LEDs, expanding use of treated wastewater for irrigation and implementing a much-anticipated single-stream curbside recycling program.

In August 2008, Mayor Otis Johnson held a town hall meeting to pledge that the city of Savannah will be a more environmentally sustainable community and to launch a new sustainability initiative, dubbed Thrive. However, Johnson wanted to focus on leading by example rather than making policies that force citizens to get on board with the program.

“There’s a lot of talk about being green and sustainable,” Johnson said. “If we’re going to lift up being environmentally healthy, we have to walk that walk.”

Rachel Smithson, Thrive coordinator for the city of Savannah, began collecting data to establish the city’s carbon footprint. The city conducted employee commuter surveys and analyzed electricity consumption, fuel usage and gas emissions. By plugging all of this data into a formula created by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, Smithson realized that Savannah city government produces roughly 75,320 tons of equivalent carbon emissions per year.

“Now we had a baseline and we just needed to set an emissions reduction target,” Smithson recalled. “Just about that time, the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority came up with the Governor’s Energy Challenge that invited statewide business, county and city governments to reduce their energy consumption 15 percent by the year 2020.”

After studying the carbon footprint data, Smithson noticed that city government buildings were the number one source of energy consumption, a trend that coincides with national data. The Thrive Committee decided to focus its initial efforts on buildings, and through its connection with the Georgia Environmental Partnership, called on Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute for assistance. One of the most comprehensive university-based programs of business and industry assistance, technology commercialization and economic development in the nation, the Enterprise Innovation Institute has a local office on Georgia Tech’s Savannah campus.

“We wanted to have an energy audit because we didn’t want to randomly start replacing lights and windows; we wanted to make sure that we were going to have the greatest impact on our electricity and energy consumption,” Smithson said. “The city was really excited about using Georgia Tech because it isn’t trying to sell us a particular product; the staff there gives us a good, third-party, neutral analysis of what we need.”

Mike Brown, an energy specialist with the Enterprise Innovation Institute, and two Georgia Tech co-op students conducted energy audits at three government buildings: City Hall, the Thomas Gamble Building and the Broughton Municipal Building. All three are designated historic buildings, and house the mayor’s office and council chambers, human resources, information technology, auditing, utility services and revenue, among others.

Brown and the students placed data loggers in each of the buildings, measuring temperature, lighting and energy consumption, even over nights and weekends. They studied each building’s energy consumption history and measured the major energy-consuming equipment.

Among the recommendations that the Georgia Tech specialists made were: replace incandescent lamps with compact fluorescent lamps, improve fluorescent lighting efficiency by replacing T-12 lights with T-8 lights, and manage the building plug-load. They also recommended installing occupancy sensors in restrooms, vending machine controllers to reduce lighting and cooling, a building automation system to automatically control HVAC systems, and variable-air volume fans to reduce air flow when cooling is not needed.

According to Smithson, the biggest challenge now is implementing Georgia Tech’s recommendations. As part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the City was able to establish a revolving loan with its stimulus funding. Although the City cannot implement all of the recommendations immediately, Smithson says that as soon as one investment is paid back, another project can begin with the energy savings from the previous project.

“Other challenges we face include changing the mindset of our employees, but behavior modification and organizational and culture shifts take time,” she said. “We also don’t want to harm the historic integrity of our facilities, but at the same time we don’t want to be so concerned that we’re throwing energy out the window because we’re using single-pane glass.”

Already, the benefits are outweighing the challenges. Georgia Tech’s assistance allowed the city to have an energy conservation strategy in place, a requirement of the stimulus funding application that some cities have spent more than $250,000 to obtain. And although a lot of investments have yet to be made, electricity expenditures were $350,000 below what the city had targeted through May 2009, something Smithson attributes to changing employee behavior alone.

“Having Georgia Tech on board doing the energy audit has helped us transform our messaging from ‘this is good for the environment’ to ‘this is good for the bottom line,’ and that has helped us sell this larger Thrive initiative to our elected officials and the community,” said Bret Bell, director of Savannah’s Public Information Office. “We’re taking it seriously enough that we want to document where we started and where we are going. It has given us credibility.”

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Shuttle Service to the World's Busiest Airport Becomes Carbon Neutral--The Atlanta Link offsets Carbon Footprint

(PRWEB) -- "We wanted to give back to the environment," said The Atlanta Link General Manager, Lily Santander. "We strive to run our operations as efficiently and environmentally friendly as possible. We do a lot of the little things to help achieve this goal. We require our drivers to turn off their vehicles when they don't have passengers on board, and we also have a daily maintenance check list that improves our fuel mileage and operational efficiency."

"All of the little things add up," said Verus Carbon Neutral's Eric Taub. "It takes a big fleet to service an airport as large as Hartsfield-Jackson. Saving a few gallons of fuel each day because your tires are properly inflated really adds up. We also discovered that The Atlanta Link is recycling, reusing printing paper and switching to T8 Alto II fluorescent lights."

The Atlanta Link offset the annual emissions of their fleet of 19 vehicles and their administrative office with a Georgia forestry project, managed by Valley Wood Timber. Certified and registered with the Chicago Climate Exchange, the project protects over 60,000 acres of forest and proceeds support the Humane Society.

Verus Carbon Neutral is a member of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), the world's first and North America's only active, voluntary and legally binding offset trading system. Verus Carbon Neutral provides high-quality offset projects that are third-party verified by the CCX. The Environmental Defense Fund recently recommended 12 offset projects, of which, seven were registered on the Chicago Climate Exchange.

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Atlanta Announces Municipal Carbon Footprint to Measure Emission Reductions

(BUSINESS WIRE)--Yesterday Mayor Shirley Franklin released Atlanta city government’s first report on greenhouse gas emissions as the first step towards the goal of reducing emissions in the city seven percent by 2012. Also known as the “carbon footprint,” the figure was calculated with the help of a student-faculty team from the Georgia Institute of Technology and establishes a baseline to measure progress in Atlanta’s sustainability efforts.

“The City of Atlanta’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2007 came to 540 thousand metric tonnes, which is equivalent to the household energy use of 150,000 Atlanta residents or 98,000 passenger vehicles,” said Valerie Thomas, Anderson Interface Associate Professor at the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems at Georgia Tech and primary author of the report. “Having conducted an inventory and committed to reducing emissions makes the City of Atlanta a leader in the state and region and well ahead of federal action on climate change.”

“We know that the opportunities to reduce our emissions are great, particularly now with the federal administration’s focus on green job creation and green energy,” said Mayor Franklin. “With funding from the recently-passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Atlanta’s sustainability efforts will focus on energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives which will create jobs, save money and protect our environment,” she said.

Determining Atlanta city government’s carbon footprint coincides with the release of the inaugural sustainability report for Atlanta. Produced by Sustainable Atlanta (a non-governmental partner to the city’s Office of Sustainability), the report compiles readily available data to create benchmarks for measuring Atlanta’s sustainability efforts, including the city’s carbon footprint. The report – available at www.sustainableatlanta.org – also provides best practices, context, proposed strategies and action in the areas of water; energy and climate change; parks and greenspace; and recycling and materials management.

“The Sustainability Report for Atlanta is both a map and milepost,” said Lynnette Young, executive director of Sustainable Atlanta. “It is a snapshot of Atlanta’s current status as it relates to sustainability and a context for future measurement and opportunity, determining what we can do together to help the city advance sustainable lifestyles for everyone.”

Launched in 2008 with support from the Kendeda Foundation, the Atlanta Office of Sustainability is working across city departments to “green” operations and at the same time, maximize efficiencies. Sustainable practices implemented at City Hall are already generating a 20 percent drop in electricity use, with a forecast of nearly $135,000 in annual operations cost savings.

With the municipal carbon footprint established, the next step will be to develop the Atlanta Climate Action Plan. "The Climate Action Plan will be our blueprint to guide all city departments so that current initiatives and near-term objectives are aligned with achieving the 2012 emissions reduction goal," said Mandy Schmitt, Atlanta’s Director of Sustainability. "This strategic effort to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions supports the ultimate goal of making Atlanta a community that lives within the self-perpetuating limits of its environment, while maintaining high standards for economic growth, environmental integrity, and social justice."

According to Schmitt, near-term goals for Atlanta city government to achieve by the end of 2009 include:

1. 10 percent drop in energy use in general fund* facilities through low/no-cost conservation measures yielding $300,000 to $500,000 in annual savings

2. Five percent drop in water use in general fund facilities

3. At least two renewable energy demonstration projects

4. Three percent drop in fossil fuels used by municipal fleet yielding $267,000 in annual savings

5. 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in general fund facilities

Atlanta’s greenhouse gas inventory was guided by a protocol developed by ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability. Atlanta is one of more than 1,057 cities, towns and counties worldwide that are members of ICLEI and that have made a commitment to sustainable development. Atlanta also hosts ICLEI’s Southeast Regional Office, and city staff shares office space with ICLEI representatives to maximize the organization’s resources in developing performance-based, results-oriented campaigns and programs.

*General fund facilities do not include facilities in Enterprise Fund Departments, such as Watershed and Airport.

About Atlanta’s Sustainability Initiative

The ambitious goal of reducing Atlanta city government’s greenhouse gas emissions seven percent by 2012 was set by Mayor Franklin in 2005 in Washington, D.C. when she and 140 other mayors identified environmental sustainability as a critical factor for American cities. They signed the U.S. Mayor’s Conference Climate Protection Agreement charging themselves with creating and implementing sustainability plans based on best global practices. With the help of the Kendeda Foundation, the Franklin administration then launched a parallel effort both inside and outside city government: The Office of Sustainability is reforming city government operations, while Sustainable Atlanta, a private-sector team of consultants led by former Atlanta COO Lynnette Young, is developing public policy recommendations for sustainability improvements throughout the city. For additional information regarding the City’s sustainability initiatives, visit www.atlantaga.gov/mayor/sustainability.aspx, and to learn more about Sustainable Atlanta, go to www.sustainableatlanta.org.

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