Eugene Climate and Energy

Buildings & Energy Public Forum Summary

Review the plan’s Building & Energy action working list here

What’s In Your Top 8?

After finding their way through the hallway of free food and local organic apple cider, around 60 community members–students and concerned residents, city officials and business owners, green tech experts and developers–took their seats at EWEB Tuesday night for a public forum held to identify the priorities that will guide Eugene’s Climate & Energy Action Plan.  The topic?  Buildings and Energy, the first of six plan topics open for public discussion from now through March 2010.  The purpose?  To determine what actions (related to buildings and energy) our community must take as a whole to adapt to, and mitigate, the impacts of climate change and rising fuel costs and meet the plan’s stated goal of achieving a 50% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2030.

Participants were greeted with a short introduction to the plan and how exactly buildings and energy fit into Eugene’s grand cross-sector effort to address climate change and fossil fuel use.  Then the real fun began.

Participants were given a list of actions pulled from other climate and energy action plans around the country and asked to pick their top 8–actions they felt were especially important for our community.  They were also asked to add anything they thought was missing from that list.  A series of small group discussions and rounds of voting allowed community members to share their top priority actions and discuss potential additional actions before the entire group voted actions onto the night’s agenda.

The rest of the night’s activities centered in on these priority actions.  Implementation work groups formed around tables and began to discuss each action–why it is a priority for our community, how it could and should be implemented, who should be involved, and what potential barriers exist.

Priority actions discussed:

1.    Provide / improve upon what is being done to create incentives for energy efficiency measures in existing buildings and increase resources to this end (for example, develop strategies for weatherizing hard-to-weatherize buildings).

2.    Require energy performance and emissions benchmarking for buildings at time-of-sale.

3.    Encourage passive systems (i.e. heating/cooling/daylighting) such as planting shade trees and using light colored roofs.

4.    Identify where we are using and losing the most energy in Eugene.

5.    Implement remote metering for power and peak-load billing for residential buildings and other policies that affect people’s behaviors.

6.    Provide education, assistance, and incentives for on-site installation of renewable technologies.

7.    Require / create incentives for green building standards for all new

8.    Strengthen legislation, local codes and standards (performance-based) with regular updates / Require commissioning certification on buildings – making sure code addresses requirements.

Many important issues were raised Tuesday night that, due to unfortunate time constraints, did not receive the attention they deserved.  Here are just a few:

• Use marketing, education, and outreach to motivate implementation of energy efficiency measures.
• Create an investment fund and provide low interest financing for energy efficiency upgrades for community solar/renewable energy.
• Develop utility-scale renewable energy projects including pilot projects for emerging technology.

All public input was documented and will be thoroughly considered in future planning phases.  For a full list of proposed actions and more detailed results of the implementation work groups, please visit the wiki here.

The night was a  success, but the Buildings and Energy discussion is not over.  If you didn’t make it to Tuesday’s event, there are lots of ways to join the conversation.  You can follow events and contribute your thoughts on our blog, and connect and collaborate with others on the project wiki.  If you did make it and have more to say, your continued input is highly valued.  Contact the Project Coordinator to arrange to continue a topic event discussion.

While the focus Tuesday was on buildings and energy, it was almost impossible to talk about buildings without talking about land use; to talk about renewable energy and ignore waste issues.  This is a testament to just how interconnected these issues really are and how helpful it is for those particularly concerned about one issue to attend more than just that topic discussion.

These topic discussions will inform the action plan that will count on your actions as a member of our community for it to become a reality.  For a schedule of remaining topic discussion events, click here.  The next topic discussion, on Food and Agriculture, will be on Thursday, November 5^th, same time, same place (from 6 pm to 9 pm in EWEB’s community meeting room).

Tags: Buildings and Energy