Kent Portney's "Our Green Cities" Blog

Climate Action Plans in Cities

For those of you who wish to be able to easily access cities' climate action plans, I have created a library of these plans for the 55 largest U.S. on the OurGreenCities web site.  Just go to this site, and look for a the link on the left side.  Clicking on the city name will open a pdf file of the plan or report.  Since the library contains the pdf files (rather than links to city web sites), these will not disappear.  I hope to add cities to the library in the future.

Boulder, Colorado, decides to municipalize its power grid

Boulder, Colorado has long been a national leader in trying to become more sustainable.  The latest entry in this effort is focused on electricity in the city.  The city's electricity is supplied by a private company, Xcel Energy, but over the last few years city leaders and residents have gotten increasingly frustrated with the company. From what I understand, the city has wanted Xcel to work with it to increase the city's portfolio of renewable energy to 40%, but the company has only been willing to go to 30%, what is required by state law. When Xcel embarked on a project to make Boulder the "SmarGridCity," apparently the city became very unhappy with the cost and design of the result. So last November, ballot questions passed that would allow the city to take control of the city's electric grid so that it can municipalize the delivery and possibly the generation of electricity.  It apparently intends to do this through condemnation proceedings.  Of course, Xcel is not taking this in stride, doing what it can to make this difficult or impossible.  This is certainly worth watching.  For more information, read the article here.

Tufts 2012 Energy Conference

The 2012 Energy Conference at Tufts will be held on April 20 and 21 in Medford.  I have agreed to be one of the judges for the "Energy Competition," where students can submit projects and ideas and win a $5,000 prize.  The deadline for entering the competition is March 1.  But the full conference promises to bring together a terrific array of experts about energy. Go to the conference web site for more information.

Tufts' 2012 Water Conference

The "Water Systems, Science, and Society" symposium is scheduled for April 27th in Medford, MA.  This year's conference is especially impressive because it will be co-sponsored by the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.  This is part of Tufts University's commitment to water-related education and research.  Check this year's conference program.

Local Benefits of Sustainable Cities Symposium at Florida State University

Thanks to Dr. Rick Feiock, public administration professor at Florida State, I was invited to participate in a really excellent symposium on the local benefits of sustainable cities held in Tallahassee on February 24 and 25.  He and his colleagues and staff brought together a terrific array of scholars from aroung the U.S. to present their research, and to set an agenda for improving that research well into the future.  There were a number of presentations on climate action (mitigation and adaptation) by Rachel Krause (University of Texas-El Paso), Elaine Sharp and Dorothy Daley (University of Kansas), Liz Gerber (University of Michigan), Jim Zvara and Tanya Watt (Arizona State), Chris Weible (University of Colorado -- Denver), and Phil Berke (University of North Carolina).  There were also papers presented on an array of economic issues, including mine, and papers by Greg Burge and Keith Ihlanfeldt on the use of impact fees, Sam Staley on the effectiveness of the sustainability program in Santa Monica, and the importance of public health components presented by Chris Coutts (Florida State).  To see a full list of the papers and their abstracts, go to the web site.

2012 Massachusetts Sustainable Communities and Campuses Conferences

For those of you who are in Eastern Massachusetts, you might be interested in attending this year's Sustainable Communities conference on April 20 and Sustainable Campuses conference on April 21. The conferences will be held at the campus of UMass Boston, and I will be serving on a panel the morning of the 20th.  Check out the full programs.