Cutting Energy Use A Priority For Champaign
Taxpayers in Champaign spend tens of thousands of dollars every month to keep the city running
. There are the obvious costs, like heating, cooling and lighting at the police department, fire stations and City Building. On Oct. 6, the city paid a $5,834.41 power bill for the library.
And then there are the costs that a typical homeowner might not think of $600 this month to power the METCAD communication tower, which dispatchers use to send police and fire personnel to emergencies. And $12,383.55 this month to keep the city's traffic signals running and street lights on through each night.
That's just the 3,470 street lights the city owns officials on Oct. 6 paid another $17,145.61 to lease another 1,300 lights from Ameren. The cost for the Ameren lights includes energy and maintenance.
Still want to complain about your monthly bill?
Officials are composing a plan that they hope will help them get a handle on the city's energy use and lead to some sustainable ideas for costs over which they have control and some others that they don't.
The plan itself is meant to look at the big picture and not just how to reduce costs. In their first step, officials inventoried all the greenhouse gases emitted in the city of Champaign. But city planner Lacey Rains said when the sustainability plan is finished, it could generate some green ideas and some cost savings.
"They are good for the environment, but also potentially good for our pocketbooks," Rains said.
The greenhouse gas inventory has already led to some unexpected findings. To start, Champaign as a city generates more greenhouse gases per person than other communities planners compared it to.
The science of putting a number on the average greenhouse gas emission per city resident is not exact, Rains said, and she wonders how much weight it should carry. There are very few comparable communities who have calculated their greenhouse gas emissions, which makes the information hard to come by.
But put the city up against Bloomington, Ind., Evanston and Bellingham, Wash., and Champaign is the worst. Each resident emits 15.76 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, a measurement of how much carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane gas is put into the atmosphere. The next closest was Bloomington, Ind., which puts 13.14 metric tons per capita into the air.
But that includes mostly things that are out of the local government's control. The University of Illinois' Abbott Power Plant on its own puts out 359,100 metric tons per year, and that's 28 percent of all the greenhouse gases Champaign produces as a city. The other cities in the comparison do not have coal power plants like Abbott.
Abbott Power Plant produces even more greenhouse gas than the vehicles that drive on city streets or the energy that powers residential homes. Vehicles in Champaign put out 284,850 metric tons of greenhouse gas per year 22 percent of the city's total. Residential energy use accounts for 332,137 metric tons, 26 percent of the total.
The power plant's impact on the city's total emissions was surprising to Rains.
"I know it exists, but I guess I don't really think about it," she said.
The report gave her that feeling a few times, she said. She was surprised to find out that buildings and facilities produce just as much in some places, more emissions as vehicles.
And then there are the street lights, the biggest electricity hog for the local government. At the end of the 2010 fiscal year, street lights were responsible for 51 percent of the city's total electricity bill and 44 percent of the greenhouse gas produced by all city facilities, which include buildings like the police and fire stations, city building, library and public works facility.
Street lights emit greenhouse gas the same way any other electric device does it takes energy to make that electricity, and producing the energy produces greenhouse gases.
That's an example of where some of the cost savings might be for the city in the future. But with the current technology, saving money is expensive.
LED street lights use one-third the electricity of a traditional light, said Glen Berger, the city's traffic and lighting supervisor.
The energy-saving lights also cost four times what a traditional light costs: $1,000 for LEDs compared to $250 for a traditional light. The expected payback on LED lights is about 15 to 20 years.
It might be worth it in the long-run: 4,770 street lights cost the city about $400,000 each year to keep 40 percent of the city lit at night.
The lights are being replaced in small chunks. At the time of the greenhouse gas study, the city had nine LED lights installed. Now, there are 53, and there should be 99 installed by the end of this year.
"It's going to take a long time to get to 3,000," Berger said.
University Avenue in downtown Champaign will have a noticeably different hue when a months-long construction project to improve the road is complete the old sodium-vapor fixtures project a yellowish light, and the new LEDs produce a bluish illumination.
"We can apply for energy grants to help us buy more LEDs, so those things are in play, but right now they're expensive," he said.
Berger hopes the sustainability plan being written now will help the city get those grants, and Rains said it should have an effect. The plan will give city officials solid evidence when they make their case to the granting agencies, and it will provide "real data to make effective choices with limited funds."
"It's becoming the standard against which people are making their recommendations," Rains said. "How are you impacting your greenhouse gas emissions?"
In general speaking,
12V LED has become more and more affordable, therefore
auto LED bulbs have been used widely.
by: alishushu
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