Climate change: How your city thinks globally

Ames, Ia. - Steve Schainker sometimes makes his rounds as Ames city manager in a two-seater Zenn, an electric car.

The tiny vehicle, plugged in to an electrical outlet behind City Hall, tops out at 25 mph and gets 35 miles to a charge. It is one of the more visible elements of an EcoSmart program designed to save fuel and to cut carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to climate change.

Ames is one of 34 Iowa cities that have pledged to create strong local policies and programs to reduce global warming. From Shenandoah to Cedar Falls to Davenport to Des Moines, cities large and small are overhauling vehicle fleets, checking buildings for energy efficiency, and changing light fixtures to save money and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The efforts are paying dividends at the bank and in the air.

Interactive graphic: Building greener cities and counties

"There is an immediate impact," said Roya Stanley, chief of Iowa's Office of Energy Independence. Stanley and others monitoring the cities' efforts say they provide models for businesses and residents, cut emissions, and build a market for green equipment and supplies.

Some experts, however, say the cities' images are benefiting right now more than the atmosphere. Iowa cities and their U.S. counterparts lag European municipalities that are trying to meet or exceed Kyoto Protocol standards to combat global warming.

Kamyar Enshayan, a Cedar Falls City Council member and director of the University of Northern Iowa's Center for Energy and Environmental Education, said American cities have largely ignored the greenhouse-gas issue as they consider requirements for new buildings. Their transportation plans favor four-lane highways with single-occupant vehicles, instead of mass transit.

By contrast, cities in the European Union are much more aggressive than U.S. cities in promoting solar, wind and other renewable energy sources, Enshayan said.

"They are more compact," Enshayan said of European cities. "A European city doesn't look like Des Moines' suburbs. Everything is closer together, and that promotes the use of bicycles, buses and trains."

The difference: Germans use half as much energy per person as do Americans, Enshayan said.

Some Iowa cities' efforts cost millions of dollars but earn paybacks in lower energy costs and usage. Others bring only minor downturns in emissions, or tax the environment in other ways.

For example, Ames' seemingly exhaustless electric car relies on coal-fired power plants, one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, for electricity to recharge the battery.



Going greener: A political reality

A few Iowa cities track their greenhouse gas emissions, but most have not set firm goals to cut them. Many have such goals in the works.

Michael Kinsley, an energy efficiency authority for the Colorado-based nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, said taking "green" action is a political necessity these days for city officials. Taxpayers and businesses are demanding their local governments save energy and cut emissions.

"In the last two to 10 years, mainly in the last three to four years, there's been a huge surge in the number of cities that are attempting to develop comprehensive sustainability programs," Kinsley said. "Most have done something, but what we see happening now with city leadership is the recognition that the overall environmental performance of their city matters and matters profoundly. It matters for the city's reputation, its ability to recruit businesses and capable employees, and ... it also reduces their cost and their risks. "

Perhaps not surprisingly, the biggest efforts to cut emissions in Iowa have come in the state's largest cities. Those cities have the most emissions, the most equipment, and the most resources to do something.

In Des Moines, Mayor Frank Cownie has been on a mission to install LED bulbs in stop lights, use biofuels in vehicles, encourage drivers not to idle vehicles, ensure city offices use recycled paper and plant rain gardens in parks.

Already, the city has changed lights in City Hall, the armory and the police station, saving $27,000, 500,000 kilowatt hours of power and 1 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. The capital city also installed energy efficient LED bulbs in traffic signals at 300 intersections, saving $120,000 in electricity costs and 4.7 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, according to city documents.

In Cedar Falls, workers installed daylight panels and motion sensors in its vehicle storage facility. The city also replaced burned out lights with more efficient ones, installed high efficiency furnaces at the Hearst Center for the Arts, and increased the use of methane gas from sewage treatment as a fuel to heat the plant.

Iowa City is moving to establish an east-side recycling center and educational facility, and will begin an inventory of greenhouse gases this fall, said Dale Henning, assistant city manager. The city has one hybrid vehicle, and the rest of the cars and trucks burn ethanol or biodiesel.

In the works are plans to burn landfill gases to generate electricity. More-efficient lights save the city $94,000 a year.

Davenport has been aggressively planting trees since 1980, has paved bike paths with recycled asphalt shingles and has replaced 100 flood-prone homes with natural areas. The city also restored a 4 1/2-acre prairie, which helps sweep carbon from the sky.



Small, midsized cities make strides, too

Ames, a city of 54,000, has long been ahead of its time on environmental efforts.

The city replaced some of the coal at its city-owned power plant with pellets made of trash, saving money and cutting greenhouse gas emissions as far back as the 1970s. The city power plant now is looking to cut greenhouse emissions by 20 percent before 2021.

"We are weaving this into the fabric of everything we do as a city government," said Schainker, the city manager. "That sends a signal to the citizens and to the city government that this is a high priority."

The city collects discarded glass in special bins at grocery stores. A grinder turns the glass into sand used in landscaping.

Ames installed LED stoplights, put in rain gardens that cut runoff while pulling carbon from the air and launched voluntary water conservation programs to avoid building a new water plant that would use more energy.

Schainker says Ames rental inspectors and other staffers love driving the Zenn, or the city's fleet of hybrids and vehicles burning biofuels. They track mileage, emissions and maintenance costs as part of a long-term experiment.

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