Four years since State College Borough Council passed climate-protection goals, the borough has begun to examine specific ideas to encourage better energy efficiency in buildings.
‘I think the opportunity for the State College area to do something is great. And we can lead at least this state,’ said local resident Ken Sagan, a green-building expert who has joined a borough Planning Commission subcommittee focused on the effort.
The effort’s roots go back to 2007, when the council passed borough Resolution No. 944. The five-page declaration dubs State College a ‘climate-protection community’ and outlines 21 goals — 16 to be achieved by the borough itself, such as buying more energy from renewable sources, and five to be achieved by the community at large.
The latter include a hoped-for reduction in electricity use, to dip 10 percent from 2000 levels by 2012; a hoped-for increase in the use of ‘green’ electricity sources, to account for 20 percent of all power use by 2015; and a hoped-for 10 percent increase in the number of residents who avoid cars in commuting to work. (To read Resolution No. 944, click here for a PDF download from the borough website.)
It’s not yet clear exactly how much progress the community has made toward those goals, though borough Americorps worker and environmental specialist Courtney Hayden, who joined the government late last year, is working to develop ongoing calculations.
To help the borough make progress toward the objectives, sitting council members have asked the Planning Commission to create a set of building-related recommendations for their consideration.
‘We’re just starting the discussion right now,’ Hayden said this month. She said borough officials are looking to see ‘what we can pull from other programs (in other communities) and use here.’
The Planning Commission subcommittee assigned to the subject began meeting in June and is scheduled assemble regularly — and publicly — through August. Each of the gatherings is to focus on a different subject area where the borough may inspire some change with regard to buildings — such as raw water and energy use, air quality and land-use management.
About a dozen people, including a few Planning Commission members, Mayor Elizabeth Goreham and some other interested residents, joined the initial two subcommittee meetings this month.
Among the very tentative ideas already discussed:
- Encourage adoption of fluorescent light bulbs in place of incandescent light bulbs. If everyone in the borough were to do that in a light fixture that’s used nine hours a day, Hayden said, the town could reduce its electricity consumption by 10 percent.
- At a modest expense, offer new toilets as replacements for older, relatively water-guzzling models. That would reduce the amount of water needed from local aquifers — and the amount pumped to local sewage plants.
- Sponsor workshops to show people how to rebuild old residential windows to make them more energy-efficient.
- Improve college students’ awareness of energy efficiency with the hope that they’ll lobby their landlords for better attention to the issue.
- Reward apartment-building owners for energy-use reductions.
‘If we can educate the populace, it will perpetuate itself,’ Sagan said. ‘And all these costs associated with energy audits and so on — I think it would just be second nature. But it has to take a strong public-education program. I think that’s where our money would be best spent.’
The subcommittee meetings are open to the public, and the borough is encouraging public participation. Additional information about the meetings is available through the borough planning office, whose official website is available here.
Subcommittee members are expected to take up a variety of concepts in the weeks to come, from potential green-related zoning ideas to building-retrofit incentives.
‘We just have no sense at this point where this is going to’ end up, borough planner Anne Messner said, underscoring the need for public input and participation.
Ideas advanced by the subcommittee will go before the full Planning Commission for consideration. Those supported by the Planning Commission will likely go on to the Borough Council for discussion late in the year.
‘This is a three-month operation to see where the heck we are and where the heck we go,’ Planning Commission member Michael Roeckel said of the subcommittee. …
‘If we can show there’s money (to be saved) in it,’ he said of conservation concepts, ‘that’ll make it happen.’
