The Benchmarking Team will identify other regions that have made good progress on advanced energy strategies and synthesize lessons learned (accounting for our region’s differences).
The team first met on July 7, 2006, and here is a summary of the brainstorming:
Cities/regions that that are pretty comparable to ours, in terms of demographics, size, industrial “ethos,” and economic challenges:
- Pittsburgh
- Detroit
- St. Louis
- Newark
- Indianapolis
- Kansas City
- Chattanooga
- Providence
- Glasgow
- Dublin
- Alberta
- Harbin (China)
- Barcelona
Cities/regions that have done some good work on local energy strategies:
- Iceland
- London
- San Diego
- Austin
- Chattanooga
- Portland, OR
- Pittsburgh
- Chicago
- DeWeese Island, SC
- Copenhagen
- Leicester, England
- Birmingham, England
- Manchester, England
- Toronto
- Seattle
- Vancouver
From these two lists, it became clear that Pittsburgh and Chattanooga represented potentially very interesting analogies for Northeast Ohio – potentially meriting field visits for discussions with parties to learn how they made their progress. The industrialized UK cities (e.g., Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow) possibly also are quite promising as models. And an international city – especially in China or India – could be valuable as a partner in our efforts, especially for trade-building purposes.
We agreed on the following next steps:
- Chris Varley to contact Pittsburgh colleagues to learn about their work
- Chris to contact colleagues about Glasgow
- Chris to investigate relevance of Barcelona analogy
- Chris to investigate if any Eastern European analogies would be relevant
- Richard Stuebi and Vinola Vincent to begin research on Chattanooga
- Richard and Vinola to research the International Energy Agency and other websites for any other regional/city energy planning studies
- Richard to contact David Yen of World Trade Center Cleveland about Cleveland sister cities
- Richard to email document of U.S. cities’ best practices in energy planning
- Richard to discuss with Betsy Vandenbosch at Case Weatherhead about potential linkage with Case's Business as an Agent of World Benefit global forum in October 2006
- Richard and Chris to set up conference call with Bridging to the Future effort
Team members include:
- Gerry Barna, consultant
- Bill Manz, Ohio Department of Development, Office of Energy Efficiency
- Joe Pustai, eQuest
- Larry Viterna, NASA/Glenn
