Last week we reported that dozens of temporary green collar jobs were created for Cleveland’s Summer Youth Program. Now we discover that the city built a pipeline for green collar jobs.

In 2003, the Water Department started a training program for unemployed city residents to convert paper maps of its extensive water delivery system into digital format. Cleveland Resident Workforce provided 50 paid trainees on Geographic Information System (GIS), a mapping software program, to create maps and a searchable database of 500,000 water connections, 5,200 miles of water mains, and 270 electric feeders and electrical substations.

Four of the trainees stayed on as permanent hires, and the GIS work continues to improve operations at the city. Analyzing routes with GIS has allowed truck rerouting and led to a 15 to 22 percent savings for mileage and drive time, according to a study done by the Division of Waste Collection and Disposal. The city used this savings to reinstate a recycling program that had been cut for lack of funds. It bought new recycling containers and trucks to start a pilot recycling program.

ESRI, the company that makes GIS software, recognized Cleveland’s use of GIS with its 2007 Special Achievement Award. Read more at American Planning Association’s Planning magazine.

Location(s)

Join Green Energy Ohio for our first network meeting in Cleveland in 2008. Featured speaker is Bill Eger, Energy Manager in the City of Cleveland’s Sustainability Program. Established in May of 2005, the program’s goals are to save the City of Cleveland money and reduce its environmental footprint, use sustainability as a tool for economic development and introduce sustainability principles to city employees.

Bill will discuss energy policies and initiatives focused on driving sustainability in Cleveland in 2008 and beyond.

For more information, contact Athan Barkoukis at Athan@GreenEnergyOhio.org or call (216) 526-5545.

From the Sierra Club Northeast Ohio Chapter as of April 3, 2007

The following Northeast Ohio mayors have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement:

Cogeneration is one of those technologies that’s old enough to be new again. As costs skyrocket and concerns about air quality spread, interest grows in cleaner, more efficient energy production. Cogeneration may fit the bill — it doubles the efficiency of burning coal by capturing and reusing the hot air or steam that conventional power companies view as ‘waste’ (roughly 60 to 70% of the total energy is lost as waste heat).

Cleveland Thermal Chilled Water Distribution, LLC — which already pipes steam and chilled water services to downtown office buildings (but not electric power) — is proposing to build a cogeneration plant at E. 26th Street just north of Lakeside Avenue. This would be the first commercial cogeneration facility in Cleveland.

The city of Cleveland might sign on as a partner in the venture. First, EcoCity Cleveland has agreed to hire a consulting engineer to review Cleveland Thermal's proposal for its environmental best practices and economic feasibility. The consultant's report will be submitted to the city of Cleveland before it makes a recommendation to city-owned Cleveland Public Power, a potential customer for the electricity portion of the plant.

Cogeneration is the simultaneous production of heat and power in a single thermodynamic process. With typical fossil-fuel-fired, utility-scale power production, roughly 60 to 70% of the total energy is lost as waste heat. By capturing that thermal energy, overall efficiency can be dramatically increased. A cogeneration plant captures that ‘waste’ and usually transports it through underground pipes to commercial or industrial buildings for heating or cooling (new advances are connecting cogeneration waste heat with fuel cell power).

Also known as "combined heat and power," this process ultimately requires less burning of fossil fuels (improving the air we breath). Sometimes cogeneration plants use renewable resources such as straw, biomass, solar or wind as the input to generate the heat and power (called "trigeneration").

Cogeneration is very popular among colleges and institutions, especially if they have an interconnected network of buildings (with the steam pipe infrastructure). Barriers in the private sector have included high fees charged by power companies to provide stand-by or back up power in case the cogeneration system goes off line. In fact, stand-by fees were cited as the deal breaker for a cogeneration plant that Cuyahoga County was considering for its downtown Cleveland administrative offices.

While a few private cogeneration plants exist in Cleveland (the largest of which is at the Mittal Steel site), no commercial cogeneration plants have been built. Cleveland Thermal Chilled Water Distribution, LLC produces steam and chilled water services at its E. 18th Street and Hamilton and Canal Road plants, and moves it through a network of underground steam pipes. Many of the older downtown buildings pay for its steam heat and chilled water services.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors represents 1,139 cities promoting a platform for the development of a national urban policy.

In addition to the ongoing work of the Conference's standing committees, mayors are organized into task forces to examine and act on issues that demand special attention - homeland security, hunger and homelessness, and brownfields for example.

Under the leadership of Conference of Mayors President Long Beach Mayor Beverly O’Neill, more than 100 mayors, business leaders and energy experts gathered in Chicago May 10-11, 2006 for an urgent National Summit on Energy and the Environment to sound an alarm on the country’s energy and environmental challenges and to share innovative “best practices” and strategies that are being initiated at the local level.

With record-level gas prices and rising fuel costs in America, the summit, which was hosted by Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley whose city is one of the “greenest” in the world, covered a broad range of topics, including air quality, climate change, alternative energy sources, alternative vehicles, public transit and green housing and buildings.

GreenCityBlueLake spoke with Cleveland Sustainability Programs Manager Andrew Watterson last week on the occasion of Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson joining more than 200 mayors who've signed the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement. We discussed what this means for sustainable activities, and how this connects with what the sustainability program is already doing in Cleveland.

Congratulations on signing the climate change agreement. Did Mayor Jackson sign mainly for environmental reasons or are there other reasons?

The reasons why Mayor Jackson signed is, yes, for the environment, but also for economic development. There’s a lot of technology around addressing climate change.

Read more here.

The Ohio Environmental Council today issued a 65-point action plan for how Ohio can combat global warming, yet strengthen its mainstay industries of agriculture, coal, and manufacturing.

The group’s report calls for deep reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions through a wide-scale transition to cleaner energy technologies, including no-till farming, coal gasification power plants, and energy-efficient manufacturing processes, vehicles, appliances, and consumer products.

The OEC’s report—Ohio Climate Road Map, Part 2—emphasizes that Ohio industry is well positioned to be a major supplier of the technology necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It also stresses that immediate investment by industry, government, and consumers in existing and emerging technologies can pay big dividends to the state’s environment and economy and help Ohio avoid more challenging emission cuts later.

Here are some more ideas from the World Urban Forum in Vancouver (click "read more" above to see the whole post). I'm back home in Cleveland now, and in the coming week I will continue to post my reflections on the future of cities and lessons for Northeast Ohio.

Many of my thoughts were stimulated by the head-spinning, 150-nation, multi-cultural stew of the forum itself — where rich nations' consumer lifestyles were challenged by poor nations' desperate need for development to meet basic human needs, a conflict which will determine the future environmental, economic, and political stability of the planet.

But even more of my thoughts were stimulated by the city of Vancouver, which is pioneering new ways for advanced, Western cities to think about how to develop sustainably. This is a city whose mayor talks proudly about "eco-density" and reducing the city's ecological footprint. This is a city whose planners have an explicit goal to reduce auto use by making it inconvenient and costly to drive and by investing heavily in quality pedestrian environments, bike facilities, and transit to give people better alternatives. This is a city where the typical commuter is a comfortably dressed person walking down the street with a backpack and a cup of coffee.

More ideas from the last four days of the World Urban Forum in Vancouver...Click the "read more" link above to see the entire post.

Regional planning from Toronto

An audacious — and politically popular — regional plan is coming out of the Toronto region. It can be a model for how other regions of North American can approach growth and conservation in a comprehensive manner.

First, they did a regional Greenbelt Plan, which protects 1.8 million acres of environmentally sensitive land, water resources, and important agricultural areas. Then, they did the Places to Grow plan, which will curb suburban sprawl by intensifying new develop in existing cities and town centers (thus reducing demands for new infrastructure, improving transportation and housing choices, and protecting air quality).

Together, they represent the Province of Ontario's commitment to more sustainable patterns of urban development in Canada's most populous region. If it had the political will, Ohio could do something similar to help Northeast Ohio.

Redeveloping Toronto's waterfront

Another Toronto project for Clevelanders to pay attention to is the West Don Lands redevelopment. It has a lot of parallels to the Flats East Bank project.