Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Model of urban future: Jersey City?
Rick Hampson, USA TODAY
JERSEY CITY – Once, this was a city of browns and grays. Railroads owned a third of the land, and trains rumbled night and day to the cacophonous riverfront. Factories belched fumes and leaked chemicals. “Nobody cared,” says Bob Leach, born here in 1937. “Smoke meant jobs.”
And those were the good years. Then, in the 1960s, the railroads went broke. Rail yards were abandoned, piers rotted, factories closed. In the 1970s alone, the city lost 14% of its population and about 9% of its jobs.
Now Jersey City has come back as its own antithesis: clean, green and growing – an example, urban planners say, of how the nation can accommodate some of the additional 100 million Americans expected by 2040 without paving over every farm, forest and meadow.
Jersey City, a model of smart growth? Even Robert Cotter, the city’s planning director, says he was surprised by the notion. But because so many people here live in apartments or attached houses located near shops, offices and mass transit, they require less land, gasoline, heating oil, water, sewer pipe and other finite resources.
(16 April 2007)
Top Ten US City Use of Renewable Energy
SustainLane Government
1. Oakland, CA (17%)
2. Sacramento/SF/San Jose, CA (12%)*
3. Portland, OR (10%)
4. Boston (8.6%)
5. San Diego, CA (8%)
6. Austin, TX (6%)
7. Los Angeles, CA (5%)
8. Minneapolis, MN (4.5%)
9. Seattle, WA (3.5%)
10. Chicago, IL (2.5%)
*tied
SustainLane US City Rankings data 2006/2007
Which of the largest 50 US cities provide citizens with the highest percentage of power produced from renewable energy? SustainLane Government (www.sustainlane.us) determined the percentage of each city’s electricity that comes from renewables such as solar, wind, geothermal, and small-scale hydro energy.
…The leading cities in renewable energy could have an advantage in any upcoming federal or state regulations aimed at regulating or eliminating greenhouse gas emissions or developing renewable energy standards. If the greenhouse gases that cause climate change get priced, cities with strong renewable energy programs could save a lot of money in the long run and their economies could gain a tax advantage.
Oakland, California led the nation with 17 percent of its electricity being produced by energy sources such as solar, wind and geothermal energy. Oakland gets some of its wind energy power from one of the largest wind power generating facilities in the nation at nearby Altamont Pass.
San Francisco, Sacramento and San Jose tied for second with 12 percent of their electricity coming from renewable energy sources.
California cities rank high in general because of the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, which set minimal requirements in 2002 for utility purchases of renewable energy for the state’s electric grid. That standard requires a 20 percent renewable energy total for the state’s utilities by 2020.
(16 April 2007)
