Green Labor Journal - Working for a Substainable Future

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter

Philadelphia's plan for reducing energy costs and growing a green economy

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Washington, D.C, May 5, 2010 — Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter delivered these remarks at the 2010 Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference.  This year’s theme is “Transforming Ideas into Action.” Below are the Mayor’s remarks as prepared for delivery:

Good afternoon. I think we’re all feeling strength in our numbers today.

What an incredible turnout of thinkers and doers, all committed to a safer, healthier and more prosperous future for America, for our children and for their children.

With a tragic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as a somber and sobering backdrop, the urgency of this week’s Good Jobs Green Jobs Conference can’t be understated.

We’ve got to change our ways because a terrible judgment from Nature awaits us if we don’t! But this conference is not about doom and gloom.

It’s about action and renewal and good jobs for people who want desperately to work and to participate in the major issue of our time – which is a rebalancing of what it means to live the good life. It can no longer be about consuming today with no concern for tomorrow.

The Philadelphia Setting
This afternoon, I want to talk about the struggle for a sustainable future at ground level, in a big city, where the grand theories and programs emanating from Washington confront the hard realities of Main Street.

As mayor of Philadelphia, the 6th largest city in the United States, a grand old city filled with history, I’m motivated by hope tempered with reason.

With that caution in mind, I’m here to say that Philadelphia aims to be the Greenest City in America and we have a broad-based strategy and the powerful partnerships to pull it off.

First, a little background: Philadelphia was once a factory for the nation if not the world. We made everything from rail cars and televisions to Stetson hats and garments. But by 1960, with a population of 2 million, industry was already rapidly leaving.

Today, we’re 1.5 million and growing again. We have highly skilled niche manufacturers, but we also have huge life sciences, medical and education sectors.

Coupled with an influx of people who want to live in Center City and partake of our rich cultural venues and night life, Philadelphia is making a giant transition.

We are a walkable city, densely settled, we have an enviable public transit system; we’ve developed bike lanes and are deploying thousands of bike racks. We’re also a city with 25 percent of the population living in poverty and a city government that faces very painful fiscal choices.

But I’m an optimist, and I believe that as a city and region, Philadelphia is just right, not too big and not too small. It has everything you need to live, work and play.

A Sustainable City: Greenworks Philadelphia 
Nevertheless, people and employers are demanding a healthier, more sustainable environment.

And frankly, I didn’t believe that what we have in place now is enough to propel Philadelphia onto a higher plane in this globalizing Century. We needed a new vision and a new kind of leadership.

A year ago, we produced Greenworks Philadelphia, our comprehensive strategy to integrate the values of sustainability into every nook and cranny of government and the city. It’s both a sustainability and economic development plan.

Greenworks will help us create green jobs, but equally important it will create the context and quality of life … for more jobs of every collar … green, blue, white, creative economy, niche manufacturing.

Now, I would have preferred if Washington had already produced comprehensive climate and energy legislation. It would have made Greenworks an easier task. But Philadelphia could not wait any longer.

We developed a detailed blueprint – 169 measurable and targeted goals that we will achieve by 2015 ─ strategies to:
·    reduce energy consumption, as a city government and city;
·    promote alternative energy sources,
·    clean our air quality,
·    reduce solid waste,
·    green our neighborhoods with trees and open space,
·    control stormwater with green infrastructure, increase local food production and consumption
·    And each step of the way, create low-, medium- and high-skill green jobs.

Greenworks is not just a city plan but rather a plan for the City.

It’s a document that calls for leadership through partnerships because city government isn’t in the mandating business. And very quickly, we found plenty of partners with tremendous expertise and energy.

Philadelphia Leading the Way
But if we’re going to be urging citizens and businesses to reduce energy consumption, then the City had to take first steps.

And so, our goal is to reduce overall energy consumption in city government by 30 percent in 2015.

We’ve hired an energy service company, Noresco, one of the leaders in the field, to do an energy audit at City Hall and three other of the largest city buildings. The company will give us a menu of ways to save energy and money.

Others who had used Esco’s and their audit advice have cut demand by 20 percent.
The investments are self-financing, paid for with the savings that accrue from the new efficiencies.

And for the first time ever, we’ve established target energy budgets for city departments. Using the Energy Star program, we’ll decrease our energy costs by 10 percent in the next couple years.

We now have a single-stream weekly recycling system and an innovative recycling rewards program run by a local company that has grown and now gone nationwide with its program.

Our recycling efforts have boosted the solid waste diversion rate from about 7.5 percent when I took office more than two years ago to 18 percent.

Working with the Philadelphia City Council, we’ve developed new laws that will require LEED silver levels of energy efficiency on all new large city construction and renovation projects. A second new law requires cool roof technology on new construction or additions to existing buildings.

We’ve also installed a solar hot water system at one of our prisons and a green roof at The Free Library Central Library.

Striking While the Iron is Hot: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
With our sustainability plan in hand, the Obama Administration produced the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and that funding has helped us jumpstart many of our Greenworks initiatives. We truly struck when the iron was hot.

For example, Greenworks calls for reducing building energy consumption by 10 percent and we’ve partnered with the Energy Coordinating Agency, a local Philadelphia nonprofit that has been training people for green jobs since the mid-1980s.

With almost $30 million in new Recovery funding, the city and ECA will dramatically increase the green-collar workforce and double our production in weatherization.

Equally important, we’re making connections between the local workforce training programs and the private contractors and the nonprofit groups that will perform this work.

As it stands now, we expect to reach our Greenworks goal of retrofitting 100,000 homes by 2015.

Let me offer another example: When the city applied for the Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block grant, we received an initial $14 million formula allocation.

We set aside a large piece of funding to create a Greenworks Loan Fund to help commercial and industrial properties to do retrofit projects.

We also created a small business rebate program for mostly neighborhood retailers along important neighborhood commercial corridors.

So for example, Mugshots, a small café, will expand into a transitional neighborhood and install an energy efficient lighting system that won’t require a bulb change for a decade. It’ll create 6 jobs.

Now, as these programs began, Philadelphia joined with its nearby Pennsylvania counties in a new organization designed to increase our regional clout in Harrisburg and Washington. We call it the Metropolitan Caucus.

A few weeks ago, DOE announced that the Caucus with the city as lead had won a second competitive grant, a $25 million retrofit grant, which we’ll use to do work in the city and region with our partners at The Reinvestment Fund, the Commonwealth and private banking partners.

In the process, we’ll increase by 50 percent the number of contractors certified by the Commonwealth to do home energy efficiency work.

We’ll increase the number of number of energy auditors by 25 percent, and we’ll be working to increase the number of small minority- and women-owned businesses in these programs, bringing much needed jobs to minority neighborhoods.

We hope to leverage the EECBG investment, making available more than $225 million for retrofits in the region. These investments will translate into the creation or retention of at least 3,000 jobs in the next three years and the saving of 14 million BTU’s of energy.

Solar Power and Clean Energy Campus
Part of Greenworks is a concerted effort to move to alternative energy sources.
 
We’ve begun to train people, including ex-offenders, in solar panel installation.

But down in South Philadelphia at the Navy Yard, we’ve created a Clean Energy Campus with the goal of making it a national hub for research, education and commercialization of clean energy technologies.

I often talk about green collar jobs as a ladder of opportunity for people who have a GED all the way up to a PhD.

At the Navy Yard, we hope to see the entire ladder, a kind of conveyor belt that offers family-sustaining incomes and future opportunities.

By the end of the year, a 1.5 megawatt solar array will be up and functioning. Early next year, we hope that HelioSphera, a 200-megawatt thin-film solar manufacturing plant, will break ground on a plant that will employ 400.

This summer, Penn State will open its Mid-Atlantic Solar Resource and Training Center at the Navy Yard, supported by a $5 million grant. Two other centers run by Penn State and funded by DOE at about $10 million will focus on clean energy applications and smart grid workforce training.

And on Thursday, a group of academic, federal research and private industry partners will submit a $130 million application to DOE for a proposed Regional Innovation Center for Energy Efficient Buildings.

We have nothing but high hopes for this center locating to the Navy Yard.

Green City Clean Waters
Finally, I want to briefly mention our Green City Clean Waters program. It will be the subject of a panel discussion here tomorrow. It’s a 20-year plan to spend $1.6 billion to capture the stormwater and sewage overflow that occurs during moderate to heavy rainfalls in the city where 60 percent of the land is served by a combined sewer system.

Instead of using giant pipes and tanks, this program will use green space, tree trenches, rain gardens, green roofs, pervious surfaces and many more tools. Many of these solutions will require new green-collar workers.

City Leadership Toward a Green Future 
Growing the green economy is not something that local government can do on its own. At best, we’re an early investor, a trend setter, a convenor of various interests, a leader in the bully pulpit and certainly a regulator.

But it’s the new solar installers or manufacturers, the weatherization and retrofit specialists in the construction industry, the R&D units, the new methods of financing improvements through the market place and the ESCO’s and energy auditors that will develop the green economy.

It will take time, but Greenworks Philadelphia is a living document that enables us to converse freely, adapt to changing conditions and move forward quickly.

I rely upon the new cabinet level Office of Sustainability in my government headed by Katherine Gajewski and the 21-member Sustainability Advisory Board with public, private and nonprofit representatives. They are overseeing the drive toward our goals.

We’ve received valuable support from the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, the Living Cities Foundation and many more valuable partners.
 
Some time in the future, I hope very soon, President Obama and Congress will adopt a climate and energy program that sets out a path toward a restructuring of our national economy.

Until then, Philadelphia will push ahead with a prudent plan to reduce our energy costs while encouraging the growth of a green economy in our region. Green jobs will be a significant though not dominant part of our economy.

But the impact of these jobs will be huge. And when change finally comes to Washington, Philadelphia will already be well on the way toward its green future.
Thank you.

For additional information, see Mayor Michael Nutter, Philadelphia.