Local energy action plans taking shape

“We really took a broad-brush approach”

A comprehensive plan intended to guide the Gunnison Valley in reducing its carbon footprint has been drafted, but committee members involved in the planning process say it still needs a lot of work. 

Students, community members, town staff and political leaders gathered at an Energy Planning Exchange coordinated by the Office for Resource Efficiency (ORE) last Friday, where attendees had a chance to read through the first draft of the Energy Action Plan and make comments or voice criticisms.  
“It was a very productive meeting,” says Gunnison County planning commissioner Richard Karas. “It was all very intelligent and thoughtful, but it was very much a planning meeting. We’re not talking about the final result. That was a very rough draft.”
Gunnison city manager Ken Coleman says, “I think we’ve got some good solid groundwork in place for developing a decent plan. While all the different suggestions have various levels of opportunity for success, I think there is a real positive effort that’s gone into it.”
The entire Energy Action Plan is a heavy document, coming in at 92 pages.  More than half of the document is devoted to individual energy action plans for the towns of Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte, the city of Gunnison, and Gunnison County.   
The document also contains a synopsis of the Upper Gunnison River Watershed Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory that was released last spring, an introduction to climate change issues, and a history of the energy planning process so far.  
An Energy Summit was held last fall where attendees from all over the Gunnison Valley created ideas to reduce pollution and curb energy use.
After the summit, four workgroups were created for each of the partnering entities, and tasked with developing individual energy action plans that their respective communities will eventually endorse.  
The action plans themselves contain a number of suggested actions or policies that deal with improving the efficiency of homes and buildings, improving public transportation, or generating renewable energy.  
Crested Butte councilman Billy Rankin says not every idea included in the draft will make it in the final version of the plan. “Obviously there were some challenges, like finding money [to implement programs suggested in the plan].  Everyone mentioned that,” Rankin says.  
Some of the suggestions in Crested Butte’s energy plan involve building a new town recycling center, creating promotional campaigns for riding the bus or biking to work, or providing education classes about energy efficiency and conservation.   
City of Gunnison councilwoman Ellen Harriman says flexibility was a big aspect of the planning process. “I think it’s important that each entity be able to be flexible and serve its own needs. That’s always been a concern. But we have a plan that gives us some actions to take that are fiscally responsible and doable by people,” she says.
Gunnison’s energy action plan calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2020, but programs to achieve that goal should be voluntary. The plan also presents different recommendations for maximizing efficiency in new buildings, versus existing buildings.   
Mt. Crested Butte community development director Bill Racek was quite pleased with the draft plan, admitting that it still needed some work. “It kind of got me all fired up to get going on this thing and get it in front of the council,” Racek says. Mt. Crested Butte’s plan makes suggestions such as new building efficiency requirements, like mandated energy audits and occupancy sensors, as well as incentive-based ideas like seeking out rebates and grant monies that builders or homeowners could use.  
Racek liked how Mt. Crested Butte clearly identified goals that could be done in one year, in five years, and by the year 2020.  
Rankin says a large part of the plan centers on efficiency in buildings, and for the three municipalities growth presents a big challenge. He says, “There were a lot of questions about the growth factor. Three of the four groups involved are dealing with potential growth issues, like North Village, Gunnison Rising and the Foothills. The question is, how are we going to grow and still have some serious reductions?”
Rankin says there still isn’t a concrete answer to the growth dilemma, but he thinks local municipalities are taking the right actions even now. “We talked about how Foothills is proposing a carbon-neutral development. Our job as the Planning Commission is to figure out what that means,” Rankin says.   
Crested Butte Mountain Resort planning director John Sale says it’s hard to commit to energy reduction goals when there are big projects on the horizon.   “Certainly the largest impact in Mt. Crested Butte is going to be from buildings,” he says.  
Similar to Rankin, Sale thinks Mt. Crested Butte and CBMR are on the right track to reducing energy consumption and pollution—units in the new affordable housing development in Prospect are 40 to 50 percent more efficient than what the town code currently requires. And Sale also supports the carbon-neutral or “net-zero” scheme for new developments. “I think that’s the trend we’re going for,” he says.    
While building efficiency was a big topic for municipalities, Karas says transportation remains a challenging issue for the county. The Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory lists transportation as the biggest source of pollution on the county level, and Karas says it’s harder to identify realistic ways to reduce pollution from transportation, as opposed to reducing pollution from buildings.  He says actions that reduce energy use and pollution from buildings often allow people to live more comfortably and save money. Changes to transportation, such as getting people to ride the bus more, involve a change in lifestyle.   
Karas also points out that much of the local economy is dependent on tourists who may drive or fly, and also shops and restaurants that need food or other goods delivered in a truck. “You don’t want to jeopardize that,” Karas says.  
In coming weeks the four committees and members of ORE will refine the current draft plan into a more palatable document that local governments might be willing to sign. ORE’s energy action plan coordinator Maya Silver says a special writing committee is being formed from the existing workgroups, and the committee will attempt to make the entire document more uniform and succinct.  “We need to make it more cohesive, more doable and more effective… This was intended to be a first stab.  Ideally we’re going to go through four or five drafts,” Silver says.  
“We really took a broad-brush approach up to now,” Rankin says. “Now we need to start looking at the cost effectiveness of the programs and prioritizing what we need to do next.”
“We have to remember this plan is going to be the first shot at what could be a plan for 50 years. Some of the ideas we thought out we may not be able to do for 20 years,” Rankin says.  
One part that may get cut from the final plan is the introduction to climate change issues and history of the planning process. “There was some thought it would detract from the plans themselves,” Karas says.  
Rankin agrees, “I brushed through those pages. I wanted to know, ‘Hey, what’s the plan?’”
Silver says the final version of the Energy Action Plan should be complete by the end of March. At that point, the three municipalities and Gunnison County will have to sign their respective energy plans into action. Before the plan is presented for final consideration, Silver says she hopes the draft plan will be presented to town councils and the county commissioners for suggestions to prevent any last-minute hurdles or questions from coming up. “The acceptance process could take a lot longer,” she says.