County adopts Green Team’s Energy Action Plan suggestions

Move toward a “paperless” government

In the latest step toward making its operations more sustainable, the Gunnison Board of County Commissioners voted to adopt the Green Team’s Proposal for the Implementation of the Gunnison County Energy Action Plan.

While the county has looked at ways to reduce energy consumption and improve efficiency in several areas of the county, it hadn’t focused so much on its own operations until this year.
In March, the Green Team, a group of 10 county employees from different departments, was formed and tasked with focusing on ways to meet the environmental goals set by the commissioners in county operations.
The Green Team’s plan, like the Energy Action Plan, dissects the county operations into Buildings, Transportation, Waste, and Policy, Finance, and Education—only it makes the task easier to tackle by offering suggestions about the highest priority operations.
The first section, which deals with ways the county can bring its buildings closer to the efficiency goals agreed upon by the commissioners, recommends that the county pursue programs for energy audits and retrofits for the public to use for improving the energy efficiency of their homes. It also mentions other plans to help the public improve the energy efficiency of homes and businesses.
The Green Team’s recommendations under “Transportation” deal with public transportation and ways the county can assist in the logistics of the Rural Transportation Authority. The other half of the section deals with the efficiency of county fleet vehicles.
The plan also focuses on government waste, specifically the paper variety. It recommends the county take steps to require staff to use printers capable of double-sided printing and enforce the current requirement that county departments use recycled paper. Those steps and others are part of an effort to move toward “paperless government.”
Finally, the section on Policy, Finance, and Education addresses finding grants and other funding opportunities through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund county projects or starting a revolving loan fund for the public to use when taking measures to improve efficiency or reduce fuel consumption.
Commissioner Hap Channell said he would like to see the county’s regulatory documents amended to include the encouragement of efficiency and a reduction in waste.
The Green Team’s proposal was first presented to the commissioners on July 21, and the document was adopted, as amended at a regular meeting on Tuesday, August 4.