San Antonio Express-News
by David Hendricks
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03/16/02 Saturday |
Business 01D |
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Column |
Metro |
When Linda Stone of New Orleans interviewed a
few months ago for Metropolitan Energy Office's executive director
position, she was happily amazed by the attitude of the local officials.
The job is a demanding one. The office,
operated by the Metropolitan Partnership for Energy, is charged with meeting
the requirements of Senate Bill 5.
The law, passed in 2001, requires Texas'
metropolitan areas to reduce energy use in public buildings by 5 percent
annually in each of the next five years.
SB 5, though, assesses no penalty for areas
that do not meet the scheduled reductions. Which is where the amazement comes
in for Stone, who applied using her 20 years of experience as an environmental
policy coordinator.
"They were taking SB 5 so seriously,"
Stone recalled of the job interview committee, which included Mayor Ed Garza
and County Judge Nelson Wolff. "Sometimes it is frustrating working in
government because no one wants to do anything extra. I have never seen that
attitude (here). I thought, 'I want to work with them.'"
Stone, a Californian, comes to San Antonio from
New Orleans, where she had directed the mayor's Office of Environmental
Affairs. With Mayor Marc Morial's term ending there, her future was uncertain,
so she applied for the San Antonio position after a friend told her about the
job.
Stone graduated from the University of
California at Berkeley with an architectural degree in 1982. She also received
a master's degree in urban planning from the University of New Orleans in 1990.
Her first task in San Antonio is a daunting
one. She must establish a 2001 baseline for energy use by public buildings in
the four-county San Antonio metropolitan area as a means of measuring progress
toward meeting SB 5's goals.
She is backed, though, by a $300,000 first-year
budget supplied by the main MPE partners: City Public Service, the city and
county. To develop the baseline data, Stone will use software provided by the
Cities for Climate Protection campaign, a template that has been successful
around the world.
She also will get help from an advocacy group
called Solar San Antonio, the Alamo Area Council of Governments, VIA
Metropolitan Transit and the Brooks Energy and Sustainability
Laboratory.
How can public buildings be made more energy
efficient?
Existing buildings can have lights, chillers
and boilers changed to better models. Reflective film can be placed on windows
and other surfaces, including roofs, Stone said.
Light sensors can be installed so that lighting
goes off when no one is in a room. Office equipment can be installed that
"goes to sleep" when not in use. Stone said she also is a big believer
in recycling materials.
When new buildings are planned, solar panels
may be installed on roofs, with trees, light-colored surrounding pavements and
more natural interior lighting used to reduce utility use, Stone said More
alternatives may come along, like fuel cells or wind turbines, to generate
power on-site without emissions, but Stone said she needs to learn more those
possibilities.
SB 5's goals are multiple: lower reliance on
foreign fuels through conservation and a cleaner environment.
After the baseline data is available, a
five-year action plan will take over to meet the goals. That, Stone said, is
when the best business opportunities will arrive, especially for architects and
energy service companies.
But Stone hopes the effort expands beyond
public buildings. Commercial buildings and residences can benefit, too. One
idea she wants to explore is raising awareness of federally backed energy efficiency
mortgages.
"This is going to take education," Stone said. "We'll be doing a lot of outreach."