Newsmaker: In the heart of Texas, a mayor goes 'green'

newsmaker When it comes to global warming, Austin, Texas, Mayor Will Wynn is acting locally.

Despite being in a state closely tied to the oil and gas industry, Wynn is on the vanguard of mayors tackling climate change.

The city has proposed drastic cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions and, through its close work with municipal power company Austin Energy, is an active advocate of sustainable energy. Austin boasts the country's first city-level green-building program and has been able to offset 600 megawatts' worth of power plants through energy efficiency.

And the city is pushing for more. It has aggressive goals in carbon emissions reductions through targets in biofuels, clean energy, plug-in hybrids and green buildings.

Through his commitment to combating climate change, Wynn--a trained architect and former real-estate developer--has become something of an energy geek.

He's up to speed on the latest energy technologies and has committed his city to adopt them. And he leads by example: he walks to work and boasts about how low his home electricity bills are.

At the Clean Energy Venture Summit last week in Austin, the city hosted a tour of City Hall, a certified green building, where Wynn spoke to CNET News.com about energy technology and policy.

Q: You want Austin to be carbon-neutral by 2020.
Wynn: Yes, from the city's operations.

Is that realistic? How are you going to do it?
Wynn: Well, it's aggressive, but we're well on our way. I'd say the biggest challenge we're going to have both with our operations and with our metro economy is transportation. We own a bunch of vehicles, and a bunch of them are heavy pieces of heavy equipment.

From the metro economy standpoint, we barely have a genesis of passenger rail service coming next year. That's going to be very modest. And when your population is growing at about 3.5 percent a year for 100 years, and you're a car-dependent society, as we disproportionately are here in Texas--and even as Austin is within Texas--then fleet and transportation is going to be our biggest challenge, in my estimation.

Which technologies and approaches offer the biggest bang for the buck, both for the city's operations and its citizens?
Wynn: I'm not ashamed to say the Austin Climate Protection Plan (click for PDF) gets out ahead of the market on a couple of aspects. That is, we're having to bank on--cross our fingers--technology advances.

Frankly, to have zero net energy-using single-family homes within the next 10 years, you're going to have to have better material science. You're going to have to have probably the next generation of solar technology. So we're having to sort of roll into the plans some assumptions about how technology is going to help us.

Meanwhile, we'll need smart appliances. There's going to be a bunch of money made in this country, and across the planet, when it comes to technological advances on energy consumption. That includes these very, very smart appliances--which are in direct contact with the utility--that can buy electricity when it's cheapest, when it's less polluting. Particularly as we likely have carbon taxation and things like that.

Are you becoming a bit of an energy geek because you've had to learn about different technologies?
Wynn: Well, it's funny. I was telling somebody the other day I think my learning curve is steeper right now than it has been in the seven years I've been in office. I like that when I wake up every morning, I know that I've learned something really interesting last week and I'm going to learn something even more interesting this week. I'm heading off to New York tomorrow morning to go to the big global C40 Large Cities Climate Summit. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has me speaking to the mayors of the 40 largest cities on the planet tomorrow and Wednesday.

Your office works closely with Austin Energy, a municipal power company. How does that figure into your climate protection program? Does it allow you to invest in long-term projects?
Wynn: It allows us to do, from a public-policy standpoint, very important things when it comes to conservation, efficiencies and renewables. Meanwhile, it's important because we're doing that stuff, and I get to say to some of the skeptics--the naysayers, or some of the people who still don't want us to have a monopolized, municipal utility in this state--"wait a minute, look at our reliability standards."

We have probably the fastest-growing metro economy in the country, let alone the state. We're delivering all the power needs for that growing economy with conservation, efficiencies and renewables.

We spend a lot of money on conservation efforts--we pay people not to buy our product; it's not a real common business model. By doing so, our bond rating continues to go up. So Wall Street likes our utility more today then it did even five years ago, at a time when we have, as a composite, probably the most aggressive, progressive set of conservation efficiency policies in the country.

More Newsmakers

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Biofuels are not the answer

The article vaguely states that Austin is pushing emissions reductions through the use of biofuels. Using crops for biofuels are raising the price of food worldwide which is already affecting the poor. Farmers are already destroying rain forest in order to plant crops that can be sold as biofuels. Finally and most importantly, you have to put in more energy into growing and harvesting biofuel crops than you get out when you burn them in vehicles.

http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=755

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/03/27/a-lethal-solution/

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2007/05/22/corn.html

[C_G_K]

Like they say...

don't trust anyone from Austin or Boston. I am starting to think there is some truth to that old saying. This guy is a true believer in the boogey man of climate change. What a waste of time and money when there are REAL problems to be solved.

[chassoto]

I live in Austin...

Will Wynn speaks mostly the truth. I've personally taken advantage of the Austin Energy conservation programs. I have a 0% interest loan to replace the ancient furnace my house had when I bought it. The AC has a much higher SEER value, and combined with the energy efficiency things they did (wrapping ducts, sealing cracks, weatherstripping, insulation and solar screens) HALVED my summer electric bills. I WOULD have recovered the cost of the upgrades by the time the 5-year loan was paid off. I said "WOULD have" because shortly after, natural gas prices quadrupled in Texas, so much of the savings seen in the summer were eaten up in the winter.

Where Will Wynn is off the mark is that the city itself is promoting a disastrous transportation situation because of its own annexation and expansion into nearby territory. By annexing all the way to "the sticks," they are required to bring city services to those areas. Well, all of a sudden, it's trivial for a developer to clear a bunch of old live oak patches and build a "planned community" complete with strip malls and traffic congestion. All of the extra traffic and traffic jams will easily outpace any emissions saved through energy efficiency. Developers like Wynn are to blame, but we should hold city government accountable for allowing that.

[avfolk--2008]

Hype vs Reality Mr. Mayor!!!

The only green that our mayor is into is bucks from the very
developers who have turned Austin into a money-grubbing,
developer-driven, strawling, traffic-clogged metropolis where
'open government' is open only to developers and other monied
interests who profit only from turning Austin into a 'greener' LA.

As an Austinite for 40 years, I have observed that during Mr.
Wynn's tenure that:

-We are allowing our free-spending MTA to build a 'green' light
rail system while its budget doubles, and projected completion
and utilizatiojn stumbles.

-Downtown is overtaken with 'green' condos and businesses.
Like the new GREEN Whole Foods that has turned an entire
quadrant of downtown into a traffic nightmare for most of the
day.

-Developers are overbuilding in quaint neighborhoods, cutting
age-old trees and burdening our crumbling utility systems.

-We are so GREEN that the EPA has directed HUGE daily per/spill
fines until Austin fixes it's crumblin wastewater lines.

-Oh and Mr. Wynn is allowing WASTEWATER lines to be buried
UNDER our fabled BARTON CREEK GREENBELT. How green is
sewerage?

-Our astronomical tax base and utlities are providing the
INCENTIVES that Austin uses to bring us new people to but the
half million dollar condos the mayor seems so proud of.

-Meanwhile he touts our healthy lifestyle. Parks are crumbling,
city employee waste and overtime are at record highs, and our
libraries and social services suffer.

I have no idea what he can see thru the tinted windows of his
city vehicle -- but his 'progress' and motives are GREEDY not
GREEN.

The fact the Mr. Wynn has the nerve to tout his
'accomplishments' nationally, only indicates that his developer
buddies have some unsold condos -- and they're lookin for
more suckers.

WELCOME TO AUSTIN.

[babylovr]

The real problem is

not so much whether or not our Mayor is truly believing the *Global Warming* nonsense or if he is just trying to look good and make a buck for himself or his buddies; the problem is that he is trying to use his office and the laws to micromanage the personal lives of the citizens in the community. I am all for living a life which is harmonious with the earth and our fellow creatures and for promoting a culture which is respectful of all life, but trying to force others to take on financial burdens so that they will be living the way you think they should is not the way to make things better.

I'm glad the mayor is happy living in his little condo-box; my four children enjoy actually having a yard and a garden and trees. If our mayor is serious about making the world a better, cleaner place, there are much better ways of going about it -- for instance, how many pollutants are put into the air from parents driving their children to school? Perhaps it would be better to close down the schools; schools do use a lot of energy with all the lights and air conditioning, not to mention all the paper...plus there are the school buses, and I don't think all the teachers and administrators have eco-friendly vehicles either...

It's easy for the mayor to try to put burdens on the private home-owner -- it won't affect him! Most people actually do want to save money and most of us don't want to be adding pollution to the environment; for the most part, it's not the private citizen who is causing the problem -- I didn't set up the system whereby we use drinking water in our toilets, nor did I design any of the other aspects of our societal structure which pollute our planet, so why is our mayor wanting to hold me accountable for the environmental problems?

This is not a good way for him to make friends of his constituents.