CitiesGoGreen - October 2008 - (Page 24) What’s a Sustainability Coordinator? Lia Ayley: You were the first full-time public-sector sustainability coordinator in the state of Arkansas. What does your job as sustainability coordinator involve? John Coleman: My job was approved on the understanding that it would pay for itself through energy conservation within our local government, so obviously energy conservation initiatives are my number one priority. But there are a whole host of other things I’m involved with as well, like low-impact development standards, green building policy, transportation initiatives, water issues, and so much more. I also give many talks on sustainability initiatives to groups around the city and the state. Sustainability is a hot topic right now around the world, and very much so here in Northwest Arkansas as well. So I stay pretty busy. Tell us something about your background. What qualifications do you bring to your position with the city? My undergraduate degree is in civil engineering, and I worked as a civil engineer for five years, primarily in storm water issues. The civil engineering side of it was interesting, but as I was following the sustainability issues I realized that a lot of the larger initiatives were connected to policy-related decisions. So I decided to go back to grad school at the University of Texas at Austin, in the LBJ School of Public Affairs, because of its flexible curriculum. I ended up taking classes in the planning department, in architecture, and in economic development, among other things. I also worked for the city of Austin, which is recognized as one of the more progressive city governments in this field, and I learned a lot from that experience as well. 24 When you talk about sustainability, it can be so broad. It can be energy use, it can be water—water issues are very important to local residents here, for example—and I’ve had experience in both of those fields. Our economic development issues right now are focused primarily on bringing in what you often hear called “green collar” jobs or “green tech,” and with developing some of the research that’s coming out of the University of Arkansas. All of those components fit together, and I’ve got a little bit of experience in each of them. — INTERVIEW — Local Government in Action John Coleman talks with Lia Ayley about his job as Sustainability Coordinator for Fayetteville, Arkansas. total cost of improvements, net project costs, and simple payback in years. With performance-based contracting, once you receive the audit you choose a project from the list of recommended improvements, and the company guarantees payback of that project through your energy efficiency savings. It’s a really good mechanism for cities to use, especially if you don’t have the expertise to do this in-house. If you don’t have the number of people you need to pull off a project like that, if you don’t have the time, or if you don’t have the money, you can use one of these energy service contractors and still make some pretty significant upgrades to your building stock without stretching your budget, because you’ve got that guarantee on the back end. One of the first things you organized was an energy audit for the city buildings. How did that work and why was it important? When you are trying to allocate resources and time for energy conservation, you have to understand how everything is operating before If you’re not doing this as a city, you’re not you can start to make imtaking advantage of an opportunity. provements, and you need a baseline to measure against to make sure that what you are doing is effective. So it makes sense to If you’re not doing this as a city, you’re begin with an energy audit. not taking advantage of an opportunity. It really is that good, because of the guarWe teamed up with a company called antee. I attended the ICLEI conference in Johnson Controls who do performancebased contracting. They did the energy Albuquerque earlier this year, and there audit for us, looking at ten of our buildwere a lot of discussions about using perings, our street lights program, our water formance contracting as a mechanism. metering program, and a couple of other Even if a city were to choose technology things. The ten buildings we selected upgrades that would be paid off in eight were our ten major energy users and years and only lasted eight years, at the some of our oldest buildings, which very least it would be reducing its carbon makes sense in terms of improving energy footprint, simply by shifting the utility efficiency. The company analyzed a range payments it would otherwise have made of things and then made recommendato the performance contracting company tions about energy efficiency and carbon and the technology upgrades. And the reduction in each area. They also providway most projects work out, you end up ed data like projected utility savings, ansaving quite a bit of money. It’s a great nual operation and maintenance savings, tool. And it’s also scalable. The smallest October 2008 http://citiesgogreen.com/issues/october-2008/conversations/whats-a-sustainability-coordinator http://citiesgogreen.com/issues/october-2008/conversations/whats-a-sustainability-coordinator http://citiesgogreen.com/issues/october-2008/conversations/whats-a-sustainability-coordinator http://citiesgogreen.com
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