Municipalities, many already running unhealthy deficits, are facing a new world of cost issues in the face of increasing fuel prices. Most municipalities use fuel on the large scale, with various administrators, surveyors, building code inspectors and other city officials zipping around the city to conduct their business. As cities are looking for solutions to fuel prices, they could be thinking too small. 

 

Mayors that met at the United States Conference of Mayors discussed the results of a survey of over a hundred municipalities, 90% of which said that they had changed operating procedures to minimize fuel expenditures. The result have been soft measures so far. Mayors have been encouraging their staff to carpool, visit sites that are near each other at the same time, encouraging staff to take public transit and turn off the lights when a room is empty. Budgets for 2008 seem to have been built on $2/gallon gas and soft measures are inadequate unless cities want to go the way of Vallejo (municipal bankruptcy).

As challenging as these problems may be, they also offer an interesting opportunity for municipalities to lead the charge in energy savings and fuel efficiency. Municipalities have access to tax-free bonds that should make it ‘easy’ to invest in sustainable technology that will help them hold their costs down. Cities can usually bond design-build wind or solar projects without much trouble, or can use their collective buying power to force utilities into providing clean power for their residents (more problematic where coal companies provide the tax base). Or, they can educate their residents about opportunities for power purchase agreements in neighborhoods.

Cities could be fuel independent. Cities have the capability to incentivize a biofuels test plant in their city that could supply gas to their fleet at a reduced, or at least, controlled cost (some types of ethanol can use waste to produce fuel for less than $1 per gallon). There seems to be no reason that a city over the size of 50,000 people or so shouldn’t have its own biofuels facility. Municipalities should/could all be driving hybrid, flex fuel or diesel fleets, though many cities still have the policy of buying American cars.

Cities also have the most control over infrastructure; they can do the most of anyone to make cars unnecessary. Cities can zone to create dense downtown corridors, create or block bike lanes, and either stifle or push for public transit expansion. Cities can discourage car use by creating walk-only streets and driving up the cost of parking. Confirming some of Amory Lovin’s famous predictions, Mayor John Robert Smith of Meridian Mississippi noted “We have waited until we are at a crisis point to address transportation.”

Cities have control over their building codes. LA and other large cities have integrated LEED standards into law. All cities could do that, as well as plan and zone in a manner that encourages mixed use ecodensity and fosters the ridership for public transit. Cities can also offer microloan or lease-back programs to help citizens front the cash for wind or solar energy for their buildings. There are a range of good ways cities can help their citizens finance energy projects for their buildings.

My ultimate message is this: municipalities have enormous power to change the lives of their residents for the better, climate and energy-wise. I can't think of any reason municipalities should suffer from high energy costs when they have expansive power to control and regulate local price and markets. Municipalities have so much micro-scale control over their cities’ procedures that it is highly effective for peak oil issues to be addressed at this level.  

Photo by Payton Chung