Independent Thinking

Brian Driscoll hopes to help local governments take the lead in reducing energy consumption and costs.

Driscoll, an official with the Wisconsin Office of Energy Independence (OEI), visited with officials from Sister Bay, the Renewable Energy Task Force, Gibraltar Schools, Egg Harbor and the town of Gibraltar at the Bertschinger Center in Egg Harbor Feb. 26.

“We want to take advantage of local opportunities,” Driscoll said. “Find best practices and lead-by-example opportunities, then create a statewide network where people in government can find what’s going on in the area.”

He’s touring the state to gather ideas and practices from the lower levels of government in hopes of sharing them and creating a database.

The OEI was formed two years ago with a goal of producing 25 percent of the state’s energy needs through renewable resources by 2025. Government buildings and entities are often generally among the biggest energy consumers in a community, so it’s imperative they be addressed. The OEI has created a grant program for energy planning to help get the ball rolling.

Driscoll said the grants are available for municipalities to create a baseline for how much energy and fuel they are using. The effort is sort of a Travel Green for municipalities. Travel Green is a promotion run through the Department of Tourism that encourages tourism-dependent businesses to evaluate their energy and resource usage and pinpoint ways to cut back. The OEI program targets local governments.

In Egg Harbor alone, village administrator Josh Van Lieshout said the wastewater treatment plant costs the village $30,000 in energy use each year, and streetlights carry a $14,000 tab.

Egg Harbor began using a golf cart to service its parks last year, allowing maintenance to leave one pickup truck in the garage most of the summer. That same idea could be helpful to other communities, but some obscure regulations might need to be addressed. In Door County, the main road in most municipalities is a state highway, which has stricter restrictions as to the type of vehicle that can operate on it. Instituting certain exemptions to such regulations and ordinances could make conserving energy a little easier.

Driscoll said Wisconsin is home to multiple producers of neighborhood electric vehicles and golf carts, so using them would also be a great way to support state business.

In 2007, Sturgeon Bay Utilities bought a Toyota Prius hybrid vehicle for transportation. In three years they expect to offset in fuel savings the $3,500 premium they paid over a Ford Taurus. General Manager Jim Stawicki said they have since installed a lithium ion battery in the Prius, paid for with a grant, that allows the car to operate primarily on electricity.

Last year, the utility installed eye-catching solar flares in front of their office to provide electricity.

“I can’t tell you how many comments we get on them,” Stawicki said. “It’s nice to see Sturgeon Bay doing something in this realm.”

Dr. Steve Seyfer, Gibraltar School superintendent, gave credit to the school’s student Green Team, a collection of students that patrols the school with pad and pen to make notes of waste and possibilities for energy savings. He said Gibraltar considered several new technologies in planning its recent renovation, but the capital costs were prohibitive.

“We’re almost at the tipping point on that,” Driscoll said.

His department hopes to find ways to combine municipal purchasing power to bring costs down. Small towns and villages don’t have the demand to buy enough vehicles, light bulbs, or other supplies to get price breaks, but if purchasing were coordinated through the state, it’s possible that even small towns could keep up with otherwise costly energy-saving advances.

Driscoll said it’s imperative that government take the lead in finding efficiencies.

“We can’t sit back and tell people to cut back and invest, then do nothing on our end,” he said. “We need to lead through example.”