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by EMILY ORLEY
our years ago, Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje built a fully
functioning house entirely off the electric grid. Hieftje
designed and built the house, which runs on a solar energy
w system, on Lake Superior with his father-in-law. It includes
all the fundamentals of a normal home - a refrigerator,
washer, dryer and dishwasher - and is completely self-contained.
And according to Hieftje, he's never had a single problem with it.
Hieftje's effort to reduce his carbon footprint is just a small
step compared to the enormous strides he has made for the city of
Ann Arbor. In 2005, the mayor challenged the city to, by the end
of 2010, obtain 30 percent of its energy from renewable sources
and to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent.
His plan was inspired by the windmill
farms in Sault Saint Marie, Ontario,
just north of the Upper Peninsula.
Unfortunately, Hieftje said, Michigan
doesn't have strong enough winds to
power farms of its own, but it does have
two hydro-dams and a landfill gas energy
system, both of which have enabled cities
across the state to increase alternative
energy usage.
By the end of 2009, 16 percent of the
total energy used by the city of Ann
Arbor - including fuel, heating, lighting
and electricity - was generated from
renewable sources - the equivalent of
taking 400 cars off the road last year.
The number is still far from the
mayor's goal of 30 percent, though he
maintains the city will still make up the
14 percent by the end of this year. "We're
going to do it," he says when asked about
making the target.
Though almost doubling the city's
use of renewable energy in just one year
seems unlikely, if anyone is going to
get Ann Arbor to that goal it's Hieftje,
who has made green energy a focus of
his administration from the start. And
even if the city doesn't make it to 30
percent by 2010, the progress the mayor
has made has helped mold Ann Arbor
into a national leader in environmental
practices.
Hieftje's plan stems from his
personal life. Before setting
/ the challenge in 2005, the
mayor and his team made
sm.:: changes, any little thing they could
to make Ann Arbor a greener place. This
proactive work has helped accelerate
Hieftje's goal.
"Because we'd been doing this for so
long," Hieftje said, "by the time I made
the challenge in 2005 we'd already done
all the easy energy savings."
The mayor has been cognizant of
changing all the buses in the city to.
hydro-buses. And while he won't
decommission a perfectly good bus,
he does ensure that when a bus's life
is over, it's replaced with a hydro-bus.
The city has even begun to obtain
hydro-bucket trucks to fix streetlights,
which require substantially less energy
when operating.
"I want Ann Arbor to be
an environmentally focused,
technologically focused, innovative
kind of city that is a place with a high
quality of life where people want to
live," Hieftje said.
Last year, Ann Arbor
ranked sixteenth in the U.S.
Environmental Protection
Agency's list of on-site green
power producers in the
agency's Green Gower Partnership
list. The program acknowledges
organizations that have made the most
resourceful green power purchases.
Ann Arbor was recognized for its
use of biogas, small-hydro power
and solar power. During the summer
months, city biofuel vehicles obtain SO
percent of their energy from bio diesel.
Additionally, the EPA recognized the
mayor's efforts to replace city street
lighting with LED lights.
Ann Arbor is the leading city in the
United States in terms of using LED
streetlights. The downtown area is
almost completely converted at this
point and changes have begun in
neighboring districts. However, the
mayor and his team have faced an
imposing obstacle - 5,000 of the 7,000
lights in Ann Arbor are owned by DTE
energy. This means thatthe city cannot
change the lights to LED without the
company's consent. And while the city
has successfully changed the other
2,000, the push has been met with
resistance from DTE.
"We're going to do everything we
can," Hieftje said. "We're going to be
at 100 percent but we can't affect the
other 5,000 unless we can get them to
agree to be partners with us."
The LEDlightsthe cityhasinstalled,
however, have been remarkably
effective - both environmentally and
economically. The installations have
cost the city $630,000. Predictions
initially projected the investment
would be paid off in approximately five
years. However, researchers from the
Ross School of Business studied the
proposal and determined that the city
would be paid back in about 3.8 years.
"They came back and told us how
productive it is going to be and, from
our point of view, if we can make an
investment that pays itself back in four
years and then forever with energy
savings, we're going to go for it," Hieftje
said. The mayor is so enthusiastic about
LED lights that there is even an LED lit
conference room in city hall.
The bulbs in LED lights last almost
10 years compared to the two-year
lifespan of a normal bulb, and the
bulbs have many capabilities that
are currently being tested. Research
is being done to provide a dimming
feature to the system. This would
reduce the amount of power being used
but would still allow the bulbs to emit
quite a bit of light because of the high
brightness wavelengths released.
Additionally, the mayor and histeam
are trying to formulate a way the lights
can be used for safety. One potential
idea is that each light post in the
city would be hooked into a grid and
assigned a specific number. If someone
placed a call to 911, the operator
could input the caller's location and
flash specific lights to help guide the
ambulance to the victim.
These LED lights could also be
used to light new parking structures
around the city. During night hours,
the parking structure would be dark
to conserve electricity. However, as
motion is sensed, the lights will begin
to turn on in front of you. The lights
will remain on for fifteen minutes after
the motion stops and then begin to
turn off in the same sequence.
"We already expect these (lights)
to last a long time and if we cannot
run them at full power they'll last even
longer," said Andrew Brix, energy
programs manager for the city of Ann
Arbor.
With the increased safety of
residents, the decreased usage of
electricity and the financial savings,
the LED lights appear to be an infallible
option. The University, however, has
decided not to get on board the LED
wagon. Despite the Business School's
excellent productivity results, the
University has not voiced its desire to
make the change to LED.
"We shared what we're doing with
them but they decided it doesn't make
sense for them to do yet, which I don't
understand," Brix said.
LED lights are simply
one phase in a much
bigger plan the mayor
p has for the city. There
is currently agrant put
in place in which businesses can apply for
an energy audit. People can apply for up
to $20,000 to renovate their building to
be more energy efficient. Soon, the mayor
hopes, the plan will be able to expand
to residential areas and help people
restructure their homes.
The program will work like an energy
bank. The city will give people money
to make their buildings or homes more
energy efficient, and the monetary
savings over time will be given back
to the city until the loan is, paid off.
Essentially, once the program is in full
bloom, the money will just be recycled to
continue to help the city.
The largest goal on Hieftje's checklist,
however, is reducing the necessity of
landfills. While his current goal is for Ann
Arbor to be at30 percent renewable energy
bytheendof2010,themayorfirmlybelieves
that someday the city will be completely
sustainable on renewable energy.
But in a society where the average
American has about 1,500 pounds of
trash per year, eliminating landfills
seems unrealistic. So instead, Hieftje and
his team have created a way to actually
recycle the gases being emitted from
landfills. "If you're going to produce all
this animal waste, is there a way to use
it to produce energy?" Hieftje recalls
asking himself a while back.
And there is. When garbage breaks
down in landfills, it creates methane. The
key was to develop a way to tap into that
gas to turn it into energy.
The major landfills in Ann Arbor have
machines that trap the gases and then
convert them into energy. Not only does
this help to produce alternative forms
of energy, it protects the environment.
The machine captures 99 percent of
methane emissions that would normally
be released into the atmosphere.
"We're taking what could be a very
harmful thing for the atmosphere and
turning it into energy," Hieftje said.
In2008, the machines recaptured
over 31,000 metric tons of CO2,
the equivalent of about 6,000 cars'
emissions being recaptured. While
Ann Arbor didn't invent this system,
it was one of the first communities to
adopt the technology. And the program
is a win-win because it is generating
energy while saving the city over
$20,000 ayear.
"We're trying to mitigate the
effects," Hieftje said of the city's
landfills. "Our efforts are going to save
us money in the long run. I don't see
how people can argue with that."
The United States is responsible
for about a fourth of the world's
greenhouse gases. Even though the
acceleration rate of greenhouse gas
emissions has slowed as a result of the
recession, it by no means has begun to
decrease. And while the best thing a
person can do for the environment is
to conserve energy by not burning it in
the first place, the next best option is to
recycle the energy that must be burned.
The mayor has designed and
begun to initiate a new single-source
recycling program for all Ann Arbor
residents, including students that live
off-campus. The plan is to provide
residents a bin to fill with any waste
products that aren't trash. The city will
then pick up the contents of the bin and
sort them so they can be recycled.
This program can dramatically
increase the volume and variety of
recycled materials collected, as most
choose to just throw away items rather
than sort them into proper recycling
groups.
"The planet should be working
toward not having any more landfills
and that's the direction we're going
in," Hieftje said. "We don't want any
more landfills or to pay to put our trash
in landfills."
And the mayor is truly optimistic
about his plans. While his goals are
lofty and possibly unattainable in
the near future, he hopes that in time
people will drastically alter the way
they dispose of waste.
"My goal would be that people would
be putting a lot more in the bin than in
the trash so they'd have a big recycling
cart and asmall trash cart," he said.
One of the most crucial
components to reducing
greenhouse gases in
the city, however, is the
use of solar energy. Ann
Arbor fire stations and city swimming
pools run entirely on solar hot water
heat, and the Ann Arbor Farmers
Market is powered exclusively by solar
panels.
Unobtrusive green panels were
installed on the rooftop of the market
in June 2008. The project, which
cost about $100,000, supplements
approximately $1,500 in electricity
per year. The panels collect DC energy,
which is then converted into AC energy
in a transmitter located in the market.
The AC energy is sent back out to devices
that light and heat the market.
The city's solar Farmers Market
helped earn Ann Arbor the honor of
being named a Solar America City, one of
only twenty-five in the country. The U.S.
Department of Energy awarded this title
to cities that espoused solar technology.
The mayor prides himself on the city's
plethora of "green" buildings.
The police station and courthouse are
as environmentally up to date as possible.
And the new city hall that is being built
is an elite gold LEED certified building,
according to Hieftje. This means the new
building will have the most advanced,
state of the art, green features available
today including geothermal heating on
all floors.
The building was also designed to be
easily updated when new technologies
come out. "An investment in an energy
efficient building costs you upfront but it
comes back to you," Hieftje said.
Hieftje has emphasized
the importance of
investing now to save
later. And his plan was
wisely plotted - beginning far before
the economic recession. In the few years
since Hieftje made his challenge, the city
has made back alarge chunk of the money
it invested. The LED lights, which last
five times as long as normal bulbs, will
save taxpayers money. And the mayor
believes that being environmentally and
fiscally savvy has brought people to Ann
Arbor.
"You'd have to look far and wide to try
to find a city that is doing more than we
do," Hieftje said.
Ann Arbor is a serious frontrunner
in the alternative energy race. On the
technologicalside, the city's webpagehas
won numerous awards for its attention
to the cause. And the mayor himself has
been recognized for the strides he has
personally made for the city. In 2008,
Hieftje received the Environmental
Leadership Award from the Michigan
See HIEFTJE, Page 8B
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