City staff are hard at work on meeting the Energy Challenge goal of 30% renewable energy by 2010. Efforts fall into the three everyday forms of energy: Electricity, Natural Gas, and Transportation.
Electricity
The City is exploring options to purchase renewable electricity, and is looking specifically at the possibility of purchasing wind electricity from a project in Michigan. One possibility is locally-grown wind, and the City is partnering with Washtenaw County and others on the Washtenaw Wind Project, which is an effort to evaluate and encourage wind development in the county. In addition the City owns two hydroelectric dams and a landfill energy facility that produces electricity from gasses generated by the old City landfill. The chart below shows renewable electricity generation from the landfill project and the hydroelectric dams:
![[Chart of Renewable Energy Generation at City Facilities]](/government/publicservices/systems_planning/energy/energychallenge/PublishingImages/RenewableElectricityChart.png)
Natural Gas
The City is planning to install solar domestic hot water systems on its fire stations and already uses solar water heating systems at its three outdoor pools. We are also exploring anaerobic digestion of sewage at our wastewater treatment plant.
Transportation
The City fleet has been using B20 for several years in its diesel vehicles and is currently moving to higher percentage blends of biodiesel (B30 and possibly B50) during the summer months. The City also recently began purchasing E10 for use in its gasoline vehicles. In addition, the City has two electric vehicles and one hydrogen fuel cell vehicle in its fleet that have the potential to run on renewably-generated electricity and hydrogen, respectively.
