New ICLEI Director to Washington: Cities Need Freedom to Innovate

The real action on climate change isn’t in Congress or UN meetings.

It’s in places like Chula Vista, Calif., where the city’s offer to provide free energy evaluations identified over 5 million kWh in savings in municipal and private buildings over two years — and saw about 3.8 million kWh of savings implemented.

And Denver, where a decision to replace more than 48,000 traffic light bulbs and pedestrian signals with LEDs is saving more than $800,000 per year in energy, labor and material costs.

And Boston, the first major U.S. city to change its zoning code to require all construction of large private buildings to meet high LEED standards for energy efficiency. By one projection, the first 48 building projects under review could eventually see $4 billion a year in energy savings.

The key selling point in all of these cities — for the mayors and residents alike — is just how much money they can save with innovative energy and resource efficiency steps that limit their impact on climate change at the same time.

Martin Chavez saw first hand the benefits and challenges of turning a city green during 16 years as mayor of Albuquerque, N.M. He led the city as it cut its water use by one-third to avoid with the danger of its aquifer running dry and as it implemented green building standards and targets for energy efficiency.

He also butted heads with the federal government, particularly when parts of the city’s green building code were put on hold by a federal district judge in late 2008, in part because they were preempted by federal law.

With that experience fresh in his mind, Chavez takes over today as the new executive director of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA, a 20-year-old network of more than 600 local governments in the United States focused on sustainability. The U.S. arm of the international organization is based in Boston, but Chavez will be spending most of his time in Washington, D.C., with a goal of making sure the federal government supports cities rather than getting in their way.

“When it comes to addressing climate change, ICLEI is the most important environmental organization in the country because local governments are leading the fight,” Chavez says. “We want to make sure the local governments are at the table as federal legislation is crafted — make sure we’re calling the shots, or it’s a chunk out of our hides.”

Chavez is already working with Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee, to ensure that any climate and energy legislation will increase standards for efficiency but also allow for more experimentation at the local level — including higher standards like Albuquerque’s building codes.

The former mayor comes from a perspective that the marketplace is the strongest agent of change, and the marketplace in this case is the cities where innovation is already under way.

“The government ought not to be dictating the technology but dictating the outcome and letting the market determine the technology,” he says. “If legislation discourages innovation, that’s short-sighted.”

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