A recent article in the Wall Street Journal detailed plans from cities around the globe to cut costs while becoming energy efficient at the same time. The small city of Ann Arbor, Michigan projects its savings at almost $700,000 a year from the installation of LEDs in public street lamps and parking lot lights. Chicago experimented with planting rooftop gardens capable of withstanding harsh winters to cut electricity costs. As many may well know, New York City is attempting to harness the power of tidal currents in the East River to power roughly 640,000 homes.
Though the article detailed six other cities experimenting with alternative energy in an effort to save money and increase efficiency, these three examples are particularly instructive. Each innovative technique is something that the City of Buffalo is capable of doing. Replacing city lamps with LEDs is a cheap and easy fix for the city. Likewise, planting rooftop gardens serves a dual purpose. Not only does it save money, but it creates more usable space for employees. Even the example of New York City’s tidal turbine project is feasible in the Niagara River.
While there certainly is a cost efficiency aspect to going green, there is also the added bonus of creating jobs to service and maintain the infrastructure. Though replacing LEDs and creating roof top gardens may just provide more busy work for city employees or landscapers, there is no doubt that it takes a highly educated and skilled workforce to operate tidal turbines. Monitoring stations and service engineers would be needed year round to ensure their viability.
Though solutions like this may take years to implement, they are certainly not out of the reach for the City of Buffalo. With the great abundance of natural resources available to the area, the city and region can take advantage of its skilled labor force to reinvent itself as a hub for alternative energy. It is also a reminder that the eight windmills in Lackawanna should serve as a starting point and not the culmination of Buffalo’s alternative energy experiments. Not only would the city serve as a national example for green energy, it would save enormous sums of money each year to help solve more pressing needs.
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