Kaptur Organizes Meeting to Focus on Cleaner Energy
March 9, 2016
By: Tom Henry, Toledo Blade
March 9, 2016
From water-treatment plants to shelters for military veterans, a number of business and government leaders brainstormed Tuesday on ways different facilities and neighborhoods might be able to conserve more energy and save costs with cleaner and less-expensive power.
The gathering was organized by the office of U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) for many officials within the 9th Congressional District she represents. It featured all-day participation by two high-ranking U.S. Department of Energy officials her office invited from Washington: Assistant U.S. Energy Secretary David Danielson, whose primary responsibility is running the agency’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and AnnaMaria Garcia, the DOE’s weatherization and intergovernmental program director.
The central theme of the wide-ranging discussion was strength through unity: building stronger partnerships among business and government leaders to deliver energy more efficiency, as well as “energy corridors” among neighborhoods to encourage collaboration on clean and renewable energy projects.
In the afternoon session, inside Oregon city chambers, Toledo Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson joined city managers and utility officials from Lucas to Cuyahoga counties in thinking of ways they could someday streamline services.
The session began with Miss Kaptur lamenting about how the congressional district, which includes Cleveland, spends millions of dollars each year on energy to power its water and sewage plants.
Miss Kaptur and others said the district could become more financially stable if utilities worked closer together on renewable energy projects that could get costs down.
The visit began in the morning at a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-certified veterans housing facility in South Toledo, the Commons at Garden Lake, which is viewed as a model for its efficient design.
The two Energy Department officials spoke there and at the afternoon session about a $26 million program the agency hopes to launch to help as many as 20 cities, counties, and communities operate with more energy efficiency.
Mr. Danielson also told The Blade about a similar project on a multistate level that seeks $110 million in funding. It would provide about $10 million a year, possibly more, to 10 energy initiatives that involve more than one state, he said.
Congress saw a need to create a nexus between water and energy projects in response to the California water drought, Miss Kaptur said.
“The focus in Washington is on the coasts. We’re still in the flyover part of the country to them,” she said.
She hopes the meeting will be the first in a series of energy discussions to help develop “umbrella” protection for the Great Lakes too.
A co-generational project once thought to have great promise for Toledo — one in which methane gases from the city’s Hoffman Road landfill were supposed to generate the Bay View Treatment Plant’s power for years — is on long-term hiatus, if not shuttered permanently, because it didn’t generate results engineers had promised, Mike Schreidah, the treatment plant’s administrator, said.
Mothballed in December, 2014, after five years of operation, the project had a couple of other issues: It was built during recession of 2008, when stock-market crashes drove up prices, and it has since had trouble competing with low natural gas prices during the modern era of fracking, he said.
The outcome of a major case before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, in which FirstEnergy Corp. has asked for guaranteed cash flow to subsidize operations of its aging Davis-Besse nuclear power plant and coal-fired Sammis plant, will impact energy markets throughout Ohio for years to come, Oregon City Administrator Mike Beazley said.