November 28 2001—Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley recently outlined the city’s new energy plan, which recommends a number of measures to meet an expected 20 percent increase in Chicago’s electrical power needs by 2010 without harming the environment. The measures that most affect facilities management include:
- Adopting the city’s first Energy Code, which requires energy-efficient building materials in new construction and major rehabs, without significantly increasing costs.
- Retrofitting 15 million square feet of government property with energy-efficient boilers and long-lasting lights.
- Providing grants to companies to improve energy efficiency, and offering energy audits for private buildings and energy bills for homeowners.
- Promoting the Community Energy Cooperative, which provides its members with free and discounted energy-efficient products.
- Providing grants to low-income residents to repair their furnaces or replace them with energy-efficient models.
- Generating 20 percent of the power used by the city government from renewable resources, such as sun, wind, and landfill gas, by 2006.
- Building more co-generation plants, which save money and reduce pollution by using the wasted heat from industries to generate heat and electrical power.
- Linking emergency generators in hospitals and factories across the city to turn them into small-scale power plants.
- Helping private companies generate more of their own electricity through gas-powered generators.
The entire energy plan can be viewed on the City of Chicago’s Web site.
