The municipal buildings for the city of Norfolk, Virginia, should become much more energy efficiency over the next decade.
City councilors at the historic, waterfront community have voted to join the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Challenge. This commits the city of Norfolk to reducing municipal building energy use intensity 20 percent from the 2019 baseline of 199,000 British thermal units per square foot (199 kBtu/ft2) by 2032.
Norfolk’s city leadership has been building to this commitment for about the last five years. In 2017, Mayor Kenny Alexander signed the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate Change and Energy, establishing targets for reducing carbon emissions.
He then created an advisory committee of citizens and business leaders on how to address the city’s environmental challenges.
The energy exhaust from commercial buildings contributes to nearly 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse emissions per year, according to reports.
See EnergyTech's full coverage of Energy Efficiency contributing to the C&I Energy Transition
Two years ago, the city of Norfolk created a new position and hired Esi Langston as its environmental sustainability manager. She has led the municipal workforce acting on the Climate plan approved by councilors.
The Climate Action Plan called the for the city to inventory all municipal and school building rooftops to consider the potential of solar photovoltaic panels. The search extends to non-municipal sites which might make sense for open-land solar arrays, according to reports.
The initiative also seeks to expand residential rooftop solar by 100 households per year through the rest of this decade.
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(Rod Walton, senior editor for EnergyTech, is a 14-year veteran of covering the energy industry both as a newspaper and trade journalist. He can reached at [email protected]).
