Energy / El Paso, Texas: 2010 Smarter City - Energy

Credit: Hectore/Flickr

With 302 days of unadulterated sun each year, it comes as no surprise that El Paso (aka “Sun City”), Texas is aggressively pursuing onsite solar energy with a 20 megawatt solar plant due to begin construction this year. The project is running on the heels of the completion of a $15 million municipal building energy upgrade project that will save El Paso 11,300 tons of greenhouse gases a year and $20 million over the next ten years.  The efforts are in support of the city’s new mission to limit energy use to 70 percent of 2008 levels by 2014. In recognition of these programs and more, El Paso has joined the ranks of NRDC’s Smarter Cities for municipal energy production and conservation.  The city is also recognized for the targets it has set for energy conservation, including a goal to have 20 renewable energy projects in place by 2015, for its initiatives that encourage decentralized power generation, its plans to monitor city progress and for its community education programs.

 

Sun City to Solar City

In West Texas a single acre of land can collect enough solar energy to replace 800 barrels of oil each year, according to the Texas State Energy Conservation Office.  The installation El Paso recently commissioned through eSolar will use 250 acres just across the New Mexico border in Doña Ana County and, through an existing El Paso Electric transmission line, is expected to run enough solar energy into El Paso to power 7,000 homes.  The solar thermal plant should be fully operational by summer of 2011. As an organization, the City of El Paso estimates that their energy needs could be met completely with a 30 megawatt facility, says El Paso’s Sustainability Manager Marty Howell.

Municipal Tune-Up

The city itself is working on upgrades, investing $14.7 million just recently into retrofitting the aging infrastructure in 53 municipal buildings and 6,600 traffic signals. “We’re saving $50,000 a month just from switching to LEDs,” says Howell. But still there’s more to be done, and El Paso is in the beginning stages of a plan to tighten city screws even more with $5.8 million in retrofits and other upgrades to the remaining 132 facilities. But this time around, the city is implementing a system to monitor performance of the upgrades for the next five years, implementing changes at an additional cost when necessary. “We want to take advantage of every innovation that comes up in the next five years,” Howell says.

Beyond traffic signals and solar, the city has invested a million dollars in a landfill gas-to-energy project that will collect the heat-trapping gas methane from the Clint landfill and use it to generate a megawatt of energy to start, and 8 megawatts by 2032. The project is expected to save 100,000 metric tons of CO2e this year alone. $100,000 is budgeted for a 10-15 kilowatt solar photovoltaic power system.