Energy / Santa Clarita, California: 2010 Smarter City - Energy

Behind the success is the city’s work with The Energy Coalition, a nonprofit that combines energy-saving efforts of communities and utilities, resulting in initiatives tailored to unique community needs. In Southern California, the coalition facilitates the Community Energy Partnership (CEP)—a collaboration between Southern California Edison, Southern California Gas Company and seven cities, including Santa Clarita.

An Energy-Focused Community

Santa Clarita joined the CEP in 2004, says Heather Meranda, the city’s sustainability planner. Since then, “the focus has changed from more of a [municipal] tune up and an audit,” to an effort to bring energy savings to “hard-to-reach locations like low-income neighborhoods and mobile homes,” says Merenda. The CEP continues to help partners with municipal energy projects, but a substantial percentage of the current initiatives focus on educating the community about energy efficiency in general and more specifically about the energy-saving programs available to businesses and residents.

Currently, Southern California Edison provides customer rebates for upgrading existing structures and fixtures with Energy Star-qualified products and, under the Savings by Design program, for following LEED standards for new construction. CEP helps to inform the community about such opportunities, and it also provides support more directly through small building energy tune-ups and bulb exchanges. In 2005, the CEP gave to Santa Clarita residents free PEAK energy packs, each worth over $250 in energy savings. Goodies in each pack included a compact fluorescent light bulb, a six-inch clip fan, an air filter alarm that alerts the resident when the filter needs to be changed and weather stripping—along with energy saving tips and tools.

To get the message out to the community, the CEP spends a week in fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade classrooms, teaching students about energy production, ways to save and renewable energy alternatives. The PEAK Student Energy Actions program takes place during the California state-mandated energy education week. The program is designed to teach young people and help students bring the message home to their parents. CEP “gives them homework and they do a checklist of their house,” explains Merenda.

Meanwhile, the City of Santa Clarita has been working on its own checklist, using Energy Star qualifications to benchmark municipal buildings. Top on the list of the city’s projects is an upgrade of the Transit Maintenance Facility that covers about 40,000 square feet and services around a hundred public buses each day. The city is installing solar canopies for the buses to cool down in without idling that will generate more than a million kilowatt hours annually, converting the station into a net-zero energy user. Santa Clarita is also in the planning stages of a LEED-certified library in Newhall, one of the cities poorest communities. “There’s a lot of need down there,” says Merenda, and “the city is committed to building a very beautiful building.”