San Antonio's major Julian Castro announced a partnership to bring five cleantech companies to San Antonio next year or so. This is under his overarching Mission Verde Plan that wants to make San Antonio the greenest city in the U.S. I am excited that San Antonio is doing a lot of activities to make the city sustainable and promote greener lifestyle among city residents. While working as the energy management intern at Office of Environmental Policy, City of San Antonio, I am glad that my work to benchmark city-owned facilities for utility consumption will assist the city to become greener by reducing its energy consumption.
CPS Energy is also aggressively supporting renewable energy generation by calling for investors to build utility-scale PV in the region in the upwards of 400 MW. This will place San Antonio on the charts among the cities with the largest PV installations. Since CPS Energy is a municipal owned utility with a monopoly in San Antonio for supplying electricity and natural gas to homes and businesses, it can drive changes from top-down very easily. In addition, unlike privately owned utilities, it is not always trying to maximize profits. It has responsibly encouraged homes and businesses to perform energy audits that are highly subsidized by CPS Energy, either through its own funds or stimulus money. It also supports installations of programmable thermostats and many smart meters as part of pilot program have already been installed. Its website offers numerous suggestions on how to reduce energy consumption and what kind of electrical appliances to buy/install for maximum efficiency. This is a very exciting time to be in San Antonio, Texas or the South in general because it is among the leading regions in renewable energy production and cleantech jobs.
No comments:
Post a Comment