Green 2020 effort off the ground

Tree-hugging is green, sure. So are green-collar jobs.
“That’s a big a thrust as the environmental piece. And it’s not just any jobs. You have to balance the economy with the environment, with people, with social conditions. All of those are the focal points here. The environment, carbon reduction, carbon-emission reductions. The economy and green jobs – it’s almost cliche these days, but those jobs are really the jobs of the future,” said Steve Grande, a member of the steering committee of Staunton Green 2020, which held a kickoff meeting Wednesday night at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton.

It was a packed house at the Spencer Center for Civic and Global Engagement, and it wasn’t just a Staunton crowd, even though Staunton Green 2020 is ostensibly a Staunton-focused group at the outset of its lifespan. Already the effort is becoming regional, at the least with my efforts to piggyback something along the lines of a Waynesboro Green 2020 onto what is being done to try to bring green jobs to Staunton, and talk of making the campaign regionwide by including Augusta County and other localities in the Shenandoah Valley as well.

The driver is the number 2020 – as in the year and the goal to have localities participating in the effort producing 20 percent of their energy from clean, renewable sources and cutting their greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020. The path to achieving those goals in turn would create hundreds of green jobs locally, though that is just the tip of the iceberg on the economic front.

“We have industries here that I think could add another product, add wind-generation products, for instance. We have the possibility of biofuels. We’ve seen initiatives to convert agricultural waste to biofuels, for example. That’s exciting to hear,” said Staunton City Councilman Bruce Elder, who took part in the forum.

The local real-estate industry could also end up taking the lead by developing green-friendly housing and commercial-building stock, Elder said.

Taking the lead in that respect is a Waynesboro engineer, Dave Segars, who attended the forum to learn more about what is being talked about with the Green 2020 concept. Segars told me that he is looking to add a green focus to his engineering firm with the anticipation that developers and residential homeowners will come out of the current economic downturn thinking green in terms of improving energy efficiency.

Also playing a leadership role is J. Phillip Dixon, a Staunton entrepreneur who is launching a company called Smart Grid Inc. that he hopes can get in on the ground floor of local efforts to retrofit historic homes and structures in Downtown Staunton and the surrounding area.

“Could we put solar panels on Monticello? Probably not. But if they were available, Jefferson would have definitely had them,” Dixon said. “So to create new standards and new codes on some of these historic homes, that brings them from an energy and livability standpoint up to date, but they still have the charm and historical significance of yesterday, which is what Staunton is all about.
“I think we could take a great leadership role in that, because we have the infrastructure here,” Dixon said.

The next step for Staunton Green 2020 is to ask Staunton City Council to appoint a task force to formally begin the exploration of what needs to be done to establish the floor for a new green economy locally.

Elder anticipates that the City Council will be willing to work toward making that a reality in the coming months.

“I think our City Council has always been very receptive to anything that improves the quality of life in this city. We were unanimous in our support of a rail initiative. We’ve given our steadfast support to recycling efforts. We use biofuels in our trash trucks and our school buses. Anything that we feel is environmentally better, we’ve been doing. And if a task force could help bring new ideas to the fore, let’s go for it,” Elder said.

 

- Story by Chris Graham

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