September is Energy Efficiency Month!

With winter around the corner now is the time to make sure you’re making the most of your energy budget. Need tips on weatherizing your home? Looking for the bus schedule? Did you know that you can receive state funding for home weatherization and possibly other home improvements?

We’ve compiled a few handy links to get you started on saving money.

And to find out what the Municipality is doing to cut costs and reduce our impact on the environment, read on!

The Anchorage Department of Neighborhoods provides grants for home weatherization based on income qualification. The income limit for a family of four is $78,700.
http://www.muni.org/CDBG/weatherization.cfm

The Alaska Housing Finance Corporation administers the newly-created Home Energy Rebate Program, which reimburses homeowners up to $10,000 for efficiency improvements- there are no income limits!
http://www.ahfc.state.ak.us/energy/weatherization_rebates.cfm

The Alaska Building Sciences Network produces information on best practices, home energy audits, and more. 
http://www.absn.com/

And don’t forget to make your daily transportation more efficient. See if a route works for you, or sign up for a car-pool at Anchorage’s People Mover transit website:
http://www.muni.org/transit1/index.cfm

You’re doing your part. What about the Municipality?

The Municipality Of Anchorage has been working to make the best use of the energy we have even as we promote new sources of renewable energy for the future.

By maximizing the efficiency of our systems and technologies, Anchorage is reducing our impact on the environment, reducing waste, and saving taxpayer money to the tune of millions of dollars.

A few examples of current initiatives include:

High Performance Building Policy
On August 12, 2008, the Anchorage Assembly unanimously approved a policy requiring green building standards, known as “LEED”, for all pubic buildings over 5,000 square feet. The policy also includes incentives for private construction to encourage LEED adoption throughout the local construction industry.

Best Practices in Building Management
Facilities managers are striving to maximize efficiency throughout the Municipality. In City Hall, employees worked together to earn a GreenStar certification for the building, including effective recycling options, computer power management, and use of compact fluorescent light bulbs.

Building managers at the Performing Arts Center took efficiency to all new levels. After a thorough review of the building, they were able to reduce energy so much that the power company sent out a technician under the assumption that the meter must be broken!

Streetlight Initiative
Anchorage has over 16,000 outdoor lights using 30-year-old technology. Through extensive testing, we’ve identified LED lighting as the technology of the future for outdoor lights, and we are moving ahead with a plan to make LED lights the standard for all of Anchorage’s outdoor lighting. These fixtures use half the energy of current HPS technology, and they last seven times as long.

Following recent Assembly approval of phase 1, roughly 4,000 LED fixtures are on the way to Anchorage and will start going up shortly after their arrival in October. At an initial investment of $2.2 million and an annual savings of $360,000, these fixtures will pay for themselves in less than seven years, and produce ongoing savings for the life of the fixture.