Charlottesville goes for more green

It’s no secret that, after having received 12 awards just this year for its efforts, Charlottesville is hooked on green building.

But despite the environmental accolades, “there’s going to be a lot of work ahead of us,” Kristel Riddervold, the city’s environmental administrator, said at a recent event to celebrate the city’s prizes for sustainability.

“It’s a challenge, but it’s a good one,” she said.

So what does Charlottesville have in store next for green building and sustainability?

With energy costs still on the rise, officials and staff are in the process of crafting goals and answering that very question.

The city has already racked up significant cost savings between its government and school buildings, saving more than $134,000 in gas and electricity costs between the 2007 and 2008 fiscal years. The city’s November construction report also said that $43,573 was saved in energy costs during the past two months.

Lance Stewart, Charlottesville’s facilities maintenance manager, said the city’s largest buildings naturally consume the most energy.

“Charlottesville High School is our largest energy consumer, followed by the City Hall complex, Walker Upper Elementary School and Buford Middle School,” he said.

Stewart said a variety of areas — such as roof replacement projects and heating and air conditioning renovations — have contributed to reduced heating and cooling costs.

“We have seen a marked reduction in energy consumption, however, simply by increasing our efforts to engage and educate building occupants regarding the relationship between energy consumption and the environment, and ways to reduce the negative impact of energy use by mindful building-use practices,” he added.

Despite all the city’s green efforts, one thing is clear — local leaders are increasingly feeling the need to incorporate the private sector because of its huge influence on energy efficiency and the city’s carbon footprint.

A baseline carbon emissions audit done by the city found that government and school buildings constitute a mere 3 percent of Charlottesville’s total carbon emissions.

“We’ve done a lot with our municipal buildings and our schools,” Mayor Dave Norris said. “We’re trying to figure out how the city can be a catalyst for these changes to happen in the private sector.”

Making such efforts outside the realm of government is no small task, because the city has limited authority in terms of what it can ask of developers and property owners.

Riddervold said one of the biggest challenges Charlottesville has is figuring out ways to retrofit the sizeable number of old buildings in town, many of which have existed for decades upon decades.

“We are a very built-out city,” she said.

Those older homes tend to use more energy than necessary, Norris said, and are typically more expensive to make energy efficiency upgrades.

“Particularly in terms of retrofitting our existing housing stock, that’s where the work remains to be done,” Norris said.

To assist those people making improvements, where the biggest obstacles are upfront costs, the city already has property tax incentives and tax breaks in place for low-income residents.

“We want to reach people who wouldn’t be doing it on their own,” Councilor David Brown said.

Additionally, officials are trying to get more financing initiatives for green-related improvements passed through the General Assembly.

“The difficulty is, when you have old infrastructure, it’s costly,” said Ridge Schuyler, Piedmont Program director for the Nature Conservancy. “Everything we do in the city just seems to be more expensive than we would like.”

New construction does not create as much of a problem, with developers coming to the city with ways to decrease their project’s carbon footprint.

In recent years, the city has also adopted various environmental measures with sustainable building practices in mind — such as a low-impact development ordinance and an environmental checklist for incoming projects that need rezonings or special-use permits.

Plus, Norris said, new developments tend to be more environmentally friendly than ones built years ago.

“You’re starting to see it almost become the norm now,” he said.

Something that is just beginning to be evaluated, though, is a greater effort to conserve water.

Local architect and developer Bill Atwood is building an 85,000-square-foot, mixed-use development on West Main Street. While infill development is something increasingly common within city limits, the 270,000-gallon rainwater catching device on top of Atwood’s building is something that Charlottesville has not seen a whole lot of.

“Now we need to save the water and hide the water,” Atwood said.

Most of the water saved in Atwood’s project will be used to flush toilets, while some will also be used for landscaping and cooling purposes. Green roofs are useful and contribute to energy savings, he said, but even that invention has its weaknesses.

“Most green roofs have stress because it’s a difficult environment for a plant to survive,” Atwood said.

Riddervold said in terms of green technology and methods used to decrease the city’s energy output, water is something that remains, for the most part, untapped.

The city has very few examples of rainwater conservation devices, but the idea is catching more attention.

“It appears to be a very hot topic right now,” Riddervold said. “You’ve got a really valuable resource falling out of the sky.”

Schuyler said preserving rainwater would ultimately lead to lower energy bills and a reduced carbon footprint.

“Those are the kinds of innovative ideas that can really take hold if you can prove they’re feasible,” he said.

Riddervold said the city’s immediate goals, apart from incorporating the private sector more in its green-building efforts, is to come up with a climate and sustainability action plan. The plan, she said, will help the city find new opportunities to incorporate sustainable practices.

Plus, Brown said educating residents about energy efficiency and motivating them to change their behavior is also something that needs to be worked out.

“I’m hoping it’s not that hard because most of the things you can do basically puts money in your pocket,” Brown said.

But, Schuyler added, what’s good for society may not convince people to make those drastic changes and foot the bill to make improvements.

“That’s a tough nut to crack,” he said. “It’s going to take a lot of convincing.”