IRVINE : City Energy Savings Become a Team Goal

To help reduce energy costs and pollution, the city has agreed to work with utility companies and the nonprofit California Energy Coalition to produce city conservation policies for the next 20 years.

This long-range, team approach will be the first time any city has been so thoroughly examined, from Irvine’s light bulbs to its heating systems to its vehicle fleet, said John B. Phillips, executive director of the Laguna Beach-based California Energy Coalition.

Along with the gas and electric companies, the coalition will be paying the estimated $330,000 cost for the 18-month study, Phillips said.

“It’s never been done before for any major community in the country,” Phillips said.

“It’s the development of a total energy efficiency plan for all energy uses in the city of Irvine.”

Irvine agreed to become the subject of the analysis because of the possibility of saving taxpayers money through reduced utility costs, with minimal city staff involvement, said Michael S. Brown, Irvine’s environmental affairs manager.

The coalition, a group of large energy users in the county, brought Southern California Edison and Southern California Gas Co. together to help work on the long-range plan, Phillips said.

The coalition has a public outreach fund that will pay about 40% of the energy plan’s cost, he said, with the utilities paying the rest.

The coalition chose Irvine because of the city’s prior commitment to environmentally beneficial programs, he said. The agreement among the city, utilities and the coalition was announced Friday at City Hall.

The coalition hopes that the report will outline how Irvine can save a large percentage of energy through new technology, changed practices or other techniques, Phillips said. The report could then become a model for the other 180 or so cities served by the utilities, he said.

The plan calls for the city to identify its current and expected energy needs, then to have energy experts look for ways those needs can be met with less energy, such as by using natural gas-powered vehicles or other technologies, said James Harger, special projects manager for Southern California Gas.

The report will seek to identify ways that the city can not only reduce its utility bills but also encourage savings among businesses and residences, Phillips said.

He said that he could not provide examples of how the city would do that but that the measures would not be regulatory or mandatory.

Irvine officials have entered into the agreement as “enthusiastic skeptics,” Brown said. “If they can demonstrate to us that we can save money, we’re willing to look at it.

“We really want to see whether it will work before we commit ourselves to it.”

But because of the systematic nature of the planned energy review, Brown said, the recommendations that come out of it have the potential for saving the city money.