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San Jose, California’s “Green Vision” Goals – From AMR Research

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

John Davies’ team at AMR Research has been pulling up some interesting stuff over the last while as noted in their Green Alert, and this time, they put the spotlight on San Jose, California…not too far ‘down the street’ from some of us. Davies is VP of AMR’s Sustainability Forum. This is from last week’s Green Alert.

Rick Fedrizzi, CEO and co-founder of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), recently said (as quoted in “A Tale of Four Cities”): “It’s obvious that the most effective leadership we have today … is coming from our cities. Block by city block they are intent on reshaping their main streets and suburbs … into sustainable communities that promise a better quality of life for all their citizens.”

Thinking about the wide range of environmental and sustainability initiatives in cities across the country, we were reminded that the Hollywood writers’ strike has left us without some of our most important news sources. Especially missed is The Colbert Report’s “Better Know a District” where U.S. representatives trade their dignity for a chance to promote their district. With no end to the writers’ strike in sight (and no need to see mayors trade their dignity), we’re considering an occasional series we’ll call “Know Your Mayoral Green Initiatives.”

The fightin’ tenth sees green

We came back from Greenbuild (see “Green Builds a Community”) after listening to four mayors vie for bragging rights as the greenest city in America only to get on the phone with the San Jose mayor’s office. In a conversation with Steven Brewster, of the city’s Economic Development Office, and Collin O’Mara, the city’s cleantech policy strategist, we discussed Mayor Chuck Reed’s “Green Vision,” some of the projects that are already under way, and how a city can help, in the words of its mayor, “lead the world in solving environmental challenges … and create solutions that change the course of global events.”

San Jose is the tenth largest city in the United States. Over the next 30 years, its growth rate is projected to outstrip neighbors San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont combined. The city has transformed completely in the past 50 years, moving from canneries and packing plants to semiconductors and computers, with its eyes on even greater diversity of industry and increased prosperity.

In early October 2007, Mayor Chuck Reed introduced the city’s 15-year “Green Vision” roadmap, focusing on three core elements:

* Clean technology
* Sustainability
* Green mobility

The mayor envisions a self-sustaining city with virtually no waste, no carbon-footprint, and no harmful carbon emissions, where power is generated from renewable resources. Of the 10 major goals articulated by the mayor, 9 are directly targeted at improving the city’s physical environment.

In terms of sustainability, the city council has adopted the most aggressive municipal greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals in the nation, cutting emissions 25% from 1990 levels in the next five years, 50% by 2030, and 80% by 2045. Achieving this target has motivated the city to set 15-year goals for reducing per capita energy use by 50% and receiving 100% of its electrical power from clean renewable sources.

Contributing to energy reduction is the plan to build or retrofit 50-million square feet of green buildings. In terms of goals for waste reduction, the city will strive to divert 100% of waste from landfills and wherever possible set up ways to convert waste into energy. The city will also seek to recycle or beneficially reuse 100% of its wastewater, approximately 100-million gallons per day.

Transportation and mobility also figure high into the emission reduction goals. In Santa Clara County, more than 40% of GHG emissions come from cars, trucks, buses, trains, and other transport. To counteract this, the city is developing a long-term general plan that incorporates sustainable development standards. This includes promoting high density residential and commercial development near mass transit and a limiting of low-density housing. In other plans, they will convert 100% of their public fleet to run on alternative fuels and plant 100,000 new trees.

Creating the world center of cleantech innovation

While the city’s goals are positive and reflect a very progressive approach toward environmental and sustainability concerns for the city, our conversation turned to San Jose’s current bid to be the capital of cleantech.

Mr. Brewster noted that an important consideration of the mayor’s “Green Vision” is that current technology will not be enough to get the city to its goal of 80% GHG emissions reductions by 2045. To foster the next generation of technology, San Jose is hoping to use its experience incubating entire technology sectors (much as it did for biotech and Internet sectors).

Several factors favor San Jose’s bid to be the world center of cleantech. First is the number of world-class research centers and universities housing cutting-edge scientists in the area.

Until recently, they have been focusing more on discovery than commercialization. With the overall growth in the cleantech sector, increasingly these scientists are being introduced to the region’s unrivalled access to venture capital and the associated entrepreneurial ecosystem (including the experienced management to lead these new ventures). Add to that a supportive governmental infrastructure and it seems hard to place bets against the region’s impending cleantech leadership. In fact, the city has even gotten into the venture capital support system with the country’s first city-sponsored venture fund (see “A New Ecosystem for Venture Capital”).

These incubation and commercialization efforts are at the crux of the initiatives the city of San Jose is currently pursuing. By nurturing a growing cleantech industry, the city hopes to see the creation of 25,000 cleantech jobs in the next 15 years. While San Jose is addressing questions city governments don’t typically address, the end result is what political leaders have always been elected for: creating new jobs and improving the quality of life for their citizens.

Is your city implementing a bold plan? Should your metropolis be the next in line for our readers to “know your mayoral green initiatives?” Tell me what they’re doing at jdavies@amrresearch.com.

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