Sunnyvale Cool Meeting November 15, 2007

Since the '90's Sunnyvale has been capturing landfill gas and converting it to electricity, greatly reducing the City's carbon footprint. The City has purchased hybrids, electric cars, and electric golf carts. Sunnyvale put solar electric panels on the SeniorCenter; solar electric is going up on a firehouse. We have replaced incandescent bulbs with LED's in the traffic signals. Sunnyvale has replaced computer monitors with energy-sipping flat-screens and is replacing HVAC units in city buildings with more efficient ones. Our city government recycles extensively in its operations--even including cartridges from the police practice range--and at the curbside, saving tons of CO2 emissions each year. The City has broken ground for a multi-use downtown, with office, housing and shopping all within walking distance. The entire downtown redevelopment will be LEED (green) certified. Last summer, Sunnyvale became a pledging partner of Sustainable Silicon Valley, thereby committing to reducing greenhouse gasses from city government facilities and operations. Sunnyvale has completed a greenhouse gas audit of city government operations and facilities and is considering next steps. This fall, our council ratified the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, thus committing Sunnyvale to striving to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the entire city.

First priority: to encourage the City Council to robustly implement the recently-adopted Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement. We urge Sunnyvale to organize to systematically reduce citywide emissions by:
· conducting a citywide baseline greenhouse gas audit ;
· setting a meaningful citywide goal for reducing them;
· formulating a comprehensive Climate Protection Plan to reach the goal;
· implementing the plan.

Other Sunnyvale Cool Cities activities include informing ourselves, supporting other city actions to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, reducing our own personal carbon footprints, helping others reduce theirs.

Our next meeting will be this coming Thursday, November 15, 7:15 PM at Toyota of Sunnyvale (El Camino between Mary and Hollenbeck), second floor classroom.

Official Website: http://sunnyvalecool.org/meetings.htm