City Operations
Introduction
To effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions, significant changes need to occur to a range of functions in the municipal government operations including energy efficiency, fuel efficiency, purchasing choices, and equipment operation among others. The City plans to lead by example with improvements throughout the City’s departments, facilities and functions.
What's Being Done
- New or renovated City buildings are using green building techniques.
- Existing City owned buildings are being audited for their energy consumption and recommendations are being made to improve their performance.
- Minimum fuel efficiency standards have been set for all new City vehicle purchases.
- The Santa Fe Solid Waste Management Agency diverted approximately 3400 tons of waste from the landfill in 2006.
- A program is underway to recover methane from the wastewater treatment plant and use it to help power the treatment process.
- All Incandescent traffic signal bulbs have been replaced with LED bulbs. This change has resulted in an 85% reduction in electric use.
Actions Included in the Plan
- Develop a workplace training program to help city staff reduce the impacts of their daily operations.
- Follow the recommendations of the energy audits once completed.
- Review the City’s purchasing manual and propose revisions that would reduce the impact of city purchases including: reduced packaging, reduced toxicity, increased local and organic food, increased recycled material content, leveraged purchasing power of sustainable products through partnerships with the County and/or the State, increased local and low-mileage purchases, increased waste reduction (reduced disposables), increased recycling, increased water harvesting, and increased energy efficiency.
- Move towards plug-in electric hybrid technology for all appropriate fleet vehicles paired with solar photovoltaic recharge stations.
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