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Emissions report ‘general, generic’
YOUNGSTOWN
Members of Youngstown City Council’s community development agency committee aren’t that impressed with the results of a report about the city’s greenhouse-gas emissions.
The report from Global Green USA states the city can save $700,000 to $1 million annually and decrease its emissions.
The savings would come by switching its traffic-signal and street lights to energy-efficient LEDs and make improvements and upgrades to its facilities and operations.
“I didn’t see anything [in the report] that was new,” said Councilman DeMaine Kitchen, D-2nd and vice chairman of the CDA committee, at Monday’s meeting. “It’s kind of irrelevant. I was disappointed.”
The city paid $50,000 for the report. Also, Jack Scott, a former Youngstown resident who runs a technology company in the Salt Lake City area, and the Raymond John Wean Foundation each contributed $25,000.
“It was general and generic,” said Councilman Jamael Tito Brown, D-3rd and CDA committee chairman. “I want specificity.”
Brown said he was “still in the middle of deciphering what [the report] means.”
Global Green, an environmental nonprofit organization based in Santa Monica, Calif., released the study Friday after spending a year preparing it.
The study doesn’t include an estimate of how much it would cost to implement the proposed changes.
The study was an inventory of the city’s operations and facilities, and a detailed audit is needed for a cost estimate, Matt Petersen, Global Green’s president and chief executive officer, said Friday, when the report was released.
Mayor Jay Williams supports the study saying it will help the city save money.
“They should have had how much money it would be to implement” the recommendations, said Councilwoman Annie Gillam, D-1st and a member of the CDA committee. “It wasn’t worth” paying for the study.
A key recommendation was installing LED (light-emitting diodes) energy-efficient lights in traffic signals and streetlights.
The local manager for FirstEnergy Corp., the city’s electric company, recently said it’s expensive to replace those lights and the company wasn’t moving in that direction.
Global Green officials came to Youngstown after meeting with U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, in late 2009.
Global Green primarily focuses its work in southern California, and assisting New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated that city.
On its website, Global Green said it is the “American arm” of an international organization created by former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev “to foster a global value shift toward a sustainable and secure future by reconnecting humanity with the environment.”