By Daily Press staff
Santa Monica and 13 other cities, representing nearly 4 million citizens, have signed on to the Energy Freedom Challenge (EFC) in its first year.
Each city has publicly taken a strong stand in support of clean, renewable and domestically-produced energy. The EFC is also dubbed “America’s Race to Independence through Renewable Energy.”
The other 13 founding cities include Austin, Tex.; San Diego; Portland, Ore.; Sacramento; Albuquerque, NM.; Eugene, Ore., Ann Arbor, Mich.; Boulder, Colo.; Santa Barbara, Alameda, Calif.; Cuyahoga Falls, Willits, and Moab, Utah. In an effort to encourage U.S. cities to achieve independence from foreign and environmentally harmful energy sources, the race challenges cities to satisfy over half of their electricity needs using clean energy resources such as wind, solar and bioenergy. To meet the challenge, municipalities, consumers, government, energy providers, industry, and advocates must work together.
“The city of Santa Monica supports the Energy Freedom Challenge and commits to increasing its renewable energy use through clean distributed generation systems,” said Santa Monica Mayor Bob Holbrook. “We are launching a long-term Community Energy Independence Initiative that will install energy efficiency and solar systems in Santa Monica homes and businesses. We believe that this is the path towards energy independence.”
Participating cities will submit annual tracking reports itemizing electricity purchases — expressed in megawatt hours, or MWhs — by type of resource (e.g. solar, wind, geothermal) and method of purchase (e.g. on-site generation, renewable energy certificates, green pricing program).
Cities compete in four different size categories, from populations under 50,000 to those more than 500,000. Cities that submitted their official entry forms in year one of the EFC are “founding cities” and will comprise the EFC advisory board. Cities that join in year two and beyond will be designated “freedom cities.”
Two sponsor groups created and manage the EFC. Solar Austin, a clean energy advocacy group located in Austin, Tex., oversees all business and management aspects of the EFC. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the nation’s leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and safer world, defines all technical aspects of the EFC, including metrics and competition rules. The U.S. Department of Energy, through its Solar America Initiative, awarded initial funding to Solar Austin to launch the Challenge.
For more information, visit www.energyfreedomchallenge.org or contact Joni Gilton, EFC program coordinator, at (512) 306-0898, or
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 19, 2006. Read the original PDF.