![]() Mayor Karen Lang, who took office in January, told E&E News that she hadn’t spoken to a single resident who wanted to pursue the bulk purchase program. Others said West Valley City would lose control over its energy future and could sacrifice reliability. In West Valley City, some council members expressed concern that those costs - and any new energy spending - would raise costs on low-income residents. Every participating community will have to pay in, although a cost-sharing agreement means larger cities will pay more. CREP carries $700,000 in startup costs for legal and technical consultants, program design and filing. The discussions in Utah have highlighted obstacles, especially in a political environment where rising gasoline prices and inflation are at the top of voters’ minds. “Every community has to do this differently, and not everyone has the resources or technical staff to do it.” “A New York or a San Francisco may have a wealth of resources for planning and implementation, but smaller communities won’t,” Kasza said. But there’s a difference between making a commitment and executing it, especially when politics and the costs of implementation come into play, said Nick Kasza, manager of the National League of Cities’ sustainability program. cities was the largest on record, enough to power more than 940,000 homes annually.ĬREP showed that such pledges could even work in a conservative, coal-heavy state like Utah. The 4,370 megawatts of renewable energy announced last year by U.S. executed 290 renewable energy deals in 2021, a 55 percent increase from the previous year. ![]() As the Trump administration stalled national climate action, cities and states set their own ambitious goals and drove much of the country’s move toward clean energy and transportation - a trend that has continued even as the Biden administration has pushed for a decarbonized grid and is working on a climate package with congressional Democrats.Īccording to data from the World Resources Institute, 155 cities in the U.S. That U-turn shows the challenge some cities face when confronting the political and logistical hurdles of acquiring clean energy. Five other cities that initially joined CREP also backed out before last month’s deadline, according to Utah 100 Communities, an organization representing the program’s participants. ![]() Just ahead of a May 31 deadline to officially commit to CREP and pay administrative costs, the City Council elected to back out. Less than three years later, however, West Valley City reversed course. “This is more than a dream, we’re taking action,” said then-West Valley City Mayor Ron Bigelow in 2019, according to the West Valley Journal.
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