Pittsburgh reducing carbon footprint through renewable energy sources

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto on Friday signed an agreement maintaining membership in a group that purchases electricity in bulk and positions the city to meet a goal of transitioning away from fossil fuel energy within 10 years.

Peduto said the Western Pennsylvania Energy Consortium, consisting of 35 local municipalities, institutions and nonprofits, permits the city to purchase electricity at auction for lower prices and from a greater number of renewable sources.

Joining the mayor for a signing ceremony in his office were Barbara Baker, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium, and James Stitt, sustainability manager for the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority. The zoo and PWSA are members of the consortium and its largest electricity consumers.

“Purchasing of renewable energy is something where we’re at about 35% right now,” Peduto said. “To build capacity we need partners. Having the zoo and PWSA - the zoo with its technical expertise, PWSA with its capacity as the largest user of energy of local government - allows us to get the capacity to build that to at least 50% … renewable by next year.”

The mayor has pledged that the city will reduce energy and water consumption by 50% and convert its fleet to fossil free fuel for a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

The city has been purchasing bulk electricity since 2007 when it created the consortium. The latest agreement ends next year.

Grant Ervin, Pittsburgh’s sustainability manager, said the consortium is moving from the retail energy market, which includes smaller residential and commercial customers, to wholesale available only to large consumers. He said the group purchases a total of about 170 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each year at about 5.5 cents to 5.6 cents per kWH.

Moving to wholesale will lower that cost, he said, and allow members to have sub-accounts to purchase electricity directly from renewable energy suppliers.

“Part of our objective is what we call kind of the farmers market approach,” Ervin said. “We want to buy our renewable power as close to home as possible. The reason for that is we feel we can optimize price, we can create economic development opportunities and also provide the greatest amount of environmental benefit in terms of air quality and things like that.”

Ervin could not immediately provide the city’s annual energy cost savings, but said the consortium has saved a total of about $440,000 per year on average.

Baker and Stitt said the pact has saved their organizations “hundreds of thousands” over the years.

“It’s easily in the neighborhood of a half-million dollars less than what we would normally pay,” Stitt said. “More important to us is the power we are buying is cleaner. With this group we have the kind of buying power to make these demands on the suppliers.”

Peduto said the city in 2020 plans to retrofit diesel equipment for the use of biodiesel fuel and increase purchases of hybrid and electric vehicles for its fleet.

City officials also are working with consultants on a plan to build a plant that would generate electricity by burning city garbage with little environmental impact, Peduto said.

He said the ideal site would be near the Alcosan plant in Woods Run, and Alcosan could potentially partner with the city to burn its sludge waste.

“That will be somewhere around 2027 or so where we build a facility to convert landfill into energy,” he said. “It would use the actual garbage itself and burn it at a very, very high rate. It provides no particulate matter because of the heat of the system.”