Every budget season for municipal (local) government has a certain element of “the sky is falling.” Last year by June, more than 45,000 jobs had been cut by state and local governments. The sky fell for some. This year, predictions are just as dire, the private sector economy is stumbling through huge layoffs not seen in a generation, and local governments are going through the belt-tightening drill. Just like every year.
I was looking for a positive angle when I started this, and perhaps here is one: we are now thinking of ways to change. The largest portions of any municipal budget are wages and energy. If we can (this is a big if) change the cost of energy for the long term, local governments and all government will be better off.
When the federal government adopted Adobe pdf documents, everybody adopted Adobe. When the federal government changes energy sourcing…
T, Boone Pickens thinks so too. Today: Energy is Still a Piece of the Economic Puzzle
I am fully with you on the huge opportunity to cut costs through energy savings. The California DOJ won the first “Green IT” award from Center for Digital Government in 2008 as a result of implementing power management software on their network – they are saving over $200k/year and achieving a 47% decrease in energy consumption for the PC and monitor. And they applied for energy rebates from the utilities companies which offset their cost and drove ROI down to 3 months. The business case more or less writes itself.
Here’s another resource I recently discovered on this topic: http://statetechmag.com/issues/february-march-2009/power-conservation.html
Great link and great comments, thanks Elizabeth. I just feel it in my bones that energy sourcing is linked to our future goals.