Community Environmental Council, Inc.
Website: http://www.cecsb.org
Put simply, the Community Environmental Council’s goal is to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in Santa Barbara County in one generation. While fossil fuels served their purpose in the last century, our society now faces a nearly perfect storm of problems related to climate change, dependence on foreign oil, and the impending global decline in the production of oil -- known as “peak oil.”
Moving an entire region away from fossil fuels – and then using that experience to help others do the same – is a monumental task that requires changes in policies, infrastructure, and behavior. However, as daunting as the “Fossil Free by ’33” goal may sound, it is doable. CEC’s recent report, A New Energy Direction: A Blueprint for Santa Barbara County, establishes a framework and achievable milestones for meeting our region’s energy needs entirely with renewable energy, bio-fuels and energy efficiency.
For example, nearly 40 percent of the energy needed in Santa Barbara County is used to heat, light, and power our buildings. CEC is leading a group of local architects, builders, and real estate agents to promote a vision adopted by the American Institute of Architects that calls for reducing the fossil fuel energy used by all new and renovated buildings immediately by 50 percent, then ratcheting this goal upward every five years until all buildings are carbon-neutral by 2030. In California, this means pushing local governments to amend their building codes to be more stringent than the state’s. CEC’s efforts are paying off: in October 2007, Santa Barbara’s City Council voted unanimously to require that all new and retrofitted buildings in City limits exceed state energy standards by 20 percent. CEC is now turning its attention to other communities in the region.
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Other strategies for shifting society toward renewable energy are more complex. For example, Santa Barbara does not manufacture cars, nor can it mandate their fuel efficiency. Instead, CEC is guiding the community toward more efficient hybrid-electric vehicles (such as school buses), biofuels (such as ethanol and biodiesel) and other alternatives (such as mass transit). In one of several projects, CEC is working with General Motors and other industry partners to install four biodiesel and/or ethanol fueling stations on the Central Coast, as part of a 15-station corridor in Southern California. In other projects, CEC is helping Santa Barbara shift away from liquid fossil fuels and toward electricity generated by renewable resources by working with cutting-edge technology providers to tap the power of the wind, sun, and even waves.
