At this week's Michigan Green Communities Workshop organized by a team of five graduate students affiliated with U-M's School of Natural Resources, municipalities and non-profits around southeast Michigan will be sharing the latest environmental infrastructure know-how.
The workshop will provide an update to the
Michigan Green Communities Challenge, a reporting mechanism for communities to track sustainability activity and share information with one another. The Economic Energy Analysis tool will also be making its debut there.
The tool is "a framework and a model for different communities to assess their baseline energy consumption patterns," says Courtney Lee, a graduate student at U-M's School of Natural Resources and one of the organizers. It uses modeling to estimate how much a community is spending on energy imports and how much energy is being lost during transmission.
The city of Detroit will make a presentation on the greening of its operations, followed by the cities of Wyandotte, Eastpointe, and Huntington Woods. Ann Arbor-based Clean Energy Coalition, NextEnergy, and the Southeast Michigan Regional Energy Office will also be featured presenters.
Additionally, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) will make a presentation focusing on green infrastructure, including its Green Streets program. "We are working with Oakland County, Macomb County, Wayne County and the city of Luna Pier to develop projects along road corridors that can manage some of the stormwater running off the streets through low-impact development and practices, like planting of bioswales and street trees with under drains using green infrastructure techniques, specifically along identified roadways within this corridor area," says Angela Ayers, an environmental planner for SEMCOG.
The workshop, to be held on Friday, Feb. 24 at
NextEnergy in Detroit, is the third in a series being offered around the state. Others were recently held in Traverse City and Muskegon. "In the previous two workshops, communities presented on a really wide range of activities, from energy efficiency and conservation and land use planning, so it's really a very wide variety of activities," says Seth Federspiel, workshop organizer and U-M School of Natural Resources graduate student.
Representatives from various state agencies, 10 nonprofits, and 16 municipalities, including the city of Ann Arbor, will be in attendance.
Sources: Courtney Lee and Seth Federspiel, workshop organizers and U-M School of Natural Resources graduate students; Angela Ayers, environmental planner for SEMCOG
Writer: Tanya Muzumdar
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