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Hi, I'm Dave Gardy for Clean Cities TV, the Internet TV channel for the Department of
Energy's Clean Cities program. CCTV features the videos of Clean Cities coalitions across
the country, like this one from the Southern Utah Clean Cities group. The Southern Utah
Clean Cities Coalition participated in an informative Clean Energy Workshop in Moab Utah
June 2, 2011 at the Moab Arts and Recreation Center. The well-attended event featured
workshops, discussions and exhibits giving residents, business owners and contractors a
chance to learn about green building practices, alternative fuels, and incentive programs.
Robin Erickson of Utah Clean Cities introduces some of the participants.
We've got Gordon Larson with Questar who is going to be talking about the success programs
with using compressed natural gas as a fuel of choice. We've got Char starting a brand new
company called Moab Bus and she is going to be transporting people in the community through
public transportation. We've got Irene Dodd who is with our Green River City Council. She
has a big interest in knowing where there is a gas line so Green River can start using
natural gas as an alternative fuel.
Luckily we do have some volunteers today with the Department of Workforces for the State of
Utah. We have 7 or 8 people who are volunteering. These gentlemen here today are signing in
and so today we have -- who are you please. I'm Dave Cousins. Robin: Hi, Dave Cousins, I
heard that you have a natural gas vehicle. Dave: I do, it's right out here. Robin: That's
wonderful, we'll be talking. This is Jeff. Hi Jeff. And you are with the City of Moab.
Jeff: yes. Robin: Awesome, and what do you do for the city? Jeff: Public Works Director.
Robin: Public Works Director, so he's interested in what we're doing in our compressed
natural gas workshop and green building.
Robin also talked to Verna Butcher about the success of an anti-idling program.
Verna, along with her school bus drivers, were involved in a state-wide campaign where Utah
Clean Cities trained 3,000 school bus drivers not to idle their school busses unnecessarily.
During that first year in 2008 they saved 92,000 gallons of diesel fuel and they reduced
their idling time by 24 minutes per day per school bus. And if it wasn't for our school bus
drivers who are taking the initiative to help clean up the air throughout the state we
don't' know what we'd do without you. Verna: .And our drivers also went a step further and
quite idling their own vehicles.
The workshops covered a variety of environmental topics. Robin Erickson, presented an
overview of the Clean Cities Coalition.
You're going to see a number of different things we've been able to develop with the Clean
Cities program over the years
In a talk called "Shift to CNG", Rick Cregar of Wake Tech Community College discussed the
technical aspects of compressed natural gas. Today I want to talk about natural gas or
methane, where it comes from, its properties and benefits quite a bit of engine and vehicle
technology specific to natural gas.
Kelly Thornton of Utah's Workforce Services and Russell Goodrich from the Division of
Professional and Technical Education talked about training programs for green jobs.
Part of the grant is to really create seamless career ladders, transitions for people who
are changing careers or who are advancing in the career that they have.
One of the things that we're doing at the college that's part of the USP grant is we can
train 5 instructors that can do natural gas installations.
Other presentations discussed alternative energy grants, energy efficiency incentives, and
the Questar fleet success story. Breakout sessions offered additional content. In his
keynote, Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker presented the local government perspective.
There is a real excitement going on in cities. There is a very healthy competition that is
going on for many cities, really most cities, around the country, on who can carry the
mantle of the most sustainable city. And to put that in perspective, there are now over
1,000 cities that have adopted Kyoto Protocol and when you think about that 7% of the
population in this country lives in urban areas it means that in many respects cities can be
taking a lot of informative action that hopefully can help address these many issues that
really center around energy use.
In his speech, Mayor Becker also summed up why collaborative workshops such as this are so
important.
I think it means we've got to be aggressive in approaching our use of energy and building
livable communities. We have to work to leverage every partnership that we have in the
public and private sectors. We have to learn and listen to each other.
That workshop packed a lot of valuable content into one day. Congratulations to the Southern
Utah Coalition for a great job. I'm Dave Gardy for Clean Cities TV.
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