The Pittsburgh plan

Pittsburgh’s certification is the municipal part of a plan to integrate efficiency and resilience among its big players, including corporations and institutions, said Grant Ervin, the city’s resilience coordinator.

The Green Building Alliance is helping Pittsburgh chart the performance of its largest buildings, an initiative that will include the commercial sector next year.

“Commercial buildings are among the largest generators of greenhouse gas emissions and one of biggest opportunities for savings,” he said.

After the city analyzed its 1,000-vehicle fleet and its emissions, Mr. Ervin said, it prioritized replacements. It will buy electric cars for the Permits, Licensing and Inspections staff and refit 25 dump trucks to run on biodiesel fuel.

The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University have helped the city reduce energy use in its offices. On the sixth floor of the City-County Building, Mr. Ervin said, “we have censors on utility meters to monitor consumption, from plugs to servers and lights. We want to expand that.”

The city has installed 10,000 LED streetlights, with 30,000 still to upgrade. That investment should reduce energy use by almost half, he said. LED traffic signals to better manage traffic flow are in the offing, he said.

Upgraded technology and lighting in publicly owned parking garages have saved “hundreds of thousands of dollars a year,” Mr. Ervin said. The URA alone saved $123,000 within the first year, he said.

Cities are obvious leaders in sustainability, both by design and because they have more capacity and bigger budgets, Mr. Price said. (Philadelphia has gold certification as do 22 other municipalities.) But small towns of modest means can save their taxpayers significant money.

Source: Cranberry Township

Millvale model

After the 2004 flood, Millvale, a borough of almost 4,000, began planning with towns upstream to prevent future flooding, said Amy Rockwell, borough manager. “Our public works people now work together all the time because we see how everything interconnects.”

Millvale’s 13 traffic lights now run on LED technology, and LED streetlights are being phased into the business district. Mr. Machajewski said he expects a four-year payback after implementation.

The community library and an adjacent business are solar powered, and every quarter, they get credits from Duquesne Light, said Zaheen Hussain, Millvale’s sustainability coordinator.

He said the payback to a community isn’t just in dollars “but in being more resilient and reducing our carbon impact.”

Millvale has planted hundreds of trees and added two large bioswales to reduce flooding. With Ross upstream,