In our work with local governments, Post Carbon Cities encourages cities and towns to start with a resolution recognizing the problem of peak oil -- this brings the issue to the forefront, and lays the groundwork for later policies that can take a constrained energy future into account. We also recommend that local governments form a task force to examine the specific, local challenges they face in peak oil and global warming.

For many local governments, however, these can be challenging or even impossible political actions. The citizen groups of our Relocalization Network know that many people in both the public and private sectors simply are not, for various reasons, ready to acknowledge the challenges we face in peak oil. Luckily, there are a lot of things that local governments can do that do not require an official endorsement of peak oil action. One of the most important of these is promoting local renewable energy -- particularly solar energy.

Local governments are often fairly large institutions, and that means they have significant purchasing power. Municipalities are major energy utility customers and can use their leverage to encourage utilities to offer energy from "green" sources like solar energy. Some cities are creating buying pools to aggregate demand and create an even bigger push toward renewables.

While electric cars get a lot of media attention, municipal governments are really in the best position to turn electricity from the sun into a transportation option. Electric rail will run just as well on energy from the sun and other renewable sources as on energy from coal. Some other infrastructure investments that cities can make to increase their use of solar energy were listed in this month's PCC newsletter.

Policies can be put into place that encourage solar. This can be as simple as streamlining codes to make it easier for homeowners and businesses to install solar panels, as Portland (Ore.) has done. Some cities in Germany (not exactly a sun-soaked place) mandate levels of energy efficiency in new houses that make passive solar designs --and even net energy producing designs-- increasingly common. Barcelona, Spain, pioneered a solar hot water ordinance mandating that all new and renovated buildings use solar energy to supply at least 60% of their hot water. (c40cities.org)

A city doesn't have to aim for 100% solar (like Cloncurry, Australia is doing) or be located out in the desert to start weaning itself from fossilized solar and moving along to the good, fresh stuff. As cities in rainy, cool northern Europe and the Pacific Northwest are showing, any community can take advantage of solar energy -- it's just a matter of political will.

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk

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