The board of Babylon, Fla. voted to reclassify carbon emissions as solid waste, enabling them to use some of the town's garbage district surplus to promote green building and energy efficiency measures.

A Southeast Portland (Ore.) proposed district heating system could be a proof of concept for retrofitting neighborhoods with more efficient locally generated heat and power systems. It just needs some help from the city to move forward.

This report provides a wide range of illustrations of how cities are tackling the need to conserve energy and other resources and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and what they are accomplishing as a result of their efforts. These best practices vary greatly in size, scope, cost, and focus. Some are well established and some are just getting underway, but all have ideas to offer on how to protect our cities today and our planet in the years ahead.

Citizen groups have led efforts to address the issue of peak oil in Santa Fe, where a citizen's energy board is forming, and in Greensboro, N.C., where city government is starting to listen. Both articles quote Daniel Lerch and Post Carbon Cities.

As the inevitable shadow of high-priced and carbon-emitting fossil fuels looms, Nova Scotia's municipality of Clare is sowing its own seeds of self-sufficiency, based on its kinship with a tiny European local energy leader Güssing, Austria.

Mick Winter of Drydipstick.com reviews Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty. "Post Carbon Cities focuses on the basics: what the energy problem is, why it is, and what can be done about it. It brings home the effects that oil and gas depletion—and climate change—are apt to have (and indeed already have) on local governments."

This excerpt of Daniel Lerch's presentation at the Spirit of Red Hill Valley 2007 lecture in Hamilton, Ontario, categorizes some of the short and long term challenges that peak oil will present to local governments. A good introduction for colleagues who may have heard of peak oil but don't associate it with local issues.

San Francisco is looking to become the United States' "Berlin of solar power" in terms of installed solar capacity - and is backing up that goal with a solar rebate program that's the nation's highest local solar subsidy.

It may be June, but Vermont's Governor and legislature are planning for the potential emergency when high fuel prices and low temperatures coincide this coming winter. The Governor has created the Vermont Fuel and Food Partnership and established a Cabinet-level task force. The state legislature has called an emergency home heating meeting of the Joint Fiscal Committee, all in recognition that plans need to be made for the state's needs sooner rather than later.

Some Idaho Falls city officials are proposing construction of a fuel storage facility that in case of emergency could sustain services, like police and fire, for a month. They estimate that they would require 50,000 gallons of fuel.