Washington D.C. backtracks on energy initiatives

Two years after D.C. legislators created a trailblazing entity to run energy efficiency programs, some claim Mayor Adrian Fenty’s proposed budget cuts now threaten to gut that entity in its first year.

In his fiscal 2011 budget proposal, the mayor has suggested chopping a $7.5 million contract to establish and operate the Sustainable Energy Utility, a third-party private contractor position created by 2008 legislation to manage the city’s energy conservation programs, down to $1 million. In all, the proposal would cleave nearly $13.1 million out of $22.9 million in energy-related initiatives laid out for the next fiscal year in the Clean and Affordable Act that passed in the summer of 2008.

Supporters of the energy bill, led by Councilwoman Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3, worry that cutbacks will make potential bidders less likely to pursue the third-party contract, dim the effectiveness of the energy-saving programs and reroute proceeds from higher utility customer taxes away from the energy-related programs they were originally assigned for years ago.

“I find this deeply troubling, and quite at odds with the mayor’s self-professed view of him being the mayor of green,” said Cheh, who was set to chair a budget hearing April 30 to discuss the energy budget cuts. “It may, unless I can fix it, scuttle this new way of doing energy conservation in the District.”

The mayor’s office said the cuts and cash transfers, potentially $3 million from the sustainable energy contractor’s fund to the city’s general fund, are meant to bridge its $523 million deficit. “This is one of the many sources we had to turn to in terms of closing that gap,” said Sean Madigan, a Fenty spokesman.

Read the full story in the Washington Business Journal.