Energy Sense

The City of New Haven and Town of Willimantic are Energy Sen$e Model Communities. Both municipalities have passed resolutions authorizing their participation in International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives' (ICLEI) Cities for Climate Protection and pledging to take a leadership role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from municipal operations. Each has also completed a greenhouse gas emissions inventory as one of five milestones under the ICLEI process. The inventories provide baseline data and preliminary recommendations for reduction measures.

Typical recommendations included in the inventories are energy efficiency measures coupled with conservation in city buildings, and transportation-related actions. Buying renewable energy ("green power") instead of power generated from fossil fuels is another option. While funding is needed to proceed with another milestone - the action plan- it is not preventing these towns from making progress towards reducing energy consumption and emissions through such actions as lighting improvements, purchasing Energy Star office equipment, and changing over to LED traffic signals.

The City of Bridgeport and Town of Fairfield are also ICLEI partners and completed green house gas inventories prior to 2001.