Page 24 - Green Builder Jan-Feb 2021

Hydro power. The Winooski River and the Burlington-based
Winooski One Hydroelectric Station now generate half of
the city’s electricity — a far cry from the 1980s, when coal
was king. CREDIT: KEN GALLAGER

SMALL MUNICIPALITY NY MUNICIPALITY GOVERNMENT that says it’s just
too difficult to operate entirely on renewable energy
Burlington, A border, has been 100 percent green-powered since 2014
should take its case to Burlington, Vermont. The far
northeastern city, only 43 miles from the Canadian

and is generally considered the first municipality in the U.S. to reach
Vermont that goal. It has since become the poster child for more than 170
U.S. cities that have promised to drop coal and natural gas for wind,
water and solar by 2035.
Vermont’s largest city — a.k.a., the “Queen City” — was once
almost entirely dependent upon coal for power. But in the mid-1980s,
Burlington’s coal plant was shuttered by pollution and aesthetic
concerns. Power generation duties then shifted to a new waste wood-
POPULATION: 42,819 burning facility (promoted by then-mayor, now U.S. Senator Bernie
Sanders). Each year, the facility burns some 400,000 tons of wood
As the nation’s first city to be powered chips — significantly cleaner and easier on the eyes.
entirely by green energy, Burlington now Buoyed by an increasingly sustainability-minded populace
heads for net-zero territory. in Burlington and statewide, the city began to move toward all-
renewable power. Long- and short-term energy contracts were
secured, energy efficiency-directed bonds approved, and solar energy
systems marketed to residential and commercial avenues. According
to the Burlington Electric Department (BED), solar’s popularity is a
bit of a surprise, as Burlington receives some of the nation’s lowest
average levels of sunlight per day. Yet, Burlington now has more
Sustainability than 16 times the solar power storage capacity that it had at the
end of 2011.
The final component of the conversion to all-renewable power was
Awards 2021 the purchase of a hydroelectric facility in 2014, which now supplies
half of the city’s energy. The wood chip plant still supplies 30 percent,

22 GREEN BUILDER January/February 2021 www.greenbuildermedia.com

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