Message from Randall H. Reid, Alachua County Manager Dear Commissioners,
This reality is a clarion call for the development of a more locally secure and lower cost energy future based upon
Few issues in recent decades
more efficient building designs, transportation alternatives,
have presented local govern-
and energy sources and fuels that can create an energy re-
ment with a magnitude of chal-
silient and sustainable community. This is not simply an
lenge and the potential of sig-
environmental issue or simply the important effort to re-
nificant opportunities to willfully
duce our carbon footprint as a community, but provides a
create more sustainable com-
more secure future for our people and the quality of life the
munities than those related to
local community may provide.
energy management.
Author
Thomas Friedman in the reRandall H. Reid, County Manager
cently published work “Hot, Flat
and Crowded� has termed the time we are living in as the Energy/Climate Era.
As County Manager, I am therefore pleased to introduce and publish the Executive Summary and Final Report of the Alachua County Energy Conservation Strategies Committee (ECSC). The report is an analysis of how Alachua County can be made a more energy resilient and sustainable com-
We are confronted daily, both as individuals and communi-
munity. It is written in such a manner to both raise aware-
ties, with the impacts of climate change, global competition
ness of the problems facing our communities as well as pro-
for resources and an erratic but continually upward trend in
pose solution and implementation strategies. It was re-
energy prices. The issue of peak oil is real. Resource scar-
searched and prepared by a dedicated group of citizens,
city, inequities in distribution, disruption of distribution sys-
academics and professionals who made up the ECSC.
tems and the higher costs of oil appear to be the realities of our energy future.
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