Gillette, WY

Background

The City of Gillette is known as the “Energy Capital of the Nation” as a result of the energy resources distributed throughout the area. Gillette’s goal is to demonstrate to its citizens, utility customers, and communities around the state that they value our natural resources. In addition, they wish to demonstrate to tax payers their commitment to fiscal responsibility as it relates to operational costs.

The City of Gillette is committed to reducing energy consumption 20% by 2020. In order to achieve this goal, the City is exploring a number of initiatives, campaigns, and actions, including the adoption of past pilot projects found effective.

As a complement to the commitment to the DOE, the City is participating in the Partnership for Local Action with EPA Region 8. This relationship helped Gillette receive an APPA-DEED grant, with which the City hired a summer intern to perform benchmarking with Portfolio Manager and begin formulating energy efficiency campaigns. In addition, EPA supplied an intern to help the City develop an Energy Action Plan. The Plan will serve as a roadmap in pursuing efficiency actions leading to the achievement of our goal.

Gillette is utilizing Energy Service Companies to conduct feasibility studies in an effort to identify and catalog efficiency opportunities. The City’s Sustainability Division has partnered with the Facilities Manager to develop a GIS-based inventory log and depreciation schedule for HVAC assets portfolio-wide. This key step should prove to be a valuable resource as the City begins to budget for retrofits.

Continuing with the partnership theme, the City is working with the Wyoming State Energy Office and the University of Wyoming to develop funding solutions for area small businesses. The mutual objective is to provide financial assistance to small businesses that wish to perform energy audits and implement recommended retrofits.