Energy Efficiency

With energy costs putting the squeeze on budgets from the kitchen table to the board room, the Municipality Of Anchorage has been working to make the best use of the energy we have even as we promote new sources of renewable energy for the future.  By maximizing the efficiency of our systems and technologies, Anchorage is reducing our impact on the environment, reducing waste, and saving taxpayer money to the tune of millions of dollars.   Efficiency for homes and businesses information

 Current Initiatives Include:

Best Practices in Building Management

Management Facilities managers are striving to maximize efficiency throughout the Municipality. In City Hall, at the Transit Center, and at the Department of Health and Human Services, employees earned a GreenStar certification for their buildings, which is an independently-developed protocol for waste reduction, including effective recycling options, computer power management, and use of efficient lighting.

New LED streetlights in Anchorage.

The LED lights are the white lights on the left side of the photo, the yellow light on the right is an HPS fixture.  Anchorage has over 16,000 outdoor lights using 30-year-old technology. Through extensive testing, we’ve identified LED lighting as the technology of the future for outdoor lights, and we are moving ahead with a plan to make LED lights the standard for all of Anchorage’s outdoor lighting, including streets, parking lots and garages, and trails. These fixtures use half the energy of current HPS technology and last seven times as long.

Following recent Assembly approval of phase 1, roughly 4,000 LED fixtures have been installed throughout the city. At an initial investment of $2.2 million and an annual savings of $360,000, these fixtures will pay for themselves in less than seven years, and produce ongoing savings for the life of the fixture. Anchorage is blazing the trail in streetlight improvement policies, and communities across the state, the country, and around the world are watching closely to follow our lead.