Emerald City: Having the foresight to "go green" pays off for businesses and the community

Even in the dead of winter, Syracuse is a pretty green place. Its baronial city hall, built more than 100 years ago, now gets all its power from renewable energy, not fossil fuels. Traffic signals at 354 intersections use energy-stingy LED lights. The city is renovating each of its 37 K-12 public schools to meet the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, improving indoor air quality and lessening the schools' dependence on fossil fuels while updating the infrastructure. The city's Centro public transportation system includes more than 125 clean-air buses. You might expect such environmental consciousness in a city that is home to the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. The center is a collaborative effort by more than 70 companies, research and economic development organizations, and colleges and universities to create new jobs for the city and region— mayor Matthew Driscoll calls them "green-collar" jobs — in renewable energy, improving indoor environments, and assuring water quality. The innovations of many of its partners will be showcased in a new headquarters being built. At the College of Environmental Science and Forestry, which educates 1,500 undergrads and 600 graduate students, leaders participate in Campus Commitment to Climate Neutrality, a program focused on creating a zero-carbon footprint by 2015. "If you are going to teach green, you have to be green," said Neil Murphy, the college's president. Teaching green is particularly apt at a school with majors ranging from aquatic and fisheries science to bioprocess engineering, environmental biology, and wood products engineering. The college's Department of Paper and Bioprocess Engineering is developing technology to produce cellulosic ethanol, bioplastics, and renewable chemicals from woody biomass produced by fast-growing shrub willow. "We have a dream to build an integrated biorefinery," said Murphy. "Most of the world's platform chemicals are petro-carbon-based. We want to use carbon derived from cellulose instead to produce biofuels, bioplastics, platform chemicals, and new composite materials with a cellulosic base." In 2004, the school's work in detecting chemicals in water found its way into a new company, Source Sentinel LLC. The company was created in partnership with East Syracuse-based Sensis Corp., a maker of air traffic and defense systems, and O'Brien and Gere, an engineering firm that has worked on air and water quality projects and environmental remediation for 60 years. Together, they have created systems to monitor natural and man-made threats to water supplies. Even businesses outside the normal "green" categories are taking on an emerald hue in Syracuse. The massive Destiny USA is being built by biodiesel-powered construction equipment and will operate without fossil fuels when it opens. Early this year, the Syracuse Industrial Development Agency sold $322 million in bonds to fund the complex and its associated projects. Looming large over the southeast corner of Syracuse's Onondaga Lake the seven-story, 1.5 million s/f shopping and entertainment complex stands. Developer Robert Congel and his Pyramid Companies built Carousel Center on land once dotted by rusting oil storage tanks on seemingly irreclaimable land knownto locals as Oil City. Opened in 1990, Carousel Center is Syracuse's top tourist attraction, drawing more than 17 million annual visitors. But that number could be just a drop in the bucket. Pyramid Companies has proposed expanding the complex to create Destiny USA, a "retail city" by the lake thatwill include additional shopping, dining, hotel accommodations, an indoor aquarium, water park, stadium, performing arts center, golf courses, indoor park, artificial lake, and more. Nearby would sit a technology park for companies whose work focuses on renewable energy. The entire complex would be"green" — deriving its power completely from renewable energy sources. "Five years ago, we made a commitment to operate a world-class consumer destination as a living laboratory, free of fossil fuels," said Congel, founder and chairman of Destiny USA. "Today, I am proud that we are building the first phase on a brownfield site with renewable energy sources, and we look forward to attracting millions of visitors to our facilities." CEO Mike Lorenz sees Destiny USA generating significant new business in the state. "We anticipate creating jobs across upstate New York as we look to purchase manyof the needs and requirements of the project from New York State-based companies," he said. "That sense of creating an entrepreneurial environment and attracting new companies into the region, into New York State, is one of the aspects of Destiny that we feel most proud of." Going green certainly doesn't come cheap. The city has invested more than $3 million to improve energy efficiency in government operations. The first phase of its school renovation project will total a maximum of $225 million. But the payoffs are expected to be equally large, and not just from lower energy costs. According to a national study, students in schools that have received the LEED certification see a 20% jump in their standardized test scores. Written by Virginia Citrane, a contributing writer of US Airways Magazine. Article previously printed in the September 2007 edition of US Airways Magazine.