Salt Lake City Leaders Honor Green Building Owners

SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake City lawmakers and city leaders honored in mid-July the winners of the Project Skyline Mayor’s Challenge 2015 Awards.

Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, Kathleen Hogan, deputy Assistant secretary for energy efficiency for the U.S. Department of Energy and Matthew Dalbey, director of the Office of Sustainable Communities for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, joined together to honor the winners.

Launched in May 2014, the multi-year competition challenges building owners across Salt Lake City to proactively meet — and exceed — the air quality and energy-saving targets of the mayor’s Sustainable Salt Lake – Plan 2015 and reduce citywide building energy use by 15 percent by 2020.

“Salt Lake City is committed to ensuring that our community is a vibrant, healthy and prosperous municipality,” said Mayor Becker in a statement. “To do this, we must address unhealthy air pollutants, and our buildings can play a significant role in doing so by reducing energy waste. I applaud the leading organizations being recognized — as well as the 20 participants in this first year of competition—for helping to lead the city in reducing energy use and pollution while working to save local taxpayers money and create quality local jobs.”

Salt Lake City is making several efforts to stand out as a sustainable city. In 2014, the city was selected as one of 10 U.S. cities to participate in the City Energy Project, a multi-year initiative from the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Institute for Market Transformation that seeks to enable cities to create healthier and more prosperous cities by improving the energy efficiency of their buildings. Additionally, there have been a number of initiatives undertaken by the administration which have helped garner roughly $800,000 in funding to expand Salt Lake City’s energy efficiency efforts.

Mayor Becker has challenged Salt Lake City building owners to collectively reduce citywide building energy use by 5 percent by 2015 and 15 percent by 2020. By participating in the Project Skyline Challenge, local business owners are eligible to attend educational and networking workshops and receive guidance on best practices and resources for evaluating their building’s energy use, setting energy-saving goals, and undertaking energy-saving projects.

The 2015 Award Winners are:
Energy Innovator Award: Basic Research
Sustained Excellence Award: Fidelity Investments
Most-Improved Energy Star Score Award: The McGillis School
Energy Efficiency Leadership Award: Newmark Grubb ACRES
Benchmarking Champion Award: Salt Lake School District