The Bluegrass and Beyond

Madison is a “green” city, and for any of the Commerce Lexington visitors who didn’t believe it, there was a pair of green-colored glasses and a copy of the booklet Green Living for Dummies at their seat.

Seriously, Madison, WI, has long been a pioneer among American cities in looking for ways to improve environmental sustainability. It was among the first cities with curbside recycling, and energy conservation has always been big — thanks to high power costs and below-zero winters.

Other cities and businesses are following Madison’s examples, not just because it’s a good thing to do, but because it makes economic sense and will make even more sense in the future as energy prices rise and the world grapples with increasingly complex environmental issues and depletion of fossil fuels.

“The environmental movement is not a trend,” said Sonya Newenhouse, president of Madison Environmental Group. “It’s like the civil rights movement or the women’s movement.”

Newenhouse was an interesting example not only of Madison’s focus on sustainability, but how its quality of life attracts and retains talented people who build its economic future.

There’s an often-told joke here that Madison’s cab drivers all have PhDs because they came here to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, didn’t want to leave but couldn’t find jobs.

When Newenhouse finished her PhD at the university and couldn’t find a job doing what she wanted to do — environmental sustainability consulting — she started her own firm. It has grown substantially, and now she has started a second company, too.

“I was one of those PhD students who never left,” she said. “I got into the transportation business, although not cab-driving.”

Newenhouse’s firm helps companies become more environmentally friendly and energy efficient — and save money. Among its many services is developing parking and commuting plans.

Her firm also helps companies that are demolishing buildings figure out how to minimize waste. In Madison, 40 percent of landfill waste is from construction and demolition, and the city has laws that require as much as possible to be recycled so the landfills don’t fill up so fast.

A second company she started, Community Car, rents cars by the hour to people who occasionally need a car but don’t want the cost — or environmental impact — of driving one more than they really need.

Jeanne Hoffman, Madison’s sustainability coordinator, said many of the city’s environmental efforts are done in partnership with local companies. “The business community cooperates greatly with the city and with non-profits,” she said.

Among the initiatives are incentives to build environmentally friendly LEED-certified buildings and use sustainable energy. The city’s fire stations have solar thermal systems. There’s a growing interest here in developing wind power.

There are many rebates and tax incentives for installing solar panels to generate power, which people and companies can sell back to the local electric utility for a higher price than electricity they buy.

“It’s a wildly popular program,” Hoffman said. “Businesses had better start thinking about this because it’s going to affect their bottom line.”

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