Consultant presents draft municipal energy plan aiming for deep building-emissions cuts by 2035

Consultant Ted Redmond of Pale Blue Dot presented a draft comprehensive energy plan to the City of Oshkosh Sustainability Advisory Board on Thursday, Sept. 4, outlining energy-benchmarking, solar feasibility work and a five-part roadmap the consultant says could cut municipal building greenhouse gas emissions roughly 62 percent by 2035.

The plan matters because it combines audited utility data, technology options and financial modeling to give the city a menu of actions that staff can sequence into capital planning and operations decisions.

Redmond told the board the plan team collected facility energy data from the city and utility WPS, created Energy Star Portfolio Manager accounts for major properties, and benchmarked key buildings to flag outliers and prioritize deeper audits. "We prioritized 33 specific sites and buildings to do a detailed solar feasibility assessment," Redmond said. He said the firm modeled example arrays, produced order-of-magnitude project budgets, and generated 30-year return‑on‑investment projections for those sites.

The draft includes five strategic goals for city…