The City of Miramar in partnership with the Florida League of Cities joined the Race to Zero (RtZ) campaign and held a kickoff launch on Thursday at city hall.
The kickoff was hosted by Mayor Wayne Messam who spearheaded the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 campaign.
Mayor Messam outlined his city’s substantial progress on the Climate Action Plan. There is an Energy Efficiency Project which is ongoing and now 60% complete to retrofits streetlights and lights in all city buildings to LED, HVAC upgrades, LEED certified buildings, utilization of carbon neutral cooling and heating technology an doing an EV Roadmap Study. There is also an Energy Efficiency Block Grant (EECB) where the City awarded $170,000 in funding in addition to Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Grant (CFI)
Mayor Messam said the city is gearing up to roll out its programs to support the Race to Zero initiative.
“So far, we have installed charging stations around Miramar, and we were proactive in installing these years ago in preparation for laws that will be passed to eliminate carbon emission vehicles. However, they are not super chargers, and I am challenging our team in Miramar to come up with an EV Masterplan to upgrade these chargers to superchargers for Electric Vehicles,” he said.
“Our plan involves taking this initiative to our residents and schools so we as a collective can make small changes to see carbon reduction in our city, state, country and ultimately globally. Already we have energy savings technology in our aquatic centers, for both cooling and heating, we have installed EV charges across the city, and changing out or fleet of cars to electric. This will be an ongoing effort to ensure net zero by 2050 and beyond,” he added.
Head of External Affairs and City Executive, SE Region Ms. Denise Quarles of Siemens, USA brought the main message of sustainability that more cities need to adopt to achieve NetZero.
She said, “Every city usually has 5 stakeholders: Businesses, Academia, Non-profit, Government, Residents and it’s our collective impact and the decisions that we make that will shape our future. Our commitment is evident in the projects that we have undertaken such as retrofitting streetlights, EV chargers, automation updates to name a few. We are in partnership with Miramar to reduce carbon emissions in this race to zero by 2050.”
NextEra Chief, Ben Wesley: “We have made a commitment to be at Real Zero by 2045 which means that there will be zero carbon released in the air by our company and instead utilize solar technology.”
Universal Technical Institute (UTI), Robert Burnfield: “We have been around for 30 years and has been a leader in technical education. We are always at the cutting edge of technology, and we have made the transition from gasoline and diesel to electric.”
State Representative Marie Woodson was also on hand and had this to say “I would like to see the State take this initiative to the next level and this is what I will be working on in my next Legislative session.”
Miramar went all out to display its many EV cars and Broward County transit displayed its Electric buses. The conservation effort by the cities is part of a global campaign for the countries that signed the Paris Accords for Climate Change. All the conservation efforts by cities and countries are aimed at reducing Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and obtain 100% carbon neutrality by the year 2050.
The Race to Zero efforts is led by ICLEI-Local Governments for sustainability, USA, of which Miramar has been a member. The city partners with Under 2 Coalition which is an alliance of subnational governments across the globe committed to climate action. Other partners include Siemens Energy, Clean Cities, Universal Technical Institute, Broward County, Florida Broward Water Partnership Conservation, SFRPC, SSDN, Sierra Club, Florida Chapter and Recycle Right Miramar.
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