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Justin 225 days ago
Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan is touting Gainesville's environmental credentials as part of the Green Jobs for Florida delegation at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Denmark.
People from around the world are hearing about Gainesville's solar feed-in tariff, energy efficiency programs and planned biomass power plant.
"When I describe the actions we've taken, people I see internationally are really impressed that an American city is as far ahead as we are," she said by conference call Wednesday.
As further confirmation of Gainesville's green standing, Hanrahan was invited by the White House to sit on a panel of mayors today to highlight the work of their cities, she said.
Hanrahan said there were doubts about whether that event will happen because of some of the chaos of the overcrowded conference.
She was calling from a Copenhagen train station that was under a bomb threat, "so if the phone goes dead, I might be dead," she said wryly.
The delegation includes 25 people in business, government and research who are meeting with their counterparts from around the world to drum up business for the state and create jobs by providing the energy-efficient technology that will be needed to meet the climate goals of the conference.
Enterprise Florida expects companies from around the world to visit Florida in the spring and hopes the contacts made at the conference end with deals for Florida companies, said Christelle Maffre, the organization's European representative.
She said she expects an announcement later on a deal with a French energy provider.
Florida is well situated to take advantage of the burgeoning green technology field thanks to policy decisions by Gov. Charlie Crist and the state Legislature, said Howell Ferguson, chairman and CEO of Lykes Bros. Inc. in Tampa, but policy-makers will have to continue to support green technology to keep up, he said.