At our wastewater treatment plant, operated by the Public Utilities Department, we capture methane, which has about 21 times the greenhouse effect as carbon dioxide, and utilize it to produce about 6 million kilowatts of electricity per year, saving over $160,000, and resulting in a reduction of the greenhouse equivalent of 13,600 tons of carbon dioxide annually. In collaboration with Salt Lake County, we are now capturing methane produced from waste decomposition at the Salt Lake Valley Landfill and utilizing it to produce electricity. With the ability to produce enough renewable electricity to power 2500 homes, the landfill eliminates the production of over 17,600 tons of carbon dioxide per year, roughly the emissions equivalent of removing over 25,000 cars from the road or planting 35,000 acres of trees.

We also ensured that sustainability remains central to the Olympic movement. On the heels of the incredible 2002 Winter Olympic Games, we delivered a message of peace, youth, and the environment to Torino, Italy without the use of fossil fuels. We look forward to representatives of Salt Lake City joining the Torino contingent as they carry on that Olympic tradition by delivering a message from Torino to Vancouver, the next Winter Olympic Games host city, without the use of fossil fuels.

We are continuing to implement efficiency measures to streamline City energy use, save taxpayer dollars, and preserve our environment for future generations. Recently, I asked City department directors to voluntarily discontinue the tremendously wasteful use of individually sized bottles of water at City functions, which I urge the City Council and our residents to do as well. We convened the Salt Lake City Sustainability Committee, chaired by Vicki Bennett. Composed of City officials and experts from the larger community, the Committee is identifying ways Salt Lake City can improve efficiency and continue to be an example for businesses, individuals, and other governmental entities. Building on the successes of our high performance building efforts, and aided by the critical work of the Building Services and Licensing Division, the City Council passed an ordinance requiring that all City building projects and projects that receive City funding will be certified according to the US Green Building Council�s LEED standards.

Empowering our business community to meet the challenges posed by global warming and fossil fuel dependence has been a critical part of the Salt Lake City Green program. Through the e2 Business Program (the two "e�s" stand for environmental and economic sustainability), we have helped forty-eight e2 businesses improve efficiency, save energy, and reduce waste � and improve profit margins in the process.

We have also helped empower citizens to take responsibility for their personal impacts on our environment. We launched the e2 Citizen program last April. Taking what we learned from our e2 Business program, our climate protection campaign, and other sustainability initiatives, we designed a program to give individual citizens the tools to improve our environment and