Join us on Wednesday, October 30 at 6:30 pm in the Auditorium at the Carnegie-Schadde Memorial Public Library for an evening of learning about light pollution! We experience light pollution due to the excess man-made light that escapes into our night sky. Ariana Zimney, Education and Communications Fellow at the Aldo Leopold Foundation, will help you discover the importance of dark skies to humans, wildlife, and our environment. Learn how you can preserve and protect your night sky! This free program is co-sponsored by Powered Up Baraboo and the Aldo Leopold Foundation.

Powered Up Baraboo (PUB) invites Baraboo area residents to nominate individuals, businesses, organizations, and/or government agencies that are taking responsibility to help protect the planet by advancing local efforts to conserve energy, use renewable energy, or create sustainable green spaces in the Baraboo area. The deadline for nominations is November 15, 2024, at 9 AM (CT).

To find the nomination form, go to https://forms.gle/HzmP3vsSXMgwS4NTA.

For an individual to receive a Baraboo Climate Champion Award, PUB is looking for efforts that go beyond the bounds of that individual’s home. A nominee should exhibit leadership in local climate action that reaches across the community. Such individual leadership may be made as a solo effort, as a dedicated member of a local group, in the past year, or over a number of years. For a business, government agency, or organization to receive a Baraboo Climate Champion Award, PUB is looking for efforts that reflect a commitment to significant local climate action benefitting the community while helping the business grow responsibly, or while helping the agency or organization perform their mission.

This is the third year PUB will recognize a local Climate Champion. In 2022, there were two Climate Champion Awards given. Mike Hardy, former director of the City of Baraboo Parks, Recreation, and Forestry Department was recognized for efforts he made in increasing energy efficiency in department operations and creating sustainable green spaces through native plantings on City property. Michael Kohlman, former member of the Baraboo School Board, was recognized for his work to bolster the school district’s efforts to install solar panels on Jack Young Middle School and Baraboo High School. In 2023, PUB honored PUB volunteer Richard Peidelstein for his ongoing work to benchmark energy usage in City-owned buildings, enabling the City to begin tracking energy use and laying the foundation for future energy improvements.

“We know there are many people and groups in our area taking action to reduce their carbon footprint,” said Marianne Cotter, President of Powered Up Baraboo. “We want to highlight their dedication and achievements to inspire the rest of us who also want to take climate action.”

Powered Up Baraboo plans to announce the 2024 Climate Champions Award winner(s) at their fifth anniversary celebration on December 5.

You are invited to the 5th Anniversary of Powered Up Baraboo! On December 3, 2019, Powered Up Baraboo held our organizational meeting, which kicked off five years of working with people and organizations in the Baraboo area to take local climate action. We are ready to celebrate our first five years of progress, recognize the work of action teams and supporters, and be inspired for future action.

We are excited to welcome as our keynote speaker Kathy Kuntz, Director of the Dane County Office of Energy & Climate Change, whose decades of experience and success in leading sustainability efforts for governments, businesses, and individuals have made her one of Wisconsin's most valuable resources in local climate action.

Details are developing. Please check back on our website or Facebook page in the next few weeks for more information.

Photo credit: Joan Wheeler.

En-ROADS Climate Simulation Workshop presented by David Kinzer at the Carnegie-Schadde Memorial Public Library on September 26, 2024.

Photo Credit: Joan Wheeler.

On Thursday, September 26, the public was invited to the En-ROADS Climate Workshop, featuring Baraboo resident David Kinzer, a trained En-ROADS facilitator. The workshop was co-sponsored by Carnegie-Schadde Memorial Public Library and Powered Up Baraboo. The En-ROADS interactive group exercise allowed participants to work together to test solutions for addressing climate change. Attendees had hands-on experience with the En-ROADS Climate Simulator, giving them the ability to virtually manipulate factors affecting global temperature rise and showing them, “in real time”, the effect of changes in those factors. 

Variables that could be changed in the simulator included the energy supply (coal, oil, natural gas, bioenergy, renewables, nuclear, and a “new zero-carbon” energy source, yet to be developed); increasing energy efficiency and electrification in transport and buildings/industry; reducing population growth and economic growth; increasing carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere; decreasing greenhouse gases from agricultural emissions, and waste and leakage; and reducing deforestation. 

This exercise helped attendees realize that significant changes in any of the factors affecting climate change effects will be costly and require policy changes and probable increased expenses. This means that, in addition to our own personal actions to conserve energy, support increased use of renewable energy, and support green spaces that sequester carbon, we will have to communicate with our elected representatives about the urgent need to take national and global action, and elect representatives we think will move this forward.

You can learn more about the En-ROADS Climate Simulator at https://www.climateinteractive.org/the-en-roads-climate-workshop/

October 1, 2024 Plan Commission meeting held at the Baraboo Municipal Building.

Photo credit: Rick Eilertson.

The City of Baraboo’s Comprehensive Plan has been in the works since 2023. This document will guide decision making about land use and many other issues for years to come. The Plan Commission has responsibility for creating the plan, which is then presented to the Common Council for approval. In early September, PUB supporters were well represented at an open house at the library, where citizens provided feedback on the August 2024 draft. Thank you to those who attended! Two PUB members spoke at the Plan Commission meeting on October 1, giving further comments on the latest draft. In the weeks ahead, the Plan Commission and Common Council will be discussing and voting on the final version Comprehensive Plan. You can go to the City’s website and follow the link below to review agendas of Plan Commission and Common Council meetings in order to track the status of the Comprehensive Plan:

https://baraboowi.gov/index.asp?SEC=06FDEAA2-02FD-4277-89B8-601F4D0D1912

August 15, 2021 Photo of EV Charging Station at the International Crane Foundation.

Photo Credit: Marianne Cotter.

PUB has a task force working on creating EV Charging Station(s) in the city of Baraboo. Members of Downtown Baraboo, Inc. (DBI) are very interested in making this happen. The task force is now preparing a presentation to provide DBI with information on the costs and comparative benefits of both Level 2 or Level 3 charging stations. Task force members include Mike Refsland, Jerry Jackson, Dorn Moore, Lisa Kahlow and Keith Kahlow. For more information, or to join the task force, please contact Mike Refsland, task force leader, at mikerefsland@gmail.com.  

Photo of the ground-mounted solar arrays at the Sauk County Fairgrounds taken October 8, 2024. Also visible is the yellow interpretive sign (upper right corner) created by Tom Kriegl and funded by PUB. Pictured here, from left, are Rick Eilertson, PUB Vice President; Donna Baker and Lena Nissley, PUB board members; Scott Zirzow Fair Board President; Mikala Turner, Fair Vice President; Tom Kriegl, PUB supporter; and Keith Kahlow and Lisa Kahlow, All Sky Energy, LLC.

Photo by Lisa Kahlow.

The installation of solar arrays at the Sauk County Fairgrounds was the result of determination and creativity on the part of the Friends of the Sauk County Fairgrounds, working with funds from organizations such as Focus on Energy and Solar for Good. The solar installer of the ground-mounted arrays pictured above and roof-mounted arrays was All Sky Energy, LLC .

Tom Kriegl, a member of PUB's Homes and Businesses Action Team, describes the solar project's impact this way:

Since June 2021, the Sauk County Fairgrounds has offset much of its electrical use from 52 bifacial panels in two solar arrays, one ground-mounted, one roof-mounted, with a combined rated capacity of 19.24 kilowatts (kW) DC. This system has produced close to its projected annual production of 26,810 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity which is about the amount used by 3 average Wisconsin homes. The combined PV systems are connected to the grid and produce the equivalent of about 40% of the 68,000 kWh annual use of electricity by the Sauk County Fairgrounds.

Two of our most popular informational brochures, Lowering Your Utility Bill and A Consumer's Guide to Managed Rotational Grazing in Sauk County are available for download from the PUB website.

You can also find print versions of Lowering Your Utility Bill at convenient locations in the Baraboo area, including:

• Aging and Disability Resource Center

• St. Vincent de Paul Human Service Department

• UW Extension Office

• Sauk County Human Services

• Sauk County Health Department

• Veterans Service Office for Sauk County

• Habitat for Humanity of Wisconsin River Area

• Habitat for Humanity Re-Store

• City of Baraboo Municipal Building

Do you know someone who might be interested in receiving the PUB CONNECTIONS newsletter and favors working collaboratively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the Baraboo and Sauk County area? Leave a message at the PUB website contact page and we will be in touch!