Columbus, Ohio (photo by Codydean via Flickr)

Well, hello, Columbus. (Click here if you’re not a Philip Roth fan.)

Some people were surprised when Columbus, Ohio, appeared on the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) list of the top twenty-two energy “Smarter Cities,” sharing the spotlight with towns better known for their deep green glow. Places like Portland, Seattle, Boston and San Francisco.

One person who was not surprised was Michael Coleman, mayor of the city that in the 1990s still had the reputation as being just another bleak hole in the Midwestern Rust Belt. Coleman has led efforts to make Columbus a model of energy efficiency, one of the main priorities under a program called “Get Green Columbus.”

The program was already well underway when it received a huge boost from $7.4 million in federal stimulus funds. More than a score of city fire stations and several other city buildings are getting energy efficiency make overs. Businesses and homes are given incentives to lower energy consumption.

Well before the infusion of cash from Washington, Columbus had already completed its first energy efficient affordable housing, called, fittingly, Greenview Estates. The city also developed a recycling program, an initiative clean up air pollution and an infrastructure overhaul to ensure that residents had clean, safe water.

Energy efficiency has been at the core of the Columbus revitalization, however, which is why the NRDC included it as one of the 22 “Smarter Cities” for 2010.

The other cities, grouped by size are -

Large:

Austin, TX

Boston, MA

Chicago, IL

Columbus, Ohio

Dallas, TX

El Paso, TX

Long Beach, CA

New York, NY

Oakland, CA

Portland, OR

San Francisco, CA

Seattle, WA

Medium:

Berkeley, CA

Fort Collins, CO

Huntington Beach, CA

Reno, CA

Springfield, IL

Santa Clarita, CA

Small:

Beaverton, OR

Denton, TX

Dubuque, IA

Santa Cruz, CA

To lean more about how the NRDC picked these cities from among 655 considered, visit the Smarter Cities site.

On Tuesday, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended their radio silence nine weeks after sending cryptic letters warning lenders against permitting the use of Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) — but it wasn’t the follow-up PACE advocates were hoping for.

That’s how Grist writer Jonathan Hiskes began his article about the document posted below: a “clarification” of the quasi-governmental home mortgage programs’ position on how to deal with PACE-financed solar homes.

Fannie and Freddie’s official position is, in a word, “Don’t.”

New rules: A little upside, a lot of downside

Rooftop solar panels

There’s slightly more to it, but nothing that changes the thrust of their earlier warnings. The only upside in the new letter is the part that grandfathers in existing mortgages for homes with PACE-financed solar panels. Several advocates of PACE financing have been working to keep the successful program alive within Fannie and Freddie, including the Vote Solar Initiative. Hiskes reviews some of those efforts in his Tuesday article.

For now, however, the outlook for the very successful program does not look good. With financing being the major hurdle to homeowner adoption of clean renewable energy such as solar, a blow to PACE is a blow to a clean energy future.

FHFA & PACE -

Las Vegas slot machine

Talk about a vicious circle.

The artificially low price of gas just bit us in the butt, big time. As Washington Post writer Ezra Klein points out, however, the circle goes well beyond the horrific toll on wildlife caused by the BP oil disaster. It goes farther than the lost tourists dollars and the crippled seafood industry in the gulf — each losing billions.

The real damage is the self-perpetuating nature of our addiction to cheap oil. By forcing workers, taxpayers and the environment to absorb the real costs, we prevent serious development of any alternatives. Solar power isn’t just renewable and clean, it doesn’t cause mega-disasters like the oil-spewing well at the bottom of the ocean. A wind turbine can’t break and result in a “catastrophic wind spill” — Stephen Colbert’s concerns, notwithstanding.

Yet these and other safe and reliable technologies are forced to compete with Big Oil’s bogus pricing. “Solar and wind are just too expensive,” claim energy pundits and oily politicians, who should, and often do, know better.

The lie of “cheap gas” is self-perpetuating. Solar, wind and wave power will never be competitive as long as the system is — pardon the pun — rigged.

[Read this post, along with an excerpt from Ezra Klein's.]