& The Miami Beach Convention Center is creating such a buzz with its new water chilling plant even the president of the United States wants to know more about it. &

On Tuesday, his chief environmental advisor, Nancy Sutley, came to the convention center to get an up-close look at the facility

She was pretty impressed.

"The city of Miami Beach went through a really good process of trying to figure out what works for the city of Miami Beach, and that's a lesson that not just the federal government can learn, but American homeowners can learn," she said.

Over the past few years, Miami Beach has made major infrastructure improvements, and city officials say they are all environmentally-friendly.

Power transformers have been replaced and 40 public facilities have been retrofitted with water conservation equipment.

The big-ticket item, though, is the installation of a geothermal cooling system that takes water out of the ground, uses it to cool giant air-conditioning units, then puts it back into the ground. The new system eliminates the need for the old-fashioned water cooling tower on the roof of the convention center.

The city has already enjoyed about a $600,000 savings at the convention center alone. Mayor Matti Herrera Bower said the city recently got a call from Florida Power and Light about the dramatic reduction in their electric bill.

"They called up to find out, see what happened, and what happened is that we saved money because of the new lighting that we have, because of the new things that we have been doing," she said.

The new water chilling facility has been installed at the convention center, but serves three additional city facilities – City Hall, the Fillmore Miami Beach at Jackie Gleason Theater, and a just-built parking garage.

Miami Beach says that through the convention center project and others carried out with the clean energy firm Ameresco, it has been able to "reinvest" annual savings of $1.2 million back into infrastructure improvements.

Sutley, who leads the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said she'd like to see Miami Beach's renewable energy program be used as a model for public facilities across the country.

"That's why the president's talked about this all-of-the-above energy strategy – where we have to use the resources that we have, we have to invest in the long-term solutions, and we have to save energy use," she said.

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