Fun Time With Austin Energy

Turbine, turbine, who's fired up the wind turbine? Austin Energy has launched an information-packed, interactive online game for Austinites to play, to help decide how the city should be powered through 2020. Energy nerds will have a (natural) gas playing the laugh-a-minute Change Your Generation. It provides the cost, time requirements, and carbon emissions for Austin's various energy generation choices – nuclear, coal, natural gas, solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal. Pick an animated alter ego – Roger Duncan? Will Wynn? T. Boone Pickens? – then mix and match energy sources to meet Austin's projected electric needs over the next 11 years. More fun than a sunburn! A summary of all players' submitted generation plans – which become recommendations to AE – will go to council this fall. It's a uniquely Austin community survey tool, and it's live right now at www.austinsmartenergy.com.