The city of Ann Arbor — also known as Tree Town — has been widely recognized for its environmental and sustainable practices. However, these awards represent just the beginning of Ann Arbor’s sustainability efforts, according to city officials.

In an effort to make the city more environmentally-friendly, a four-part Sustainable Ann Arbor forum series was launched earlier this year. An energy financing program called Property Assess Clean Energy was implemented last fall. The series, which held its first community forum at the Ann Arbor District Library earlier this month, is meant to facilitate public discussion on four sustainability themes — resource management, land use and access, climate and energy and community.

The meetings have had large turnouts thus far, more than 100 people attended the first meeting on Jan. 12, Christopher Graham, vice chair of the Ann Arbor Environmental Commission said.

Graham wrote in an email that the city’s sustainability efforts are a combination of different programs and initiatives that will make Ann Arbor a greener place.

“Sustainability, in practice, is actually dozens and dozens of individual initiatives, each of which represents an incremental effort in the direction of less pollution, less energy use, less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, less water runoff, less transportation cost and impact, and more of many things that have positive effects on people’s lives,” Graham wrote.

He added that a combination of small sustainability programs ultimately adds up to large-scale environmental change in the city.

“The list of these things that we are thinking about and/or actively working on at any given time is quite surprisingly long,” he wrote. “It is the combination of each small success that makes progress overall.”

Andrew Brix, city energy programs manager, said support from the city has helped further sustainability efforts.

“I think that we’re one of the cities here in the U.S. that has a very supportive population,” Brix said. “We’ve got a lot of support from the University, and we’ve got support on City Council, from the mayor, and that is fantastic, we’re really lucky to have that.”

The next sustainability forum will take place next week, and will focus on land use and access including city transportation, infrastructure and public spaces.

Apart from the forums, Matthew Naud, city environmental coordinator, said the PACE program will help Ann Arbor improve its energy efficiency by allowing commercial property owners to borrow money from the city in order to improve their building’s energy efficiency.

According to Naud, the city will wait until it has $1 million in potential projects through PACE before looking into obtaining loans for the projects.

Naud added that PACE will not only help the environment, but also improve Ann Arbor’s economy.

“I think the PACE program is a real game changer,” Naud said. “It goes a long way to making our built building stock more sustainable, more energy efficient, cheaper to business in Ann Arbor, more comfortable, and ideally, it’s all local contractors and local jobs doing that work so it’s a huge economic multiplier in the community.”

According to Naud, Ann Arbor spends about $250 million per year on natural gas and electricity, and he said he hopes PACE will lower the city’s spending by improving inefficient heating in buildings, particularly off-campus student housing.

Naud said he believes student housing is the largest sustainability issue in the city, and with the University supplying about 7,000 new student renters every year, Ann Arbor should continue to make it a priority to improve.