Joe Blake has a few bills that he would like to reduce.

Paying more than $560,000 for natural gas seems excessive until you look at the invoices for electricity and then it looks like a bargain. Electric costs are almost $2 million a year.

Of course, Blake doesn’t pay for utilities out of his personal account. In fact, he doesn’t even get to see the bills or the checks to cover the expenses and the money doesn’t come out of his pocket, at least not directly.

But Blake as director of the Maintenance Division overseeing the city’s 25 buildings knows the money is coming out of the taxpayers’ pockets and he is looking for ways to cut costs. He’s getting a lot of help to do just that.

The outcome could be some state of the art solutions such as wind turbines, solar electric panels and the use of biomass, wood chips from the city composting station, to heat the McDermott Pool and the city’s two ice rinks. Mayor Scott Avedisian says the city is even exploring “green” roofs where the roof has turf that acts as an insulator and capturing rainwater runoff to be used for irrigating city grounds.

In recent months the city was awarded a $20,000 Economic Development Corporation renewable energy fund grant. The money, Avedisian explained yesterday, will be used to investigate potential sources of renewable energy and a wind energy suitability study.

“We’ll be doing a study on wind velocity and where to put wind turbines,” he said.

Possible options he named are Rocky Point and Barton Farm off Centerville Road. The mayor said partnering with the New England Institute of Technology that installed a turbine this year is also a possibility.

The city has not yet solicited bids for the study.

On another level, as a result of Blake’s diligence and persistence the city is in line to get more than $800,000 in recovery act or stimulus funds for energy saving projects. Help is also coming from the University of Rhode Island.

The city contracted with the URI Energy Fellows Program in response to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Community Energy Challenge to analyze the utility bills of city buildings and conduct an energy audit of each facility. URI students Kristina DiSanto of Warwick, Will Frost of South Kingstown and Andrew Schicho of Cazenovia, N.Y. are working on the project. Blake praises their energy and knowledge and says they have challenged him to look at creative, new energy options.

Blake has also called upon Honeywell Building Solutions SES that has completed more than 4,000 energy-saving projects. At no cost to the city, Honeywell is assessing city energy consumption and what projects might be initiated to reduce it. Honeywell is also looking at the supply side with energy service companies (ESCOs) to expand the generation market, building district power plants or even building cogeneration facilities within efficiency projects.

Knowing that the city is pinching pennies wherever it can, Blake looks to ESCOs as a means of addressing building and system improvements without capital outlays while maintaining, if not reducing, current utility costs. Basically after reviewing the findings and proposals offered by Honeywell, the city could enter into contracts where the ESCO would make the capital outlay for the work and get paid out of the energy savings.

Blake said some projects such as a new roof that would not result in significant savings would be grouped with higher yield projects such as a new heating and air-cooling system.

In such a fashion he is hopeful of making building upgrades without impacting the city’s operating budget or seeking bond funding that would affect city budgets for years to come.

“It is going to be difficult to get any repairs [because of budget constraints] without doing something,” he said.

Among recommendations made by the URI students are low-cost or no-cost strategies, including lowering the temperatures of some hot water heaters, installing automatic thermostats and occupancy sensors, removing some light fixtures where applicable and installing more efficient lights.

City buildings are part of the challenge Blake faces.

Of the $1.9 million the city expects to pay in electric costs this fiscal year, $1 million will be spent on street lighting and traffic signals. The city has already installed LED lights in traffic signals thereby reducing power usage and dramatically extending the life of the lights thus reducing maintenance hours.

The conversion to LED traffic signals was made in 2007 and earned Warwick the designation as a “Cool City” by the Sierra Club. The cost of installing 113 signal lists and 50 yellow crosswalk hazard lights was $44,908 of which National Grid paid more than $23,000 through its incentive program.

Blake is exploring ways to reduce street lighting costs as well as the use of solar electric panels to power some lights.

Essential from his perspective are projects that offer extended savings, not simply quick fixes that will last a couple of years and then need to be replaced or place demands on his maintenance crews.

“We need something sustainable, not just a flash in the pan,” he said.

Of city buildings, with the exception of the wastewater treatment plant operated by the Sewer Authority, the swimming pool and skating rinks are high-energy users. Biomass generation, using wood chips from the compost station is a possible means of heating the pool and rinks, he said. As for wind-generated electricity, Blake isn’t necessarily thinking solely of erecting wind turbines with their giant turning blades in the city. That is an option, but he is also exploring the possibility of erecting turbines outside the city in more favorable wind locations to offset municipal electric costs. The energy generated would be sold to the grid to offset city utility costs.

Blake is also examining as to how best leverage utility-saving projects with funding made available by National Grid. Some of the utility company’s energy saving programs will pay up to 30 percent of a project, he said.

The question Blake says he finds himself asking is, can you afford to do it at this point in time?

The answer he could get when the Honeywell report is complete in another several weeks is: you can’t afford not to do it at this time.