A work plan is officially in place to achieve Sunnyvale’s greenhouse gas reduction targets in the city’s Climate Action Plan.
The Sunnyvale City Council on Nov. 25 approved upward of 100 GHG emission reduction strategies to be reached in phases–in the near term before 2016, mid-term before 2020 and long-term thereafter.
The wide variety of strategies range from decreasing energy consumption via solar and community choice aggregation programs to optimizing vehicular travel.
The implementation of the strategies will help to achieve the state-recommended GHG emission reduction target of 15 percent below 2008 levels by the year 2020, or the equivalent of 1990 emissions.
Existing city programs and policies will be combined with new GHG emission reduction strategies, and there will be a time frame for implementation and monitoring.
When the Climate Action Plan was approved in May, city staff was directed to return to the city council with a work plan and possible funding strategies that would help Sunnyvale not only meet but exceed the recommended GHG reduction goals.
The city council approved using a one-time amount of $69,000 from the budget stabilization fund to begin the process by hiring a consultant to track reductions and overall progress. The city would be using the same consultants, Pacific Municipal Consultants, who helped prepare the CAP.
Some council members hesitated to approve the plan, as funding for future reduction measures has not yet been identified. Staff told the council that those items would return to the council for further review as part of the budget process.
“You are not looking at any commitment to any future additional funding at this point,” assistant city manager Robert Walker said during the meeting. “We would always come back to council for that.”
State and federal grants, participation in regional programs and participation in a community choice aggregation program were presented as some sources of external funding.
Community choice aggregation is a system that allows communities to purchase power directly from energy producers, while continuing to use the local utility to deliver it to homes and businesses.
CCA is identified in the CAP as the single greatest measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Emission reductions from CCA implementation is greater than all other proposed CAP actions combined, and accounts for more than 50 percent of the proposed reductions.
The council also approved establishing a biennial CAP progress report, which will be provided to the council and commissions to coordinate with Earth Day of 2016, 2018, 2020 and beyond.
“From my point of view, we can’t not go forward with this,” Councilwoman Tara Martin-Milius said during the meeting. “I think this is a wonderful first step, but we have a long way to go and the faster we can implement these strategies, the better.”
