Attendees at the Climate Action Plan community workshop Tuesday night in Council Chambers. Photo by Kirsten Laskey/ladailypost.com

By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com

During the interactive community workshop for Los Alamos County’s Climate Action Plan Tuesday night in council chambers, Cascadia’s Project Manager Andrea Martin did not sugarcoat the situation that Los Alamos, and the rest of the world, finds itself in.

“The climate is changing as a result of human activity and that represents an existential threat to the Los Alamos community and the world with impacts becoming evident at an accelerated rate,” she said. “Changes in global temperatures result in local impacts that could threaten the Los Alamos community including extreme heat, drought and increasing intensity and frequency of wildfires. And while climate change presents an ever-increasing threat, the Los Alamos County government and community continues to produce climate changing greenhouse emissions that could contribute to this threat …”

In sum, Martin said communities across the globe need to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to limit the worst effects of climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change.

Just how will Los Alamos go about doing that? Martin unveiled what Cascadia, which is contracted by the County to address this issue, has done so far with the County’s climate action plan efforts and asked for input from the workshop attendees.

The effort was initiated by Los Alamos County Council and the project launched in June 2023, she reported Tuesday that the project team has completed most of the foundational steps and analysis that will feed into the climate action plan. These include three different greenhouse gas inventories, a community wide survey, a baseline policy assessment, a list of climate strategies and actions, a zero-waste strategy, a greenhouse gas emissions forecasting model, meetings with the Environmental Sustainability Board and County staff and action analysis, which were presented during Tuesday’s workshop.

Expanding on the greenhouse gas inventories, Martin said two sector-based inventories for the community and government have been completed along with a community-wide consumption-based inventory.

“The inventories are helpful for understanding the full impact of community activity … that can help lower a community’s total carbon footprint,” Martin said.

For instance, she explained that the community-wide sector focused on emissions within Los Alamos’ geographic boundaries. It looked at emissions produced by residents, visitors, transportation, solid waste disposal, heating and cooling and wastewater treatment. Martin noted that Los Alamos National Laboratory was not included due to data limitations and the County’s lack of control over its actions. This inventory showed the community generated an estimated 137,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022. The major culprits were building energy and transportation.

Therefore, Martin said the suggested actions in the climate action plan should address reducing emissions from these sources such as expanding transportation options including walking, biking, public transportation, expanding electric vehicle infrastructure and adoption, increasing building energy efficiency, increasing renewable energy sources and promoting electrification.

The County-government sector addressed the County’s vehicle fleet, building energy consumption, solid waste disposal from County operations and the County’s wastewater treatment facilities. Building energy and transportation were also major carbon emitters for this sector, Martin said.

To lower the emissions, the County should look to lower employee commuting greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize buildings, reduce waste and shift to lower carbon fleets and equipment.

The consumption-based inventory looked at upstream emissions (or those generated outside the County) emitted by residents through purchased goods, services and travel; Martin said the results are still being developed.

Touching on the community-wide survey, Martin said it revealed key themes important to citizens.

When asked what a sustainable and resilient Los Alamos would look like, respondents answered with energy efficiency, transition to renewable energy sources, water conservation, public transit, access to EV chargers, waste diversion, strong and diverse economy and wildfire resiliency.

When asked what strategies were important, survey respondents identified transition to clean carbon free energy sources, expand and protect green spaces and ecosystems and make buildings more energy efficient.

From all this, Martin said a draft list of strategies and actions were developed.

The draft list has six primary focus areas: buildings and energy, transportation, materials and consumption, natural systems and water resources, community resilience and well-being, and cross cutting actions that touch on other areas.

Breaking it down further, Martin listed the strategies and actions in each of these areas.

Buildings and Energy:

• Strategies: Advancing decarbonization and increasing efficiency and renewable energy generation
• Actions: Building retrofit incentive programs, policies resulting in broadscale replacement of fossil fuel heating equipment with electric at the end of their life, adopting green building standards and energy benchmarking program for commercial and government buildings

Transportation:

• Strategies: Expanding electric vehicle infrastructure, expanding and promoting multi-modal connectivity and enhancing sustainable land use planning.
• Actions: Educating and promoting electric vehicle adoption and public transit, developing an infrastructure plan for electric vehicles and developing a county commute trip reduction program.

Materials and Consumption:

• Strategies: Keeping waste out of the landfill
  Actions: Following a zero-waste strategy

Natural Systems and Water Resources:

• Strategies: Increasing urban green space and conserving water resources
• Actions: Promoting tree preservation, green stormwater infrastructure programs, grey water reuse education and developing a water security strategy.

Community Resilience and Well-being:

• Strategies: Building resiliency to climate change impacts such as climate vulnerability assessment to better understand what the risks are, encouraging upgrades to building infrastructure to have enhanced resiliency and supporting local food systems.
• Actions: Developing a sustainable business certification program, expanding community engagement, and monitoring and sharing climate action progress.

So, what does all of this tell people?

“They tell us that you can achieve impactful and long-term greenhouse gas emission reductions, but it will require investment and policies that will transform the building and transportation sectors in particular from fossil fuel and to more clean energy sources,” Martin said. “We also saw that carbon sequestration … will be necessary to really reach that long term net zero goal. We can also see that the proposed actions … that we presented today will put the county on a path to achieving those net zero emissions by 2050…”

Finally, Martin addressed the next steps. The draft climate plan will be available for public input in early summer, it will also be vetted to council. The final adoption is planned for the fall.