Albany's Climate Action Plan Gets into Action

With the Copenhagen and now Cancun climate summits unsuccessful in producing international agreements on how to reduce carbon emissions and stem global warming, some environmentalists believe it may be up to communities to lead the way.

Cities around the globe have drafted Climate Action Plans to do just that: to commit themselves to concrete actions that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, as they describe it, help heal the earth.

Albany is one of those cities.

Albany's Climate Action Plan was adopted last spring with a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Albany by 25 percent below 2004 levels by the year 2020. 

Now the city's and city staff in its Environmental Resources, Transportation, Urban Forestry and other departments have begun working in earnest to implement the plan.

Wednesday night at its meeting, the committee rolled out a tentative plan for the next year of actions, events and public outreach campaigns the city will launch around low carbon transportation, weatherization and building efficiency, waste reduction, water conservation, supporting locally grown food and enhancing wooded areas in the city.

Each season, or possibly each month, residents will be urged to consider one of these areas and how they can personally take action.

For instance, February's campaign will likely be focused on steps people can take to conserve water, while January will be about setting New Year's resolutions to drive less often or save on electricy usage. May will be about bicycling options and, during June, the city might encourage you to consider installing rooftop solar panels or solar thermal water tanks -- and likely offer incentives to do so.

Along with those campaigns, the city plans to continue to host community events that encourage low carbon activity: the Arts & Green Festival, the , the , and others which are soon to include a . It also plans to work with non-profit organizations, such as and , on these efforts.

Thomas Cooper, chair of the Sustainability Committee, said the idea is to try to engage the community in the effort of reducing Albany's carbon footprint.

The Climate Action Plan also calls for the city to do certain things in managing its infrastructure. It is unrolling an ambitious new , which involves building bikeways and walkways along many major roads in the city. 

A major challenge to implementing the plan, however, is funding, according to the city's Environmental Resources Manager Nicole Almaguer. Right now, the money available is from several grants the city received from government agencies, such as a federal Environmental Protection Agency grant to encourage home weatherization and energy efficiency. But the transportation portion of the Climate Action Plan alone will cost about $3 million, the city estimates.

The good news is that short term activities and measures in the Climate Action Plan can be funded within the city's 2010-11 operating budget, Almaguer said. For its longer term goals, the city likely will have to consider new revenue sources.

But nobody said healing the earth would be easy.

"Achieving the goals outlined in the CAP will require a significant amount of work by the City and the community as a whole," the city states on its website where the Climate Action Plan can be read. (It's also attached as a PDF to this story.)

Everybody makes mistakes ... ! If there's something in this article you think should be corrected, or if something else is amiss, give editor Emilie Raguso a ring at 510-459-8325 or shoot her an e-mail at emilier@patch.com.