The City of Boulder’s Climate and Sustainability Division has been a pioneering organization in recent years and a driving force behind the city’s transition to a sustainable future. We interviewed the staff to learn more about the strategy and vision behind their Climate Mobilization Action Plan. Learn more about the City of Boulder’s plan here.

What is Boulder’s Sustainability Plan?

Boulder’s sustainability plan is called Boulder’s Climate Commitment. It was last updated in 2017. The city’s working on a new initiative called the Climate Mobilization Action Plan (CMAP).

How did it start? What are the long term goals?

Boulder launched its first formal climate action efforts in 2002. Since that time, the city has been at the forefront of innovation in working to reduce climate impacts: adopting the Climate Action Plan tax, the country’s first voter approved tax dedicated to addressing climate change, developing a national model for delivering energy efficiency services, enacting the country’s most stringent energy code for new buildings and much more.

Boulder’s Climate Action Plan, often referred to as the CAP, was Boulder’s first phase of climate action, and featured a set of aggressive, city-funded programs and services designed to reduce local greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change. As a result of CAP-funded programs, many of which exist today, Boulder avoided more than 50,000 metric tons of emissions between 2007 and 2015, keeping our community emissions fairly constant despite growth in population, jobs and economic activity.

In Dec. 2016, Boulder City Council adopted the Climate Commitment and its associated goals of an 80 percent reduction in community greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2050; 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030; and 80 percent reduction in organization greenhouse gas emissions below 2008 levels by 2030. The goals and their related sub-milestones are the city’s first since the expiration of the city’s previous climate action goal in 2012.

In July 2019, City Council declared a climate emergency to join other cities around the globe in acknowledging the serious threat of the climate crisis. In response, city staff began a process to mobilize the community in taking more aggressive climate action than ever by starting the development of the Climate Mobilization Action Plan, or CMAP. This process to co-create a new climate action plan kicked off with a launch event on Sept. 26, 2019, during global climate strike week.

Learn more about Boulder’s energy use and greenhouse gas emissions through Boulder’s GHG inventory.

Why do you care about sustainability?

It’s a part of our cultural legacy. Boulder was one of the first communities in the country to limit urban sprawl and protect its unique environmental beauty.

For our community, climate action is about resilience and transformation: we need to adapt to the climate changes that are already in motion, as well as reduce the emissions-heavy activities that drive future climate change. We face a great challenge but also a great opportunity to make Boulder better — to create a healthier, safer and more prosperous community.

What is your approach energy efficiency?

The city has created several programs and policies designed to make our community’s building stock more energy efficient. This effort means that we use less energy, no matter how it’s created.

What is your approach water conservation?

Goal: By 2050, we will manage water as a key resource in stabilizing the climate, producing and storing renewable energy, maintaining natural ecosystems.

Priorities:

Complete water supply modeling updates, including evaluation of climate change effects on the city’s water supply.

Initiate an update to the city’s drought plan starting in late 2019 with emphasis on outreach strategies necessary to achieve demand reductions under various drought scenarios.

Continue to build upon the city’s instream flow program for the Boulder Creek watershed with emphasis on establishing environmental flows in South Boulder Creek.

Continue to optimize the water conservation program to meet the community’s needs while also emphasizing city water supply and demand management strategies.

Continue to harness the energy in the city’s water utility system through existing hydroelectric generation while evaluating new hydroelectric opportunities.

Monitor ongoing Colorado River drought conditions and seek opportunities to participate in and influence Colorado policies in a manner consistent with sound water and environmental stewardship practices.

What is your approach green design and construction?

In 2020 the City of Boulder will update the energy code to the 2020 City of Boulder Energy Conservation Code (COBECC). COBECC prescribes minimum energy efficiency and conservation standards for new buildings and for additions and alterations to existing buildings. Code language development is currently underway. For more information on the process scroll down to Energy Code Changes below.

The City of Boulder has set a goal of reaching net zero energy (NZE) construction through building and energy codes by 2031. These updates represent a key step in reaching this goal.

What is your approach waste management?

Boulder is working to become a zero waste community.

This means reducing the waste we create and then reusing, recycling and composting most of what we throw away. Our goal is to generate new materials from 85 percent of our waste by 2025 rather than send that waste to the landfill.

We mandate curbside composting for all housing (single-family and multi-family). And our Universal Zero Waste Ordinance provides for recycling, composting and trash at all city locations.

How do you think about emissions reduction goals?

We think it’s important to have these goals. The City of Boulder and the Boulder community are committed to mitigating climate change by reducing GHG emissions. This page shows the Boulder community’s progress toward this goal. Another dashboard page, titled, “Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions from City Operations and Facilities,” shows the municipal government’s progress toward the city organization’s emissions reduction goals. View more information about the city’s Climate Commitment. The community’s latest GHG inventory can be found at Boulder’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory.

What are the challenges associated with sustainability, and how do you overcome those challenges?

The launch of a new round of climate action planning provides an opportunity to examine what has been learned over the past 15 years of climate action and evaluate how these lessons could change some of the foundational assumptions upon which previous strategies have been built.

The beginnings: a city-scale approach to climate action

The entry of cities into global climate action was largely driven by the failure of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol negotiations to create an effective worldwide commitment to achieving substantive emissions reduction. As it became clear that leading nations like the U.S. would not participate, cities like Boulder stepped forward and passed resolutions4 stating their commitment to achieve the Kyoto Protocol’s greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target (12% below 1990 levels by 2012).

This approach set an important precedent that has, since the early 2000s, shaped how most cities have defined and sought to achieve their climate action goals. Cities effectively adopted a nation-state model of climate action in which the focus of action and measurement of success were based on achieving emission reduction targets confined to political boundaries — in this case municipal boundaries. The underlying assumption of this approach was that as leading cities demonstrated that they could successfully achieve emissions reduction within their boundaries, they would inspire other cities to adopt and achieve similar goals. It was assumed that this would, in turn, put pressure on larger public jurisdictions — states and the federal government — to adopt and achieve similar goals. Now, over 10 years into this movement, this citycentric approach faces several significant challenges.

Limited adoption of comprehensive climate action strategies

While there has been a growing list of cities signing on to climate action proclamations or 100% renewable energy goals, the number of cities with actual plans to achieve these goals is relatively small. After nearly two decades of city-focused efforts in climate action, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) reports that less than 8% (43) of the nearly 600 global cities in the CDP rating system had ambitious targets, formal plans and were showing substantive action toward those plans. Only 14 cities had carbon neutral goals, and only five had 100% renewable energy goals. Despite Boulder’s significant progress in emissions reduction through conservation, energy efficiency and local renewable energy, the pace of actual emissions reduction at city levels must rapidly accelerate to address the even more urgent targets set by the recent IPCC report.

Limited scope of municipal control

For those cities attempting to implement ambitious climate action goals, many soon discover the limits of their ability to control crucial factors such as the source and carbon intensity of their energy. A recent NPR report on difficulties the City of Atlanta is encountering in achieving deep emissions reduction highlights the challenges Boulder became aware of over a decade ago. Atlanta has now realized that it is impossible to meet its climate objectives when the carbon intensity of its electricity sources is controlled by Georgia Power, the incumbent investor-owned utility. This problem is compounded by the fact that emissions reduction alone is insufficient to address the climate emergency. This dilemma will likely face most of the growing list of cities signing on to ambitious climate goals for which they do not yet have clear plans to achieve.

The limits of municipal boundary-focused climate strategies were summarized in a recent scientific assessment of city climate action strategies, which found: “These results suggest that many U.S. cities’ climate action plans lack the cohesiveness to make them fully successful. Consequently, unless they reevaluate their climate action plans, many U.S. cities might struggle to achieve the broader greenhouse gas reduction strategies needed to significantly contribute to global climate change mitigation.”

Given these limitations and barriers facing cities as catalysts for deep emissions reduction, Boulder has been on the forefront of work to expand the role of cities in developing policy change at scales sufficient to encompass the driving factors in emissions reduction. The significant climate policy advances made at the state level in Colorado during the 2019 legislative session are an important indication of what is possible and necessary to achieve rapid, systems-level change.

How do you think about and approach resiliency?

Resilience is the ability of a community to prepare for and respond effectively to shocks and stressors. The shocks will come on suddenly, like the 2013 flood, wildfires, violence or illnesses. The stressors take their toll over time, such as economic hardship, social inequality, or the declining health of a community and its members. Resilient communities prepare for, survive, adapt and learn to thrive under new conditions.

Being able to adeptly respond to disturbances and changes (e.g., Resilience) is a key aspect of achieving long term social, economic and environmental Sustainability.

Let’s oversimplify this:

RESILIENCE: The acknowledgement that the future isn’t static.

SUSTAINABILITY: Doing things in the present with an eye toward the future.

In 2017, the City of Boulder and local partners built a community of resident scientists, began a process of planning for uncertainty, developed a cohort of residents ready to respond in the event of an emergency and witnessed first-hand the power of a community working to build resilience daily. Read the city’s resilience strategy.

What trends are you seeing related to sustainability?

The city is updating its climate plan to address key trends:

Climate changes are already occurring and will continue, necessitating that both equity and resilience become core design considerations integrated into all proposed strategies and actions.

A focus just on community-level emissions is insufficient; increased emphasis must be placed on the life cycle costs and the impacts of resource management that fall outside the city boundaries

Emissions reductions alone will not be enough to stabilize climate; carbon capture and sequestration must be addressed.

Voluntary and behavioral change programs will not achieve the scale of change that is needed; strategies must be focused on systemic change.

What do you see on the horizon related to sustainable initiatives?

The past two decades of municipal climate action has been largely based on a model of change that has assumed cities demonstrating significant emissions reduction within their own boundaries will inspire similar actions by other cities and ultimately higher levels of government. While this approach has engendered substantial city-scale innovation among many leading cities, the pace of city adoption globally is inadequate to prompt the large-scale change now required to achieve climate stabilization. This is causing a growing group of cities to reconsider how cities can have the greatest impact in accelerating the systemic change now necessary. These discussions in groups like the Urban Sustainability Director’s Network (207 North American Cities) and the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA) are beginning to distill a number of essential features of next generation city-based action designed to accelerate systems scale change. These include: