Albuquerque Sustainability

Albuquerque’s Climate Action Plan Sets a Vision for the Future

An Interview with the City’s First Sustainability Officer

Image Source: Shutterstock

Kelsey Rader is the City of Albuquerque’s first Sustainability Officer. She is also on the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission and was previously the Natural Resource Policy Director of New Mexico First. She is in charge of coordinating numerous efforts associated with the City of Albuquerque’s Climate Action Plan.

What is Albuquerque’s Sustainability Plan?

The Sustainability Office advances Albuquerque as a leader in equitable, long-term environmental solutions. We support city government and the community in reducing greenhouse gas emissions while growing our economy and protecting resident health. Our projects focus on renewable energy, energy efficiency, low-carbon transportation, and reducing waste.

As recipients of the support through Bloomberg Philanthropies’ American Cities Climate Challenge, Albuquerque’s current sustainability goals include:

· Using 100 percent renewable energy for municipal operations by 2030

· Reducing the City’s energy usage by 65% by 2025

· Transitioning the City’s fleet to 100% electric and hybrid light duty vehicles

· Installing public electric vehicle charging stations

· Supporting local and state lawmakers to enact good environmental justice policies like community solar and renewable energy tax credits.

Thanks to support from our city leaders and residents, Albuquerque has already made some huge strides and achieved some major environmental goals. Looking to the future, the City is committed to supporting the development of a community-wide Climate Action Plan to set the course for future climate goals and actions.

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

Sustainability has always been important to the people of Albuquerque. Since as early as the late 1970’s the City has taken action to establish efforts to reduce our reliance on oil and gas and the first Climate Action Plan was completed in 2009. The establishment of the Sustainability Office was one more step on the road to reducing our negative environmental impact and supporting the health and well-being of all residents.

Our long-term goals are focused on making Albuquerque a safe and healthy place to live while also making us a national leader in sustainability. We know to achieve these ends the City must continue to make progress in updating energy conservation codes, establishing community-wide climate mitigation plans, while further addressing solutions to reduce emissions from transportation and energy generation. Ultimately, the most important long-term goal is better enable sustainability to resonate and improve residents’ daily lives. The City will continue to make sure that every neighborhood has the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of a sustainable city, from more affordable energy to cleaner air, parks, and accessible transit.

Why do you care about sustainability?

Sustainability is a common sense approach to addressing environmental issues. Framing our present-day investments to ensure we are supporting the well-being of future generations results in both long-term cost savings as well as immediate well-being for residents.

What is your approach energy efficiency?

Energy efficiency is a huge focus for the Keller Administration. The City is in the process of scoping an Energy Service Performance Contract to allow us to do deep energy efficiency retrofits to many of our buildings without upfront costs to taxpayers. We are also extremely lucky to have a forward thinking City Council, which passed a law to put aside 3% of our Capital Improvement Budget each year for energy improvement upgrades. It has helped us to save thousands since its passage in 2001, as well as supporting energy efficiency job growth.

Finally, we are partnering outside the city government on the Albuquerque Mayor’s Energy Challenge. We are inviting businesses and non-profits to commit to reducing their energy consumption by 20% over the next five years. In return, we will provide technical assistance and opportunities to share their great work. So far, we have 20 small- and medium-sized enrolled in the program and are really excited to see what they able to accomplish over the next few years in terms of reducing their carbon emissions and saving money.

What is your approach water conservation?

The Albuquerque Water Utility Authority has made incredible headway in supporting resident water conservation. Over the last two decades, efforts by the Water Authority and residents have effectively cut household water consumption in half — from peak use at 250 gallons per capita per day in 1994 to 121 gallons in 2019. Currently, Albuquerque is on track to meet its conservation goal of 110 gallons per capita per day by 2037, likely much sooner than initially expected.

The Water Authority also helps to support customer conservation through numerous rebates and education efforts.

What is your approach green design and construction?

The City is currently reviewing and initiating legislation to move forward on adopting the 2018 International Energy Conservation Code. This code adoption will be a major step forward in updating building requirements to ensure more energy efficient systems.

What is your approach waste management?

The City’s Solid Waste Department is a champion in continuously assessing new opportunities to make waste management practices more efficient and sustainable. From utilizing green waste to make landfill mulch to advancing campaigns to educate the public on proper recycling practices, our waste management teams are innovators in developing new and effective approaches to handling waste.

How do you think about emissions reduction goals?

Our focus is reducing greenhouse gas emissions while growing our economy and protecting resident health. Energy efficiency is a big focus of our work because it is the most cost effective way to meet our emissions goals. We are lucky in New Mexico that the green economy is booming here. In 2018, energy efficiency jobs grew 11%. In the midst of the COVID19 crisis, we are looking for ways to ensure that our recovery continues to support and grow that sector.

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

Sustainability very often requires a large systems change requiring big shifts for how departments and programs operate. In a large organization, like the City of Albuquerque, that can require a huge amount of coordination. At the same time, we have a small team with a lot of programs and projects we would like to engage in. We have to be strategic in how we expend our resources and where we spend our time.

How do you think about and approach resiliency?

As a city affected by dry summer heat, Albuquerque continues to make updates to programs and practices to reduce the heat island effect and safeguard against future heat impacts of climate change. Current efforts include our tree-planting program and ensuring city buildings use cool or reflective roofs.

What trends are you seeing related to sustainability?

Like many cities, prioritizing sustainability and emissions reductions are becoming much more mainstream. Our constituents are really demanding it and we even see people and companies who are moving to cities that share those values. Because of the support from Mayor Keller, we are able to do new and innovative programs and projects — things that you would normally see in much larger cities. The Mayor’s Energy Challenge and our installation of 16 new public EV charging stations are great examples.

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

Supporting non-single passenger vehicle transportation, from walkability and bike-ability to the accessibility of our public transit system is going to become hugely important in the next few years. Especially in a spread-out city, encouraging practices and new development that will reduce the amount of vehicle traffic in addition to the adoption of electric vehicles will be a major shift.

Also ensuring that equity takes the driver’s seat of sustainability initiatives is another forefront issue. We know that similar for most natural disasters, our low-income communities withstand the worst of the impacts. Making sure those communities have improved access to directing city policy can help the city better support all residents equally.