Here are two great program available to homes and business in Seattle that want to reduce the carbon footprint of their buildings. We all need to step up to fight the climate change we are already witnessing. The City is preparing it’s Climate Action Plan that we hope to adopt by Earth Day, 2013, and that will lay out the map for how we will get to a carbon neutral city by 2050. In fact, tonight we will be hosting a forum at Yesler Community Center from 6-8pm on how to make our energy use visible, a key strategy for improving conservation. The City cannot achieve carbon neutrality on its own; we need your efforts, too, and these programs can help.
City Council recently received an update on the progress of Community Power Works, an innovative pilot program testing “new models for [building] energy efficiency in the residential, commercial, and institutional sectors.” The timing of the update is great because we are also currently creating our Climate Action Plan, which has a key focus on reducing the carbon footprint of our building stock in Seattle. Currently, our buildings produce about 21% of Seattle’s greenhouse gas emissions, with 9% coming from residential buildings and 12% from commercial and institutional. Community Power Works is a program to incentivize investments in retrofits and new technologies to improve energy efficiency.
Appeared in Blog of Councilmember Mike O'Brien on January 29, 2013.