City of Seattle - Sustainable Development

City of Seattle - Sustainable Development

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  CITY OF SEATTLE– SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT & GREEN INITIATIVES<br />Seattle, May 25th 2010<br />Sara Wysocki - Climate Action Now Manager, [email protected]<br />Charlie Cunniff – Seattle Climate Partnership Director, [email protected]<br />Office of Sustainability & Environment<br />The Office of Sustainability and Environment exists since October, 2000 and is an executive department: it is part of the Mayor’s office. Things change depending upon the Mayor. The Office is designed to work on fundamental policies: incubating other programs and eventually spin them off.<br />Urban Sustainability Advisory Panel: made up of city decision makers and opinion leaders. 25 people: department's heads, community leaders, non-profit organizations, business leaders… Advised the Mayor and the Office of Sustainability and Environment and promotes effective communication and collaboration between City Government, private and nonprofit sectors and across the community. <br />Charlie Cunniff was an environmental NGO. He started in 1992 to cooperate with the government. Their current Mayor used to be in the Urban Sustainability Advisory Panel in 2003. The advisory group did a good job.<br />Green Ribbon Commission (GRC): Seattle decided to adopt the Kyoto protocol that the US as a country did not subscribe to. In the US there are now 1015 cities that have signed the Kyoto protocol. But signing is one thing, doing is another. The GRC finalizes ways/programs to get there. The GRC is charged with developing recommendations on cutting community emissions to meet or beat Kyoto. The Green Ribbon Commission has created two working groups:<br />Seattle Climate Partnership: Business engagement in carbon reduction and climate actions. 173 members. Voluntary participation. Commitment to reduce carbon footprint of business and other sustainable improvements. They are working a lot with peer-to-peer networking. Workshops, forums (ex: reduce the footprint in business transportation).<br />Climate Action Now (CAN): Residential engagement of the community in the issues of climate protection and carbon reduction. The goal of CAN is to encourage and inspire individual residents and households to reduce their carbon footprint. The idea is that people can take climate action everywhere: at home, at work and on the street. <br />Main subjects of concern:<br />Energy <br />Transportation<br />Waste<br />Materials<br />A lot of support for people building green buildings (fast Q – they get permits easier and faster).<br />They have a lot of civic engagement. There’s a lot of pride in building green behaviors.<br />Trucost (City of London): analyzed the carbon footprint of the City of London supply chain: 90% of the carbon comes from 10% of their suppliers.<br />SEATTLE CLIMATE ACTION NOW (CAN)<br />The other side of the coin of engaging with the business community is to get people to reduce their individual carbon footprint. All actions are voluntary. When the CAN started they did a series of events to get people sensitive about climate action. The CAN has been able to build a community of over 10.000 people who are presently engaged in the program. The CAN also has a dedicated website : www.seattlecan.org. <br />The CAN has developed two main tools:<br />The online carbon calculator, which people can use to learn how to reduce by one ton their annual carbon production. There has been a lot of positive feedback on the carbon calculator.<br />Marketing campaign : the \" 1 ton challenge\" . If every resident can reduce their carbon production by one ton -as there are 600.000 inhabitants in Seattle- that could bring the city to reach its objective. On average, 12 tons of consumption by person.<br />Carbon coaches : They have trained community volunteers to spread the message to other people. Two classes have been held : October 2009 and April 2010 with 30 to 40 people each. So now there are 70 carbon coaches available for the community. Training is free for the people, but they have to give back to other people. 26 hours of training during 6 weeks.<br />What’s the difference between weather patterns and climate change? This is one of the subjects on which carbon coaches are trained to answer. <br />The CAN offers carbon coaches as a resource to the community. It’s helping to get the word out broader than what the employees of the City alone could do.<br />The next step in carbon coaches is to train groups : schools, organizations. The idea is to get people to change their habits. <br />As of today the CAN does not have a precise measurement of the effectiveness of the action of the carbon coaches. For the moment the carbon coaches only have to send back a questionnaire which is very easy to fill in. Although it is possible to track their activity, it is in fact impossible to measure the change in habits of the people they have contacted. One of the ways to track effectiveness is to look at how many people went to the carbon calculator.<br />Challenges with the carbon coaches:<br />Follow-up with them and make sure that they have all they need to work properly:<br />Maintaining energy and interest: email network but the challenge remains<br />Tracking the forms<br />Latest and up-to-date information<br />It’s a pretty labor intensive program<br />Challenges in communication:<br />Not use jargon<br />Find messages that have resonance to people<br />Let people realize that small day-to-day actions can have big economical long term benefits<br />It’s not because is good to do it that people do it : if the organic local food costs twice as much than other type of food, people will continue to buy the cheapest items.<br />To be efficient about environmental issues you have to pace the communication. There’s so much information, that we have to keep it down to things that people can digest and not get overwhelmed with.<br />In the city of Seattle they are reducing parking spaces and increasing the cost of parking, to incentivize the use of transports. They have combined the different tickets in a single system to make it easier for people to use different transportation means. The problem is that transportation means are still quite expensive. Fares are decided by the County and not by the City, which can create political frictions.<br />Seattle is building a lot more bike lanes. They did a complete bicycle master plan a couple of years ago.<br />The big companies are supporting their employees to use public transportation.<br />They have a City of Seattle TV station and have a lot of people who watch that channel.<br />In the US cities that are doing the most are New York, Chicago, Boston, Portland, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and San Francisco.<br />“Weatherize the buildings” 20 million $ over 3 years. 140 million dollars in match revolving launch fund. 25 different cities are participating with different programs. US Department of Energy.<br />Microsoft have a system of vans that pick up people to bring them to the company. They are equipped with WIFI and can work during transportation. How can that system be made larger? <br />Group Health: took out employee parking out of the union contracts and have replaced them with bus passes.<br />Hospital: they have a program for bicycles; If you plan to use the bike to go to work they give you the bike . But it’s not yours. If you leave the company you have to give it back. It’s a depreciable asset that they maintain in their budget. These changes were forced by regulatory environment imposed by the City of Seattle. But they embraced this regulation by transforming it in a good thing for them.<br />Clean Air Agency in the Puget Sound area. The City is also implementing an electric vehicle program. Electric charge will be available throughout the Puget Sound area. They already have quite a lot of hybrid vehicles (Toyota Prius is very popular). They have to decide with other cities where the electric chargers are going to be. These initiatives are larger than just the city borders. Some city programs are run through the Chamber of Commerce and not through the City Council.<br />