Guest column: Ann Arbor making strides toward meeting carbon-neutrality goals

By Christopher Taylor

ANN ARBOR, MI – Cities throughout america face a bunch of compounding challenges in the summertime of 2020. With COVID-19 resurgent, an economic system beneath huge pressure, the stark visibility of the ache and penalties of systemic racial injustice, and the very fact and threat of a altering local weather, our path is troublesome.

The scope and depth of those challenges give rise to a recognition that we should change course. The established order is not going to do. At this time let’s discuss our local weather. I’m a Local weather Mayor, and I’m proud to say that Ann Arbor is taking steps to make sure a greater future for our neighborhood and the broader area.

We now have simply handed a plan referred to as A2ZERO, which outlines a path and a method to attain a simply transition to community-wide carbon neutrality by the yr 2030. This plan handed unanimously in June. A2ZERO envisions structural transformation, however it additionally reveals us methods to impact carbon wins at the moment.

Since June, Ann Arbor has invested in our first local weather resilience hub, scaled up our Solarize Ann Arbor program to enhance family entry to photo voltaic power, invested over $75,000 in grants to native establishments to advance a wide range of sustainability-related actions, supported native youth leaders in a youth-led sustainability summit, have launched a community-wide electrical bike bulk purchase, and are launching RFPs to put in photo voltaic power on a number of metropolis amenities.

That is just the start.

Car emissions are one other space the place we are able to begin with fast wins. Car operations account for a considerable portion of our neighborhood’s carbon footprint, which is why we take part within the Local weather Mayors Electrical Car Buying Collaborative, working intently with the Electrification Coalition so as to add EVs to our municipal fleet and make Ann Arbor EV-ready.

The Electrification Coalition lately launched a case examine inspecting our work on EVs to this point, highlighting our 2018 Inexperienced Fleets Coverage, which referred to as for all metropolis departments to scale back vehicular emissions by 25% by 2025, relative to 2017 baseline ranges. Following an preliminary deployment of all-electric Chevrolet Bolts, town partnered with the Electrification Coalition by the Collaborative to assist and inform further alternatives throughout the metropolis’s automobiles to transition to electrical.

Working with the Collaborative and drawing from greatest practices throughout the nation, Ann Arbor elected to buy one other 17 Chevrolet Bolts to affect the Constructing Inspectors whole light-duty automobile fleet, in addition to the automobiles used for our Group Requirements unit, and the final Motor Pool.

In partnering with the Collaborative, we have now related with different municipalities to develop town’s first EV-Readiness ordinance and potential amendments to our Unified Growth Code to assist neighborhood EV adoption. We studied and replicated successes from different jurisdictions – particularly Atlanta, Denver and Columbus, Ohio (that one damage!) – to raised perceive the issues, challenges, and methods deployed by others to craft and efficiently go comparable legal guidelines. I’m seeking to have our proposal earlier than council by finish of this yr.

We had been additionally in a position to leverage the Electrification Coalition’s technical experience and evaluation to establish strategic financing and procurement options to handle the associated fee and infrastructure transition of our transit buses to electrical. Town will proceed to maneuver ahead its aggressive targets for set up of EV charging stations throughout town (100 EV chargers yearly), to assist a community-wide EV adoption aim of 20% by 2030. We’ll proceed to work with the Collaborative to supply town with greatest practices on coverage, pricing and technical issues.

Within the absence of nationwide management, state and native governments have to act. We’re making nice strides in Ann Arbor towards assembly our carbon-neutrality targets and attaining a simply and equitable zero-carbon economic system, however there may be a lot extra to do and little of if it will likely be simple. We’re proud to collaborate with different native governments throughout the nation working in direction of this aim, to study from others, to share our successes and our stumbles. We all know that we are able to’t make it alone; we’re all on this collectively.