Iowa City met its greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal 10 years early, but it’s not stopping there

IOWA CITY — Iowa City’s Climate Action and Outreach department works with all departments within the city offices to help implement the Iowa City Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, established in 2018, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city.

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Iowa City Climate Action Coordinator Sarah Gardner sat down with The Gazette to talk about the city’s progress and community outreach efforts.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: What does your job entail?

A: It looks different from day to day, but my primary responsibilities are to help the city move forward on its climate action and adaptation plan, and to coordinate other departments’ efforts in doing so and provide support as needed. Both internally to city departments and externally to residents, organizations and businesses in the community as they work to move forward on their climate plans.

Q: Do you mind if we break that up and talk about what that looks like internally and also externally, in terms of community interaction?

A: One of the biggest things that my office does is maintain our annual greenhouse gas inventory. It goes back to about 2008 and that's broken out by different sectors to help us figure out where the highest impact actions might be. We also maintain a greenhouse gas inventory for municipal operations, and one of the things we know from those two inventories is that things the City Hall has direct control over, like refueling city vehicles, snow plows and fire trucks or how much energy are we using in the library and in our public works facility, those things all add up to only about 5 percent of the city's total emissions. One of the things we often talk about in response, knowing that 95 percent of the emissions are outside of the control of City Hall means that engaging with the community is the bulk of what we do, because that is where we're going to see the greatest gains and reductions. It's also important to lead by example, and 5 percent is not nothing. We need to be addressing our emissions. We've learned a lot in addressing our own emissions about things that might work in the larger community.

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Internally, what we do is work with departments as they move forward on their climate action goals. Some examples of that is that we worked hand in hand with the airport when it put out its solar array earlier this year. We have worked with our transit department in promoting the fare free bus service. Last year, we completed a fleet analysis of the entire Iowa City fleet of vehicles with an eye toward electrification to figure out what vehicles are most compatible with electrification right now, what kind of infrastructure do we need to be building to have in place to support that? We recently reviewed plans for the new pool in city park to help identify some climate action strategies that might be applied to that build ... You could pick a department and in one form or another we’ve worked with them. ... It's not just us working in a tiny silo trying to get it done, but every department is charged with helping the city meet its climate goals, and we're to here to help them accomplish that.

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Q: Shifting over to like external and community based actions, how does that work?

A: One of the big programs that we've gotten up and running in the last five years has been focused on reducing household energy usage, because we know that's one of the meaningful things that individuals can do. We have a Green Iowa AmeriCorps team that will go and perform home energy audits for households. While they're there, they will also perform basic weatherization so they'll help caulk up those windows and help identify areas where air and thus heat might be escaping a building. If they need larger interventions, they'll talk to them about the installation grant program that we have up and running for income qualified households ... Basically, the more we can reduce our energy usage, the more cost effective the transition to a clean energy future is going to be right? ... One of my favorite emails we've gotten over the years, shortly after we rolled out, we had a resident who had lived for over a decade in his home, and the furnace had always run all winter long. Once we put insulation in the attic, he heard his furnace turn off for the first time since he lived there in the winter. ... We look for things that have benefits to the people participating, beyond just addressing climate change.

Q: How is the department looking to build on the work you're currently doing, and investing in future initiatives as well?

A: Well, I'll just circle back to the insulation example, not because it's the only thing we're doing, but because it's handy. The EPA has estimated nine out of 10 homes are under insulated. We insulate about 40-50 homes more or less a year. Insulation is really cost effective for us to do. A lot of what we need to do is just continue to get the word out about those opportunities to continue to support things like fare free transit service. A lot of what we emphasize in our work is that there's no one climate solution that's going to solve everything, there's no one change you can make. ... When we engage folks with one of our programs, we're always trying to highlight others. If you enjoy the insulation your home, maybe the business you work at could benefit from some energy efficiency measures as well.

We've done things like do a comprehensive code review to make sure there weren't barriers in our own ordinances that one would make it more difficult for someone to put solar on their property. ... We put some bonuses in the city policies for things like TIF funding or new building permits ... For example, if you put a certain percentage of solar on site, you get what's known as a density bonus, which essentially lets you build another floor to and add some more units so that you're recouping that cost and added rent. I think things like that can be really creative and impactful solutions, things that help create market incentives can be very helpful.

Q: For people that don't know about the city's climate action goals, what are those? And how do they connect to your department?

A: Our biggest goals are established with the Climate Action Plan, and they're basically greenhouse gas reduction goals coupled with climate adaptation goals. Our greenhouse gas reduction goals are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 45 percent by 2030 and then to get to net zero by 2050 and I'm really quite proud to say that Iowa City achieved that first goal ... in 2020 but to me, more importantly, we've been able to maintain it over the last several years.

We also have, in the last year, been working with community organizations to launch a resilience hub program, and this is something I think that I am most proud of in my time with the city. ... I think most people, when they think about responses to natural disasters, tend to think about things like emergency cooling stations or emergency shelters. A resilience hub is different, and it's based on the fact that most people, given the choice, would rather be in their own homes than sleeping on a cot in a gym. Resilience hubs are organizations that can help support people to shelter in place in those instances, by serving as key places where people can come to get information or supplies as needed ...

We started the process last year with the planning phase, and once the planning was well underway with the Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County, we began working with the Iowa City Bike library as a second location. Both have a lot of robust community programming that enables them to connect with folks in multiple parts of the city. The Bike Library is also very used to navigating the city by bike on multiple paths, so in instances where it might be difficult to plot and deploy vehicles, they could be helpful in disseminating information.

Q: Any last thoughts you’d like to share?

A: In our office recently, we've been getting a lot of questions about, how does this work continue with the changes in priorities at the federal level, which is a real thing. One of the things that we talk about a lot is that we do this work not because funding was available, but because it's important. ... I would also say it continues to be a core function of this office to help engage people with the resources they need to be taking the action. We'll get people who say, “I recycle a lot, but I'm wondering what my next action could be.” We try to approach that very creatively and very comprehensively.

Comments: megan.woolard@thegazette.com

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