Title
Review and Comment on the Draft Climate Action and Resiliency Plan
Body
To: Honorable President and Members of the Planning Board
From: Erin Smith
Deputy Director, Public Works Department
BACKGROUND
Alameda is expected to face significant challenge in the coming years due to a changing climate. This means preparing for more frequent episodes of unhealthy air quality from wildfires, rising sea levels, more intense winter rain/wind storms, a rise in groundwater levels and longer, deeper droughts with impacts to transportation, power, communications, health, personal property, housing supply, and the economy, among others.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that human behavior- particularly burning fossil fuels-accelerates climate change by releasing harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The severity of predicted climate change scenarios are explicitly linked to global trajectories of GHG emissions. If emissions don't decrease, and if Alameda does not prepare for sea level rise and more intense storms, many parts of Alameda will see frequent flooding in the near future, and some parts could be permanently underwater by mid-century.
Building on prior efforts, the CARP provides a roadmap for reducing Alameda's GHG emissions and becoming more resilient through a number of strategies. The CARP updates and expands the scope of the City's 2008 Local Action Plan for Climate Protection by adopting an integrated approach consisting of both adaptation and GHG reduction.
The 2008 Local Action Plan set a goal of reducing Alameda's GHG emissions 25% below 2005 levels by 2020. Current emissions projections indicate that the City will have reduced GHG emissions by an estimated 23% by 2020. This is mostly the result of Alameda Municipal Power's (AMP's) shift to 100 percent clean electricity, which effectively eliminates Alameda's GHG emissions from electricity consumption. In addition, Alameda's GHG emissions from waste were cut almost i...
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