Information Charlottesville

Albemarle County is moving forward with the next phase of a Climate Action Plan. The Board of Supervisors adopted the plan last October. Greg Harper of the county’s Facilities and Environmental Services Department updated the Places29-Hydraulic Community Advisory Committee. 

“The Board did not want us to develop a paper document and put it on the shelf as they say,” Harper said. “They want a climate program and I think this was just the beginning of what is going to be a long-term, long-time program.” 

Addressing climate change is one of Board’s strategic goals, which means programs to implement the plan’s objective to hit certain emissions reductions goals are likely to be funded.

“We’re supposed to have community emissions reduced by 45 percent [by 2030] and then by 2050 we should be achieving net zero emissions,” Harper said. “That means for all the emissions emits, carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases, we’re supposed to sequester or absorb an equal amount of emissions so that the net is zero. That’s basically what that means.”

Harper said the climate action plan is a set of strategies and actions that can be taken across multiple sectors to reduce the overall. 

“There are 11 goals in the five sector categories,” Harper said. “Those broad goals are supported by 31 strategies and those 31 strategies are supported by 135 separate actions in the plan.”

Harper said the county is now moving into Phase 2 which includes an update of a greenhouse gas emissions inventory. Such work has not been done in over a decade.

“And it’s nearly complete, so I would be on the lookout in the next couple of months for 2018 greenhouse gas inventory for Albemarle County,” Harper said. “And it’s 2018 because we can’t do 2020 because we won’t have the data for 2020 for a couple of years unfortunately.” 

Harper said the Climate Action Plan is intended to build on other county documents, including the Comprehensive Plan. For the full presentation, watch this portion of the Places29-Hydraulic meeting on the Albemarle County YouTube page. 

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