What’s the fastest way to get Eagle County to net zero? Addressing housing challenges is a good start

Four years ago, Eagle County adopted a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 and 80% by 2050 through the adoption of the community-wide Climate Action Plan. Following the adoption of the plan, various nonprofits, businesses, special districts and governments formed the Climate Action Collaborative to guide the work and ensure the community stays on track.  

On Monday, June 24, the Climate Action Collaborative hosted its first semi-annual stakeholder meeting of 2024 at Walking Mountains’ campus in Avon.

Since adopting the community-wide plan, the collaborative has created working groups to enact the strategies outlined. On Monday, much of the time was spent hearing updates from these groups, which cover the six main sections of the Climate Action Plan: buildings, energy supply, materials management, natural climate solutions, transportation and water.

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Groups shared information on carbon sequestration modeling; creating a net zero building code roadmap for local municipalities; progress and participation for rebate programs around energy, electric vehicles and more; waste diversion progress; Eagle River Coalition’s community water plan; and more.

Attendees also heard from the Colorado Clean Energy Fund on how to leverage millions of dollars of green financing options from the statewide nonprofit investment fund.

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While the stakeholders connected on progress, they also looked ahead at the work to be done, including how the group can increase equity and bring the entire community into the climate action work as well as whether it needs to shorten the timeframe for achieving net zero emissions. 

When can Eagle County hit net zero?

Eagle County’s current Climate Action Plan was updated in 2020. However, tracking statewide goals and global targets, the collaborative is expected to bring another update to the plan later this year.  

In 2023, the state of Colorado set a goal to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, creating a “misalignment” with Eagle County’s goals, reported Gina McCrackin, the Climate Action Collaborative Manager at Walking Mountains.

“The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is also telling us that globally, by 2050, we have to be at net zero to really limit to that 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming,” she added. “We know that it’s what is necessary. It’s what we have to do. So the question was posed, what’s stopping us? How is the state able to commit to a goal that ambitious and in a community with resources and that’s much smaller like ours, how come we aren’t able to commit to that as well?”

The first step in updating the plan includes undergoing community-wide climate modeling. This modeling and data will help the collaborative understand what is needed to hit net zero in Eagle County, and what is a reasonable timeframe.

The current Climate Action Plan’s strategies — which are aligned with reducing greenhouse gas emissions — will not go away, McCrackin said. Rather, the plan will add a few more key strategies to help Eagle County reach net zero.

“We just want to know: What else do we need to do to really get us to that net-zero goal? Is that a 2050 goal, or does it look like we can reasonably achieve that by 2045? Those are the questions that we want to ask and that will get baked into this Climate Action Plan update,” she said.

The modeling is currently underway and expected to be completed later this summer. Then, it will be used to update the Climate Action Plan, which will then be brought to local municipalities to consider the adoption of the new plan — and the actions and goals that come with it.

Building climate equity

In addition to considering bigger, bolder goals, the Climate Action Plan update this fall will include another component to ensure that everyone in the community is included in climate action.

Last year, Walking Mountains received a $154,000 grant from the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment to “work on climate equity issues across Eagle County,” McCrackin said.

The goal of this was “really increasing Latino involvement in local climate action efforts, as well as increasing the knowledge and understanding of those climate change impacts in our communities,” she added.

The organization used the funds to hire a bilingual sustainability coordinator, Mady Ponce, as well as fund a Climate Equity Plan.

So far, Walking Mountains has completed the data collection — through surveys, focus groups and more — and has done the analysis required to build the plan. McCrackin said the final version, which will share data as well as strategies to address some of the issues identified, is expected to be completed by late summer or early fall.

Then, it will be offered as an addendum to the Climate Action Plan update for adoption.

On Monday, McCrackin shared some high-level insights on the data.

“Across all of the focus areas of our questioning, housing challenges are absolutely the underbelly of every climate equity issue we have in our community. We see that with water, with waste, with energy, with transportation,” she said.

For example, the data shows a disparity between English-speaking respondents and Spanish-speaking respondents in terms of convenient access to recycling and composting that can be tracked to the type of housing.

“We see the access to composting and recycling as directly correlated to the housing types that exist within our communities. And we’re also seeing that Spanish-speaking respondents are, more often than not, not living in those housing types that have convenient access to these services,” McCrackin said. “That tells us we need to do a lot more to get this waste access within all housing types across Eagle County.”

Another example is in water. The data collection highlighted “community members that don’t have access to clean drinking water, real or perceived,” McCrackin said. 

“We learned that Eagle County residents who live in modular manufactured homes and apartments are more likely to not have access to clean drinking water,” she said. “And once again, back to housing, there is a significantly higher percentage of respondents who speak Spanish who are living in these home types, the manufactured homes and apartments, making it a key equity issue.”

McCrackin acknowledged that the equity plan would bring a lot of “heavy insights” and tough emotions.

“While these results might feel a little bit uncomfortable to sit with or there might be feelings of guilt coming up, I want us to really galvanize those emotions into action,” she said. “There are tangible things that we can be doing in our community to address all of this. So, sit with that discomfort, but let’s utilize it for action because we can’t be leaving any community members behind in our work to come.”

While Walking Mountains has coordinated the effort, implementing and addressing the issues identified will be an “all-hands-on-deck effort” similar to the climate action plan and collaborative, McCrackin said.

Budget challenges

As the Climate Action Collaborative seeks to expand its efforts and continue tracking toward its goals, there are some budgetary challenges and constraints it will face along the way.

The collaborative gets 75% of its budget from local governments, with the remaining 25% coming from “long-term partnerships with other businesses, utilities, and organizations,” McCrackin said.

In 2022, the collaborative board — comprised of representatives from all Eagle County’s town governments (except Gypsum) and the county  — adopted a new funding model to make the budgeting more methodical, predominantly tying funding requests to government’s involvement, tax revenue and CAC requests.

“It’s not a perfect funding model,” McCrackin said. “It’s definitely more methodical than we had in years past, but it still needs some refinement and some perfection to get us to a point of programmatic sustainability where we can really rely on being able to fill the budget year over year without spending too much of CAC staff time trying to fill those gaps that inevitably have occurred in our budget.”

In 2024, the budget was just over $254,226 — a number that included a $30,000 funding gap covered by Walking Mountains.

“We’re doing a little bit more with less,” McCrackin shared.

Looking ahead, the board is seeking ways to find financial sustainability for the group.

“I think we had a hiccup in our funding formula from 2022. I think we have a good start on cleaning that up, but we need to think bigger,” said Geoff Grimmer, the Climate Action Collaborative board chair and Eagle Town Council member.

Grimmer added that there could not be a worse time to cut the collaborative’s budget.

“There couldn’t be a worse time to cut that, especially if you look at what’s happening all over the world,” Grimmer said. “If you look at atmospheric temperatures, it just seems like a foolish time to try to shave 3% out of your climate action budget. So we need to get along. The electeds need to get along. If we can figure out how to put the team above the individual, I think we’re going to do great.”