What will it take for Eagle County to reach 100% emissions reduction by 2050?
Climate Action Collaborative highlights eliminating building, transportation emissions
Zoe Goldstein/Vail Daily
The Climate Action Collaborative, the collective of local governments, businesses, schools, special districts and nonprofits tasked with holding Eagle County to climate-focused goals, is upping the ante this year.
The collaborative is resetting the county-wide greenhouse reduction goal to 100% from 2014 levels by 2050.
Why reset the goal to 100% emission reduction by 2050?
The most recent emissions reduction goals were set in 2020, with an aim to reduce emissions by 25% by 2025, 50% by 2030 and 80% by 2050. While the county is not on track to reach the 2025 goal, the 2030 goal remains viable.
Gina McCrackin, the Climate Action Collaborative manager, explained that the reset was motivated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international body of scientists that provides global guidance on how to mitigate climate change.
If the planet warms by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, that is likely to dramatically change weather and climate worldwide, according to the international body of scientists. To avoid this, “we now know that we absolutely need to be at net zero globally,” McCrackin said.
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In 2023, the state of Colorado updated its emission reduction goal to 100% by 2050 to align with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s standards. With a goal of 80%, Eagle County is not aligned with the state’s goal or international recommendations.
Greenhouse gas modeling shows the road to net zero is long
Greenhouse gas modeling for the county shows that people, governments and businesses need to continue to change their ways to reach a 100% reduction.
“Business-as-usual will get us some reductions but won’t get us nearly to where we need to be,” McCrackin said.
If no further climate action is taken beyond what is currently in motion, emissions are due to decrease from 1.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent to 1 million metric tons by 2050, an amount that would require 1 million acres of United States forest to sequester. (The U.S. contains around 818 million total acres of forest.)
The modeling shows the changes that need to be made to decrease from 1 million metric tons toward zero.
Electrifying all vehicles, including public fleets, by 2050 would lead to a reduction of 350,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Full electrification of residential and commercial buildings would reduce emissions by 232,000 metric tons. A county-wide adoption of the net zero code roadmap would add nearly 100,000 metric tons to that reduction.
Right now, waste accounts for about 6% of Eagle County’s emissions. As transportation and building emissions decrease, that percentage will grow if waste management strategies are not implemented. Waste management, including widespread implementation of composting, has the potential to reduce emissions by over 100,000 metric tons.
But even if all these emissions reduction strategies are implemented, the modeling shows Eagle County will still emit nearly 200,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2050. Some of that number comes from imperfect adherence to electrification goals.
But a large portion comes from aviation, which is difficult to regulate at the local level and likely to grow in Eagle County.
Changes that need to be made to reach a 100% reduction by 2050
Reaching a 100% reduction in emissions by 2050 will not be easy.
“A lot of work needs to be done,” McCrackin said.
But current sustainable technologies show a lot of promise in reducing and eliminating emissions.
“We do have the tools at our disposal right now to make some really big strides,” McCrackin said. “A lot of all-electric technology is up to speed with where we need it to be, and has been evolving over the last few decades to get it where we need it to be integrated into daily life. Certainly, there are still some areas where technology is evolving, but we’re seeing it happen at a rapid pace.”
The biggest focus, McCrackin said, needs to be on the decarbonization of Eagle County’s building and transportation sectors.
“It’s a combination of regulation, policy and the funding to make it easy for folks,” McCrackin said. “We don’t want to burden individuals with thinking that climate change or the expensive retrofits what will need to be made is on an individual’s back. We want to make sure that these are well-supported changes that are being driven by government and large entities with a lot of capital.”
On the energy supply front, Holy Cross Energy has decarbonized most of its electrical grid and aims to reach 100% decarbonization by 2030. Xcel Energy, which is regulated by the state, is currently required to reduce its carbon emissions by 80% by 2030.
“All of that work doesn’t really mean much if we’re still burning fossil fuels,” McCrackin said.
An easy target is to build all new construction all-electric, McCrackin said. Cost-wise, building new construction all-electric is often equivalent to or cheaper than also incorporating natural gas. A regional cohort led by Walking Mountains Science Center, Lotus Engineering and Sustainability and the Community Office for Regional Efficiency has created a net zero roadmap for new construction in Eagle, Garfield and Pitkin Counties that many local governments are in the process of adopting.
The next step is to focus on existing buildings, many of which are still powered by natural gas and fossil fuels.
“We really need to be pouring funding into a lot of retrofits, and that’s where it gets really expensive and really challenging,” McCrackin said.
Retrofitting older buildings will involve working with large developers and property owners, with the support of local government.
On the transportation front, there is a need for more electrified vehicles, more public transit ridership and more people using non-vehicle forms of transport like walking and biking.
“These are challenges in our community due to our geography here, which we know, but I think the more we can develop programs to support electrified and multi-modal forms of transportation, the better,” McCrackin said.
There are additional, supplemental actions that can also assist in the reduction of greenhouse gases, like building new homes close to town centers to reduce the need for vehicles, lowering landfill-directed waste and support carbon sequestration in Eagle County’s open spaces.
“We really do need a cultural shift. This isn’t just about electrifying everything and people living with the same amount of abundance that they have always been able to live with,” McCrackin said. “We know that if every person on this globe lived with the amount of resources and things that the average U.S. citizen does, the Earth wouldn’t be able to sustain that.”
Next steps
Now that the greenhouse gas modeling has been completed, the Climate Action Collaborative’s next step is to amend the current Climate Action Plan to make it more concise, approachable and include the new, modeled strategies to drive down greenhouse gas emissions.
Once the plan has been updated, Climate Action Collaborative leaders will go to each municipality in Eagle County to adopt it. McCrackin anticipates the whole process will run through the end of the year.
“We need collective action,” McCrackin said. “That includes community members making small changes within their daily lives to ladder up to the big goals, and we can rely on government and policy and regulation and the awesome work of our utilities and larger businesses to really make those big leaps and strides in our emissions reductions that we aim to see.”
McCrackin recommended that individuals reach out to Walking Mountains and the Climate Action Collaborative for advice on programs, resources and opportunities for involvement. “We want everybody to feel empowered to make change,” she said.
