City looks to reduce carbon footprint

Whitefish is investigating whether it should establish a climate action plan in an attempt to reduce the city’s carbon footprint.

City Council studied the option last week while also considering a similar plan involving the whole North Valley.

A climate action plan is a set of strategies aimed at reducing a city’s environmental impact and increasing energy efficiency. Two years ago, council put the item on its goals list.

“I think this is the time to get going with this plan,” councilor Pam Barberis said. “There’s really good momentum on this and we should capitalize on that.”

“Two years ago we made a general commitment with this and we need to go forward with it,” added councilor Richard Hildner. “The city is ideally positioned to take the lead on this and I’d like to see us do that.”

Whitefish resident and climate activist Steve Thompson first approached the city with the idea of an action plan. Thompson asked council for a continued commitment from the city to be involved in a committee that would further investigate the idea.

“We have to be eyes wide open,” Thompson said. “We have to understand what is happening and what is likely to happen, and how it might effect us and how we can get ahead of it.”

He pointed to two possible areas of focus — a city-specific plan and a broader plan that might involve the North Valley, including Whitefish, Columbia Falls, the canyon area and Glacier National Park. He said he recently met with 35 area stakeholders with the intent of bringing them into the process.

“It can be more expensive to include a larger geographic area,” he said. “But water and fire are big issues and those transcend political boundaries.”

A few Montana towns already have climate action plans, including Helena, Red Lodge, Bozeman, Billings and Missoula.

Helena adopted its plan in 2009 focusing on mitigation through reducing its carbon footprint and protection of its municipal watershed. Red Lodge incorporated it climate action strategies into it growth policy. Bozeman adopted its plan in 2011 looking at clean energy, food, water and transportation.

Representatives from Missoula met with Whitefish officials during the two-hour work session last week.

Missoula Mayor John Engen in 2008 requested an inventory of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions and a report was presented to the council in 2011 showing steep increases in emissions, the Missoulian reported in 2013, prompting the mayor to form a task force to create that city’s action plan.

Missoula has taken a two-phase approach, first by setting goals for the city’s operations, and by creating a plan led by Climate Smart Missoula.

“We looked at what we could handle and decided we needed to get our house in order first,” explained Chase Jones, energy conservation coordinator for Missoula.

The city hopes to be carbon neutral by 2025.

The first year after the plan was implemented, the city reduced its emissions by 0.5 percent. Jones said staying almost even is a good thing when taking into consideration that the city has grown in that time.

Missoula started by looking at ways to make its buildings more energy efficient. Changes to insulation, HVAC, and lighting not only reduced its carbon footprint, Jones said, but also created almost $84,000 in savings for the city. By installing solar panels at its newest parking garage it is able to generate 80 percent of the power needed to operate the garage and savings are estimated at $12,000 per year.

Amy Cilimburg, director of Climate Smart, said one of the programs includes bringing more solar power to homes by making installation less costly and less complex.

Thompson said a lot can be learned from Missoula and the other cities that have already adopted a climate action plan.

For Whitefish, he said, the idea of a private-public partnership is an attractive one. He envisions a framework where representative from the community including the city, private citizens, business and organizations can come together to brain storm ideas for what should be included in a Whitefish plan.

“There’s a lot of folks out there involved and interested in different pieces to this,” he said. “We can bring them together and work on the things they’re interested in.”

Thompson said work on a community climate solutions project is still in its early stages.

“We’re still looking to see how much community interest there is and we want the city to be involved in those conversations,” he told council. “We’d like to be able to come back to you and say we’ve got a cooperative agreement that all these partners interested and ask the city to sign that agreement first.”