RES 231366 - Laserfiche WebLink

Section 1. Introduction | 16Pleasanton Climate Action Plan 2.0 Engagement Themes During engagement, several themes emerged as priorities for the community. These themes guided each stage of the planning process, ensuring that the City developed policies that align with the community’s priorities. Reliable Renewable Energy Water Conservation Sustainable Transportation Residents support transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, including electrification and expanding local renewable energy generation, particularly solar panels. Simultaneously, the community is concerned about future blackouts and energy shortages, underscoring the importance of technologies like battery storage to ensure that renewables are both a clean and reliable energy source. Community members recognize the threat that severe droughts and water scarcity poses to Pleasanton. They identified safe and clean water as a priority early in the engagement process and reiterated support throughout for water conservation actions, such as expanding recycled water systems. Community members and City leaders alike highlighted the need for adopting more policies and programs to reduce GHG emissions from transportation, noting support for electrifying transportation, expanding telecommuting, incentivizing carpooling, making the city more bike- and walk-friendly, making public transportation more convenient, and using sustainable land use policy to reduce VMT. What we heard Â “Vacant or large open land like parking lots and shopping centers are ideal for adding solar.” Â “Reliability of the grid; quality and cost (are critical).” What we heard Â “We need to ensure that our water supply is safe to drink and bathe in.” Â “Please put money into our water supply.” What we heard Â “More specific targets focused on reducing VMT.” Â “Electrification across transportation and buildings highest lever (for reducing emissions).” Waste Reduction and Diversion Green Space and Carbon Storage Accessibility and Cost Early on, community members elevated reducing community waste as a top priority for CAP 2.0 and reiterated this support throughout the engagement. They noted the importance of both community reuse programs to reduce waste overall and improving waste diversion to divert unavoidable waste from landfills. Community members emphasized the importance of expanding green spaces and ensuring proper soil management, both to support healthy habitat and to increase local carbon sequestration. This feedback resulted in focusing the Natural Systems strategy on local carbon sequestration and ecosystem resilience. The community voiced concern over the cost and equity implications of climate action, noting cost as a barrier to climate action and highlighting the need to provide support for low-income residents to ensure that implementing CAP 2.0 does not inadvertently increase existing economic disparities. Additionally, City staff reiterated throughout the planning process that CAP 2.0 should focus on a short list of highly impactful strategies and actions that are cost effective and feasible to implement. What we heard Â “REDUCE waste, then divert what is left.” Â “Stop the waste at source; businesses using disposable everything!” Â “City events and programs need to focus on food recycling/composting.” What we heard Â “How could Pleasanton offset emissions with low-cost investments in carbon sequestration projects?” Â “Community gardens would be great!” Â “More trees in parks & on streets will clean the air and provide more shade from the heat.” What we heard Â “I am concerned about the rising cost of living in Pleasanton as a result of the plan.” Â “Need to consider cost associated (with energy efficiency retrofits); need to incentivize.” Â “What are the equity/cost implications of EBCE’s Renewable 100?”