1 CITY COUNCIL STAFF REPORT
DATE: January 17, 2023
TO: Mayor Walker-Griffin and Members of the City Council
SUBMITTED BY: Timothy Rood, AICP, Community Development Director Dante Hall, City Manager
SUBJECT: Sustainability Initiatives
RECOMMENDED ACTION:
Receive a report on potential sustainability initiatives, ask questions, and provide direction on any initiatives the City Council would like to pursue further.
SUBCOMMITTEE ACTION:
The Council’s Economic Development Committee reviewed this report on August 16, 2022 and recommended that it be brought forward to the full Council.
FISCAL IMPACT OF RECOMMENDATION:
There are no direct fiscal impacts associated with this item ; however, several of the pote ntial initiatives, if pursued, would require additional funding for consulting services and staffing assistance.
BACKGROUND & DISCUSSION:
The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 committed the United States to sustainability, declaring it a national policy “to create and maintain conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations.” In 1987, the United Nations Brundtland Commission defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency uses a similar definition: “To pursue sustainability is to create and maintain the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony to support present and future generations.”
Local Sustainability Initiatives
The City of Hercules has recognized the importance of environmental sustainability in many ways.
In June 2020 the City Council approved a $3.9 million engineering services contract with ENGIE to install solar arrays and LED lighting on City-owned facilities and streetlights, retrocommission the library heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system, and replace the City Hall HVAC
2 system. The ongoing planning for the Regional Intermodal Transit Center and Waterfront District Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) demonstrate the City’s leadership in planning for sustainable transportation and land use. Public electric vehicle (EV) chargers are available at several locations in Hercules, including North Shore Business Park and Park Lake Plaza, with more c hargers to be installed at Safeway as well.
The City Council adopted an updated General Plan Safety Element and Local Hazard Mitigation Plan in 2021, which address adaptation and resiliency strategies applicable to Hercules. The Element recognizes that the impacts of climate change pose an increasing and growing challenge to the safety and wellbeing to the residents of Hercules, as California will continue to experience effects of climate change in different ways, including increased likelihood of drought, flooding, wildfires, heat waves, severe weather, and sea-level rise. The Local Hazard Mitigation Plan includes a policy calling for the City to develop a Climate Action Plan by 2026.
In 2017, the City worked with East Bay Energy Watch, a program of StopWaste.org, to develop draft Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventories for the City of Hercules for the years 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2017, While some data were not available, the inventory estimated that roughly 55 to 60% of the City’s GHG emissions result from transportation, with the remainder primarily resulting from residential and commercial energy use (heating and cooling) and water and wastewater systems. In May 2022, the City adopted local energy standards that are more stringent than the statewide standards, called “Reach Codes” because they are reaching beyond the minimum requirements with the goal of decreasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Members of the City Council have expressed interest in additional sustainability initiatives, including incentives for installation of EV charging stations and permit streamlining for solar panels. Given the very limited staffing in the Community Development Department, staff is requesting direction on Council priorities for bringing forward new sustainability initiatives as part of the Department’s overall work plan and staffing strategy.
Climate Change
Since the mid to late 1900s, the world has seen the average global temperature increase. June 2022 marked the 46th consecutive June and the 450th consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th- century average. The ten warmest Junes on record have all occurred since 2010. 1 According to NASA,
over 97% of scientists agree that human activities, specifically emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, are the major cause of this trend. Climate change brings added stress to community members’ livelihoods, businesses, and infrastructure systems. While no individual weather event can be fully and directly attributed to climate change, a warming climate increases the volatility of weather and climate conditions. Heat waves become hotter. Storms become more extreme. Fires burn more land.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. The IPCC was created in 1988 to provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, its implications and potential future risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and mitigation options. Through its assessments, the IPCC determines the state of knowledge on climate change. It identifies where there is agreement in the scientific community on topics related to climate change, and where further research is needed. The reports are drafted and reviewed in several stages, thus guaranteeing objectivity and transparency. IPCC’s Sixth Assessment,
1 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “June 2022 was Earth’s 6th -warmest on record,” July 2022 3 issued in 2022, states with high confidence that the rise in weather and climate extremes has led to some irreversible impacts as natural and human systems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt. The Assessment also states:
• Global warming, reaching 1.5°C in the near -term, would cause unavoidable increases in multiple climate hazards and present multiple risks to ecosystems and humans (very high confidence).
• Near-term actions that limit global warming to close to 1.5°C would substantially reduce projected losses and damages related to climate change in human systems and ecosystems, compared to higher warming levels, but cannot eliminate them all (very high confidence)
California is particularly vulnerable to disruption of its water supply due to loss of snowpack.
Fourteen of the most destructive wildfires in California state history have occurred since 2012. In the coming decades, the changing climate is likely to further decrease the supply of water, increase the risk of wildfires, and threaten coastal development and ecosystems. In the Bay Area alone, the effects of climate change have been slowly intensifying. Between 1950 and 2005, the Bay Area’s average annual maximum temperature increased by 1.7°F (0.95 °C). The 2012-2016 drought led to moisture shortages not seen in the last 1,200 years. Sea levels in the Bay Area have risen over 8 inches in the last 100 years.
2 Sea level is likely to rise between one and four feet in the next century. Even a 16- inch rise could threaten coastal highways, bridges, and the San Francisco and Oakland airports. A rise of three feet would increase the number of Californians living in places that are flooded by a 100-year storm from about 250,000 today to about 400,000.3
Regulatory Context
The State of California has set ambitious greenhouse gas emissions targets for the next 30 years. The State has implemented policies, span ning from renewable energy procurement to sustainable transportation planning, that help it achieve its goals. Aligning with the state can help the City secure funding for projects to improve the livability of its communities.
State laws have outlined goals for the state’s greenhouse gas emissions reductions, including:
• AB 32 (2006): Limit greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 • SB 32 (2016): Limit greenhouse gas emissions to 40% of 1990 levels by 2030
In 2007, California developed green building standards in an effort to meet the goals of AB 32. The California Green Building Standards Code — Part 11, Title 24, California Code of Regulations — known as CALGreen, was the first-in-the-nation mandatory green building standards code. Since then, regular updates to the code have greatly streamlined permitting for energy efficiency measures such as solar panels and EV chargers, in most cases requiring such permits to be issued ministerially, without a public hearing.
Local governments have a role to play in helping the State achieve its climate goals. California’s Climate Change Scoping Plan encourages local governments to adopt goals to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 15% below 1990 levels by 2020, 40% below 1990 levels in 2030, and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Additionally, Executive Order B -55-18 calls for carbon neutrality by 2045, consistent with the latest IPCC report.
2 Bay Area Climate Change Regional Report – California’s Fourth Climate Change Report 3 EPA Bulletin 430-F-16-007 – “What Climate Change Means for California,” August 2016 4 POTENTIAL INITATIVES:
Climate Action Plan
Climate Action Plans (CAPs) are comprehensive roadmaps that outline the specific activities that an agency will undertake to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Climate Action Plans build upon the information gathered by greenhouse gas inventories and generally focus on those activities that can achieve the relatively greatest emission reductions in the most cost-effective manner.
In Hercules, the General Plan Safety Element and associated Local Hazard Mitigation Plan adopted in 2021 call for the City to develop a Climate Action Plan by 2026. Such a plan would require considerable public outreach and consultant assistance and would need to be considered as part of the Community Development Department’s overall workplan and staffing strategy for the coming years.
As of August 2022, in Contra Costa County, 11 of the 16 cities and towns, as well as the County of Contra Costa, currently have adopted Climate Action Plans, and the cities of Brentwood, Pinole and Pittsburg have CAPs in progress. The cities or towns in the County that do not have, and are not currently developing, a CAP are Clayton, Hercules, Lafayette, Orinda, and Pleasant Hill.
A Climate Action Plan would likely take at least 9 -12 months to bring forward for adoption once work began. For context, in May 2022, the City of Pinole authorized a budget of $184,808 for its first Climate Action Plan and associated optional tasks and an additional $50,000 to partner with Strategic Energy Innovations (SEI) to support a Climate Action Fellow for 10 months of on-site service.
Sustainability Task Force
The Council could consider appointing a limited-term task force to make recommendations regarding sustainability initiatives. Such an advisory body could identify and recommend specific programs for the City Council to consider, and if a Climate Action Plan were prepared, the task force could act as an advisory committee for the effort.
Community Choice Energy
Joining a Community Choice Energy (CCE) provider would be an opportunity to signficantly reduce energy costs for homeowners and businesses and reduce carbon pollution citywide, at no cost to the City. Authorized by the Legislature under AB 117 in 2002, Community Choice Energy, formerly known as Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), is a program by which local, not-for- profit public agencies provide electricity and often other energy-related programs to residents and businesses in their service area. Through Community Choice, communities can join together to pool (or aggregate) their electricity load in order to purchase clean energy and develop local projects and programs on behalf of their residents and businesses. Community Choice introduces competition and consumer choice into the electricity sector with a focus on local, renewable energy to stimulate rapid innovations in clean energy systems. As not-for-profit agencies, CCAs are not beholden to shareholder returns, but rather to stable, competitive pricing for consumers and increasingly resilient, clean, and local energy systems. Community Choice providers work in partnership with the region’s existing Investor-Owned Utility (IOU), which continues to deliver power and maintain the power grid.
Since the launch of Marin Clean Energy (now known as MCE) in 2010, many new CCAs have formed in communities across the service territories of California’s three largest investor-owned utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas & 5 Electric (SDG&E). According to Cal-CCA, the trade association representing CCAs in California, as of summer 2022, there are 24 operational CCA entities serving over 15 million people in more than 200 California cities and about half the counties in the state. According to CalCCA, CCAs in California have contracted for over 10,000 megawatts (10 gigawatts) of new renewable energy capacity and over 2,600 megawatt-hours of new energy storage, avoided about 940,000 metric tons of GHG emissions per year, and supported thousands of jobs.
In Contra Costa County, the unincorporated County and the cities of Concord, Danville, El Cerrito, Lafayette, Martinez, Moraga, Oakley, Pinole, Pittsburg, Pleasant Hill, Richmond, San Pablo, San Ramon and Walnut Creek are members of MCE, which now serves 37 communities in Marin, Napa, Solano and Contra Costa Counties. Like most CCAs, MCE is a Joint Powers Authority (JPA), with a board made up of elected officials representing its member agencies. PG&E continues to deliver the electricity through its transmission and distribution system and provide meter reading, billing, and maintenance services for MCE and other CCA customers in its territory, as well as to provide natural gas service. The MCE charges appear as a line item on the PG&E bill. MCE’s standard service, Light Green, has contained 60% renewable energy or more since 2017, meeting state goals 13 years ahead of schedule. Light Green is projected to be 95% GHG-free by 2023 and will increase to 85% renewable by 2029.
Once a city or county implements or joins a CCA program, state law requires that residential customers within a CCA member's jurisdictions be enrolled in CCA service unless they choose to opt out. The noticing process is conducted by the CCA and includes a website and telephone call center for questions. The default power product at enrollment is selected by the member agency’s governing body, and once enrolled, customers have the option to “opt up” or “opt down” to a different power product, or to “opt out” of the CCA entirely at no charge and continue to purchase their electricity at higher cost from PG&E. Customers will receive at least two notices during a 60- day period prior to CCA service commencement and at least two additional notices during a 60-day period after CCA service commencement. These notices will inform the customer how to opt out of the program if he or she chooses to do so.
On June 25, 2017, the Hercules City Council discussed the option of joining a CCA program. The consensus of City Council at that time was to not join and to only consider this item on a future agenda if MCE offers another open enrollment program where the one-time cost to join is waived, and to return to the City Council at that time to ask if the Council is inclined to consider the option.
MCE staff indicated in July 2022 that there is no cost to join MCE and that all three of MCE’s power products are currently priced below PG&E rates. MCE staff have indicated that they would be happy to present to the City Council, if desired.
Vehicle Electrification
Given that roughly half of the City’s GHG emissions result from transportation, addressing vehicle emissions will be a key part of any climate action strategy. Along with increased walking, bicycling, use of micro-mobility (e-scooters, e-bikes etc.) and transit use, vehicle electrification is a major part of the state and region’s plans for reducing vehicle emissions. CALGreen, the state Building Code, currently requires a minimum percentage of parking spaces for certain uses to be EV Capable (equipped with service panel capacity and raceway, but not the chargers themselves). The 2022 update that went into effect January 1, 2023 will require new multifamily dwellings and hotels/motels to equip 25% of parking spaces with low power Level 2 receptacles and require 5% of parking spaces in buildings with 20 or more units to provide higher power Level 2 chargers. Local agencies may choose to enact higher minimum percentages as voluntary measures, and Contra Costa County has 6 done so, increasing the required percenta ge of spaces with higher power Level 2 EV spaces for hotels/motels and multifamily to 10%. On January 10, 2023, the City Council considered an ordinance adopting the 2022 California Building Code with local amendments consistent with the County’s in this regard.
In partnership with Contra Costa County, the City complies with state laws requiring streamlined permitting of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (EVCS). AB 1236 (Chiu, 2015), codified in Government Code Section 65850.7, requires all California ci ties and counties to develop an expedited, streamlined permitting process for electric vehicle charging stations (EVCS) , with approval limited to health and safety review and no public hearing required. AB 970 (McCarty, 2021) adds specific binding timelines to that review period based on the size of the project and clarifies parking requirements - if the EVCS and associated equipment interferes with, reduces, eliminates, or in any way impacts the required parking spaces for existing uses. cities and counties shall reduce the number of required parking spaces by the amount necessary to accommodate the EVCS. EVCS are also required to be installed at Safeway and Sycamore Crossing per the approved development agreements.
The City could consider acquiring new electric vehicles (EVs) for its fleet as City vehicles are retired from service and replaced. The Fiscal Year 22 -23 budget includes replacement of three Police Department patrol vehicles and two Public Works pick-up trucks. Transitioning the City fleet to EVs would require further study, as the City fleet includes police vehicles and trucks which may not be well suited to electrification with currently available vehicles. Fleet recharging facilities would also be required; such facilities were considered but not pursued as part of the agreement with ENGIE that the Council approved in June 2020.
In summer 2022, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) issued a call for proposals or concepts for projects or programs that address gaps and accelerate equitable electric vehicle adoption, EV charging deployment, or other electric mobility options (e-scooters, e-bike, etc.) and demonstrate replicable or scalable solutions that can improve access to clean mobility options across the region.
MTC anticipates developing a $40-60 million funding program(s) to advance vehicle electrification in the region, with a call for applications later in 2023.
Jurisdictions that belong to MCE can participate in CCTA’s Charge Up Contra Costa program to support electric personal mobility and provide educational programs in low-income communities in Contra Costa. Strategies include rebates for the procurement of electric vehicle charging stations, electric vehicle carshare, e- Bike rebates, Workforce Development, courses for electric vehicle maintenance and repair, and installation and maintenance of electric vehicle charging stations. MCE will lead the outreach efforts to install electric vehicle charging stations at multi-unit dwellings and public locations. The program, which will run through March 2024, aims to improve localized health impacts with estimates to reduce 54,640 tons of greenhouse gases that exacerbate health issues, including emphysema, asthma, and other respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bronchitis.
Staffing Assistance
With a full-time staff of 2.0 FTEs, the Community Development Department does not currently have capacity to take on major new initiatives. Should the Council decide to pursue a Climate Action Plan and/or Sustainability Task Force , staff recommends consideration of participating in one of the available staffing assistance programs for this type of effort. These include the following:
7 • CivicSpark Fellowship, a program of the Local Government Commission, is a Governor’s Initiative AmeriCorps program that launched in 2014 to build capacity for local governments to address climate change. Since then, the program has evolved to address community resilience issues in general, including climate change, affordable housing, transportation equity, and others.. Fellows are placed with agencies from September through August, with applications due in April-July each year. The Fellowship runs for an 11-month term where Fellows serve an average of 40 hours per week to complete a minimum of 1700 hours during the service term. The 2022-23 cost to the participating local government is $29,000.
• Climate Action Fellowship, a program of Strategic Energy Innovations (SEI), is also an AmeriCorps program. Fellows are placed with agencies from September through June, with applications due in April-June each year. The Fellowship runs for a 1 0-month term where Fellows serve an average of 40 hours per week. The 2022-23 cost to the participating local government starts at $46,500 for public agencies.