Municipal Committee to Review Update on City’s Climate Action Plan

Pasadena’s Environmental Advisory Commission said the City has been making significant progress in implementing the Pasadena Climate Action Plan (CAP), but that some of its efforts “have not been commensurate with the existential threat that greenhouse gas emissions represent.”

“We are however falling short in a few critical areas and the language of the plan somewhat obfuscates these shortcomings,” the EAC said in a letter to the City Council last month. “We would appreciate a more direct assessment that articulates if we are not on track to meet our goal.”

The letter is included in a preliminary report that the Department of Planning and Community Development is submitting Tuesday to the City Council’s Municipal Services Committee, as part of its Pasadena Climate Action Plan 2019 Annual Report.

The Municipal Services Committee will formally receive the Planning Department’s report Tuesday during its regular virtual meeting.

In the letter, the EAC said it will continue to work with City staff to identify and coordinate high impact projects – with a high potential to raise public awareness – to reduce greenhouse gases.

The EAC listed their comments on each of the five CAP strategies earlier agreed upon by the City’s stakeholders when the City Council approved the CAP in March 2018. These strategies are sustainable mobility and land use, energy efficiency and conservation, water conservation, waste reduction, and urban greening.

According to the Pasadena CAP, these strategies are aimed at helping the City achieve its greenhouse gas emission goals between 2020 and 2035.

Aside from the list of comments from the EAC, the Planning Department’s preliminary report also noted some strategies will need to be more strictly monitored in order to determine compliance.

Under the sustainable mobility and land use strategy, the report noted that the Department is evaluating alternatives to the bike share agreement with Metro that was recently terminated because of low ridership and increasing associated maintenance costs, as well as a decrease by 4.9 percent in 2019 in the City’s transit mode share – use of public transportation as opposed to private vehicles – instead of the desired 10 percent share.

It also noted that for the waste reduction strategy, the goal of achieving a 75-percent diversion rate by 2020 has remained a challenge. In 2019, Pasadena achieved a 60-percent diversion rate – which measures how much solid waste is being diverted into reuse, recycling or composting instead of being dumped into landfills – for 2019, according to the report.

For organic wastes, the Planning Department was able to report that almost 14,000 tons have been diverted through City-managed programs, but the percentage of the diversion rate is still undetermined, as guidance for determining the diversion rate for this type of waste is yet to be provided by guidance from the state.

The report said the City intends to conduct a greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory to measure levels for 2020 to be able to come up with more viable targets in the Pasadena CAP. By the end of April, the City will release a Request for Proposals to select a consultant that will conduct the inventory.

The Planning Department also indicated it may be necessary to update the Pasadena CAP to provide for means to solicit public input and measure public acceptance of the need to address climate change, before embarking on further policy changes and legislation.