Provided by Ames Climate Action Team – a group dedicated to supporting action centered in social justice at the city, county, state, and national levels to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Ames city council has begun the process of developing a climate action plan. This plan will inform the city’s climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy.
However, the speed and scale of the city’s effort are still up in the air. In December, the city council will be voting on a specific emissions reduction target for Ames to pursue. Once the target is set, the city will send it to their climate consultant firm to explore how it can be achieved.
Ames Climate Action Team (ACAT,) along with other groups, have spent the last several months advocating for Ames to adopt an aggressive goal.
“It’s an exciting time to be in Ames,” said Jeri Neal, a member of ACAT. “We have a long history of investing in sustainability, but most recently the city has really stepped up in climate-aware leadership.”
Neal said that Ames has already taken some steps to address climate change such as conducting a greenhouse gas inventory, a climate vulnerability report, and has recently begun the process of developing the climate action plan, the outcome of which ACAT hopes to influence.
“The challenge is to develop a bold, grand plan,” Neal said, “Not a comfortable plan.”
ACAT has started a campaign to convince Ames to adopt a bold, citywide goal of 100% clean energy and carbon neutrality by 2030. The team has created an endorsement letter to demonstrate support for their 2030 goal.
Read the full letter on the ACAT website.
The team has asked organizations, businesses, and institutions to sign on. (Iowa IPL has signed.) The letter will be submitted to the city council before they make their decision in December.
“We hope this letter accomplishes two things,” Neal said. “First, we want it known that there is wide support for aggressive climate action. Second, we want the city to consider at least one bold emissions reduction scenario in our goal-setting process. No timeline is too bold to be considered.”
Currently, the most aggressive scenario the climate consultants will present to the city council for consideration is 83 percent emissions reduction from 2018 levels by 2030.
However, ACAT believes that net-zero emissions by 2030 are achievable if the city uses all of the emissions reduction strategies at its disposal.
Many of the world’s top companies, including Apple, Google, and Microsoft, have pledged to become carbon neutral by 2030. In addition, aggressive climate action plans exist in cities such as Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Decorah, Ann Arbor, Columbia, and Minneapolis.
The group also said that Ames is well-positioned to become a leader on climate change in Iowa. Iowa already gets 60 percent of its electricity from wind and is developing solar as well as sequestration options.
There are also other opportunities coming online soon in the state, such as the creation of an Iowa Carbon Sequestration Task Force. This group has already compiled Iowa carbon market tax credit and incentive recommendations in preparation for formulating policies for the 2022 legislative session.
“Getting moving now is extremely important,” Neal said,” because all our actions have a legacy. Ames is in a position to move fast with its goals, planning, and policies thanks to an abundance of renewable resources in our immediate vicinity, an engaged civic population, and strong social and educational institutions.”
To get involved, ACAT asks for people to visit their website. Here they will find additional information about the campaign, links to sign on as a group or individual, as well as informational posts about local climate change issues written by ISU Professor Emerita Dr. Lee Anne Willson.
“If you have a local or state group that you think could sign on, direct them our way,” Neal said.
You can contact ACAT by emailing acat.website@gmail.com.