A new plan to reduce carbon emissions by 2030
Garfield Clean Energy announced that Garfield County and all six of its municipalities unanimously adopted an updated clean energy action plan that sets five goals to help reduce carbon emissions by 2030. The plan expands on the county’s 2017 plan and serves as a multi-year work plan for GCE, which is a collaboration between Garfield County, its six municipalities, the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority, Colorado Mountain College and Holy Cross Energy. It includes strategies to help the communities save energy, expand solar power, advance clean mobility and achieve other emissions reduction goals, according to a press release. The five goals included in the plan are: energy savings (reduce energy consumption in the built environment by 12%); carbon-free electricity (make Garfield County’s electricity supply 100% carbon-free by 2030); clean mobility (increase the share of zero-emissions electric vehicles to 15% of the county’s registered vehicles and support alternative fuels and alternatives to driving); greenhouse gas emissions (reduce emissions from electricity by 100% and emissions from natural gas by 10%); and economic development and jobs (harness the clean-energy transition for the benefit of Garfield County by creating more job opportunities to do the work of energy efficiency). The action plan, which can be viewed and downloaded from GCE’s website, will be used by the county and individual municipalities to steer their environmental efforts. In Carbondale, the town is looking forward to aligning some of its climate work with things that the county and other municipalities are doing so that the actions have a larger effect.