Even for Boulder, an icon of earthy urban planning, saving the planet doesn’t come easy.
Faced with a looming deadline and lagging results in its efforts to cut carbon-dioxide emissions, city leaders recently vowed to redouble their efforts.
The City Council earlier this month voted to raise the city’s “carbon tax” — a charge based on how much electricity one consumes — to the maximum $21 per year for residences and $94 per year for businesses.
And Boulderites aren’t pikers. Many of the 20 or more Colorado towns and communities trying to meet targets in cutting greenhouse gases are finding it a challenge.
“The goals that people are talking about achieving … are ambitious,” said Stephen Saunders of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization.
Boulder officials are crafting a plan to send technicians door-to-door to encourage residents to install more-efficient light bulbs or weatherstripping. And city leaders are negotiating with Xcel Energy to get more renewable energy onto Boulder’s power grid.
Even with all of that, it remains uncertain whether Boulder will be able to reach its goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to 7 percent below what they were in 1990.
“What we’re trying here is new; it’s innovative,” said Kara Mertz, assistant to the city manager for environmental affairs. “No one’s ever done it before. Our intention is to get everyone in the community doing something.”
Man-made gases — primarily carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels — are building up in the atmosphere, trapping heat and altering the global climate, according to United Nations scientific studies.
In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol called for carbon- dioxide cutbacks — 183 countries signed the treaty; the U.S. did not.
And so, American communities and states, including Colorado, set their own reduction goals. Boulder pegged its goals to the Kyoto Protocol. Colorado has a first target of a 20 percent cut from 2005 levels by 2020.
Boulder must eliminate more than 400,000 metric tons from its annual carbon-dioxide emissions, about a quarter of its total emissions, to meet its goal.
Other communities are finding the exercise just as daunting.
Last year, Fort Collins — the first city in the state to adopt an emissions-reduction goal when it vowed in 1999 to cut its emissions by 2010 to 30 percent below projected levels — conceded it was not going to reach its goal. The City Council adopted a new goal of 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
Uncertainty also looms in Aspen. Though city officials say their “Canary Initiative” is on pace to reach its goal — 30 percent below 2004 levels by 2020 — they are also eyeing a continued rise in the community’s electricity consumption with worry.
“It’s not easy to change people’s behavior,” said Kim Peterson, the Canary Initiative’s project manager. “In local government, we can pass policies and provide incentives. But at the end of the day, you can’t make people make the changes.”
“Net goals”
To be sure, some communities are not fretting about their climate goals. In Denver, city leaders say they are on target after initial efforts produced an estimated 1.4 percent drop in the city’s greenhouse-gas emissions between 2005 and 2007.
“We expected them to be rising with population increase,” said Scott Morrissey, deputy director for Greenprint Denver.
Fort Collins officials say the city has restrained its emissions increases in the face of growth.
“These goals are not per capita or per square foot,” said Lucinda Smith, a senior environmental planner for the city. “They’re net goals. So to meet them, you need to do so in spite of growth.”
Also complicating the efforts is the fact that there are no foolproof strategies that will work in every community.
In Aspen, the city has greened its municipal electric utility so that more than three-quarters of its power comes from renewable sources.
Still, residents — including a large number of second-home owners — have been slow to embrace the city’s energy-efficiency programs.
In Boulder, the situation is reversed. Mertz said residents have been interested in the city’s efficiency programs.
But because the city is served by Xcel Energy, a large amount of the power the city uses comes from coal-fired power plants — a reality city leaders are working with Xcel to change.
The key for each city seeking to reduce emissions is to determine that city’s climate “vice” and engage the public, said Nathan Ratledge, the acting director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency in Aspen.
“Once you get that critical mass of people involved, it makes it that much easier,” he said.
John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com
