CCAP - Community Climate Action Plan.
In March of 2021, the city published its first ever CCAP to acknowledge that climate change is “an environmental, economic, and societal issue” that the city, local governments, private businesses, and non-profit organizations need to work together to take collective action on addressing.
There are a lot of good outcomes from this plan so far and the city will publish information about them this upcoming February.
Link to the CCAP:
Timely from the NYT
The map shows a nice green stripe across Raleigh, where per-household emissions are half or a third what they are elsewhere in town. Conveniently, that’s where the Western-New Bern BRT axis is going to go, so let’s allow more people to live in more carbon-smart places.
Yet household emissions often depend on factors that individuals have limited control over, such as whether public transportation is available in their neighborhoods… Consider housing. For decades in the United States, the majority of new homes have been built in the suburbs and, increasingly, exurbs, where climate footprints are larger. As a result, for many people today, it is often easier and cheaper to find a home in a high-emissions community than a lower-emissions one.
Those high-emissions communities are in part the result of government investment in roads and highways in the postwar era. Add to that white flight from cities, as well as the simple fact that many Americans increasingly wanted, and could afford, the quintessential single-family home with a yard and a driveway in the suburbs…
Just as importantly, many cities and local governments often artificially limit the amount of denser or transit-friendly housing available, particularly in wealthier neighborhoods, through zoning that favors single-family homes or requirements around minimum lot sizes and parking spaces. But if people get pushed out of, say, Brooklyn or San Francisco and into the exurbs because of a shortage of housing, their household emissions are likely to soar…
For both climate change and affordability reasons, “we need to be building smaller homes in denser places, closer together and closer to jobs, to public transportation,” said Jenny Schuetz, a housing researcher at the Brookings Institution. “But the locations where we should be adding a ton more housing have made it really hard to build…”
Dr. Jones has shown that for many cities, such as Berkeley, Calif., the single most effective climate strategy local leaders can pursue is to add what’s known as infill housing, apartments or townhouses built in underutilized parts of cities to reduce car dependence and improve energy efficiency.
The university’s site has a tool that I like, which allows you to factor out the impacts of household income and size (both major contributors to emissions) - which makes the location impact much clearer.
According to my old boss, The Solarize, a Triangle based solar panel program is on track to be the largest in the country!
Also, the city has a new Heat Mapping project going on:
Happy to share that we’re getting panels installed through that program so I’m glad to hear the news. 
I’m just going to drop these sustainability gems here:
https://twitter.com/jonburkeuk/status/1618626814762680321?s=46&t=OjTjHAGL1PBv-B5f3fOHAg
https://twitter.com/culdesac/status/1616599664933101568?s=46&t=OjTjHAGL1PBv-B5f3fOHAg
https://twitter.com/_dmoser/status/1611313346099417089?s=46&t=OjTjHAGL1PBv-B5f3fOHAg
https://twitter.com/mikehudema/status/1611095722941730828?s=46&t=OjTjHAGL1PBv-B5f3fOHAg
https://twitter.com/jimrockaway/status/1610066449388666885?s=46&t=OjTjHAGL1PBv-B5f3fOHAg
And here’s a tweet for the climate deniers:
https://twitter.com/vivianharris45/status/1613663166483038208?s=46&t=OjTjHAGL1PBv-B5f3fOHAg
This UC Berkeley study is very relevant and influenced my thinking about the need for density for our city and others. Those in HB and responsible citizens should be thinking 10 years and beyond. We will soon be searching for shadows.
“A key finding of the UC Berkeley study is that suburbs account for half of all household greenhouse gas emissions, even though they account for less than half the U.S. population. The average carbon footprint of households living in the center of large, population-dense urban cities is about 50 percent below average, while households in distant suburbs are up to twice the average.”
Hey everyone, if you know any college students interested in working for the city one day and have an interest in planning and passion for helping the environment, please let them know about this great internship opportunity:
Partnership Raleigh is a public-private partnership between the City of Raleigh and the local business and non-profit community. The purpose of this program is to provide internship opportunities to High School and Undergraduate College Students who…
Thanks!
Here’s the city’s first Community Climate Action Plan Implementation Report: https://cityofraleigh0drupal.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/drupal-prod/COR27/2023CCAPImplementationReport.pdf
There is a lot of good information mentioned, I’m pretty excited for the future!
I hope these bullet points are ordered by priority. VMT reduction and efficient land use will go much further than vehicle electrification. A lot of state and local governments get this backwards, mainly because buying electric vehicles is a lot less controversial than removing parking for bike and bus lanes. A full diesel bus is much better for the environment than an empty electric one.
Definitely! I believe that it is ordered based on priority. It’s my hope that we continue to see more bike tracks be constructed downtown but with traffic signals.
The city can encourage more biking by making it very freaking clear that bikes belong on roads and educating people how to drive around cyclists, as well as punishing people who drive distracted (texting, etc) and aggressively around cyclists. Also, the police can catch people who beat cyclists to death on greenways…pretty sure that’s still an open case…
Someone was beaten to death?? 
Officially stabbed, but this was almost 3 years ago with no leads. This along with the 21 year old who was shot and the mass shooting on the greenway, it’s been a rough couple years.
Interesting read. I hope that this helps to influence Raleigh developers and parking lot owners to cover their parking lots with solar panels.
With the constant increase in yearly rainfall and storms, Raleigh should start creating spaces and infrastructure like this:
The city also qualifies for grants that will pay for a large chunk of the installation. 30% credit, could get up to 50% if they meet certain requirements.
I’m not sure if they still do it for residential projects, but the city reimbursed me for materials on a diy rain collection system. It is/was called rainwater rewards.
Since its climate related, the city also installed street 2 mature trees in my sidewalk strip for free even though the street trees program has been cancelled.
In order to claim the direct credit the city would have to own the system. Private parties can also get the credit but would either have to sell the credit or use it to offset a federal tax liability. It’s not an easy sell and a lot of solar developers opt for ground-mounted units (solar farms) which cost less and have a higher ROI.
