With a unanimous vote, the city council has adopted Jersey City’s first Climate and Energy Action Plan.
The plan aims to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and consists of over 50 individual actions for reducing the city’s carbon footprint.
These actions include a new Community Solar Program for renters and low-income homeowners and energy and emission requirements for new and municipal buildings.
“This Action Plan expands upon our efforts in the fight to protect our environment with actionable steps to mitigate climate change, increase resiliency, invest in a green economy, and ensure equity,” said Mayor Steven Fulop. “The consequences of climate change disproportionately impact minority and low-income communities, and so it is especially important for Jersey City to continue our aggressive and progressive efforts by incorporating community feedback to address our environment’s worst health offenders.”
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions
Following over six years of data collection, strategic planning, and public engagement, the scope of the plan spans three pillars of integrated climate action: mitigation, adaptation, and equity.
High impact actions for reducing GHG emissions include: requiring 100 percent clean energy for municipal facilities by 2030, meeting net-zero carbon emissions by 2025 for new buildings over 50,000 square feet, developing clean energy workforce opportunities and training programs, retrofitting buildings using the NJ Energy Savings Improvement Program (ESIP), electrifying 100 percent of the eligible municipal fleet by 2030, and requiring food business to compost or recycle food waste.
The plan instructs the city to develop a Zero Waste Plan with waste reduction targets and strategies and to improve and expand transit options like Citi Bike, Via, PATH, and NJ Transit.
According to the city, the plan will act as a roadmap to help reduce energy use and waste, create jobs, improve air quality, preserve the city’s landscape and history, minimize risk to people and property, and benefit the physical environment for years to come.
“With this plan, we brought in many voices to create a clear course of action to achieve our climate and sustainability goals,” said the city’s Director of the Office of Sustainability Kate Lawrence. “The result is a community-focused Climate and Energy Action Plan that will lead to measurable results.”
This isn’t the first step the city has taken toward a greener future as the Fulop Administration joined the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80-percent by the year 2050, and created the Office of Sustainability in 2018, to name a few.
Over the last several years the city has built bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, banned plastic bags, installed electric vehicle charging stations, and started switching the city’s municipal fleet to fully electric vehicles, including purchasing the first electric garbage trucks on the East Coast.
Jersey City recently announced its first Energy Savings Improvement Program (ESIP), currently being implemented, which is estimated to save taxpayers $21 million in energy and operational costs while funding over $19 million for the city’s capital needs.
“Jersey City is uniquely vulnerable to the impact of storm surges and flooding, and the future impacts of change will exacerbate the impacts of the heat island impact and worse air pollution,” said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey. “Mayor Fulop’s Administration has consistently worked to drive a path toward a more sustainable City that pushes all sectors to do better to reduce global warming pollution and make Jersey City more green. The Climate and Energy Action Plan lays out that vision — and provides a roadmap on how Jersey City can be a national urban climate leader.”
To learn more about the city’s green initiatives go to https://jcmakeitgreen.org/.
To read the 103-page Climate and Energy Action Plan go to https://tinyurl.com/uved5wk7.
For updates on this and other stories check www.hudsonreporter.com and follow us on Twitter @hudson_reporter. Marilyn Baer can be reached at Marilynb@hudsonreporter.com.
