An Opportunity for Community Decarbonization Planning
To hold global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures, as agreed upon in the Paris Climate Accords, greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, halve by 2030, and cease by midcentury. Every person, family, neighborhood, community, town, city, state, and nation must work towards this imperative goal. Louisville is about to embark on a new phase of planning to achieve this goal: over the next half year the community will develop a decarbonization roadmap in collaboration with Xcel’s Partners in Energy. You have the opportunity to participate in this process: the City is currently seeking volunteers for the community stakeholder group that will guide development of this roadmap. If you are interested in joining this group, then please complete the application by Friday 23 June at 5:00 pm.
What will this decarbonization roadmap address? Let me explain in some detail. The greenhouse effect is the primary driver of global warming. Greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, principally carbon dioxide, absorb sunlight, transform the sunlight’s energy into heat, and radiate this heat to Earth’s atmosphere, land masses, oceans, and partially back to space. The presence of excess greenhouse gases results in Earth retaining excess energy from the sun. The excess heat warms the globe, and global warming results in climate change, the myriad detrimental effects of which we are experiencing ever more severely. To slow global warming, we must reduce the concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, firstly, by preventing more greenhouse gases from entering Earth’s atmosphere and, secondly, by removing excess greenhouse gases from Earth’s atmosphere. Since carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas, the process of preventing more greenhouse gases from entering Earth’s atmosphere is often called decarbonization. (Some other greenhouse gases like methane also contain carbon, but other greenhouse gases like water vapor do not contain carbon.) The amount of carbon dioxide emitted by some source (over some time period)—or the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide if other greenhouse gases are emitted—is that source’s carbon footprint. Decarbonization entails reducing a source’s future carbon footprint to zero.
Decarbonization applies in many contexts at many levels. For instance, decarbonizing your home entails altering how your home functions so that your home does not emit any more greenhouse gases into Earth’s atmosphere. Your home’s carbon footprint most likely stems from burning natural gas in appliances like your furnace, water heater, stove, and fireplace. There are further greenhouse gas emissions associated with your home: from the generation of electricity used in your home, from burning gasoline to power your vehicles and landscaping equipment, from burning natural gas to fire your grill, from the manufacture and transport of products that you use, et cetera. Some of these further greenhouse gas emissions occur at your home or nearby your home while some of these greenhouse gas emissions occur far from your home. Decarbonizing Louisville entails the elimination of all anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the City.
Louisville has engaged in some decarbonization planning over the past several years. Most recently, the City is planning decarbonization of all municipal buildings and operations in collaboration with the consulting firm McKinstry Engineering. The City aims to complete this decarbonization by 2030. Of course, the carbon footprint of Louisville’s municipal buildings and operations pales in comparison to the carbon footprint of the whole Louisville community. To do our part in mitigating climate change, planning to decarbonize Louisville in its entirety is thus essential. I hope that you will join our community’s efforts, if not as a member of the stakeholder group, then as a concerned resident.
For further information you can consult the packets from the Louisville Sustainability Advisory Board’s April meeting or the Louisville City Council’s May 16 meeting.
