Flooding on Pennsylvania Avenue in March of 2022 by Victoria Pickering licensed under Creative Commons.

It has been over a decade since the proverbial race for carbon neutrality began globally and whether in the dead heat of the District summer or driving through a foot of standing water on Rhode Island Avenue, climate change is often not far from the center of the cultural conversation in DC.

The US Environmental Protection Agency reported in 2016 that the temperature of the Washington region has risen by two degrees over the last 50 years. The Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) has reported more days of extreme heat over the past few years. The heat-related death toll is going up and so is the toll on the energy grid to keep people cool.

In 2017, Mayor Bowser pledged DC’s commitment to prepare for and combat climate change by becoming carbon-neutral and climate resilient by 2050 in front of mayors from across the US, Canada, and Mexico at the North American Climate Summit. Now, a little less than five years later, where are we? And what should we expect from the rest of the decade?

We are here

According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, carbon neutrality is the notion of “achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) by balancing those emissions so they are equal (or less than) the emissions that get removed through the planet’s natural absorption.” Greenhouse gas emissions is a catch-all term for the kind of harmful emissions that are the currency of modern life namely: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride.

Large-scale climate change planning is two-pronged, though. First, it’s mitigating the effects of DC’s carbon output, but also planning for it in order to minimize the devastation to DC’s ecosystems. The Department of Energy and Environment’s, and by extension the Bowser Administration’s, strategy for meeting this ambitious 2050 pledge live largely under the initiatives Climate Ready DC and Clean Energy DC.

Sustainable DC is the working group of the DOEE’s Urban Sustainability Administration and the DC Office of Planning and their work plan, Sustainable DC 2.0, is the overarching “green” umbrella plan for, not to be dramatic, the District’s continued existence. It covers 167 actions and 36 goals spanning 13 separate but inextricably linked topics: governance, equity, built environment, climate, economy, education, energy, food, health, nature, transportation, waste, and water.

Breaking it down

The focus for Clean Energy DC is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2032 through targeting the three largest sources of GHG: buildings, energy, and transportation.

The most recent report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) ranked Washington DC as number three on their City Clean Energy Scorecard which ranks major cities based on five criteria of sustainable development, including community-wide initiatives, buildings policies, transportation policies, energy and water utilities, and local government operations. The District scored highly in community-wide initiatives (9.5/15) for its efforts in equity-driven sustainability and community solar, and energy and water utilities (13.5/15) for similar reasons.

Clean Energy DC reports that buildings are responsible for 74% of the District’s total GHG emissions. “That’s the biggest wedge of the pie we’re dealing with,” says Jenn Hatch, chief of the Green Building and Climate Branch of the Department of Energy and Environment.

According to Hatch, it is important to accelerate Net Zero standards for new construction but perhaps more important is figuring out what to do with the majority of buildings, the ones that are already here. The acting solution for this is the Clean Energy DC Omnibus Act of 2018.

According to Mark Rodeffer*, political chair of the DC chapter of the Sierra Club, “the Clean Energy Omnibus Act did a bunch of things but primarily it established that by 2032 we have to get 100% of our energy from renewable sources,” says Rodeffer. “The other thing it did was establish building energy performance standards which require existing buildings to improve their energy efficiency. Meaning requiring less energy to do the same things.”

For Rodeffer and the Sierra Club, the act was a win, but the biggest hurdle is still to come and not enough is being done to address it. “Something like 60% of buildings in DC get their heat from fracked gas and if we’re going to achieve carbon neutrality, we cannot keep burning it inside our homes and businesses,” Rodeffer says.

Meanwhile, transportation,the second largest part of DC’s carbon footprint, accounts for 24% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Bill Pugh*, senior policy fellow for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, says that at a high level, the District is doing a good job on those issues. However, there are areas where it can do more and do it faster.

“The District community needs to start recognizing that electric vehicles are not enough and there are more sustainability benefits than just carbon reduction of a city where people don’t need to drive as much,” says Pugh. “Especially with a warming climate, making the city streets a place you want to be through urban design, placemaking, urban greenery, and reduction in asphalt will make these streets more climate resilient. The other part of that is continuing to make the streets safer and more pleasant for walking and biking. The District is doing some good things but, again, they can work faster.”

MoveDC 2021, DDOT’s multimodal, long-range plan to “provide a transportation system that is safe, sustainable, and equitable” promises to address this through more bike lanes, reliable transit, and more efficient flow of the traffic system. For CSG, it is a good start. Pugh believes that MoveDC sets a strong goal for shifting commute trips to more sustainable modes but the way to make it more effective is to focus on non-commute trips. “Especially in a post-pandemic city, that’s what a majority of trips are going to be,” Pugh says, adding that MoveDC’s plan to carve out bus priority corridors and creating a more robust network is going to be particularly important to taking care of crosstown travel and noncommute trips.

DC is not hermetically-sealed though, and Jenn Hatch says that one of the biggest hurdles of carbon neutrality is the interconnectivity of the region, a sentiment echoed by Pugh. From a sustainable transportation perspective, bike lanes and reliable transit are not a fix for the traffic and freight flowing through the District on their way to somewhere else. In a post-pandemic context, only looking at downtown DC may not be the right geography anymore. For Hatch and Pugh, addressing this starts with DC’s dialogue with other inter suburban jurisdictions in the region. As Bill Pugh puts it, “As a regional leader, the city needs to build alliances to help the region become more sustainable and equitable.”

Finally, DC has a strong track record with renewable energy in the last decade, supplying one-third of the District government’s electric grid with what they claim is the largest Power Purchase Agreement of wind power in American history and continuing to grow programs like Solar For All to provide low-to-moderate income renters or owners with renewable energy but Hatch maintains that the District only has so much sway in a larger system.

“As long as we are tied into a regional electric grid that isn’t 100% renewable, we are on the hook for those emissions,” Hatch says. “The District’s purchasing power is so tiny compared to the region. We need our neighbors and the federal government to help push the grid all the way renewable.”

This is not to say it is hopeless though. Many jurisdictions in the region have come a long way. “The thing that has been driving our emissions reduction in the biggest way to date has been cleaning up our regional electric grid,” Hatch says. “The transition off of coal has really done a lot for us. The difference between cutting emissions in half by 2032 and getting to Net Zero, though, means we’re starting with big buildings but we have to get to everybody. That magnitude of transition is a big challenge we’re grappling with.”

Here’s where we’re headed

In July of 2022, the DC council passed two important bills, the Climate Commitment Act which took the climate commitments that Muriel Bowser made in 2017 and codified them into law. It also accelerated the timeline. Now, the District has pledged carbon neutrality by 2045 instead of 2050 and also set interim goals to reduce emissions to a certain amount by specific target years.

The other important bill was the Clean Energy DC Building Codes Act of 2022 which states that new buildings have to be Net Zero by 2026. According to Rodeffer, “Before, that was already the goal of Clean Energy DC but that was just a plan the DOEE had, it wasn’t enforceable. This bill made it a law.”

In October, a month before the DC mayoral election, the mayors of C40 member cities will come together again in Buenos Aires to show the progress they have made in their climate commitments and what will be done in the years to come.

As more plans emerge and funding is allocated, the remainder of this decade and the hazy image of 2050 will take shape by holding the administration accountable and, Pugh says, raising awareness. “It is important for the people of DC to see how the types of policies we are working with are beneficial, cost-effective, and make the city more affordable for households and workers.” As Hatch summarizes it, “The size and the scope of the transition ahead is a lot. We have made tremendous progress as a city in reducing citywide emissions but we still have a long way to go.”

*Editor’s note: Both Mark Rodeffer and Bill Pugh are past contributors for GGWash.