Following a year of in-depth work looking at ways for Park City and Summit County to reduce emissions from their homes and buildings, a ready-to-implement Strategic Action Plan is now complete!
The plan is the result of a community-driven collaboration between Utah Clean Energy, the Park City Community Foundation, Park City Municipal, and Summit County.
Central to developing the plan was getting input from the community. To that end, Utah Clean Energy facilitated a local and diverse Community Advisory Committee over the course of 12 months (June 2020 – May 2021). We engaged over 70 community members, including local builders, developers, architects, business leaders, city and county staff, and nonprofit organizations to seek guidance and secure community buy-in during the development of the Strategic Action Plan.
Strategies to Reduce Emissions from Homes and Buildings
Because homes and commercial buildings are responsible for 56% of Park City’s greenhouse gas footprint, and 44% of Summit County’s footprint, our work focused on mitigating emissions from the built environment while also seeking to produce equitable outcomes. The Strategic Action Plan includes 10 strategies geared toward reducing emissions on a community-wide scale:
The Strategic Action Plan is equipped with supporting resources, action steps, and implementation timelines for each program and policy.
Putting the Plan Into Action
Park City Municipal and Summit County have already begun working on the first implementation steps for some of the strategies to accelerate the decarbonization of the local built environment.
Moving forward, Park City will seek to implement a Building Energy Transparency Ordinance to incentivize commercial building property owners to improve the energy performance of local commercial buildings.
Additionally, Park City will pursue implementing a Net-Zero Stretch Benchmark Program to incentivize a voluntary net-zero building performance benchmark as well as launch a Green Business Certification and Recognition 2.0 Program in partnership with the Park City Chamber and Recycle Utah. Summit County is currently exploring and prioritizing near-term, decarbonization-pathway strategies with County leadership.
Cutting emissions from the built environment is vital in achieving Park City and Summit County’s goals to deliver net-100% renewable electricity for residents by 2030. Park City and Summit County are now equipped with a community-driven Action Plan to advance emission-free buildings throughout the community, which can also be shared with other local communities and Mountain Towns 2030 communities!
We would like to clarify that Utah Clean Energy is not a solar company. We are a nonprofit organization that advocates for solar and other clean energy technologies, but we do not install or sell solar in any way.