We have made real progress reducing countywide emissions AND we all need to do more faster to achieve our 2030 countywide climate action goals.
Both things are true.
We—the local governments, private businesses, nonprofits, and residents of Dane County have turned the corner on emissions. While our population continues to grow, our total greenhouse gas emissions have decreased since 2017. That is awesome and encouraging news—it demonstrates that we are headed in the right direction.
At the same time, we are not reducing emissions fast enough—yet—to hit our goal of cutting countywide emissions in half by 2030. We need to do more and we need to do it faster.
This is what we’ve learned from our efforts to update our countywide emissions inventory and then also to model how a variety of initiatives will reduce our emissions going forward. You can read more about the emissions inventory here. There’s also a summary of our modeling estimates here if you want to dig into the details. The bottom line, though, is that we need to do more and we need to do it faster.
More than 100 community stakeholders helped create our Climate Action Plan and the associated ambitious climate action goals. And hundreds more of you contributed to the emissions reductions we have seen between 2017 and 2022. Just as we would not have the CAP or our stellar progress without our amazing and diverse stakeholders, we cannot close the gap in our countywide emissions on our own. This is and always will be a team effort.
So we are assembling the team. We invite you to join us on October 30 to participate in a stakeholder discussion to identify the strategies that will help us accelerate action and achieve our 2030 goals.
We acknowledge that this is a significant lift—if cutting emissions in half were easy every community in the nation would have done it by now. We also acknowledge that we do not have the answers—this is a complicated interdisciplinary challenge where the answers are going to be collaborative, involving a variety of stakeholders leading in various ways.
Some people spend decades talking about what they could do, waiting for perfect circumstances, and some folks just get things done. We believe Dane County and its stakeholders are doers—after all, we’ve already started to reduce total emissions, despite our growing population.
There will always be barriers. We will wish we had more time, more money, fewer state restrictions. The reality is, though, we do not have time to pine for different realities. Instead, we need to get substantive things done in this reality. To quote former County Executive Joe Parisi, we need to pursue the art of the possible.
On the 30th we will focus on the three areas for action that represent more than 90% of our countywide emissions – the electric grid and renewable energy, buildings and communities, and the transportation network. (Again, see the inventory and the modeling for more background.) If we take stronger action to reduce emissions in these areas we will achieve our 2030 goals and be on track for the 2050 goal of carbon neutrality too.
I am immensely grateful to do climate work in a region where I am surrounded by so many smart and innovative collaborators. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas on October 30th.
If you have not already registered to attend the event, register here by Wednesday, October 23.
Kathy is the Director of the Dane County’s Office of Energy and Climate Change. In that role she's leading efforts to implement the Climate Action Plan. Prior to coming to Dane County, Kathy led Cool Choices and, prior to that, she led Wisconsin's Focus on Energy program.
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