Boise Aims to Go Carbon-Neutral by 2050, Adopts New Climate Plan

City leaders expressed enthusiastic support for the Climate Action Roadmap, a detailed plan for reducing carbon emissions, protecting the environment, and meeting other climate goals.

1 minute read

June 25, 2021, 7:00 AM PDT

By Diana Ionescu @aworkoffiction


Downtown Boise

Doug Kerr / Flickr

Boise's city council and mayor unanimously approved its new Climate Action Roadmap, a plan that "fleshes out the city’s ambitious goals with steps and projects in several focus areas, like transportation, water, and energy with goals in each section," as well as "a larger goal to have the community hit carbon neutrality by 2050." Margaret Carmel writes in BoiseDev that Mayor Laurel McLean calls the city's environmental and energy goals "a people issue," saying that "[i]f we want to thrive in the long term, we have to do everything we can to set ourselves up for success." 

The roadmap "breaks down priorities for the city into different categories, ranking them from focusing on reducing emissions to increasing the city’s resilience to the impacts of climate change. For example, projects focused on energy are squarely focused on cutting CO2, while initiatives to address water are most important to keep the city functioning as the climate continues to warm."

"Each priority area in the road map has targets, opportunities, and ordered priorities for both the near and long term to meet the city’s goals." According to City Councilmember Patrick Bageant, the goals laid out in the plan "are attainable, they’re in order, they’re logical and it can be done. It’s not just a declaration of a wishlist. It’s an actual plan we will begin to execute."

Wednesday, June 16, 2021 in BoiseDev

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