HomeMy WebLinkAboutStaff Report 6588City of Palo Alto (ID # 6588)
City Council Staff Report
Report Type: Consent Calendar Meeting Date: 2/1/2016
City of Palo Alto Page 1
Summary Title: Cool Block Small Pilot Program
Title: Agreement with Empowerment Institute on Cool Block Small Pilot
Program (Continued From January 25, 2016)
From: City Manager
Lead Department: City Manager
Recommendation
Authorize the City Manager to sign the attached Cool Block Pilot Memorandum of Understanding
between the City of Palo Alto and Empowerment Institute.
Background
In 2012 the Council authorized the City Manager to sign a Letter of Intent (LOI) to participate in
the Cool Cities Challenge being organized in implemented by David Gershon, the Empowerment
Institute, and its partner organizations (Attachment A).
That “Challenge” has been modified slightly to the Cool Block Pilot Program, which is the
subject of the attached MOU (Attachment B). While one interpretation would be that the City
Manager could sign this new MOU on his own authority, based upon that prior direction,
Council re-authorization is being sought because:
The Cool Block Pilot is in a slightly different form that the earlier proposal, although the
concept is similar.
The Pilot involves a process of neighborhood engagement of between 10-30 city blocks
and this Consent Item informs the Council and community of that intention.
The earlier LOI included the following language: If the Council approves the LOI, and as
staff learns of EI’s success in fundraising, staff will return to Council with a process to test
community interest through targeted outreach to key stakeholders and some method of
surveying household interest.
The Cool Block Pilot is a program that will require relatively little staff time over the next 12-14
months but will secure enough assistance from the Empowerment Institute to test the
effectiveness of this block-based engagement effort to accelerate household and neighborhood
action on climate change, resiliency, social connectedness and growing the green economy. As
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the details below lay out, the results of the pilot will shape the formal competitive RFP to later
be issued by The Empowerment Institute, which will provide significant funding and support for
a broader city-wide Cool Cities Challenge (still using the block as an organizing basis). We may
again decide to participate in that competition, as The Empowerment Institute has now secured
funding to advance that program. Again, participation in this pilot program in no way obligates
the City to further participation nor does it guarantee our automatic selection.
In any case, the City may independently learn some important lessons from this pilot. The core
component of our role will lie in the identification of the pilot blocks and helping to identify and
recruit block leaders, in up to 30 blocks.
Further Detail form the Attached MOU
The Cool Block grows out of a vision to reinvent our cities from the bottom up in the age of
climate change to help people adopt low carbon and environmentally sustainable lifestyles,
disaster resilient and livable neighborhoods and collaborate together as neighbors and citizens.
It builds upon David Gershon and his Empowerment Institute’s decades of experience
furthering pro-social behavior change and community engagement throughout America and the
world. It does this through a nine-meeting, 4 1/2-month program co-led by a group of
neighbors living on a block or in a building. Participants in the program select from a menu of
112 action recipes. Some actions are done as individuals and others are
Attachments:
Attachment A: Staff Report October 2012 (DOC)
Attachment B: TCB MOU Between CoPA and EI (DOC)
City of Palo Alto (ID # 3170)
City Council Staff Report
Report Type: Action Items Meeting Date: 10/22/2012
City of Palo Alto Page 1
Council Priority: Environmental Sustainability
Summary Title: Cool Cities Challenge
Title: Approval of Letter of Intent to Participate in Cool Cities Challenge
From: City Manager
Lead Department: Public Works
Recommendation
Staff recommends that Council authorize the City Manager or his designee to sign
the Letter of Intent to participate in the Cool Cities Challenge (Attachment A)
being organized and implemented by David Gershon, the Empowerment Institute
and its partner organizations.
Background
David Gershon, author of the Low Carbon Diet, co-founder of the Empowerment
Institute (EI), and a leading social change practitioner, has visited Palo Alto on
several occasions in preceding months to invite our participation in the ambitious
Cool City Challenge (CCC) community engagement program. This has led to the
current invitation to Palo Alto to formalize this potential working partnership
through a Letter of Intent (LOI).
The purpose of the CCC is to scale up a proven community-based social
innovation to achieve dramatic greenhouse gas emission reductions in three early
adopter American cities and three neighborhoods in San Paolo, Brazil of
comparable size to the American cities, and then disseminate this model
worldwide. The ultimate goal of the CCC is to develop a scalable social innovation
capable of making a dramatic change to retard climate change.
With international climate change legislation failing to get traction in adoption or
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implementation, and the long timeframe required to scale up technological
solutions, there is a need now for viable and scalable strategies for addressing
global warming. Cities represent 70% of the planet’s CO2 emissions and in
developed countries citizens’ daily lifestyle choices represent at least 50% of
these emissions with huge opportunities for efficiency. This provides the potential
for a high leverage opportunity to address global warming if cities can achieve
substantial behavior change among its citizens by taking individual behavior
change to a communitywide scale. Further, this could serve as a demand-side
driver for local green economic development.
The Empowerment Institute—a leader in environmental behavior change and
community engagement—over the past two decades has developed a
methodology to help cities empower citizens to reduce their carbon footprint by
25% through the Low Carbon Diet EcoTeam program and a strategy to achieve
between 25% and 75% household participation. This methodology has been
tested on a smaller scale in over 300 US cities and 6 countries including China. The
CCC is designed to bring this potentially transformative social innovation to scale
(community-wide) first in the three California demonstration cities and Sao Paulo
and then to the wider world based on the experience and lessons learned in the
demonstration cities.
The Empowerment Institute (EI) will provide each of the cities deep technical
assistance in its implementation. This Institute has a successful track record in
designing and implementing successful behavior change programs and
community engagement strategies for cities both in the United States and
Europe. The content of these behavior change programs include Low Carbon
Lifestyles, Green Living, Livable Neighborhoods, and Disaster-resilient
Communities. In particular, their Low Carbon Diet Program has been disseminated
to over 300 US cities with 46 of those cities in California.
To enable this project to be most effectively disseminated after this prototype
phase, EI has enlisted the commitment of major research institutions to study,
evaluate, and assist in the analytics. EI reports that these partners are Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley, UC Davis and Stanford.
EI assumes that cities do not have resources to implement this type of social
innovation, and has committed to raising the funds for the cities. One of the
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purposes of the Letters of Intent with potential demonstration cities is to indicate
potential participation by cities that will aid in the Empowerment Institute’s fund
raising goals. If EI is successful in raising the funds to provide the support and
staffing in the demonstration cities over the three year program period, then EI
will issue Requests for Proposals from cities for evaluation and final selection of
the demonstration cities to participate in the program. That proposal process is
expected to occur sometime later in 2013.
Discussion
The Cool Cities Challenge gives Palo Alto a chance to contribute to developing a
potentially game changing local solution to climate change. Palo Alto is already a
leader in climate protection in many ways, so this is an opportunity to achieve the
next level and advance our climate action and energy efficiency goals.
CCC potentially provides the City with a platform that allows for integration of its
many sustainability programs and which can be applied literally block by block
across our community. Neighborhood groups would allow Palo Alto to get better
take up in these programs; it also allows for efficiency in the financial investments
that will create and distribute these programs.
The CCC provides Palo Alto an opportunity to more tightly knit together the social
fabric of the community. It also allows for the integration of sustainable
community outreach efforts.
Resource Impact
No significant direct costs to the City are associated with the staff
recommendation to sign the LOI. Staff will continue to work with EI, and other
partners (Cool Davis, California Air Resources Board, Lawrence Berkeley National
Labs), to advance the City’s community engagement goals and our efforts to
reduce GHG emissions.
As indicated in the attached LOI, fiscal impacts associated with long-term
participation in this ambitious program will be offset by funding secured by EI; as
mentioned earlier in this report, the Cool Cities Challenge program will only occur
if EI is able to secure adequate funding. Indirect fiscal impacts associated with the
implementation of a household based demand-side carbon reduction program
are undetermined. While this initiative is based on EI providing new funding to
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support this effort, a program as ambitious and as far reaching as this in its intent
and design will certainly draw on existing city staff, Council, and community
capacity. On the other hand, staff anticipates that local businesses and
entrepreneurs could respond as local demand for carbon reduction products and
services emerge as one outcome of this program.
While submission of a LOI by the City signals our serious interest in this initiative,
it commits to no binding obligation. The City will again need to carefully review
the results this initiative may produce and the investment that this initiative will
require, if and when EI issues the formal Request for Proposals later in 2013. By
that point, the City should be able to have a clearer understanding of the costs of
participation that may occur beyond the funding EI provides and a better sense of
our citizens’ interest in participating.
If the Council approves the LOI, and as staff learns of EI’s success in fundraising,
staff will return to Council with a process to test community interest through
targeted outreach to key stakeholders and some method of surveying household
interest.
A good understanding of the receptivity of our citizens to participating in a multi-
year high touch outreach and behavior change program such as this would be
important as a prelude to our submission of any formal proposal to EI when they
issue their Request for Proposals in 2013.
Policy Implications
Participation in the Cool Cities Challenge would assist Palo Alto in implementing
its Climate Protection Plan and is fully consistent with the Greenhouse Gas
reduction goals of that plan.
Environmental Review
Submitting a LOI to participate in the Cool Cities Challenge does not constitute a
project under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
Attachments:
Cool City Challenge Letter of Intent (DOCX)
THE COOL BLOCK PILOT MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING
BETWEEN THE CITY OF PALO ALTO AND EMPOWERMENT INSTITUTE
OVERVIEW
The Cool Block grows out of a vision to reinvent our cities from the bottom up in the age of
climate change to help people adopt low carbon and environmentally sustainable lifestyles,
disaster resilient and livable neighborhoods and collaborate together as neighbors and citizens.
It builds upon David Gershon and his Empowerment Institute’s decades of experience
furthering pro-social behavior change and community engagement throughout America and
the world. It does this through a nine-meeting, 4 1/2-month program co-led by a group of
neighbors living on a block or in a building. Participants in the program select from a menu of
112 action recipes. Some actions are done as individuals and others are collective and carried
out by The Cool Block team.
The pilot phase of The Cool Block program will take place in three cities: Palo Alto, San
Francisco and Los Angeles. The Cool Block program will then be integrated into the Cool City
Challenge – a three-year campaign to achieve a minimum of 25% carbon reduction among a
minimum of 25% of the households in a community along with creating disaster resilient
neighborhoods and green economic development. The Cool Block pilot program provides an
advantage to participating cities to being favorably considered for the statewide competitive
RFP process to receive a 3-year grant of $2.5 million to participate in the Cool City Challenge.
This is because of the social infrastructure, program knowledge and integration into city
services that will have been created. That said, participation in Cool City Challenge is not
guaranteed.
This MOU below describes The Cool Block two-phase pilot in the City of Palo Alto from
January 2016 to March 2017. What follows are roles, responsibilities, deliverables and a
timeline for Empowerment Institute and the City of Palo Alto.
EMPOWERMENT INSTITUTE DELIVERABLES
1. Recruit, train and coach 30 Cool Block leaders and deliver the program on 30 blocks in two
phases.
Phase 1: Pilot The Cool Block program independently, or if ready, with the alpha tech
platform on 10 blocks.
Phase 2: Pilot the beta version on The Cool Block program and tech platform on an
additional 20 blocks with support of community groups.
2. Build The Cool Block technology platform, a web and smartphone platform to track results,
share best practices, and integrate city agency, non-profit and local business services into
the program’s actions.
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3. Work with the City of Palo Alto to integrate city programs and services into The Cool Block
tech platform around the relevant actions.
4. Research and integrate into The Cool Block tech platform local business, community
organization and state services and programs around the relevant actions.
5. Produce a report on pilot outcomes that includes carbon reduction per household,
household and block level actions taken, participation rate per block and feedback on
various aspects of the program.
CITY OF PALO ALTO DELIVERABLES
1. Participation of City Manager to frame, communicate, and execute The Cool Block program
internally with city staff and externally in the community.
2. Participate with the Office of Sustainability and other city staff to integrate The Cool Block
program into the S/CAP strategy and encourage the participation of the S/CAP Advisory
Board.
3. Assist in creating The Cool Block strategy including identification of blocks and potential
block leaders.
4. Assist in the recruitment of community organization leaders around the four core pillars of
The Cool Block program and respective actions: carbon reduction, disaster resiliency, water
conservation/quality and livability/social cohesion.
5. Participate on the design team of the Cool City Challenge to accelerate bold climate action
toward carbon neutrality in up to 20 California cities through the use of this platform and
funding.
6. Participate in communication and events at the local and state level.
PILOT TIMELINE: JANUARY 2016 TO JUNE 2017
Recruit and train of Cool Block leaders: January to March 2016
The Cool Block pilot phase 1 (10 blocks): April to August 2016
The Cool Block pilot phase 2 (20 blocks): October 2016 to February 2017
COOL CITY CHALLENGE TIMELINE: MAY 2017 TO DECEMBER 2020
Cool City Challenge RFP announcement: May 2017
Cool City Challenge RFP due: July 2017
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Cool City Challenge awards to cities: September 2017
Cool City Challenge Deployment: January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2020
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David Gershon,
CEO, Empowerment Institute
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Date
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Jim Keene, City Manager, City of Palo Alto
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Date