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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2026-09-04 Climate Action and Sustainability Committee Summary MinutesCLIMATE ACTION & SUSTAINABILITY COMMITTEE SUMMARY MINUTES Page 1 of 9 Regular Meeting September 4, 2026 The Climate Action and Sustainability Committee of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Community Meeting Room and by virtual teleconference at 2:00 p.m. Present In-Person: Veenker (Chair), Burt, Lu Absent: None Call to Order The call to order was not captured by the recording. In-Person Public Comment No request to speak. Verbal Report A. Staff Comments Brad Eggleston, Director of Public Works, shared that the City's Utilities Department is setting up a webinar this September in collaboration with the Planning and Development Services Department to support commercial HVAC contractors installing commercial packaged HVAC units. The session would cover advanced commercial heat pump HVAC program incentives that are available, permitting and planning requirements, as well as opportunities for contractors to be included on a courtesy list that will be provided to program participants, without any city endorsement of specific contractors. This should help contractors participate in city programs more confidently as they begin more extensive outreach of their updated program. He shared some statistics from the first half of the year about residential electrification. There were 129 HVAC units replaced with 72 heat pump water heaters. He noted that heat pump water heater participation was lower in the first 4 months of the year due to light promotion, as Staff was focused on the direct installation program at that time. Heat pump water heater promotion picked up in May and June, when they averaged 15 heat pump water heaters per month, which would be about 180 per year. He reminded the group that the City is running a $500 discount campaign for heat pump water heater replacements through the end of October. The timing and amount of the promotion align with other promotions by community choice aggregators (CCAs) in the region. They have been collaborating on outreach to water heater distributors to make sure they inform contractors that they work with. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 2 of 9 Climate Action and Sustainability Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 09/04/2026 Mayor Veenker questioned what percent of replacements per year it would be if they do 180 per year. She agreed it would be great for the City to promote 120s but she heard that contractors are getting more up to speed. They are doing some workshopping. Jonathan Abendschein, Assistant Director of Sustainability Climate Action, said that for single- family homes, 180 per year is in the ballpark of 15% to 20% annual. It is slightly lower than it was about a year ago. Some of that comes from their focus on HVAC over the last year and a half. It has started to pick up as they have started to refocus on water heaters over the last few months. He said the number of 120s is relatively low still. For energy-efficient households that can successfully use a 120 volt, it lowers the prices. He said the contractors are the most effective voice but he can review where they talk about 120s on their website. Councilmember Burt asked for a breakdown on the proportion that are 120 versus 240. He mentioned the cost comparison and making sure folks understand the cost benefit if a 120 works for them. He asked about an estimate model. He ventured that a majority of people do not know 120s are available. He was skeptical that contractors were promoting it and suggested supplementing with their own initiative or communication. B. Committee Member Comments and Announcements Councilmember Lu asked about the multi-family EV charging program, where they are on project selection, and if Ventura Community Center could be an opportunity before the end of the year. Brad Eggleston, Director of Public Works, said Ventura Community Center is a location for their facility electrification pilot program and Council approved the design contract on August 17. They are still working on finalizing the locations that would be included in the MTC grant and Ventura Community Center is a candidate. Agenda Items 1. Preliminary Review of the 2025 Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Overview of Scope 3 Emissions; CEQA Status - Not a Project Christine Luong, Sustainability Manager, described the 2 types of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventories, generation-based and consumption-based. Palo Alto completes a generation-based GHG inventory and follows the Global Protocol for Community-scale GHG inventories (GPC). Emissions from community activities are classified into 3 main sectors, stationary energy, transportation, and waste. Activities within the city can generate emissions inside and outside the city boundary. To differentiate, the GPC groups emissions into 3 categories based on where they occur. Scope 1 includes sources within the city boundary. Scope 2 includes emissions occurring due to the use of grid-supplied electricity. Scope 3 is all other emissions that occur outside the city boundary because of activities taking place within the city boundary. To provide context on their progress in achieving sustainability and climate action goals, preliminary calculations show that in 2025, Palo Alto emitted an estimated SUMMARY MINUTES Page 3 of 9 Climate Action and Sustainability Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 09/04/2026 406,607 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from the residential, commercial, industrial, transportation, wastewater, and municipal sectors. Compared with 1990, emissions represent a 49.1% decrease in total community emissions despite a 25% population increase during the same time period. In order to achieve their 80% reduction goal, they need to meet an emissions target of around 160,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent, which is about 6 metric tons per Palo Alto resident in 2025 compared to 14.3 metric tons per resident in 1990. The California Air Resources Board (CARB)'s 2017 Scoping Plan Update recommends a goal for local governments of 6 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per capita by 2030 and 2 metric tons by 2050. They have hit the 2030 goal. Christine Luong said they have been focusing on programs and policies to help scale more widely, which will accelerate emissions reductions. Ultimately, they need strong community participation and continued city programs to achieve the 80% reduction. The main sources of Palo Alto emissions are natural gas consumption and gasoline and diesel vehicles. Transportation and mobile sources represent about 64%. On-road transportation increased 5% since 2024, largely due to the CARB updating the vehicle emissions factors. Normally the factors decrease but the methodology update reflects accuracy improvements rather than an actual increase in per-mile emissions, so it is a little misleading. Off-road vehicle & equipment accounts for about 8% of transportation and mobile sources and aviation fuel accounts for 1%. She was happy to report that now that Caltrain is fully electric, the line serving Palo Alto in 2025 is now powered with 100% renewable electricity, so there are no more GHG emissions associated with Caltrain. That is about 7000 metric tons of emission savings per year. Natural gas consumption represents the second-largest source of admissions at about 33%. Christine Luong said electric vehicle adoption continues to grow significantly. In 2025, 60% of new car sales in Palo Alto were EVs. The EV Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) share of passenger vehicles that have an origin and destination in Palto Alto doubled from about 10% in 2024 to 20% in 2025. The EV VMT share of passenger vehicles that have either an origin or a destination inside Palo Alto or a destination or origin outside of Palo Alto nearly doubled from 7% to 15%. Commercial EV VMT grew from less than 1% to approximately 2% for all trips. Bus EV VMT increased from 2% to 7%. She pointed out how the 2025 emissions factors mask the progress made in EV adoption. If they used the same emissions factors from 2021, on-road transportation emissions would have decreased about 14%. It would have been a 9.6% decrease from 2024 and would have resulted in overall emissions reductions being 53.4% compared to 1990 levels or 5.5 metric tons per capita instead of 49.1% and 6. Once they get the updated Google Environmental Insights Explorer data, they can do more work on tracking progress in vehicle miles traveled and mode share across all years. Natural gas (methane) emissions increased by 2.2% in 2025 compared to 2024, which was driven by an 8.1% increase in commercial natural gas emissions. Residential natural gas emissions decreased by 1.5% and industrial decreased by 11.6% compared to 2024. These fluctuations reflect variability in natural gas consumption driven by weather conditions, energy efficiency improvements, occupancy behavior and community growth. They reflect participation in the City's residential electrification programs. At the time the staff report was SUMMARY MINUTES Page 4 of 9 Climate Action and Sustainability Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 09/04/2026 written, the municipal GHG inventory was still being finalized, so they will provide further analysis at a City Council meeting in the fall. Preliminary calculations show that in 2025, the City emitted 15,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from municipal operations, which is a 3% increase through 2024. They continue to try to make progress in replacing internal combustion engine (ICE) passenger vehicles and light-duty fleet vehicles with electric whenever they are due for retirement, provided a suitable EV model is available. The generation-based emissions inventory is generally best suited to track emissions and to inform policies related to energy use in buildings and transportation as well as emissions from in-city waste sources. A consumption-based inventory is more useful for understanding where embedded emissions generated outside the city boundaries constitute a significant portion of the carbon footprint of household and government consumption. The embedded GHG sources include emissions associated with production, transportation, distribution, and disposal of the goods and services consumed. A consumption-based emissions inventory can lead to insights about where local consumption gives rise to emissions outside of the city's boundaries and suggests additional opportunities for reducing emissions. Unlike the generation-based inventory, there is no standard protocol for calculating a consumption-based emissions inventory currently. The CARB was tasked with developing an implementation framework similar to the GPC but there are no progress updates. The framework needs to address how to account for the emissions that are not covered by the generation-based inventory. Even though they don't currently complete consumption-based GHG inventory, they are taking efforts to better understand the impact of certain Scope 3 emissions. For example, the City adopted a low carbon concrete ordinance effective January 1, 2023, and they are developing a strategy to collect more detailed data on larger commercial projects. To date, there are 270 new residential and commercial buildings that must comply with the requirement; 119 projects were completed and 151 permits were issued for projects under construction. Christine Luong continued that the Climate Protection Working Group provided feedback on the inventory at their August 5 meeting. They requested more analysis of on-road transportation emissions in the 2026 GHG inventory, especially when new Google EIE data becomes available. Their feedback was taken and slides 8 and 9 were added. Their feedback was incorporated on health and quality-of-life benefits from electrification. Christine Luong answered questions from the group. She said typically if they were to follow the GPC protocol, everyone in California would be using the EMFAC database for emissions factors. She said she reached out to other sustainability managers to see how they were dealing with it but there was only one other city that had completed their 2025 inventory. Rincon suggested they keep using EMFAC. The 2025 EMFAC is more accurate than the 2021 one. She didn't think they would change previous inventories but they could always include a separate apples-to-apples comparison going forward and note the methodology change. They could do just looking at the VMT. She guessed that commercial gas usage jumped due to a combination of factors but primarily return to work changes. She said she could look into it more. She said because the Google EIE data was unavailable, they used EMFAC and CARB model data based on EV registration and past patterns but they will be able to provide more accurate numbers next SUMMARY MINUTES Page 5 of 9 Climate Action and Sustainability Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 09/04/2026 year. She clarified for Councilmember Burt that they do not include the service populations outside of Palo Alto when they calculate emissions from the water treatment plant. She said the increase related to renovating aeration basins was temporary. After double-checking, she said the staff at the plant separate out the influent flow of partners' waste but they do not disaggregate the electricity and natural gas usage. The plant staff does not disaggregate the effluent result but Rincon applies their service population to that. Councilmember Lu appreciated Ms. Luong's detailed report. He asked about the EMFAC calculations for emissions associated with car travel. He asked why commercial gas usage jumped something like 8%. He agreed they should be looking at goals per capita and presenting those numbers alongside. He commented on Scope 3 details being TBD and focusing on goals they can measure. He said they could spin up a metric on the side for actions they take on Scope 3. He was optimistic about EV sales. Councilmember Burt said that given commercial gas usage was one of the few categories where they had an actual increase to a change in computational method, he thought it was important and worth understanding more. He suggested getting data from Stanford Research Park and Stanford Hospitals. He thanked Christine Luong for the graphs, which were not in the staff report. He recommended they lead with the apples-to-apples comparison and then clarify the new methodology. He wondered about car sales, as the percent increase and absolute numbers did not track in his mind. He thought they should feature those positive numbers, as there was a huge jump in EV sales. He asked if they were assuming each vehicle was being driven the same number of miles. He wants more information about how much a family would drive an EV on average if they have an EV and an ICE car. Councilmember Burt noted that Palo Alto owns all the GHGs from the water quality control plant, which serves 6 jurisdictions. He said the other communities are not getting a proportionate share of the GHGs and he asked where that is mandated in the methodology. He said it was troubling that there was a significant increase in GHGs related to renovating aeration basins. He noted a doubling of ridership on Caltrain. He echoed the per capita tracking. He was glad to get the update about the low-carbon concrete. He would like to see a plan on methodology for tracking that. He noted there is significant residential growth with a spike in construction material and embedded carbon in that. He wondered how impactful the low- carbon concrete program is. If they could show it works, perhaps others would be more prone to adopt a similar program. He wondered if there were any other Scope 3 categories where they could have a meaningful quantification ahead of CARB coming out with a methodology. He found the report informative and encouraging and noted the real audience is the community. He asked if the plant staff disaggregates the effluent result. He clarified with Christine Luong that they are not bearing the GHGs from other communities that are embedded in the effluent. Brad Eggelston, Director of Public Works said any feedback is fair game for consideration as they prepare what they bring to council in the fall. Relating to Councilmember Burt's concern about aeration basins, he said they are operating a hybrid system while construction is ongoing. He said the report was meant to bring the numbers to the committee and was a more simplistic SUMMARY MINUTES Page 6 of 9 Climate Action and Sustainability Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 09/04/2026 version than what they would bring to Council. He thought they could provide some follow-up to the report offline to clarify different aspects of the treatment plant emissions. Mayor Veenker wondered if they could track the percentage drop per capita, which Christine Luong said she could easily calculate and which Brad Eggelston thought was a good suggestion. She commented on the statistics being a tricky art. She welcomed public comments but noted there were none. She asked when the report would come to Council and Christine Luong answered that it is tentatively scheduled for November 16. Brad Eggelston said that date wouldn't work. He said it might be coming sooner than that but the date has not been finalized. Mayor Veenker talked a little bit on EV adoption and newer cars replacing the oldest cars. She mentioned Leno's Law unfortunately being on the governor's desk and classic cars being much more polluting. It looked to her that there was a 58% drop as opposed to the 49% drop, so they are almost 10 points ahead. It would be extraordinary if they could get to two-thirds. They can congratulate people on their individual behavior, which would hopefully incentivize them to do greater collective behavior, which would help them to their 80 by 30. She said there was a lot of work to do but a lot of reason for optimism. Item 1 Public Comment No request to speak. NO ACTION TAKEN 2. Overview of Approaches to Achieving the City's Carbon Neutrality Goal and Committee Feedback on Areas for Further Staff Analysis; CEQA Status - Not a Project Jonathan Abendschein said the City adopted a carbon neutrality by 2030 goal in October 2022. Their primary focus over the last few years has been direct emissions reduction in the 2023 through 2025 S/CAP Work Plan but they have a Work Plan item for 2026-2027 to develop some potential strategies for City Council consideration. They are talking about carbon neutrality at a community level and the concept is derived from the way the intergovernmental panel on climate change talks about carbon neutrality, the idea that they need to reduce global emissions to reach net zero by midcentury. The idea is to reduce nearly all direct emissions and find ways to take carbon out of the atmosphere for the parts that can't be reduced. People are working on technologies to do that sort of thing but they are a ways away from being commercialized, so it is a longer-term goal. Their goal is shorter-term, so they have thought about offsets like preserving forests, destroying refrigerants, turning high GHG emitting gases into CO2 so they have a lower emissions impact. There has been a focus on offsets but he emphasized that this is distinct from the 80% emissions reduction goal. They are focusing on how to neutralize emissions that they have been unable to reduce. Jonathan Abendschein continued that their primary emissions come from transportation and natural gas use. They offset the use of natural gas through their Carbon Offset Natural Gas program, which leaves primarily transportation emissions and a small amount of other emissions to focus on, which is about two-thirds of their emissions. About 272,000 metric tons SUMMARY MINUTES Page 7 of 9 Climate Action and Sustainability Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 09/04/2026 per year would need to be offset to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, less what direct emissions reductions they achieve in the next 5 years. They are working in parallel through the funding strategies effort this year on longer-term projections of what they might be able to achieve by 2030. He said they should prioritize emissions reduction first and then offset what remains through offsets, reforestation, or CO2 removal. He said the main thing to note is that offsets are generally substantially less expensive than reforestation or CO2 removal. As far as strategies for achieving carbon neutrality, he said the simplest thing to do is buy the offsets needed but finding a funding source is challenging. Other alternatives are creating a voluntary carbon neutrality program for people to purchase offsets or carbon neutrality for City operations. When considering buying offsets, a question that comes up is whether they can consider local opportunities. There are local opportunities but not on a scale that they would need. Their best estimate is that there could be about 1% of current annual vehicle carbon emissions available through local options and some of those options are fairly novel, like expanding wetlands, algae farms. One possibility is expansion of the urban canopy. It would be 0.1% to 0.4% of need, and costs and time investment are substantial but there are values in local opportunities. Jonathan Abendschein presented a graph showing preliminary estimated costs per ton. There are wide ranges in costs. Offsets are about $8 to $12 per ton. Other technologies are significantly more expensive and there are not a lot of data points to them, as they are still being developed. Looking at cost for various portfolio mixes, the lowest-cost offsets only and the low-cost offsets plus local options are not outside the range of what could be achieved. Adding reforestation or CO2 removal causes costs to go up significantly. The lowest-cost option would be $3 to $4 per month per resident and under $0.01 per square foot per month for nonresidential. They looked at potential funding sources and struggled. The General Fund is not viable given the budget situation. Utility special revenues have legal constraints and are a limited funding source. They are declining long-term and funding neutrality from this source competes with primary source emissions reductions and other important uses. Revenue measure would be challenging. That left them with voluntary participation. One challenge with that would be startup costs. He noted municipal operations have some of the same challenges as community-wide emissions reduction. The staff report cited about $150,000 needed to offset municipal emissions, which is an impact to financial sustainability. Jonathan Abendschein said more guidance was needed before continuing on this work item. He said their recommendation is to focus on exploring voluntary programs for carbon neutrality and municipal carbon neutrality rather than trying to find funding options for a city-wide program. That raises questions about whether they should look at adjustments to the 2030 carbon neutrality goal as they look at what is feasible for achieving the 80% emissions reduction goal over the next few months. He said that If they want to move forward with any kind of community carbon neutrality program, he is looking for feedback as to whether it should be offset focused or whether there is interest in local options or trees or carbon removal. Given the extensive work plan, lowest-cost reputable offsets and possible expansion of the urban canopy are the 2 options that seem most reasonable. He said the working group provided feedback that the funding to buy offsets would be better directed towards direct emissions SUMMARY MINUTES Page 8 of 9 Climate Action and Sustainability Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 09/04/2026 reductions and that reexamining the timeline would be valuable. There were concerns about the purchasing of offsets reducing the urgency for people to reduce emissions. They had a lot of discussion about the voluntary program with a mix of opinions. Most leaned against implementing it. He said growth of unthreatened forests is not counted towards offsets. He clarified that expansion of the canopy is counted toward offsets but not toward GHG inventory. Councilmember Burt said this has become a well-established goal among leading cities. He thinks they are recognizing how challenging it will be to hit their 80% reduction goal but it might be a more obtainable goal and has become a more universally accepted goal. There is the question of which is a better goal. He understands the working group wanting to reduce emissions but they are seeing how challenging and expensive it is. He thinks they should let go of the concept that it is more virtuous to have their own reductions. He strongly wants to stick with their goal. He thinks they should look closely at the voluntary program of residents and businesses. He suspects the participation rate would be over a third. He suggested a sampling survey. He noted that they have more canopy than what is naturally occurring, to which Jonathan Abendschein replied that the term would be afforestation rather than reforestation. Councilmember Burt mentioned a reforestation program they participated in with Oaxaca. He said canopy growth is part of their GHG reduction program for 2030. He asked if the cost estimate was based upon existing remaining GHGs or projected GHGs in 2030. Jonathan Abendschein said it was based on current year, as they are still working on 2030 projections, but it will be lower. Councilmember Burt said a reflective white roof program would be impactful. He asked if their climate program included an initiative for such. Jonathan Abendschein said he would get back to him on that. Brad Eggelston, Director of Public Works did not believe they quantify GHG impact from canopy growth and apply it to the inventory. Jonathan Abendschein indicated he was correct. Councilmember Lu asked how they think about existing biomass growth and if it should be counted towards carbon neutrality. He asked about the math for offsets that companies buy, to which Jonathan Abendschein replied that was something they need to think about and address if they were to look at a voluntary program. Councilmember Lu thought that would be worth revisiting. He was roughly aligned with the working group but agreed with Councilmember Burt that they should get a better signal about the voluntary program. He asked about the price of planting trees in relation to the $100 per ton reduction cost but Jonathan Abendschein did not have those numbers. Mayor Veenker liked the surveying idea. She asked if they only count canopy expansion as a carbon sink and don't count the co-benefits. Jonathan Abendschein answered that further investigation was necessary. She asked what would be the next steps besides the survey. She liked the idea about pushing on commercial but wondered if there were edge cases where other businesses might get excited about a program. She wondered if they could give some kind of a seal to smaller businesses for participating. She suggested climate awards. She said the voluntary program gives a chance to educate, so it serves 2 goals. She said it could be expanded to Scope 3s. She wants to explore the voluntary program. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 9 of 9 Climate Action and Sustainability Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 09/04/2026 Alan Kurotori, Utilities Director, said many utilities have a tree power program and a shade tree program. He said they are talking through ideas with the Public Works Director. They are sending a community survey to commercial customers this year. He said on his action item list was to do outreach to other cities about their programs to see how they could be adopted. He said it does not affect electric rates; it comes from the public benefits charge. Item 2 Public Comment: Stephen R. thought it might be useful to think about using Scope 3 emissions from low-carbon concrete to offset some of their carbon if the City would invest effort in figuring out how to quantify that carbon emissions reduction. NO ACTION TAKEN Virtual Public Comment No request to speak. Future Meetings and Agendas This portion was not captured by the recording. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 3:48 p.m.