City inching forward on sustainability plan

Apr. 2—It's as long and segmented as a Netflix series, though perhaps not as binge-worthy: "The Scottsdale Sustainability Plan."

Before the latest episode, a "viewer recap": In 2022, Scottsdale City Council identified the creation and implementation of a sustainability plan as a top priority.

Last spring, Sustainability Director Lisa McNeilly presented a draft of the plan — and watched as City Council members ripped it to shreds.

In November, McNeilly provided the framework of a vastly revamped plan, getting general approval on the first section, which dealt with air quality and water.

At another work study session, capping a long March 19 meeting, McNeilly moved on to the plan's next section, regarding energy, waste and extreme heat.

No formal vote on the in-progress plan was taken, though on several key points a show of hands provided "council consensus."

In many cases, McNeilly provided two recommendations — one from her city staff, the other from "SEAC."

That stands for the Scottsdale Environmental Advisory Commission, which has met 27 times "to share their valuable input and review plan drafts," according to McNeilly's presentation.

In most cases, the SEAC goals were much more aggressive than the city staff's aims.

For instance, McNeilly noted Scottsdale residents and businesses pushed 3 metric tons of carbon dioxide, aka "greenhouse gas emissions," into the air in 2022.

City staff asked council to "reduce greenhouse gas emissions (relative to 2022) by 45% by 2035 and 90% by 2050."

SEAC agreed with the first part, but wanted the 90% reduction by 2040.

The council consensus went with the city staff, here.

But that was not always the case, as council gave consensus to the SEAC recommendation for increasing tree and shrub canopy to 20% by 2030 and 25% by 2040.

And council went with ambitious SEAC goals of reducing landfill refuse per single-family household from 2022 levels by 25% by 2030 and by 90% by 2040.

In the energy section of the presentation, McNeilly explained how "city-wide, electricity purchased from utilities has remained fairly constant since 2018, but would have been 4% higher without the solar installations on houses and businesses."

In 2022, total energy use equaled 16,232 kilowatt hours per capita and 9.2 kWh per square foot of building space.

The amount of solar energy installed on homes and businesses has almost doubled since 2018 "driven mostly by the residential sector."

In 2022, over 90 megawatts of distributed solar systems were installed in the city (78 MW residential and 12 MW commercial), including 350 kilowatts on municipal property

Council gave the thumbs up to SEAC's recommendation to double solar power, increasing distributed solar capacity in Scottsdale to 180 MW by 2030 — and to a staggering 500 MW by 2040.

To help that along, council agreed with SEAC's view of increasing municipal solar capacity to 5 MW by 2030.

Is the end of this "series" near?

Some on council are pushing to vote on the plan by June.