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Posts tagged ‘sustainability’

Apr 13

Salt Lake City Approves Ordinance Update to Expand Electric Vehicle Charging at New Multi-Family Properties

One of the many ways Salt Lake City works to improve air quality is by making it easier to own an electric vehicle, which doesn’t emit any tailpipe pollution.

On that topic, we’re excited to report that theSalt Lake City Council enacted our proposed electric vehicle readiness standards on April 4!

This will enable more residents to charge their vehicles at home if they live in a new multi-family building.

The electric vehicle readiness standards were adopted as part of the Off-Street Parking ordinance (21A.44) and will require multi-family new-construction properties to include electric vehicle ready (EV-ready) infrastructure at 20% of installed parking spaces. It does not require that the EV stations themselves be installed; only the electric capacity and conduit to make it that much easier to put in a station as demand increases.

An EV-ready parking stall has sufficient electrical capacity for the future use of a minimum 200-volt EV charging station.  With the understanding that the majority of charging events take place at home, this new requirement will address a growing need for residential charging and set the foundation of more accessible charging in the future.

Increasing the adoption of EVs will help our wintertime PM2.5 pollution, as well as reduce summertime ozone pollution. Electric vehicles produce zero direct emissions and help to maintain a cleaner airshed for our community.

Electric vehicles are also more efficient and have a lower overall carbon footprint than their gasoline counterparts. This will only increase as our electric grid becomes cleaner (see the City’s efforts with Rocky Mountain Power and 17 other communities on the Community Renewable Energy Program). EV emission reductions will be even more significant as the electricity used to charge them is sourced from more renewable energy.

Due to their affordability and environmental benefits, EVs have been growing in popularity year after year.  In fact, 1,043 EVs were registered in Salt Lake City in 2020 alone. While we are excited to see more people are able to drive electric, we understand barriers like lack of accessible charging and range anxiety still exist for many.

In the past several years, Salt Lake City installed 20 public EV charging stations and adopted a requirement in 2017 that multi-family properties must provide 1 electric vehicle charging station per 25 required parking spaces.

The recent approval of the EV Readiness Ordinance marks yet another major milestone to help achieve increased accessibility and adoption of EVs in Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City continues to work on expanding access to electric vehicle charging stations. Stay tuned for further outreach opportunities and updates later this year!

To learn more about the benefits of the Electric Vehicle Readiness Ordinance, check out Utah Clean Energy’s blog.

Feb 6

2022 Year in Review

We are officially well into 2023 and ready to share our full 2022 Year in Review with you! You might’ve caught our teasers on social media of what we’ve accomplished this past year but in case you missed it or want to read the full review, we’ve got you covered.

This past year we worked hard to provide sustainability in Salt Lake City, at both the city and local levels. Keep scrolling to catch a few highlights, and be sure to check out the full Year in Review for all the incredible work we did in 2022!

WASTE + RECYCLING

2022 Accomplishments

  • Emptied 4.3 million containers and provided weekly waste collection for approximately 42,000 residential customers.
  • Provide waste and recycling services for City parks and facilities, special events throughout the City, and curbside recycling for qualified small businesses and multi-family properties
  • Partnered with three local artists to create new wraps on our newest refuse trucks.

AIR QUALITY

2022 Accomplishments

  • Hosted an Indoor Air Quality Summit and launched a new public campaign to share best practices around keeping our homes, buildings, schools, and other spaces healthy.
  • Submitted a grant application for an EV car share pilot program at affordable housing properties
  • Expanded the City’s Comprehensive Sustainability Policy so that all new construction and major renovations of large City buildings will, when practicable, be constructed to use all-electric, combustion-free technologies.
Read more

Nov 30

We’re Dreaming of a “Green” Christmas

The holiday season can be a time of joy, time spent with friends and family, gift giving, good food, and rewatching our favorite comfort movies.  It’s also a time when thinking about and acting on sustainable alternatives is important! 

Holidays bring about plastic and paper waste, increased travel emissions, food waste, and the never-ending debate over plastic versus real trees. Check out some our tips for navigating this holiday season as sustainably as possible! 

Shop local: 

We’ve talked about the importance of shopping local for our food, but shopping local for gifts is also important! Keeping our shopping to our local, small businesses helps support the local economy. Additionally, shopping locally minimizes carbon emissions because travel is minimized for consumers and purveyors.  Supporting small, local businesses also helps to sustain our town centers and can help reduce sprawl and automobile use! 

Food waste: 

Food waste is a major issues even outside of the holiday season- about 40% of all food produced in the US never gets eaten.  This amount increases by an additional 25% between Thanksgiving and New Years! Here are a couple of easy ways to minimize your food waste: 

  • Plan a head! Figure out your menu ahead of time and plan for the amount of people who will be attending your event. Try and plan foods that you will enjoy eating as leftovers or can repurpose into other dishes (like turkey soup, curry, or sandwiches!). Consider doing more plant-based options for an increased impact! 
  • Compost! Any of the raw fruit and vegetable scraps created in the cooking of your delicious feast  can go into your compost bin to be turned into compost for you to use during the next planting season! Learn more about composting in SLC here. 
  • Send people home with leftovers! Tell your guests to bring their own to-go containers to help you eat through any remaining leftovers. 
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Nov 21

A Vegetarian Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving can be a difficult holiday for those practicing vegetarianism or veganism- with food being such a focal point and the main dish often being meat based. While there are other ways to contribute towards a sustainable lifestyle, how we eat is a major player in our individual carbon footprints. In Utah, these choices contribute to nearly 25% of our  household carbon footprint. Learn more about Dining with Discretion and the importance of understanding the intricacy of our food systems!

A vegetarian Thanksgiving can be easy, there are vegetarian/vegan roasts you can get at the store, but there’s something about creating a flavorful dish to share with your guests that took preparation and dedication. We wanted to make this holiday a little easier for our vegetarian and vegan friends this year so we made a menu, just for you!

Appetizers:

Stuffed Mushrooms

Kale and White Bean Artichoke Dip*

Candied Spiced Nuts

Pastry Wrapped Cranberry Brie

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Nov 18

Salt Lake City BIPOC-owned Westside businesses to receive funding to go solar

PRESS RELEASE: November 17, 2022

A year-long effort to create solutions for Black-, Indigenous-, and People of Color- (BIPOC) owned businesses on the Westside of Salt Lake City to pursue rooftop solar and battery storage has received a significant boost thanks to a commitment from American Express.

American Express recently announced a $5 million global commitment to help cities build resiliency and fight climate change ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference which took place in Egypt last week. The Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) has been awarded $1.2 million to work with three cities, including Salt Lake City, to install solar energy systems in our community.

American Express will provide $325,000 in philanthropic support to complement other incentives and financial strategies to help install solar with optional battery systems for small businesses on the Westside. These systems can lower energy costs for residents and businesses, can be more resilient than standard electric sources during extreme weather, support local clean energy jobs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

View of the Utah State Capital Building from 500 North.

“I’m thrilled with American Express’ generosity, which will build off the hard work our City team and partners have done to advance solar on our Westside,” said Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall. “We have the tools to reduce climate emissions, strengthen community resiliency, and save our businesses and residents money through clean energy, and this collaboration is a perfect demonstration of that.”

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Nov 10

1 Comment

Inversion season is here! What can we do?

November 1 is the official start of inversion season along the Wasatch Front and it certainly feels like  winter is settling in around us!

But what exactly is an inversion? This natural phenomenon occurs when a high-pressure system is setting up, trapping cold air on the valley floors with warmer air above it. This warm air also traps all our pollution with the cold air, keeping it contained in the valley until the inversion breaks. 

What causes an inversion? 

Meteorologists on the news and the Utah Division of Air Quality will  warn you in advance before an inversion happens. Here are some signs that you can keep a look out for: 

  • Calm winds: this reduces the natural mixing of air temperatures. 
  • Clear skies: this increases the rate of cooling for air close to the ground. 
  • Long nights allow the cooling of the ground to continue over a longer period of time, resulting in a greater decrease in temperature near the surface. 
  • The sun is lower on the horizon during the winter, so it supplies less warmth to the earth’s surface and more to the atmosphere. 

In Utah, our inversions often occur right after snowstorms due to the increase in cold air near the ground and the clear skies warming up the upper atmosphere and acting as a lid to the cooler air below. 

Inversions are meteorological events that are common in mountain/valley geographies with our weather patterns.  When you pair inversions with human activity, you often wind up with pollution that sticks around.  Here along the Wasatch Front, a significant source of pollution comes from transportation(roughly 50%), as well as our homes and buildings (roughly 35%). That means each of us can make a difference to our air quality. 

What can you do? 

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Oct 25

Waste is Spooky! Here’s Some Tips for a Sustainable Halloween

It’s almost Halloween- a holiday of costumes, candy, and decorations! But can we do that sustainably? We sure can and we’re here to give you some fun, helpful ideas! 

Decorations 

Decorations can create a lot of waste with items that we don’t always reuse. Similar to other holidays, invest in decorations you can use year after year, or create decorations using items you already have! Check out these ideas for decorations we made using stuff from around the home. And don’t forget, you can compost your pumpkins after the festivities as long as there’s no wax or paint on them! 

Here are some other ideas from when the SLCgreen team decorated our office, sustainably, a few years ago. 

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Oct 6

Salt Lake City and Santa Fe join Boulder County and the City of Flagstaff to tackle climate crisis through regional partnership

PRESS RELEASE: October 5, 2022

A trailblazing partnership of local governments will soon pool resources to fund carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects in the Four Corners region. The 4 Corners Carbon Coalition (4CCC), established by Boulder County, Colorado and the City of Flagstaff, Arizona, today welcomed Salt Lake City, Utah and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Earlier this year, Boulder County and Flagstaff invested seed funding to launch this coalition with the goal of spurring regional CDR innovation to fight climate change. The coalition will provide catalytic funding to accelerate CDR project deployment and business development.

CDR describes diverse processes, on land and at sea, that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and durably lock it away in geological, biological and synthetic formations for decades, centuries, or even millennia. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), cutting emissions from fossil fuels is necessary, but it’s no longer sufficient to stem the worst effects of climate change.

Graphic provided by U.S. Department of Energy

“We’re so excited to round out the ‘Four Corners’ vision with two cities that recognize the importance of local leadership,” said Flagstaff Mayor Paul Deasy. “This collaboration gives local communities the opportunity to put our fingerprints on this emerging and necessary space of carbon dioxide removal (CDR); to hold ourselves and our partners to the highest standards; to show what community-based CDR might look like and the potential benefits of supporting vetted projects in our backyards.” 

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Oct 5

Eating Local

by SLCgreen intern Mariah Trujillo

Last week we celebrated Utah Climate Week but did you know it was Eat Local Week too? This is a weeklong event developed by Urban Food Connections of Utah, that challenges participants to eat food grown or raised within a 250-mile radius.  

Eat Local Week is intended to highlight and celebrate regional harvests, local agriculture, and Utah’s agricultural heritage. Supporting strong local food systems is one way to build a more resilient community and it can help reduce emissions. Climate change, rising temperatures, and changing precipitation patterns are rapidly changing our agricultural system.  

On July 17, Salt Lake City reached our all-time city record high temperature of 107owhich was repeated several times throughout this summer and into September! High temperatures during extended growing seasons affect the health and yield of crops that haven’t been adapted to a specific regional climate. Supporting our local farmers and their farms builds and invests in communities and helps them become more resilient to our changing climate. 

What does “local food” mean? 

Local food is grown and produced within a small distance from where the consumer purchases it.  On average, produce in the United States travels 1,500 miles from production point to the consumer’s plate. Local food, on the other hand, usually travels a maximum distance of 100-250 miles. Some common locally produced food items include fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, eggs, dairy products, and honey.  

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Sep 24

It’s National Public Lands Day! Let’s Talk About Climate Change

Did you know that public lands play a critical role in shaping the future of climate change?

In Utah, 45 million tons of fossil fuels are extracted each year from federal public lands, the equivalent emissions of 9.7 passenger cars driven for one year. These extraction practices, designed to help fuel our energy grids, creates a positive feedback loop. The University of Calgary explains, “Similar to how keeping money in a savings account earns interest and compounds to earn more money, positive climate feedback increases some initial change in the climate.”

But what are public lands?

These are areas of land and water that are today collectively owned by U.S. citizens and managed by government agencies. These lands can consist of national parks, monuments, forests, wild and scenic rivers, Bureau of Land Management lands, wilderness and wilderness study areas, watersheds, and municipal lands, to name a few. Each agency oversees how these lands are managed to balance the multitude of uses these areas have- from recreational activities like hiking, kayaking, or rock climbing, to energy development, logging, and mining.

These large patches of continuous wild lands are also important for maintaining habitats for wildlife, allowing for safe migration due to climate change, and they can function as carbon sinks! Trees and plants suck CO2, a major contributor to climate change, from the air during photosynthesis. As they grow, they can absorb great volumes in their leaves, trunks, and roots. The older and bigger they get, the more carbon they store!

While we might not think of Utah as being a dense forest, the forests we do have play pivotal roles, just as much as the desert in helping support ecosystems and wildlife. The Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, contains over a net acreage of 2,169,596 acres of forested land, imagine all the CO2 this massive forest in our backyard is absorbing!

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