Sunnyvale staff outlines phased approach to 'climate budgeting' and next steps for council review

Christina Raby, a city staff member assigned to Study Issue ESD 23-01, told the Sustainability Commission on July 21 that climate budgeting is "a governance system to integrate a city's climate commitments into funded measurable actions," and outlined staff's recommended, phased approach.

Raby said the study began as part of the FY23–24 budget process and was funded for consultant support, but staff completed most work in-house. She and Madeline Kerr, the city's environmental programs manager, summarized research on models from cities including Paris and Flagstaff and described a pilot step the city used in the FY25–26 projects cycle: an internal checkbox on project records to flag climate-action–related work.

The nut of staff's recommendation is modest: train departmental staff and embed sustainability staff earlier in project-budget preparations; add a required checkbox and an associated strategy selection field on the project page; and perform a one-time, focused review of projects in the next projects budget cycle so flagged items are accurate. "We added a climate action related checkbox there this year just to kind of, like, test run, see what this looked like," Kerr said, adding that use of the box was lower than expected because of a need for more upfront education.

Staff said they considered—but are not recommending at this time—full quantification of greenhouse-gas emissions for each project and software-based priority scoring. Raby explained that emissions quantification for hundreds of projects would be "incredibly costly and time intensive," and staff judged it would offer limited decision value compared with the cost. Staff also said some third‑party priority‑scoring tools do not integrate easily with Sunnyvale's existing budget software.

Commissioners asked for clarification about next steps, public transparency and incentives. Commissioner Pistone raised concerns that nearly any project can be framed as climate-related and asked whether the checkbox should capture direction (positive/negative/neutral). Raby and Kerr said staff had not found a reliable, low‑cost method to identify projects that are climate‑negative and that such debates were already taking place in existing budget discussions.

On timing, staff said they will present the recommended approach to City Council at a study session scheduled for Aug. 12 to obtain council feedback. If council approves, staff plan to integrate training and the checkbox into the FY27–28 projects budget cycle and to publish a more detailed accounting of climate‑related spending in the recommended budget. Kerr said the approach is intended to be iterative: "It will be slowly evolving... we can continue to build off of that."

The presentation highlighted that five FY25–26 projects were marked in the city system as climate-action–related this year but staff expect that many more projects actually align with the Climate Action Playbook once education and review are expanded.

The commission discussion also raised related topics staff will track: fleet electrification planning and a proposed update to California reach codes the city is fast-tracking to capture building‑electrification incentives. No formal motion or vote was taken on the study issue at the July 21 meeting; staff will return to council and the commission for further implementation steps.

The meeting's public comment period included a separate speaker who raised questions about a wastewater CIP (see separate item).