Regional climate collaborative briefs North Las Vegas council on emissions, energy and outreach

City staff and council members on June 18 received a briefing from the All In Clark County Regional Climate Collaborative on regional greenhouse gas (GHG) trends, energy and transportation strategies, and community outreach efforts.

Veronica Freeman, the city’s grant officer and the council’s liaison to the collaborative, introduced the presentation and turned the briefing over to Jody Bechtel, assistant director of the Clark County Department of Environment and Sustainability, and Robert Bergey, the county’s climate and sustainability program manager. Bechtel told the council the collaborative had been meeting to implement a regional sustainability and climate action initiative that Clark County and the valley’s municipalities adopted in April 2023.

Bechtel summarized the collaborative’s updated GHG inventory and goals and said, “we had set a 32% reduction goal, which aligned with the state of Nevada's reduction goals. So 32% reduction by 02/1930,” language she used while describing target alignment. The collaborative reported a countywide total of roughly 26,300,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in its inventory and said buildings (energy for buildings) and on-road transportation are the largest local sources of emissions.

Bergey described opportunities and progress in clean energy and transportation. He said electricity consumption in the county rose between 2019 and 2022 but emissions from electricity have fallen because of a cleaner grid and the state renewable portfolio standard. He highlighted distributed solar growth: “There’s approximately 102,000 installations across the county as of 2023 data. And over 6% of the installations in 2022 and 2023 were in North Las Vegas.”

On transportation, the collaborative noted vehicle-miles-traveled dipped in 2020 during the pandemic and are projected to grow; the presenters said North Las Vegas alone is projected to see a 45% increase in vehicle miles traveled by 02/1950 relative to 2022 in the materials presented. The presenters emphasized building energy efficiency, solar deployment, urban forestry and cool-pavement/shade strategies as near-term actions to reduce community heat and emissions. The briefing noted North Las Vegas’ urban forestry progress including Tree City USA designation, a municipal forester award, gold leaf awards and a lidar tree inventory.

The collaborative outlined its public engagement program: it has 15 community ambassadors, has staffed more than 100 events (hosted 40), delivered 18 webinars and reached 17,869 people in the last year. Freeman said educational materials are available in English, Spanish and Tagalog and offered to coordinate ambassador participation at city events including senior and back-to-school activities.

Council members asked about multilingual materials, participation at local events, demonstration projects for cool pavements and xeriscape display ideas, and how to identify reputable solar installers. The presenters said they would share outreach materials and noted that a large regional EPA grant (an Environmental Protection Agency Climate Pollution Reduction Grant application) was pursued but not awarded; the research and program design could be re-scoped for smaller funding opportunities.

The item was a presentation and no council action was required.