Council Passes Long-Term Carbon Reduction Goal

This morning, the Council adopted a new long-term carbon emission reduction goal for the City of Minneapolis: we will strive to reduce carbon emissions by 80% or more by 2050, from a 2006 baseline. 

This is in line with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommendations and the 2050 goals already adopted by the State of Minnesota and Hennepin County, and was recommended by the City’s Sustainability staff and the Community Environmental Advisory Committee.  I want to thank both our staff and CEAC for their quick work and thorough analysis.

The work to draft this recommendation was in response to a staff direction I made back in February of this year.  I enthusiastically supported setting this goal, and hope that we can push well past reaching it. 

However, we need to be clear that this is a very aggressive goal.  Reducing our carbon emissions by 80% will require a fundamental transformation of the way we use energy in buildings, in our transportation system, and how we deal with waste.  This new goal underscores the importance of the action we're already taking on climate, through our work to create new partnerships with our energy utilities and the highest priority strategies from the Climate Action Plan that we've already started to implement.