City plan aims to cut emissions by 45% in five years

They city’s new Climate Action Plan aims to decrease greenhouse gas emissions 45% by 2025 relative to the levels they were at in 2015.

The plan comes after an annual sustainability report showed that the city’s greenhouse gas emissions have been rising since 2017.

“Our carbon pollution has increased year over year, and that’s signaling us in the wrong direction,” said Matthew Gonser, executive director of the Honolulu Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency at a news conference Thursday.

“That’s why we need to really look at this plan of action, find the ways that we can immediately take action and drive those emissions down over time.”

The plan focuses on three sectors: energy, ground transportation and waste.

The plan commits the city to fully transition its fleet to electric or renewable technology by 2035. It includes the city’s 550 buses.

The city now has three electric buses and expects about 14 more to be added to the fleet in 2021.

“With these new buses, one of the priorities that we do have is to try to serve all of all parts of our island,” said Roger Morton, Department of Transportation Serv­ices director.

“We’re going to concentrate on our Route 40 buses, which are our buses that run 24 hours, and they serve the Waianae and Makaha section of our island.”

The plan also looks at installing more protected bicycle lanes and electric vehicle charging stations.

The city also will examine its own buildings to ensure it is maximizing opportunities to be energy- efficient.

“We evaluated every city building facility from Hawaii Kai to Hauula from Waima­nalo to Waianae,” said Brody McMurtry with Johnson Controls, a private company the city is partnering with to examine its buildings.

The project will focus on replacing light fixtures with higher-efficiency LED fixtures, installing solar panels and even replacing old transformers that generate large amounts of heat with more efficient ones.

McMurtry explained that these measures would save the city $51 million; subtracting the cost of the replacements, they would still save the city about $9 million.

“In addition, all those projects create 321 jobs,” he said.

“We’re starting construction next month, in May, and we’ll be completing that over a 24-month period.”

To curb waste, the plan is looking at installing more public drinking fountains to promote reusable water bottles, implementing methane collection systems at the landfill and wastewater treatment facilities to use it as energy, and continuing to eliminate single-use plastics.

The Climate Action Plan is expected to help the city achieve its commitment of reducing carbon emissions to below zero by 2045.

The sustainability report did find that the city operations decreased their electrical use by 3.4% and reached 30% renewable energy for the first time.

Mayor Rick Blangiardi supported the Climate Action Plan and emphasized the need for action.

“Plans are one thing; it’s how you react and what you do in the days and weeks ahead,” he said.

“None of us have an ability to predict the future. We just know the inevitability of the impact on climate change.”