The city of Prairie Village plans to develop a community-wide climate action plan aimed at zeroing out the city’s net carbon emissions by 2050.
After embarking last year on a climate action plan focused on municipal operations with Indianapolis-based consultants Keramida, Prairie Village is now poised to expand the effort to businesses and residents.
This comes three years after the city committed to the “Cities Race to Zero,” an international campaign with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At that time, Prairie Village pledged to reach the commitment’s goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The Prairie Village City Council last month during a council committee of the whole meeting voted 9 to 3 to move the broader community-wide climate action plan forward for final consideration at a later date.
That item is scheduled for the meeting Monday night.
Councilmembers Terrence Gallagher, Nick Reddell and Lori Sharp previously voted against the motion.
How is this different from the prior municipal plan?
- The municipal operations climate action plan focused solely on Prairie Village’s city buildings and operations, and Keramida has already completed work analyzing the city’s carbon output.
- That inventory looked at emissions from the city’s public building, vehicle fleet and waste from 2018 to 2022.
- Keramida found that the two largest opportunities for reducing emissions in municipal operations came from the potential construction of a new city hall and a new community center.
- A community-wide climate action plan, which the city council gave the green light for last month, will now target how resident and business emissions can be reduced.
This is the second phase of work per contract
- Nick McCreary, vice president of sustainability and climate services with Keramida, said the firm will conduct a greenhouse gas inventory now for all of Prairie Village, including businesses and homes.
- A community-wide climate action plan is a requirement for the “Cities Race to Zero,” he said.
- This process will include public input on the plan, though it is unclear what community engagement will look like at this time, McCreary said.
- In order to gauge residential and business emissions, McCreary said that Keramida plans to use data from Evergy and WaterOne.
Next steps:
- The Prairie Village City Council on July 1 is set to consider final approval of the community wide climate action plan.
- The city council meeting starts at 6 p.m. at city hall, 7700 Mission Road.
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