We have already made significant strides towards a climate-friendly Alameda by reducing emissions 29% below 2005 levels by 2022, with a 40% drop in energy emissions and a 25% drop in transportation emissions. Our city’s goal is to cut emissions in half by 2030, and reach net-zero emissions by 2045. What would that look like, and how can you help achieve a climate-friendly Alameda?
[1]Given that our electricity from Alameda Municipal Power is 100% renewable, a move to all-electric homes and businesses is a vision worth striving for now. Moving away from natural gas appliances to electric ones reduces emissions and leads to a cleaner environment for one’s health. Start by replacing gas appliances with electric ones as they age out. Alameda Municipal Power offers rebates [2] to help with this transition, including a recently increased rebate of up to $2,000 for a heat pump. Using heat pump furnaces and heat pump water heaters also saves money in the long run.
Let’s increase our tree canopy in Alameda, which is now at 11.2% coverage—not ideal. The draft Urban Forest Plan is to achieve 20% tree canopy coverage over the next 30 years, but let’s do better than that! Let’s reach 30% tree canopy coverage in the next ten years by working together. October through February is prime tree planting season. If you’d like to request a street tree in front of your property, please submit a service request [3] under the category Trees (Street Trees). Also plant as many trees as you can on your property.
[4]The Rotary Club of Alameda and 100K Trees for Humanity plant trees in public parks with the Alameda Recreation and Parks Department a few times per year. Watch the Alameda Post for the next community tree planting planned for Main Street Linear Park this Fall. Let’s make Alameda even more beautiful and suck up carbon dioxide to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, with a large urban forest!
I’ve lived in Alameda for over 30 years and have noticed that, with our new bike lanes in town, more of us are bicycling to get around in Alameda now than we were 10 years ago. This is a big part of our success in reducing our transportation emissions. More ferries to San Francisco and the Woodstock ferry to Oakland help as well. So does bus ridership. Let’s keep up the momentum and get even more people walking, bicycling, and taking public transportation.
[5]In 2024, 10.8% of all registered vehicles in the City of Alameda [7] were electric, plug-in hybrid, or fuel cell vehicles. In a climate-friendly Alameda, this percentage will be much higher. Alameda Municipal Power has rebates available for used electric vehicles [2] and charging ports [2].
A climate-friendly Alameda would be a zero-waste city. Our current diversion from the landfill is 81%! Not too shabby! In a climate-friendly Alameda, everyone sorts their trash into recycling, composting, and landfill bins properly, and reduces waste by refusing and reusing items. Check out my column from 2024 [8] on striving for zero waste for details on how to sort trash properly, my column on the 4 R’s, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot [9], my column on reducing textile waste [10], and my column on reducing food waste [11] as well. Together, we can strive to become a zero-waste community.
Let’s make Alameda the ultimate climate-friendly city and lead reductions across all emission sources, as a shining example to other cities. We’ve got this Alameda!
Joyce Mercado is the author of Save the Planet in Your Spare Time: A Climate Protection Handbook for the Busy Person, a member of Community Action for a Sustainable Alameda (CASA), and a past president of the Rotary Club of Alameda. Her columns are collected at alamedapost.com/Joyce-Mercado [12]. She can be reached at [email protected] [13].