City Council

(16) 22-1402 ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE REPORT relative to a Community and a Municipal Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory, Climate Impact team, annual carbon reduction goals, and Capital and Technology Improvement and Expenditure Program (CTIEP), and related matters. Recommendations for Council action, pursuant to Motion (Krekorian - O’Farrell): DIRECT the Bureau of Sanitation (BOS) to present a Community and a Municipal Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory to inform progress towards meeting the City of Los Angeles’ (City) climate change goals. The Municipal and Community inventories should be developed and reported by sector, based upon established Local Government Operations Protocol and Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Departments, including proprietary departments, must share requested activity data for the previous year with the BOS by October 31 of each year. The inventory should be finalized and presented to the Council by January 15 of each year and used to inform the subsequent year's budget process. INSTRUCT the City Administrative Officer (CAO) to establish a Climate Impact team, which shall support departments in the preparation of investment plans that achieve the City's goal of carbon neutrality and perform other climate-related activities referred to them. This team shall be responsible for setting annual, decreasing caps on emissions for each high-emitting department in order to reduce emissions levels to each Council-established goal. Departments included in this cap should at minimum include the BOS, Department of General Services, Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Fire Department, Department of Recreation and Parks, and Zoo Department. Proprietary departments should also report on these metrics in the format identified by the CAO. INSTRUCT the CAO, with the assistance of the BOS, to report by April 15 of each year on departments' progress towards meeting their annual carbon reduction goals. DIRECT the CAO, in consultation with both City and proprietary departments, to compile a list of all programs currently active in the City that are intended to reduce emissions, along with their total expected cost, cost per year, and scheduled time of completion; and that this list be included in the Budget. The CAO should further elaborate meaningful reporting standards (e.g. size and type of project) for departments to follow to meet this reporting requirement. AMEND the CTIEP policy by incorporating climate change mitigation projects and specifically, carbon reduction projects as Primary Criteria within the CTIEP Project Prioritization Criteria section, and establish climate change mitigation projects as elements within the existing Element Descriptions for municipal facilities, physical plant, and major information technology infrastructure and systems. INSTRUCT the CAO to identify the CTIEP projects with climate change mitigation goals included in 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23 budgets that were counted towards the General Fund annual minimum investment target of 1.5 percent, and recommend an investment target for General Fund supported climate change mitigation projects for 2023-24 utilizing available metrics, including the rate of return on the City's investment. This target should represent a meaningful increase in the annual level of investment. INSTRUCT the CAO, with the assistance of all departments and proprietary departments, to prepare a study using an expert consultant, that identifies the feasibility of and investments needed to achieve carbon neutrality in municipal operations by 2035. The study should identify costs and projects needed to achieve the City's existing goal of carbon neutrality by 2045 to compare costs of both timelines. The study should identify intermediate percentage reduction targets and associated costs based on the 2021 baseline in order to guide the preparation of a carbon budget. This study should rely upon the analysis in the LA100 study, the Municipal Solar and Building Decarb workbooks, and assume that the City will reach 100 percent clean electricity by 2035. INSTRUCT the CAO to report on the staffing and budget resources needed to create a Climate Impact team capable of managing the tasks described in this Motion.