Sustainability: A sustainable plan? (I)
The city of Middleton's sustainability committee is currently revising its Sustainable City Plan, 'a three-year plan for helping Middleton live up to the city leaders’ vision of a sustainable city (...). This plan focuses on actions from the city’s 2021 Comprehensive Plan, with ways to measure our progress on each action.' The revisions are based in large part on feedback from other committees, some of which questioned the financial impact of the actions required to meet the plan's goals.
The sustainability committee considers climate change to be 'a major threat to life as we know it. For this reason, our highest priority over the 2022-2024 period will be to achieve the city s goal of meeting 100% of our energy needs through clean, renewable sources by 2050.' As 'interim targets' to be met by 2030, the committee suggests reducing energy use from 2018 levels by 15% for the city and by 10% for the community; meeting 80% of the city’s electricity needs and 66% of the community’s electricity needs with clean, renewable sources; and meeting 66% of all energy needs for the city and 21% of all energy needs for the community with clean, renewable sources.
In the June 2022 version of the plan, the committee recommends that the city take a series of actions between now and the end of 2024 to help move the city and the community as a whole towards its 'vision of a sustainable city' in seven distinct areas: energy, greenhouse gas emissions, food, land use, transportation, waste generation and management, and water. While the chapter on energy proposes a dozen measures for the city to implement, some eminently practical and commonsensical, others less so, those on food and transportation don't make it past their vision statements and some wishful thinking (at least in this draft).
In addition to the seven areas for action, the sustainability committee also recommends that the city take other steps: