Longmont took its first steps this month toward the climate-friendly goal to electrify homes and businesses in the city, signaling a decades-long effort to cut consumer use of fossil fuels by 2030.
Councilmembers Marcia Martin and Joan Peck were named as city council liaisons to the yet-to-be formed electrification feasibility committee. The eight-person body will oversee research and develop a phased plan for electrification, producing options the city can pursue while ensuring no one in Longmont will be left out of the effort, according to a city staff report to the city council.
Naming Martin and Peck is a small but important move toward Longmont reaching its future climate goals, Susan Bartlett, key account manager for Longmont Power and Communications, told the council. The two council members will offer insights and broad community representation on the committee, she said.
“This is an exciting start to the process,” Bartlett said.
The electrification push will also include the hiring of a consultant and a broad-based effort to educate the public about the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the staff report states.
The city’s electrification policy should be both ambitious and realistic, offering a reasonable phased plan for the next 10 years and be vetted, documented and presented in a non-technical way that will allow city council and public buy-in, the report states.
Also, the electrification feasibility committee “should ensure that priority is given to maintaining affordable housing stock for our most vulnerable residents,” the staff report states.
Longmont Power and Communications officials, along with city staff now working on energy sustainability efforts, and several community members should make up the committee, the staff report states. The committee should be named in May.
Electrification for Longmont is among several recommendations from the city’s Climate Action Task Force, approved by the city council in December 2020. The formation of the task force followed a city council resolution in 2019 declaring a climate emergency which repeated a goal of reaching a 100% renewable energy supply for electricity by 2030, according to the task force implementation plan.
The city’s plan will include consideration of potential policies, building codes, technologies, practices that have worked well in other cities, community priorities and the potential impacts of electrification activities may have in Longmont, Bartlett said in her email.
“The plan should be complete in the next 18-24 months, including timelines for implementing its strategies over the next decade,” Bartlett said.
