Operators at the Eagles Point Water Resource Recovery Facility have reduced the amount of air being pumped into wastewater treatment tanks while still effectively removing phosphorus and ammonia from wastewater, achieving a 40% cost savings. Metro Transit is updating its building automation systems to create “smarter” buildings and improve energy efficiency. 21 transit facilities, including all service garages and major support facilities, use these systems. Metro HRA established a partnership with Xcel Energy’s Home Energy Squad to make our suburban Family Affordable Housing Partnership homes more energy efficient. These are among the dozens of efforts completed or under way to reduce the Met Council’s greenhouse gas emissions and make our services and facilities resilient to the impacts of climate change. Our Climate Action Work Plan brings staff together across divisions to share best practices and plan and implement projects. Met Council members heard a report in May about agency progress on the climate plan in 2024. The report focused on the second year of the five-year plan. Met Council emissions rose slightly in 2024 from the previous year, largely due to increased wastewater flows and expanding transit service. However, our operations are becoming more efficient. For example, the more miles we travel before one ton of CO2e is emitted, the more efficient we are. In 2024, Metro Transit buses and trains traveled 273 miles per 1 metric ton of CO2e compared with 247 miles in 2018. Integrating climate policy into Imagine 2050 Perhaps the biggest lift in the past year was finalizing and adopting Imagine 2050, the regional development guide. We integrated climate mitigation and adaptation strategies into every policy area: housing, land use, parks, transportation, and water resources. Met Council staff are collaborating with local governments to create guidelines to implement the minimum requirements for local climate planning, established in state law in 2023. Watch the presentation at the Committee of the Whole on 5/21. Reducing emissions, adapting to climate change regionwide The Met Council is also developing a Comprehensive Climate Action Plan, funded by a federal Climate Pollution Reduction Act grant. The goal of this plan is to compile an inventory of the greater metro area’s emissions and identify opportunities to reduce them. In addition, the plan will quantify co-benefits of reducing emissions to overburdened communities, such as less pollution, and will include a workforce analysis. In developing the plan, Met Council has engaged local governments and community groups to learn their visions on climate action. “The synergy between our internal climate work and the regional climate plan is exciting,” said Lisa Barajas, director of the community development at Met Council. “We’re enhancing our existing tools and creating new ones scaled for local governments, like the Greenhouse Gas Strategy Planning Tool and the Climate Action Toolkit, to assist with climate mitigation and adaptation at the local level.” The tools will be launched in the fall when the Met Council issues new system statements to local governments. A draft of the Comprehensive Climate Action Plan will be published for public comment in September. Posted In: Council News