Source: SmartCitiesWorld News
Author: SmartCitiesWorld news team
Date published: 2025-09-18
[original article can be accessed via hyperlink at the end]
Seattle has completed or made significant progress on more than half (88 of 148) of the actions in its 2013 Climate Action Plan (CAP) Progress Report, while also advancing projects outside the plan.
The City said these efforts contributed to a 5.7 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2014 to 2022.
One Seattle Climate Action Plan
The Seattle Office of Sustainability & Environment released the 2013 Climate Action Plan Progress Report, one of the first major deliverables in Executive Order 2025-04 to develop a new One Seattle Climate Action Plan.
Major accomplishments across the four categories of the 2013 CAP include:
- Transportation and land use: six Rapid Ride bus routes by 2027 and 60,000-plus new efficient housing units in urban centres and villages which provide zero pollution transportation opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Seattleites
- Building energy: stronger energy codes and incentive programmes passed to increase efficiency in buildings. Policies like Building Emissions Performance Standards, signed into law in 2023, are projected to reduce building sector emissions by 27 per cent by 2050
- Waste: Seattle is leading the nation in efforts to reduce waste from food and construction through composting regulations and salvage standards, achieving a 31 per cent cut in waste sector emissions since 2008
- Climate adaptation: tens of millions of dollars in capital investments to prevent flooding and sea level rise in the Duwamish Valley to help our most impacted communities begin to adapt to the climate damage we are already seeing.
“Seattle has been a global leader in climate action for decades. We have passed landmark policies to reduce pollution from buildings, made significant investments to expand access to public transportation, and found innovative ways to reduce waste; however, there is more work to do to meet the urgency of the climate crisis,” said Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell.
“This report lays out the progress we must make through new and scaled up actions, ensuring our upcoming One Seattle Climate Action Plan puts us on track towards a healthy, sustainable, and climate-resilient city.”
Despite this progress, Seattle, like many cities, is not on track to meet its climate goals. Amongst the 2013 CAP actions, not all actions were equal in scope or impact. Some Plan actions had a direct connection and large impact on reducing emissions, while others made an impact by improving systems, data, or policies that enable future emission reductions.
Actions that were challenging to complete often had similar barriers that constrained Seattle’s ability to act faster or go further to meet the scale of the climate crisis such as high cost or challenging financing, differing priorities, limited market demand, and more.
Seattle’s population growth and increased building stock also increased transportation and energy demands – even though our per capita emissions are decreasing – making it harder to reduce emissions at necessitating an increased scale for certain actions going forward.
“This report lays out the progress we must make through new and scaled up actions, ensuring our upcoming One Seattle Climate Action Plan puts us on track towards a healthy, sustainable, and climate-resilient city”
“For over a decade, we’ve been working with community, business, and regional partners to meet the climate challenge, and we’re proud of the progress and learning,” said Michelle Caulfield, director of Seattle’s Office of Sustainability & Environment. “Today, thanks to tested strategies and trusted partnerships, Seattle has a strong foundation for accelerating the clean energy transition and resilience. We are energised to tackle the challenges ahead and build on our strengths and success to date.”
Selecting the next set of climate actions for the One Seattle Climate Action Plan is one of the steps of the update process. The report provides starting points to consider policies that could be expanded or further explored during the 2026 CAP update, including:
- Integrate public health impacts, benefits, and social costs of GHG emissions into future planning to account for the impacts of climate change on individual and community health
- Include equity-focused indicators to better highlight racial and social equity impacts of programmes and policies
- Evaluate and recommend revenue-generating policies, investment strategies, and projects that will achieve significant reductions in pollution and greenhouse gas emissions over the next 5-to-10 years
- Retrofit existing buildings to be more energy efficient and to transition them to clean energy
- Prevent waste from going to landfill, especially in construction and self-haul sectors, to lower the amount of methane and other GHG emissions that would otherwise be released during decomposition in landfills
- Enhance and protect natural systems and tree canopy to improve habitats for native species, increase flood resilience, reduce urban heat, and more.
View original article at:
https://www.smartcitiesworld.net/news/seattle-releases-climate-action-progress-report-11949