Avon produces first analysis of the town's greenhouse gas emissions - Vail Daily

Avon produces first analysis of the town’s greenhouse gas emissions | VailDaily.com

Avon produces first analysis of the town’s greenhouse gas emissions

Transportation and buildings stand out as biggest sources, targets for reduction as town pursues goal of net zero emissions by 2050
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily

The town of Avon has lofty climate goals. By 2030, Avon aims to have reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% from its 2014 numbers. By 2050, the town is trying to reach an 80% reduction from its 2014 numbers, a goal which will soon be updated from 80% to net zero.

The problem? Until recently, Avon did not actually know what its 2014 greenhouse gas emissions number was.

During the Tuesday, April 23 Town Council meeting, Avon sustainability coordinator Charlotte Lin presented the town’s first greenhouse gas inventory, assessing Avon’s emissions from 2019 to 2022.

Creating a greenhouse gas inventory was a 2023 goal of the Avon Sustainability Department, Lin said, and it took a year of work with a consultant to develop the report.

“A greenhouse gas inventory allows us to identify emissions drivers, and also allows us to plan our mitigation and adaptation strategies to reduce greenhouse gas amount according to Avon’s unique profile,” Lin said.

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Eagle County has produced greenhouse gas inventories covering the entire county starting in 2014. While the reports included Avon’s data, it was unknown until now how much exactly Avon was contributing to the county’s numbers.

As the town works toward its stated sustainability goals, “we cannot manage what we don’t measure,” Lin said.

The report’s findings

The results, Lin said, were “no surprise,” based on the Eagle County data already available. However, there were some discrepancies between Avon and the county.

“Understanding this breakdown really helps us identify where our efforts should be concentrated so we can effectively reduce our overall emissions,” Lin said.

In 2022, transportation was the largest section of Avon’s emissions, accounting for 41%. Commercial energy accounted for 29%, and residential energy for 21% — together, the two can be thought of as the energy uses of buildings.

Combined, emissions from transportation and buildings accounts for 91% of Avon’s total emissions. Another 7% comes from solid waste, including from food items that go to the landfill and might otherwise be composted.

While the county data shows an increase in emissions between 2019 and 2022, Avon achieved an overall reduction in emissions during the same time period of 6.44%.

“If we didn’t have Avon’s data and we only looked at the county’s data, we might very well assume that we are also seeing an increase here,” Lin said.

Avon saw a 14.23% reduction in electricity emissions from 2019 to 2022. “The reduction is primarily due to the cleaner electricity grid that we get from our utility providers and not really so much of a decrease in electricity usage,” Lin said.

“This really emphasizes the importance of transitioning to renewable energy sources because it impacts our overall emissions even if we maintain the same amount of usage, but, of course, we want to reduce that, too,” Lin said.

Avon’s transportations emissions decreased by 8.55%. “We mainly saw this from a decrease in gasoline cars,” Lin said.

In Eagle County, the number of electric vehicles exploded between 2020 and 2022, increasing from 362 to 2,998, Lin said. There is no Avon-specific number at this time.

The town’s public transit emissions were also reduced by electric vehicles, as the town acquired electric buses.

“This really shows the effectiveness of our efforts. Even if it seems like small policies here and there, it is all coming together to create this overall reduction,” Lin said.

Some categories of emissions did see escalation. Solid waste emissions increased by 16.66%, a factor Lin posed was due to population growth, increased consumption and increased tourism. One of the ways to reduce this number, Lin said, is to implement composting, a project Avon sustainability staff is actively working on.

Looking forward

While the report revealed that Avon was headed in the right direction of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, it also showed things were not changing fast enough to accomplish the town’s stated goals.

Using the new greenhouse gas emissions report and Eagle County’s greenhouse gas data from 2014, Avon sustainability staff and consultants were able to reverse engineer Avon’s data back to 2014. This data, while an estimate, allows Avon to create a baseline for its 50% reduction goal.

In 2014, Avon produced 69,007 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2022, the town produced 49,086 metric tons of emissions.

“To meet our reduction of 50% by 2030, we need to reduce this amount (reduced between 2019 and 2022, 6.55%) every year, not just every three years,” Lin said.

Included in the greenhouse gas emissions report is forecasting for the town’s climate future, including different potential scenarios based on policies the town might choose to utilize regarding greenhouse gas reduction.

The “business as usual” model forms a baseline, showing expected emissions if the town takes no further action. The model includes expectations of potential population growth of 2.5% based on data from the state, vehicle fuel efficiency changes, and the decarbonization of electricity grid.

Also included in the report is what it would take for Avon to hit its “science-based targets,” which are “aggressive targets that make sure we adhere to the science behind greenhouse gas reduction,” Lin explained. The targets are “equitable and reflect the greater responsibilities of higher socioeconomic regions such as the U.S. have in comparison to developing countries, for example,” she said.

Avon’s science-based target would ask the town to hit an averaged target of 61.5% reduction by 2030 to aid in reaching the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“With us being an ambitious community when it comes to climate action, this is potentially a possibility, as well,” Lin said.

Avon sustainability staff is using software to model other possibilities to get the town to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with a rough finish line of end-of-summer for the modeling.

Taking action

As the Town Council and staff work to create concrete steps to get to net zero emissions, “programs regarding renewable energy, electrification, and sustainable transportation will be the most impactful,” Lin said.

Partnerships — with state agencies, utility partners, Eagle County, other towns, and more — are also crucial to reaching Avon’s goals, along with keeping up with innovation in the field, Lin said.

“A lot of the technologies in sustainability and climate action evolve really fast, so we just want to make sure that we are incorporating any fast-changing trends there,” Lin said.

Achieving Avon’s greenhouse gas emissions goals will not be an easy task.

First, the modeling is complex. “This is embedded with layers and layers and layers of assumptions,” said Eric Heil, Avon town manager. The math, he said, is not straightforward. For example, while Avon benefits from tourism that comes from the airport being used, the town’s analysis does not include the airport as it does not lie within Avon’s boundaries.

“This is challenging enough for a community that is not growing,” Heil said. “For us to get to the 50% reduction while at the same time Avon is growing — and with State Land Board and Village (at Avon), we could easily grow 50% — simply straight reducing from where we are existing isn’t enough. We have to be reducing even more than that,” he said.

Avon does have the advantage, Heil said, that most of its growth is going to be higher density on the valley floor, with energy efficient buildings near bus lines.

Avon’s other advantage is that the town has a dedicated focus on making strides toward sustainability.

“I think that we’re amongst the best leaders in climate action,” Heil said.

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