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February 22, 2021 | 09:48AM
The Fairfax County Office of Environmental and Energy Coordination is pleased to announce the release of three online public surveys to capture the input and feedback of county residents and stakeholders on the development of a Community-wide Energy and Climate Action Plan, or CECAP. The surveys, which are each designed to take less than 10 minutes to complete, cover three different areas of focus.
The first survey is focused on energy issues as they relate to climate planning and asks questions about what it would take for residents to make changes to their homes or behaviors to be more energy efficient.
The second survey is dedicated to transportation, development, and waste issues, three areas of focus that are relevant to every county resident, and to climate planning. Both the energy survey and the transportation, development, and waste survey are largely multiple choice.
The third survey includes open-ended questions and is designed to capture general feedback on the CECAP development process and the direction of the planning effort.
Together, these surveys will help to inform the discussion and decision making of the CECAP Working Group, a public body consisting of individual county residents and representatives of local nonprofits, businesses, associations, and utilities. This group is responsible for providing recommendations to the Board of Supervisors for their consideration and adoption in summer 2021.
The CECAP is a community-driven plan and will define our goals as a community to reduce our collective greenhouse gas emissions. In Fairfax County, more than 95 percent of emissions are attributable to sources other than county and school operations. In other words, community sources like energy used in homes and businesses, or cars and trucks on our roads, are the primary culprits. This means there is a very significant role for individuals and organizations in the community to play as we work to lower our emissions in the coming years. The CECAP will define strategies and actions community members can take to play a vital role in this effort.
All three surveys are available in English, Spanish, Korean, and Vietnamese and will remain open until March 14, 2021. County residents and stakeholders are also invited to share their thoughts on CECAP at two virtual public meetings taking place on Tuesday, February 23 and Thursday, February 25. More information on the surveys and the public meetings can be found here.
County residents and stakeholders are also encouraged to take the countywide strategic plan survey, which is open until mid-April. More information and links to the survey can be found here.
February 17, 2021 | 09:42AM
The Fairfax County Office of Environmental and Energy Coordination announces two climate action public meetings taking place the week of February 22, 2021. These public meetings will provide residents and other county stakeholders an opportunity to hear from experts and to offer feedback on the development of the county’s first-ever Community-wide Energy and Climate Action Plan (CECAP).
The two public meetings will be held virtually using the WebEx platform due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first public meeting will be devoted to energy issues, and the second will focus on transportation, development, and waste-related issues. This division of the climate planning discussion draws attention to the two greatest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Fairfax County: energy use in buildings, and transportation.
More information on the February 23, 2021 climate planning public meeting on energy issues can be found here.
More information on the February 25, 2021 climate planning public meeting on transportation, development, and waste-related issues can be found here.
The public meetings will be complemented by three short online surveys, set to launch on Monday, February 22. More information on the surveys will be posted on the CECAP public engagement page as it becomes available.
February 16, 2021 | 03:42PM
The threads of the local, national, and international economic fabric are closely woven together – what we do on a local level can create ripples in the global economy. That’s why it’s imperative that we understand the risks climate change poses to the economy at all levels, and do what we can to control greenhouse gas emissions close to home.
In recent years, major economic players and leaders of multinational businesses have routinely cited failure to address climate change as a significant risk to their operations and supply chains. Natural disasters and extreme weather events caused by climate change can cause major disruptions, and the impacts are distributed throughout our increasingly connected economy.
Locally, municipal bonds that are used to finance capital projects and improvements to infrastructure can be harder to come by if a county or city does not take action to address climate concerns. In Fairfax County, where we enjoy a Triple-A bond rating from all three national ratings agencies, failure to tackle climate change risks could significantly reduce our collective creditworthiness over time. This would make it more expensive for our community to finance large-scale community projects.
For the individual consumer, these larger economic concerns may pale in comparison to the prospect of paying more on a weekly basis at the grocery store. Agriculture is the economic sector most impacted by climate change. For every degree Celsius our global thermostat climbs, crop yields will decline by five to 15 percent. As supply declines and demand remains the same or increases with time, prices on grocery store shelves will go up.
Just like paying down a credit card balance promptly can help you avoid spiraling debt, reducing our collective carbon footprint can help prevent an escalating problem that becomes harder and harder to fix the more time goes by. We owe it to ourselves and to future generations of Fairfax County residents to take climate action today.
This is why we are in the midst of developing the first-ever Community-wide Energy and Climate Action Plan, or CECAP. The CECAP is unique in that it is being developed by the community, for the community, with input from dozens of organizational, business, and civic leaders, as well as individual residents. The CECAP will outline greenhouse gas reduction goals for the community and will include recommended strategies and actions community members can take on a voluntary basis to help achieve the goals. County residents interested in helping to implement the plan can email cecapoutrach@fairfaxcounty.gov for more information.
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