Breaking down the Blaine County Climate Action Plan
The climate action of Blaine County, Idaho; a model for local climate action.
According to KMVT, “we had a night; we got a fellowship hall and said you know anyone can come in,” Jeffrey said. “Thirty people came and two of those were city council members from Hailey.”
That meeting was eventful and led directly to hiring a sustainability manager on staff for the city of Hailey. As time passed, the coalition grew out of Hailey and into the surrounding communities in Blaine County, eventually building into the Climate Action Plan’s grassroots document.
“In October of 2021, there was a community charrette where we started laying the framework for the plan itself,” Sustainability Manager for Blaine County Andrew Mentzer explained.
While massive in scope, the plan focuses on four key areas: clean energy and green buildings, solid waste and recycling, land and water conservation, and land use and mobility. Each section outlines goals the county will attempt to achieve over several years. Starting with clean energy and green buildings, Blaine County will focus on reaching clean energy goals, an already underway initiative.
The goals are ambitious. By 2025, the county hopes that municipal electricity use will be 75% clean energy.
“There’s going to be some moving targets with a lot of our goals,” Mentzer said. “So, we’re working on some local solar programming and trying to scale and elevate some of those realities alongside Idaho Power, them being our primary power provider or parent power utility in the area.”
The goal also looks past 2025 and into the future: to have the entire valley on green energy by 2045. The group says that while this goal is lofty, it is not impossible thanks to the advances in green energy devices, which is where the second half of the task force comes in: the Green Building
“It’s a term that says, ‘let’s build out structures in a way that makes them as energy efficient, comfortable, and healthy as possible,’” Co-Chair of the Clean Energy & Green Building Task Force Scott Runkle said.
The Green Building has a few components, but it boils down to supply and demand and building future buildings to be as energy efficient as possible.
“The clean energy portion is focusing on increasing the supply of renewable energy to the valley, whereas the green building portion is focusing on decreasing the demand for energy as a whole, and that comes with like green building practices are huge components of that, and just retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient and closing air gaps,” Sustainability Fellow for Blaine County Eve Preucil explained.
Along with the benefits of fighting climate change, these changes can also help human health in the long term, especially moving from gas stoves to electric ones.
“Gas stoves actually release so many particulates into the air that you’re breathing in and it’s a big risk for children, elderly people with Asthma,” Preucil said.
