On February 24, the City of Aspen announced that the City Council had approved the Aspen Sustainability Action Plan (ASAP), replacing the previous Climate Action Plan and setting new goals for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions within the next five to seven years.
Aspen’s previous initiative for sustainability, penned in 2017, set the primary goals of reducing total GHG emissions 30% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. ASAP is more ambitious, setting a goal of reducing emissions 63.4% by 2030 and 100% by 2050, theoretically reaching a point of net-zero GHG emissions within three decades.
The document repeatedly emphasizes the need to move quickly and effectively in order to combat the causes of climate change. According to the plan, “The average number of consecutive frost-free days in Aspen has increased by 46 days since 1940 and by 30 days since 1980, representing the loss of more than a month of winter in less than a lifetime.”
ASAP targets five different high-impact sources of CO2 — energy supply, buildings, aviation and airport, transportation, waste — providing recommendations to reduce emissions in each sector.
In terms of energy, two of Aspen’s main providers of electricity — Aspen Electric and Holy Cross Energy — are proving successful in their endeavors to decarbonize. Aspen Electric’s energy is 100% renewably sourced. Meanwhile, Holy Cross Electric receives about 48% of their energy from renewable sources but has set a goal to reach 100% by 2030. ASAP sets goals in this sector for generally providing support for state and federal initiatives to reduce emissions, as the City of Aspen is well ahead of the game in its energy sourcing.
Within the broad sector of “buildings,” ASAP intends to address energy and water efficiency in newly constructed buildings, making them fully electric when possible and ensuring utility costs are properly scaled to equitably handle decarbonization among lower income community members.
This sector also addresses “embodied carbon,” which identifies the carbon emissions of a building not by its day-to-day consumption of energy, but by all the emissions relating to its construction — including the extraction, manufacturing and transportation of all its materials to the job site. The combined embodied carbon and “business as usual emissions,” which are a functional space’s GHG emissions, form 57% of Aspen’s total GHG emissions.
In 2022, the City of Aspen issued 531 building permits, representing a significant quantity of emissions for each project. Of ASAP’s “building” objectives, one of the most radical is to mandate no- to low-carbon standards for new construction. Such a mandate could significantly improve sustainability in the face of frequent demolition and construction.
“Waste” presents a significant issue in Aspen as well as the whole of Pitkin County — whose landfill is steadily coming closer to capacity. As ASAP states, “Once the Pitkin County Landfill closes, solid waste will have to be transported out of the Roaring Fork River Valley, increasing the miles traveled for disposal.” Furthermore, of all the waste that Aspen produces, constituting 16% of total emissions, 78% results from construction and demolition waste. Therefore, ASAP aims to phase out demolition in favor of deconstruction, which will enable the reuse of building materials and slow the closure of the landfill.
Likewise, transportation issues in Aspen are no different from the rest of the Valley. In Aspen, 96.5% of roadside emissions come from on-road gasoline and diesel, with only 3% from mass-transit. ASAP prioritizes both a shift away from single-occupant vehicle driving as well as a push for mass transit and electrification of vehicles. The plan states that Aspen will incentivize ride-sharing, as well as support bicycle infrastructure in order to reduce emissions, hopefully reducing traffic as well.
Within the bracket of transportation, Aspen Pitkin County Airport accounts for 58% of total transportation emissions in 2020 — over 25,000 metric tons of CO2. The airport also presents difficulty for the 2050 goal of zero emissions, considering there are no electric commercial passenger planes in regular flight. Until such aircraft are commonplace, ASAP only states that Aspen will encourage reduction of GHGs via use of electric vehicles for ground support and shuttling.
Notably, the plan allows for some leeway in its goals and methods, prioritizing communication with Aspen citizens and staying up-to-date with evolving science and climatological data. The City also publishes a sustainability report, which will document ASAP’s policies as they occur each year and can be found with the plan on the City of Aspen’s website, www.aspen.gov