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Energy & Climate Action Planning

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For more information about this program, contact Amaury by email or phone: (831) 264-5089

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Local Governments Beacon Award

The Institute for Local Governments recognized the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments in 2017 with a Champion of the year Beacon Award. AMBAG earned this award because of our commitment to helping the Monterey Bay reduce energy use and GHG emissions.

Greenhouse Gas Inventories

AMBAG recognizes that while large metropolitan cities have been working on climate change mitigation projects for years, many of California’s smaller jurisdictions are in much earlier stages of grappling with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Many of these cities and counties lack the necessary staff and funds to devote to greenhouse gas reduction projects, and as a result, the vast majority of AMBAG’s 21 member jurisdictions had not quantified their baseline GHG emissions as of 2009.

Recognizing the need for more support with local climate change efforts, AMBAG worked with each jurisdiction to achieve the following results:

  • Completion of the following inventories in 100% of AMBAG jurisdictions at NO COST to the municipal governments:
    • Local Government Operations 2005 Baseline GHG Inventories
    • Community-wide 2005 Baseline;
    • Community-wide 2009 GHG Inventories;
    • Community-wide 2010 GHG Inventories; and
    • Community-wide 2015 GHG Inventories;
  • Standardized (“apples-to-apples”) greenhouse gas inventories for regional comparability;
  • Periodic updates to Community-wide GHG Inventories for all 21 of AMBAG’s member jurisdictions;
  • Ongoing GHG Inventory technical support and capacity-building for jurisdictional staff;
  • Community engagement on the topic of climate change mitigation

Currently, the AMBAG sustainability program is working with the AMBAG jurisdictions to complete Community-wide 2018 GHG Inventories.

Climate Action Planning

AMBAG staff provides resources and opportunities for peer learning to our member jurisdictions who are working to develop, adopt and implement Climate Action Plans. These may include:

  • General technical support (i.e. GHG Inventories, GHG Forecasts, GHG Reduction Measure Identification and Modeling, etc.)
  • Legislative and regulatory updates
  • Educational forums and technical training workshops
  • Energy-related GHG mitigation scenario development and modeling
  • Peer review of climate action planning documents

Energy Action Strategies

AMBAG worked closely with many of our member jurisdictions to develop comprehensive and cost-effective plans to quantify and reduce residential and non-residential energy consumption and related GHG emissions.

These standalone plans—known as Energy Action Strategies—provide analyses of annual energy consumption patterns and contain a range energy efficiency and conservation initiatives that are feasible and appropriate within each unique community.

For those jurisdictions who ultimately decide to develop and adopt comprehensive Climate Action Plans, the initiatives comprising the Energy Action Strategies can be easily and efficiently integrated into the energy chapter(s) of the Climate Action Plans. This can effectively reduce the cost and time required to develop a quality Climate Action Plan.