Climate Action Stakeholder Process

Overview

The Denver Climate Action Task Force made suggestions to improve the city's efforts on climate change. The key areas were: Buildings, Transportation, Electricity Generation, Industrial Energy Use, Consumption Emissions and Resiliency/Climate Adaptation. These recommendations aim to help Denver address climate change more equitably and efficiently.

The task force engaged experts, stakeholders, and community members in their work. In the process, the task force:

• Engaged Denver's communities to define goals, gaps, solutions and investment opportunities.
  • Engaging networks of each member to inform and support their work.
  • Supporting the City in developing and implementing a broader community engagement strategy that informs their work.

• Reviewed goals, current work, and gaps.
• • Reviewing and updating the City’s goals in the 80x50 Climate Action plan to align with the latest climate science.
  • Reviewing current climate work by the Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency so that the task force outcomes build upon this strong foundation.
  • Reviewing the gaps between current work and what is necessary to achieve the goals equitably and to begin work on climate resiliency.

• Recommended policies and solutions to meet goals in an equitable way.
• • Defining where policies and requirements are necessary to close the gap to achieving scientifically informed goals. 
  • Developing a set of high-level solutions and strategies (e.g. marketing, training, incentives) that the City must implement to support our community and enable the passage of equitable policies.

• Recommended investment opportunities.
• • Determining the level of funding that is needed to implement the proposed policies and solutions. 
  • Selecting one or more revenue sources to fill any agreed upon funding gap.  

The science of climate change is evolving. Denver aims to align itself with the latest science and update its goals, plans and policies on a regular basis. In June 2020, the task force finished their work and created a report of recommendations.

Task Force Meetings

All meetings were open to public observers. Due to Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) concerns some meetings took place virtually. Virtual meetings were streamed on Facebook Live. Meeting agendas, notes, and recordings are available below.

Background and Task Force Members

In August 2019, Mayor Hancock and Denver City Council announced a plan to strengthen Denver’s work to address climate change by launching a process to examine current climate work, identify gaps to achieve scientifically informed goals, develop an investment strategy to fill those gaps, analyze funding needs, and agree on a revenue source to fill any funding gaps.

We received over 260 applications to join the task force. The Climate Action Task Force members are as follows:

• Brandon Rietheimer, Resilient Denver
• Dominique Gomez, Salazar Center for North American Conservation
• Emily Gedeon, Sierra Club - Colorado
• Eugene Downing, New Hope Baptist Church
• Frank Locantore, Colfax Ave BID
• George E. Ware, Community Member
• Jackie Bouvier, Santa Fe BID
• Jasmin Barco, Eco-Cycle
• Jennifer Gremmert, Energy Outreach Colorado
• Jessica Goad, Conservation Colorado
• Jon Buerge, Urban Villages / LoDo District / Downtown BID
• Kathie A Barstnar, NAIOP Colorado, the Commercial Real Estate Association
• Kelly Shanley, Student Advocate, Community College of Denver
• Laura Zaspel, Serendipity Catering
• Lori Pace, Denver Metro Association of Realtors
• Micaela Iron Shell-Dominguez, International Indigenous Youth Council
• Mike Kruger, Colorado Solar and Storage Association (COSSA)
• Naomi Amaha, Denver Streets Partnership
• Patricia G Iwasaki, Metro/NorthEast Denver
• Piep van Heuven, Bicycle Colorado
• Rhiannon Duryea, Denver Area Labor Federation
• Sam Knaizer, BPX Energy, BP America
• Sebastian Andrews, Youth Sustainability Board, environmentally concerned youth of Denver
• Thomas Riggle, Resilient Denver
• Tyler Smith, Xcel Energy
• Veronica Booz, Green Valley Ranch/KIPP Colorado Schools

Community Engagement

The Climate Action Task Force have focused on engaging the community in the process through a variety of ways:

• Hosted 2 rounds of small community meetings with hundreds of Denverites in February and March.
• Hosted Stakeholder Advisory Group meetings in April with: youth, climate activists, labor and workforce, business and industry, people vulnerable to climate impacts, and frontline communities.
• Made a website available from April 20-May 4 where the public could review proposals and provide feedback.

Read the full report on Denver's community support(PDF, 9MB)

Learn more about Denver’s current work and best practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with our 2-page fact sheets:

Learn more about Denver’s current work and best practices(PPTX, 16MB)