Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability Publishes Second Year Progress Report for Climate Emergency Workplan

News Article

Portland's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability today published a memo highlighting progress made in the second year of the Climate Emergency Workplan (CEW).

The CEW highlights collaborative work between multiple City bureaus that identified 47 priority actions that the City should complete over three years to meet 2030 and 2050 Climate goals.

In the second of this three-year plan, most actions (72%) were ongoing and moving forward, indicating their duration beyond this plan. Many others (13%) were on track to be complete by the end of the next fiscal year. No additional actions were achieved this year, leaving the total achieved at two. However, some additional actions were delayed this year.

Over the past year, the City of Portland notably advanced the priorities of the CEW in the following areas:

• Invested $600 million into City projects and $700 million in community-wide projects over five years from the Portland Clean Energy Fund.
• Led the way on industrial decarbonization.
• Acquired approximately $7 million in external grant funds; and
• Made the most of one-time general fund investments.

The need to address the climate crisis is clear. Portlanders experienced record-shattering heat, choking smoke from increasing wildfires, more frequent floods, and other extreme climate events over the past several years. Scientists also recently published a warning that the next five summers will be the hottest on record. In fact, Earth is likely to pass 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming over pre-industrial levels, a key climate threshold, by 2027.

"Investing in climate today by directing staff and providing resources to address delayed projects is critical in this last year of the CEW," notes Vivian Satterfield, Portland's Chief Sustainability Officer. "Despite the very real impacts of a warming planet on our community, I feel hopeful that we have the best science available and learned strategies from across the globe to change the trajectory of climate change and build equitable and climate resilient communities."

There is still time to avert the worst impacts of climate change if we take the actions outlined in the CEW, but the window grows ever smaller. We have a plan, the necessary technologies, and the time to change the course of events for the Portlanders today and for the future. We simply must keep doing more.

View the memo and learn more about the City's progress in the Climate Emergency Workplan 2024 Progress Report.