'Portsmouth’s Climate Future': City Council adopts climate action plan

PORTSMOUTH — After nearly two years of work, including extensive community engagement and research into local community impacts, the city’s Planning and Sustainability Department presented Portsmouth’s Climate Future to the City Council at its Aug. 19 meeting.

The Council voted unanimously to adopt the plan, which includes an exhaustive inventory of municipal and estimated community greenhouse gas emissions.

Available online on the city’s website portsnh.co/climatefuture, the 79-page climate action plan offers a roadmap for residents, businesses and community members, and the municipal government to follow to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions. The goal is for the Portsmouth community to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and for the city’s municipal operations to lead by example with a more ambitious target date of 2040.

In January 2023, Portsmouth partnered with VHB, Resilience Planning & Design, LLC, and the Rockingham Planning Commission to develop the City’s first climate action plan. This initiative was led by Planning and Sustainability Director Peter Britz and Associate Environmental Planner Kate Homet, with significant support from the City of Portsmouth Sustainability Committee, a group of dedicated resident volunteers.

The plan provides the groundwork for both Capital Improvement Plan considerations and the next Master Plan process, which is set to start soon. The "Implementation Roadmap" chapter details 52 “priority actions” that help lead the municipality and the community to net zero; the following chapter "Enabling Success" charts the next steps, including funding opportunities, for building the capacity to implement the plan successfully.

In their introductory letter, Mayor Deaglan McEachern, City Manager Karen Conard, and Sustainability Committee Chair Burt Cohen emphasized the urgency of addressing the existential threat posed by climate change. They stated, "The climate action plan is the path to take the city to a zero-carbon future. Our municipal government can take steps such as those outlined in this plan to oversee and control its climate future. The larger community, which includes residents, businesses, workers, and visitors, is also presented with a path forward with this plan. Together, we will implement priority strategies that incorporate energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable transportation, and climate adaptation. This plan gives the city an opportunity to meet head on the challenge of our time and come together to address it.”

Portsmouth’s Climate Future looks at steps the city has taken to understand and address the goal of centering environmental stewardship at the core of local planning efforts. In 2005, the city’s Master Plan underscored the community’s desire to be more sustainable and eco-friendly. In 2007, the city established the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Committee on Sustainable Practices (now the Sustainability Committee) and declared Portsmouth an Eco-Municipality. The new plan builds on work over the past decades to address climate change while recognizing the urgency of recent climate trends and projections.

The City’s Planning and Sustainability Department, Sustainability Committee, and all relevant boards and committees continue to work collaboratively and across all city departments to incorporate the “priority actions” in their work.

For more information and background on the plan, visit the project webpage portsnh.co/climatefuture.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: 'Portsmouth’s Climate Future': City adopts climate action plan