Over the past four years, city and community leaders have created the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan.
“We call it CAAP for short. It’s a roadmap for how the Grand Rapids community will both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for the impact of climate change.”
Chief Sustainability Officer Annabelle Wilkinson says the plan breaks down strategies to reach goals in sustainable building, air quality, access to clean energy, transportation and food systems.
The funding model leveraged federal dollars to reduce the cost for local resources.
Now the federal government is significantly reducing funding for climate and clean energy initiatives.
“We're a partner in the “Solar for All” application with a coalition of other cities represented by an organization called Growth Ops. We were actually informed last night that they received a letter of termination for the grant. That grant for Grand Rapids would've been to provide solar onto multifamily affordable housing units, so helping to reduce those bills for low- income families.”
Wilkinson is also seeing cuts to programs that offer incentives and tax rebates for electric vehicles and other residential solar projects.
“It really diminishes the return on investment that a lot of families could see if they wanted to invest in solar, so that's something that we're seeing in our community regularly now.”
The city commission will consider a resolution to adopt the climate action plan Tuesday, August 12.
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