In honor of Earth Day last Friday, the ICMA has shared some key findings from their national 2015 Local Government Sustainability Practices Survey, including:
- The two top motivating factors in developing a sustainability plan are leadership from elected officials and fiscal savings.
- The biggest hurdle in moving forward on sustainability issues is funding.
- Local leaders place the highest importance on sources of sustainability strategies from local, regional, or national environmental groups, and examples from other municipalities.
California local governments have a number of state (including the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund), utility, and local funding and financing options – and currently have a unique opportunity to hear and weigh in on how energy efficiency ratepayer-funded programming is development for the coming years. For current and recent federal funding opportunities, click here. For examples of projects and activities getting done across the state through investor-owned utility-local government partnerships, click here. For more on funding, click here or visit the Funding Opportunities page.
You can keep track of what other municipalities in California are doing to further energy efficiency and sustainability goals by using the Local Governments in Action tag in the tag cloud to the right. (You can also connect directly to hundreds of local government and utility representatives at this year’s 7th Annual SEEC Best Practices Forum.)
To review the ICMA survey findings report, click here.