Climate Action Plan
FAQs

Why is the City doing a Climate Action Plan?

As an island community, we are already witnessing firsthand the impacts of climate change around us, and negative impacts will increase without a reduction in fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions. More frequent and larger hurricanes, flooding, a drop in trade wind days, and coastal erosion/beach loss are all the direct result of global warming.

Per Ordinance 20-47, the Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency is required to prepare and implement a Climate Action Plan (CAP) every five years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the pathway to carbon neutrality by 2045. The Climate Action Plan (CAP) represents our City’s determination to protect our island way of life and well-being for ourselves and future generations. A CAP also helps meet the City’s pledge to uphold the Paris Agreement on climate change, and will also result in long-term economic benefits as we currently export nearly $5 billion each year to pay for imported fossil fuel. Oʻahu is already becoming an innovation hub for renewable energy, electrification of transportation, and energy storage technology, and decarbonizing our economy rapidly will not only protect us against risk, but drive economic growth and job creation for the 21st century.

Who creates a Climate Action Plan?

You! Climate action planning is a collaborative process to establish our communities’ priorities for the CAP, which involves bringing together residents, subject matter experts, and other community stakeholders to collectively map out the measures and actions to decarbonize our local economy. The City’s Office of Climate Change, Sustainability & Resiliency launched the community CAP process in July 2018 and hosted a series of island-wide community meetings co-hosted by City Councilmembers and held in each City Council district. The purpose of these public outreach meetings was two-fold: (1) informing residents about the urgency of climate action; and (2) collecting their ideas and concerns to be incorporated in the CAP. The CAP will only be as strong as the community understanding of the risk of climate change, and the will to change policies and practices to decarbonize our economy quickly for long-term security.  

In addition to community input, the CAP is informed by a Climate Action Working Group comprised of experts in government, academia, and business, and technical analyses on emissions reductions scenarios were prepared by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Institute of Sustainability & Resilience

Where are we in the process?

The City released the draft 2020-2025 Climate Action Plan on December 30, 2020 and is currently taking public comments on the draft CAP until January 30, 2021. Following the public comment period, the Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency will be hosting a virtual community meeting on February 2, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. where the public can learn more and engage further. The public can pre-register for the meeting here.

Following the public input period, per Ordinance 20-47, the Office must submit the CAP to the City Council for adoption by resolution within 120 days it is finalized. Sign up here, if you would like to stay informed about our policy alerts, including the final adoption of the CAP!

How does the CAP relate to the Oʻahu Resilience Strategy that has been released and adopted by City Council?          

The O‘ahu Resilience Strategy was officially adopted by the Honolulu City Council as a guiding policy document for the City and County of Honolulu in October 2019. The Resilience Strategy contains four critical resilience pillars prioritized by residents: I) “Remaining Rooted” — increasing self-sufficiency and long-term affordability for residents; II) “Bouncing Forward” — natural disaster preparation; III) “Climate Security” — climate change mitigation and adaptation; and IV) “Community Cohesion” — strengthening communities and fostering collaboration.

The CAP dives deeper on Pillar III. Climate Security, giving specific strategies on a clean energy economy, clean ground transportation, and how to achieve a climate resilient future for the island of Oʻahu.

Will the implementation of a Climate Action Plan likely cost taxpayers money?

This question depends directly on which costs we are counting. Doing nothing about climate change will cost Oʻahu at least $12.9 billion dollars in at-risk coastal real estate and assets, and our reliance on fossil fuel energy currently costs our state $5 billion per year. These are the costs of not acting. While the transition to a 100% clean energy economy will save billions of dollars for taxpayers over time, the up-front costs to change the major elements of the system will certainly have costs associated with it. Investments in building efficiency, electric charging infrastructure, installing renewable energy projects, and even building flood prevention or planting trees to cool neighborhoods all have up-front costs. However, if we do not invest as taxpayers right now, we are increasingly risking billions of dollars and ultimately lives as climate change impacts worsen.   

Isn’t Hawaiʻi’s contribution to global warming too small to make a difference—why should we make the effort to get off of fossil fuels if others aren’t doing it first?

As an island community that will be hit “first and worst” by climate change impacts, we need to lead by example. But we also have a moral responsibility, along with every other city, state, and country, to clean up our share of the problem. If everyone uses the excuse that their contribution won’t make a difference, surely no action action at all will be taken.  This is an opportunity to building a dynamic new innovation sector in our economy by accelerating Oʻahu as a laboratory for the newest and most effective green technologies.  Our island isolation provides the perfect “petri dish” to pilot new technologies and business models. Seattle, San Diego, and other cities have already shown that reducing emissions can go hand-in-hand with strong economic growth and better-paying jobs—transitioning to a zero carbon economy actually reduces disaster risk and economic risk for our island.