Des Moines climate plan isn't for city workers alone. Everybody needs to be on board.

Adapt DSM, the city of Des Moines’ new 30-year climate-change-response plan, doesn’t stop with tasks for city workers and cooperation with utilities.

It’s a plan whose success hinges on action from the capital’s 200,000 people. Developers and homebuilders and business leaders are important pieces of the puzzle, to be sure. But residents will have plenty to say about the pace at which the city becomes resilient to extreme weather and achieves its carbon-free energy goals.

“We have to bring the whole community along on that journey with us,” said Jeremy Caron, the project manager for the team that developed the plan.

The City Council discussed the 104-page draft of the plan Monday and could vote to approve it as early as Nov. 20. The comprehensive plan correctly frames the stakes of climate change in central Iowa and the scope of necessary action, and it deserves enthusiastic “yes” votes.

Getting to this point has been a years-long undertaking, and implementing it – including that buy-in from 200,000 residents – will involve a host of challenges. The adaptation plan will itself need future adaptation.

“The point is to try to move forward a plan that is doable, and also is amendable,” said Mayor Frank Cownie, “because we know that science is going to change, conditions are going to change, and intelligence is going to change, technology is going to change.”

More: Editorial: The climate crisis is already here. Iowa has to work on adapting.

Individuals: Plan targets tangible changes as well as awareness

One of the top-line targets in the plan is “decrease residential energy use by 26% by 2030.”

Reading that, I know my family probably neglects to turn off lights sometimes and could stand to be a degree or two colder in winter and a degree or two hotter in summer, but that’s not the stuff of reducing our appliance use by a quarter. Fortunately, that’s not what’s being talked about, Caron said – one of this goal’s targets is wasted energy. Better insulation, better windows, better weatherproofing, replacements for furnaces and water heaters that were installed in the 1990s – making those improvements can make a big difference quickly.

Many residents would, of course, love to lower their energy bills and contribute to decreasing emissions, but the price tag is prohibitive. The city’s burden is to identify financial assistance through the Inflation Reduction Act, utility rebates and other initiatives, and connect it to individuals. (The reduction targets for commercial and industrial buildings are even more ambitious – 32% and 34%.)

“Part of this plan is focused on, how do we bring them along? How do we support them? How do we ensure that the benefits of implementing this plan are accruing back to them also?” Caron said.

Adaptation: Extreme weather is assured, so the city has to be ready

Des Moines endured two wild extreme-weather events in a three-year span – 9 inches of rain in about four hours in June 2018, and a tree- and power-line-devastating derecho in August 2020. But those are just the top headlines amid other events, such as prolonged extreme heat and drought, that scientists say we can expect to occur with greater frequency and intensity because of climate change.

That means the way we live and the way cities and facilities are set up needs to account for those extremes and higher probabilities.

“A lot of early climate action planning didn't have that adaptation component,” Caron said. “It was more focused on emissions reduction.”

One of the Adapt DSM planks related to adaptation include a network of Resilience Hubs, dense enough that one is easily accessible for every resident. The facilities would help residents and handle distribution of resources in response to emergencies.

The plan also accounts for climate migration – people leaving their homes because climate change makes it more difficult or impossible to live there. Des Moines should become recognized “nationally and/or internationally as a safe and welcoming climate migration destination,” the plan says.

Emissions: Electric heat sparks debate on City Council

Net-zero emissions by 2050 means that buildings will need to be decarbonized; that means, among other things, heating with clean electricity.

That was one point where Caron and others confronted some skepticism from council members during the Nov. 6 discussion of the draft plan. Councilman Joe Gatto noted that moving fully away from natural gas service to buildings is a drastic shift. Councilwoman Linda Westergaard said she didn’t think home builders were adequately involved in the preparation of the plan.

“Incremental change will not get (us) to the goals you established as a council,” Caron responded. City Manager Scott Sanders reiterated that point: “This plan … is the science to achieve the goals the council has already set.” They’re referring mainly to a 2021 resolution to have 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035 and net-zero emissions by 2050.

Regarding the costs of climate projects, Councilman Josh Mandelbaum pointed out as an example that the costs to install solar energy have dropped precipitously in the past decade, even faster than was projected in the mid-2010s. The financial feasibility of other new technologies could change quickly, too, he said: “It’s about encouraging that market; it’s about those incentives for people to innovate.”

Councilwoman Connie Boesen, now the mayor-elect, said it was important to keep in mind grant and other money that can be brought into the city for many of these initiatives.

The city has cooperated with MidAmerican Energy on its climate legislation, and utility vice president Kathryn Kunert was on the steering committee for development of Adapt DSM.

Newer buildings codes mean significantly reduced costs for operating buildings, Caron said in an interview, but, at the moment, “there’s still less of an incentive there for the builder or the developer to build it that way.”

He added that the city will need to work directly with developers and builders to identify “pain points” associated with efficiency-focused rules. Incentives and changes to permitting are potential avenues to address problems.

On many fronts, time is wasting

Money and the city budget are part of the backdrop to any large, new city initiative. Cownie acknowledged that balancing budget priorities won’t be easy for Boesen and the council, and Caron emphasized that thinking of the planks of the climate plan as a collection of cost centers is, at the least, incomplete. Averting disasters saves lives and money. Many projects can spur economic development.

The city needs to work in 2024 to get federal money made available through the Inflation Reduction Act and other initiatives; changing leadership in Congress and the White House makes it harder to count on such sources as those for long.

“We have to take advantage of those opportunities when they present themselves,” Cownie said. “We don't know 24 months from now whether or not all those resources are going to be available.”

Caron said the research that went into Adapt DSM was intended to set targets that are realistic but still ambitious enough to meet the city’s established 2035 and 2050 goals.

“If we can blow past some of these goals? Great,” he said. Developments we don’t know about now could help with that: The plan “is built in with a lot of flexibility to be, to a degree, technology-agnostic.”

Cownie has been vocal about climate action throughout his two decades as mayor. “I was the old tree-hugger guy,” he said, but he has seen popular understanding of the seriousness of climate change increase over those years. Cownie has worked with people around the world on responses, including attending Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change summits; he is now president of the global executive committee for ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. That role is important to him, he said, because effective climate response is something that happens on a collective level locally, not just in Congress or at international forums.

“We're where it happens,” he said. “It's all of us together to make the impact sufficiently to, hopefully, take away the worst outcomes.”

Lucas Grundmeier is the Register's opinion editor.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Climate-adaptation plan needs everybody in Des Moines on board