Eau Claire updates progress toward clean energy goal

Jan. 29—EAU CLAIRE — The city is well on its way toward a goal of running entirely on clean energy by 2050, according to the latest estimates available on Eau Claire's use of carbon-based energy.

Between 2015 and 2020, the carbon footprint of the Eau Claire municipal government's operations became 23% smaller. When homes, businesses and others in the city are added in, the reduction is a somewhat smaller 14% carbon reduction, based on a report that came out in recent weeks.

Ned Noel, senior city planner, noted that both measures did surpass a milestone that Eau Claire's city leaders included in a pledge they made in 2018 to dramatically increase clean energy use.

"In both cases they met the 5% goal by 2020," he said.

Noel delivered the good news during a City Council meeting last week, following several months of verification both in-house and by third parties of the carbon reduction estimates. The 2020 figures are the latest available for the city due to lags in getting data used to calculate the estimates and lengthy processes used to vet the numbers.

The calculations encompass a wide variety of ways that carbon emissions are generated both directly and indirectly. That includes natural gas used to heat a building's boiler, gasoline burned for employees' commutes, electricity that keeps lights on and even waste sent to a landfill where it produces methane gas as it breaks down.

The city's carbon footprint is estimated in metric tons of carbon dioxide — a unit of measurement that is about enough of the gas to fill a hot air balloon, Noel said.

In 2015 — a year the city is using as its baseline — municipal operations generated 17,500 metric tons of carbon dioxide. By 2020, it had shrunk to 13,512 metric tons.

Citywide, Eau Claire generated an estimated 901,871 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That declined to 774,985 in 2020.

Reductions in carbon emissions have been tied to steps the private and public sectors, and even individual households, have taken to use less energy or use cleaner sources for it.

Upgrading heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems to more efficient models, switching out old light bulbs for LEDs and adding motion detecting sensors to control room lighting are among steps taken in Eau Claire homes and businesses to reduce power use. Those changes and others made in 2020 trimmed electricity usage by 4.5 million kilowatt hours at businesses in Eau Claire and by 2.6 million kilowatt hours at homes in the city, according to a report from Wisconsin's Focus on Energy program.

One of the projects that lowered the city government's carbon footprint was an overhaul of the Wastewater Treatment Plant in 2015. Though the plant had for decades harvested methane from wastewater to produce power, the renovations made several years ago included a generator upgrade that allowed it to capture and use more of the gas.

"That is a big renewable generator for the city," Noel said.

Another factor helping the city and its populous get closer to Eau Claire's goal of running solely on renewable power by 2050 is power utility Xcel Energy's efforts to increase its use of windmills and solar farms. Both the city and Xcel made their pledges in the same year — 2018, but the latter was already making headway toward its goal by then.

In 2015, Xcel Energy's operations in its Upper Midwest service area (Michigan, Minnesota, the Dakotas and Wisconsin), generated 22.9 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. That was down from the 28.1 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2005, which serves as Xcel's base year.

Xcel's latest figures show that in 2021, the power company's carbon dioxide emissions had gotten down to 13.8 million tons in the Upper Midwest.

"Our nation-leading clean energy plan will reduce carbon emissions from the electricity we provide to customers more than 85% by 2030, compared to 2005 and pushes us closer to our vision of providing 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050," Brian Elwood, Xcel's general manager of customer and community service for its Wisconsin and Michigan territory, said in a statement. "We have worked to align our energy leadership with the polices of the states and communities we serve and our priority is to continue that collaboration going forward."

Eau Claire's next milestone toward its renewable energy goal is reaching the 30% mark for reducing its carbon footprint by 2030.

Based on the recently calculated 2020 figures, Noel said the city appears to be well on its way toward that, especially with the carbon footprint tied specifically to municipal operations.

"The pace is good," he said.

Estimates updating Eau Claire on progress toward reaching the renewable energy goal are likely to be done every other year, not annually, Noel said, due to the work that goes into calculating the figures.

When the city next updates its carbon footprint estimates, it is expected to show the benefits of municipal projects that have been done since 2020. That would include solar panels added next to Fire Station No. 8, 3510 Starr Ave. in 2021, and the geothermal system included in the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library renovation project that wrapped up last year.