ALBANY COUNTY — With two regional plans, Albany County and the municipalities that make it up have a framework for how to protect themselves from the consequences of climate change. 

The Albany County Climate Resiliency Plan and Climate Action Plan for the Capital Region each establish guidelines for how to reduce emissions, with the county plan going a step further and focusing on protection from climate conditions like high heat and increased flooding.

Emissions reduction is the priority, since it has a direct effect on the intensity and frequency of the climate conditions. 

Accordingly, the county plan distinguishes climate resiliency from climate adaptation. Although both are proactive, resiliency refers to the general ability of communities to weather and bounce back from various climate threats — such as by reducing the threat itself by lowering emissions. 

Adaptation, meanwhile, refers to changing behavior in direct response to future threats, such as moving development away from flood-prone areas and growing different kinds of crops. 

According to the Climate Action Plan for the Capital Region, which was crafted by the Capital District Regional Planning Commission (CDRPC), the average resident in that area released nearly 15 metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent in 2010, totaling 15.8 million metric tons overall. The vast majority — 84 percent — came from fossil fuels. 

Transportation, built environments, and waste were the three sectors that contributed the most to the output, the plan says. Albany County – which was the region’s largest greenhouse gas contributor in 2010 — is working on its own emissions inventory, per its resiliency plan. 

The county has, however, completed various risk assessments, which lay out the stakes of emissions reduction. 

One map showing the different shades of flood risk reveals that virtually every municipality in the county has pockets that are at “extreme risk,” meaning there is a strong chance of flooding with a depth of at least 6 inches, up to more than and 24 inches, due to greater precipitation and rising water levels. 

As The Enterprise wrote last month, the county is also home to high-hazard dams, some of which are in poor condition and have a higher chance of failure. Although none of the dams are known to be in imminent danger, some, like the Lake Myosotis dam in Rensselaerville, aren’t guaranteed to be safe in the face of extreme weather. 

The county also assessed heat risk and social vulnerability, though these appear to be less significant within the Enterprise coverage area, as compared to flood risk. Westerlo and Rensselaerville do, however, show a greater susceptibility to heat when considering socioeconomic factors, the map shows. 

Pushing back

To protect residents, the guides each lay out various steps that local governments can take to reduce emissions or otherwise increase resiliency from the impacts of climate change. 

The CDRPC plan is broader in terms of its suggestions, but shows specific projections of how each measure taken would reduce emissions by 2030 and 2050. 

For instance, by encouraging people to drive electric cars, the CDRPC expects emissions to reduce by 360,617 metric tons by 2030, assuming that 10 percent of drivers transition to electric; and more than 3 million by 2050, assuming an 80 percent transition rate, making it the single most effective measure of the 36 listed.

The second most effective method is encouraging carpooling and ridesharing, which would reduce emissions nearly 341,000 metric tons by 2050. 

Both plans recommend that governments work toward installing electric-vehicle charging stations to make range considerations less significant for consumers who are otherwise open to switching to electric vehicles. 

The second most effective measure in the CDRPC plan overall is transitioning to cleaner heating and cooling technologies in built environments, with success resulting in an emissions reduction of more than 2 million tons by 2050. 

The county plan notes that this measure would both reduce emissions and also make buildings more of a haven during extreme weather events. It recommends that the county establish a grant program for consumers looking to transition, though notes that the cost of heat pumps in particular may still be cost-prohibitive for low-income households. 

A third highly effective measure, according to the CDRPC, falls more squarely on the shoulders of local governments, which the plan says should purchase their own fleets of electric vehicles and invest in making their buildings more energy-efficient. Doing so would reduce emissions by more than 1.5 million tons by 2050. 

According to the county plan, some more specific steps in this area would be replacing street lights, which are typically mercury vapor or incandescent, with light-emitting diode, or LED, fixtures; making sure buildings are properly sealed for better insulation; and relying on renewable energy. 

The town of Knox, using a grant from the New York State Research and Development Authority, was able to build its own municipal solar facility that will power the town-owned buildings, and had also converted ballfield lights to LEDs.

The money was obtained thanks to Knox’s early designation as a Clean Energy Community, which is a designation that the county plan encourages all municipalities to receive. 

In his state of the county address, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy celebrated that the county had received that designation this year, allowing it to “gain more funding to use for sustainability projects and allows us to become a member of the Green Purchasing Community through New York State’s Office of General Service GreenNY initiative.”

According to a chart in the county plan, Berne and Rensselaerville are the only two municipalities in the Enterprise coverage area that have yet to receive the designation, which requires completing certain climate-oriented action items. 

The county plan also encourages municipalities to adopt the state’s Unified Solar Permit, which expedites the solar permitting process. Every municipality in the Enterprise coverage area has already done this. 

However, no municipality in the Enterprise coverage area — and only two across the whole county — is participating in the Community Choice Aggregation Program, which the plan recommends and, according to NYSERDA, “allows local governments to work together through a shared purchasing model to put out for bid the total amount of electricity and/or natural gas being purchased by eligible customers within the jurisdictional boundaries of participating municipalities.”

The plan also encourages municipalities to adopt an energy stretch code that is 10- to 12-percent more efficient than the existing Energy Conservation Construction Code of New York State. By adopting the stricter standard, municipalities can encourage greener home designs, saving residents money in the long term. The plan says that, overall, adoption could generate fiscal savings of 11 percent over the existing code across New York State. 

Other, more general local policies the plan recommends that haven’t yet been adopted by most municipalities include:

— Complete streets, which is a design philosophy that encourages streets to be built to accommodate all manner of transportation, from cars, to bikes, to pedestrians, thereby reducing the reliance on cars;

— Architectural design controls, which, similar to the adoption of a stretch code, could compel the use of energy-efficient technologies and practices for new developments;

— The creation of open space and natural-resource inventories, to make it easier to conserve those things; and 

— Historic preservation, which cuts down on the need for new developments.

The county plan also shares a list of existing grant programs at the local, state, and federal levels that municipalities can use to secure funding for various projects. 

One example is the Agricultural Environmental Management Program, which funds “farm environmental assessments, development of environmental farm plans, design and implementation of best management practices, and development of education programs for environmentally-responsible farming,” according to the plan. Farmers can access it through their local soil and water conservation district.

Municipalities can also rely on their soil and conservation district to purchase tree/shrub seeds and transplants, along with supplies, at a reduced cost, the plan says. 

The plan encourages the county to help municipalities find funding, since the resources needed to do so are often not available at the local level. 

“With its regional perspective, the County is well-positioned to work with municipalities to understand their priorities and identify projects that will increase climate resilience at the local and inter-municipal scales,” the plan says.