City of Santa Cruz Climate Action Plan 2030 Update The City of Santa Cruz has prepared and adopted their Climate Action Plan 2030 (CAP), which is the Santa Cruz community’s roadmap to achieving the City’s 2030 Greenhouse Gas emissions reduction target, and State mandated goal of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. The City of Santa Cruz adopted this CAP on September 13, 2022.

The Sierra Club submitted comments on the CAP 2030, as we had on the CAP 2020. Ten years ago we took issue with the CAP 2020’s reliance on voluntary compliance with incentives, stating that “Incentives are important, but not enough. Not only are regulations called for when implementing policy direction, they also can create clarity for all persons, including developers.” With the CAP 2030, the City of Santa Cruz did recommend more of a regulatory implementation, and the Sierra Club expressed its appreciation for that approach.

The Sierra Club also expressed appreciation for the work the City of Santa Cruz has done to address the issue of climate change, and for the document’s interactive public review process. Many in Club leadership felt that the CAP 2030 represented a significant improvement over the earlier document.

One area where the Club raised concerns was that the timeline for implementing many of the new Plan’s goal is six or more years into the future, which is sixteen years since the start of the CAP implementation.

In addition, the Club recommended both a program to develop building codes requiring passive solar heating, as well as an increase to the proposed 2% goal for increasing the amount of urban tree canopy.

• City of Santa Cruz Climate Action Plan 2030 

• Sierra Club comment letter for the City of Santa Cruz 2030 CAP