Drafter
Clerk 01/26/2017
Title
AN ORDINANCE relating to the purchase of renewable electricity; authorizing the executive to enter into a long-term agreement for the purchase of renewable, greenhouse gas neutral electricity from Puget Sound Energy.
Body
STATEMENT OF FACTS:
1. Climate change is one of the paramount challenges of our generation. King County is already experiencing the impacts of a changing climate: warming temperatures, acidifying marine waters, rising seas, increasing flooding risk, decreasing mountain snowpack and less water in the summer. Climate change will have long-term consequences for the economy, the environment, and public health and safety in King County.
2. King County has a long record of innovation, leadership and investment in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for the impacts of climate change. Consideration of climate change impacts and opportunities to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are deeply embedded throughout the work plans and capital investments of county departments and lines of business.
3. Since 2007, investments in energy efficiency and changes in operations have reduced normalized energy use in existing buildings and facilities by more than twenty percent, generating over three million dollars in annual savings.
4. King County is now producing renewable energy equivalent to more than one hundred percent of total operational energy use, excluding public transit vehicles.
5. The 2015 King County Strategic Climate Action Plan maps specific pathways and actions needed to achieve the ambitious countywide climate goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by eighty percent by 2050 against a 2007 baseline with interim goals of twenty-five-percent reduction by 2020 and fifty-percent reduction by 2030.
6. The Strategic Climate Action Plan establishes goals, targets, measures and priority actions in five goal areas for reducing greenhouse gas emissions: (a) transportation and land use; (b)...

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