While Oak Park has made some progress in reducing local greenhouse gas emissions, it might not meet its goal of reducing emissions by 60% by 2030 at its current rate.
From 2019 to 2022, the village only reduced emissions by 7%. While that’s movement in the right direction, it might not be enough to reach the benchmark set in Climate Ready Oak Park for 2030.
And some question whether the ambitious goals were ever realistic.
“We are still trending down, below the business-as-usual forecast, but still above the trajectory we’d like to be on to meet those 2030 targets,” said Chief Sustainability Officer Lindsey Roland Nieratka.
The second goal listed in the CROP plan is to achieve community-wide net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. While data from 2023 and 2024 is not yet available, it appears Oak Parkers need to do more in coming years to meet their climate goals.
“We have not been doing enough at this board table to push toward the clear goals that we as a village set,” Trustee Brian Straw said. “If we want to reach this 2030 goal, we need to support this [energy-efficiency grant] program and other programs like it and continue that support into future years, not have this just be a one-time thing.”
The sources of emissions in Oak Park have not changed much from 2019 to 2022. In 2019, residential and commercial buildings made up about 70% of the local emissions, and that was still true in 2022. Transportation and mobile sources, like cars, make up roughly 25%.
Residential energy was reduced by only 2% from 2019 to 2022. Commercial energy was reduced by 7% and transportation by 12%.
Some contributing factors to these decreases could include the impact of the Oak Park Climate Action Network’s climate coaches, the village’s electrification ordinance and the increasing number of electric vehicles owned by Oak Parkers. Nieratka said the percentage of residents who own an electric vehicle increased from 0.7% in 2019 to 3.5% in 2024.
But more work needs to be done, Nieratka said. For example, homes in Oak Park can be made more energy efficient. One way to do that is to participate in the village’s energy-efficiency grant program that offers up to $10,000 to reduce one’s home energy consumption.
Trustee Lucia Robinson asked Nieratka to help the board create subgoals for specific programs to make their overarching climate goals more manageable. For example, she suggested setting a minimum number of households climate coaches should engage with per month.
“It might feel more doable if we are just figuring out what are the smaller bites that we need to take that will get us to that really big end goal,” Robinson said.
Trustee Ravi Parakkat agreed. But Parakkat also said the 2030 goals are “unrealistic,” adding that he also said that when the CROP plan was adopted.
“At some point, as we get closer to 2030, we have to bite the bullet and say that target and that trajectory is not feasible,” Parakkat said. “And there has to be a different path to 2050.”
“I am not interested, right now, in entertaining a discussion about moving away from our 2030 goal, because the 2030 goal isn’t based on just what [we’d] like to do, it’s based on in order to avoid 1.5 degrees Celsius climate change globally, we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Straw said in response. “I don’t know that I’m interested in just admitting defeat on climate change.”
But 2024, dubbed the world’s hottest year by BBC, already breached the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit that world leaders agreed in Paris in 2015 they would do their best to avoid.
And the world is already seeing devastating impacts of climate change internationally and in the United States, Straw said, including climate migration. He said he expects that to increase over the next few decades.
Parakkat, however, said shifting goals does not mean Oak Park won’t still pursue mitigating climate change.
“I don’t appreciate the insinuation that this is somehow denying climate science,” he said.
Straw said he didn’t insinuate that, just that he doesn’t want to reevaluate their goals.
Trustee Susan Buchanan, often an advocate for climate change initiatives and funding at the Oak Park board table, said she finds the data both positive and frustrating. The village is making “heroic efforts,” she said, to battle climate change, but it can’t be up to Oak Park alone.
“We’re not going to make it to our 60% goal [by] 2030, most likely,” she said.
Buchanan also added that she might be interested in putting even more money into the village’s sustainability fund to help drive climate change initiatives. Last November, Buchanan asked the board to add $1 million to that fund from reserves, and $500,000 was ultimately approved.
Other trustees said they’d like to see if additional sustainability funds could come from other sources than reserves, such as leftover American Rescue Plan Act dollars or grant funding.
“Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it,” Buchanan read from an online quote, referencing the fires in Los Angeles.