Charlotte city leaders said Monday they won’t meet the goals of the Strategic Energy Action Plan (SEAP), which aims to make all city energy use for buildings, vehicles and other sources carbon-free by 2030.
But they said the city is still making progress.
Since the City Council passed the plan in 2018, the city said it’s gone from having 11 electric vehicles to 90 and from 46 charging stations to 138.
It said the EVs have meant the city hasn’t emitted 1,700 metric tons of carbon dioxide — with each ton equal to about 2,500 miles driven by a gas vehicle.
But those 90 EVs are only 2% of the city’s vehicle fleet — one example of how far Charlotte still has to go. And more than a third of municipal buildings’ energy will still come from carbon-producing sources in 2030, the city projects.
Some council members, like Mayor Pro Tem Braxton Winston, asked if the city should set a new goal that’s more realistic.
“We really shouldn’t move forward with a dishonest aspiration,” he said.
Sarah Hazel, the city’s sustainability and resilience officer, stressed that Charlotte is still making progress.
“We are going to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions based on the trajectory we’re on in our fleet,” she said. “But we will have a gap. I think that is obvious based on the technology in this conversation that we’ve shared.”
The problems with that technology are twofold.
One is that there aren’t enough EVs being sold right now. The other problem is that roughly half of Duke Energy’s power in North Carolina — which the city needs to charge its EVs — comes from fossil fuels.
Council members did not vote to change the plan.
The SEAP also aims to make Charlotte a “low carbon” city by 2050, emitting less than two tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per resident annually.
