Salt Lake City is committed to protecting the public health and safety of its residents, including ensuring access to clean air, clean water and a livable environment. 🌏 This Earth Month, take some time to learn about how we’re working toward our Climate Positive 2040 Plan and tips you can start with today to make positive change in your life, community, and for a healthier planet.
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New Report Out! ⚡🚗 🚚
We are excited to share Salt Lake City’s recently completed Community Electrified Transportation Study. The City initiated the study in 2023 and it was completed in January 2025 as a tool to inform an equitable transition to electrified transportation as part of our larger climate and air quality goals.
Why electric vehicles?
Salt Lake City faces significant and unique air quality challenges. In the winter, the Wasatch Front’s geography leads to periodic temperature inversions (cold air getting trapped underneath a layer of warm air) which acts like a “lid” on the Salt Lake Valley—causing particulate pollution to increase. In the summer, pollution from cars, industry, and a multitude of chemical products, combined with high temperatures and bright sunshine, lead to harmful ozone levels.
About 39% of pollution along the Wasatch Front comes from internal combustion engine vehicles. Transitioning the transportation sector to clean energy technologies, including electric vehicles (EVs), will provide a range of benefits including improved air quality, reduced carbon emissions, and enhanced public health.
It’s not just about EV’s though.
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We’re so excited to share the news that on Friday, January 24th, Rocky Mountain Power filed the Program Application with the Public Service Commission on behalf of the 19 local governments participating in Utah Renewable Communities (URC). Following nearly 5 years of negotiation and collaboration, this is our biggest milestone to date!
Over the next few months, the commission will review the application. Once approved, local communities will have the opportunity to adopt local ordinances to move forward.
We’re on our way, and we are thrilled to have 18 other communities along for the ride. Read the press release below and learn more about URC at www.utahrenewablecommunities.org.
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Every year, we release a Year-in-Review featuring our high-level accomplishments as well as priorities for the year ahead. This is an important time and opportunity for us to take stock, learn from the experiences we had the previous year, and to continue to improve our programs, services, and operations.
While we engage with Salt Lakers mostly through recycling questions and efforts, we do so much more! Here are some highlights from 2024 and keep a lookout for more details in our 2024 Year-in-Review booklet coming soon. (Check out our full 2023 Year-in-Review booklet here!) Let’s take a moment to look back at what we’ve accomplished in just this year.
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Oct. 7, 2024
Para leer este comunicado de prensa en español, oprima aqui
Salt Lake City is celebrating Utah’s first-ever SITES- and Envision-certified projects following its recently updated Comprehensive Sustainability Policy. Glendale Regional Park, where work began last month, is on track to become the first SITES-certified project in the state and one of the largest park investments the City has ever undertaken. Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities’ new water reclamation facility, which began construction in 2020, is the first Envision project registered in the state.
Enacted last December in alignment with Mayor Erin Mendenhall’s sustainability goals, the updated Sustainable Infrastructure policy added Envision and SITES to its approved certification pathways. The Envision framework is designed to help implement more sustainable, resilient, and equitable projects, while SITES supports nature-based landscapes that enhance biodiversity, mitigate climate change, and conserve resources. These two additional systems allow for a more diverse range of City projects to utilize sustainability frameworks.
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Sept. 19, 2024
Para leer este comunicado de prensa en español, oprima aqui
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall announced an innovative partnership with Solar Stewards to fund solar, air quality, and community resilience projects in historically underserved areas of Salt Lake City.
Salt Lake City is exchanging renewable energy certificates (known as RECs) produced on its solar array at the Sorenson Multicultural Center through a unique Social REC® model with Solar Stewards for financial contributions. Okta is the first identified buyer of Salt Lake City’s Social REC® via the Solar Stewards’ Marketplace.
“Salt Lake City is not only investing in solar energy to power our municipal operations and reduce pollution,” said Mayor Mendenhall, “we have also formed a unique partnership that will help us invest money from that solar back into the community.”
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Here at SLCgreen, we’re always working to find actionable, high-impact strategies to improve local air quality. This spring, we ran our first-ever Landscaping Equipment Exchange (in the past we’ve partnered with the State’s program). Our goal is to remove highly polluting gas-powered landscaping tools from the airshed and replace them with electric alternatives. Through this spring’s program, the City was able to:
♻ Recycle 707 pieces of gas-powered equipment.
⚡ Support the purchase of 1,324 electric landscaping tools.
🌏 Reduce annual air pollution by 5,869 pounds.
The Landscaping Equipment Exchange Program is part of Clean Air SLC – a new suite of air quality programs offered by the City to benefit Salt Lakers. It includes the landscaping exchange, the e-bike incentive program, and a forthcoming indoor air quality program – all meant to clear the air in our communities and homes.
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Earlier this year, Salt Lake City Sustainability staff once again joined their counterparts of the 4 Corners Carbon Coalition (4CCC) to identify innovative carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects to receive grant funding so that they can be replicated and scaled for greater impact in our region. In July, 4CCC announced four awardees that would be receiving $335,000 of funding for their liability biomass projects (read details in the press release below).
You might be wondering what CDR and liability biomass are. As 4CCC puts it, “carbon dioxide removal (CDR) describes diverse processes, on land and at sea, that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and durably lock it away in geological, biological and synthetic formations for decades, centuries, or even millennia.”
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🌍 Tackling Climate Change: A Race We Can Win Together! 🏃♀️🏃♂️
Mitigating climate change is both a sprint and a marathon. The challenge? We need to cut our emissions and local air pollution drastically in the near term while investing in projects that can have sustained impact over time. The good news? The Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act has provided billions of dollars in federal funding to support climate action. If we make a compelling emissions reduction plan, we can apply for implementation funds to execute.
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Every year, we release a Year-in-Review with featuring our high-level accomplishments as well as priorities for the year ahead. (Check out our full 2023 Year in Review booklet here!)
It’s also an important time and opportunity for us to take stock, learn from the experiences we had the previous year, and to continue to improve our programs, services, and operations.
While we engage with Salt Lakers mostly through recycling questions and efforts, we do so much more! Here are some highlights from 2023 and keep a lookout for more details in our Year-in-Review booklet coming soon. (In the meantime, you can take a look at previous annual reports for 2022 and 2021.) Some notable achievements include:
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