Category Archives: salt lake city

Urban Food Connections of Utah Brings Local Fare to our City and our Plates

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Welcome to SLCgreen Connections, an occasional series highlighting SLCgreen’s fantastic local partners—the people and organizations with whom we work closely to make Salt Lake City a greener, more vibrant, and sustainable city!

 

by Ardyn Ford, SLCgreen intern and Sophia Nicholas

Salt Lake’s historic Rio Grande Depot houses the Winter Market, an event that brings the city to life every Saturday from November to April. If you haven’t been yet, make a beeline there this week! The market is open through April 21.

Once there, you’ll find tables lined with colorful, fresh produce filling the large hall, while locals bustle around, creating a vivacious energy that stands out against the backdrop of gray days. Continue reading →

SLC Open Streets is Back! Sign up to Volunteer or Host a Booth

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Photos of residents enjoying SLC Open Streets 2015

by Ardyn Ford, SLCgreen intern

Imagine riding your bike down a wide city street under clear, blue skies. There are no cars in sight. You meander across lanes of traffic, surrounded by fellow bikers, skaters, and joggers. Food trucks and beer gardens line the streets. Echoes of laughter are carried by the warm breeze. Sound too good to be true? It isn’t!

On May 5th, Salt Lake City is bringing back a favorite community event called Open Streets. From 10 AM to 4 PM a section of downtown will be closed to all non-essential vehicular traffic. This means that streets will be open for anything from walking to rollerblading. People are encouraged to bring family and friends for a day of movement and fun community activities including yoga classes, art exhibits, and live music.

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The route was designed for easy access to public transit and GREENbike stations in an effort to give people the opportunity to experience alternative, sustainable transportation in a safe environment. Continue reading →

Check out our Roadmap for Electrified Transportation!

 

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Pop-out doors, instant acceleration, electric bikes, autonomous electric ride-share programs. . . the future is exciting when it comes to electrified transportation.

And, in many cases, the future is here. So local governments better get ready!

That’s why we’re excited to introduce you to a new report SLCgreen recently co-produced with Utah Clean Energy.

The Electrified Transportation Roadmap describes 25 steps that local governments can take to accelerate the electric transportation revolution.

The Roadmap outlines how local governments can implement a variety of electric powered modes of transit including electric vehicles (EVs), e-bikes, electric transit, and electrified ridesharing.

Salt Lake City has integrated a number of these best practices into our internal operations, and we’re now working toward more community-scale projects as part of our Climate Positive SLC plan.

As the capital city’s sustainability department, we also believe it’s important to share what we’ve learned with other local governments.

That’s the idea behind the Roadmap—as well as a workshop we organized March 14 with representatives from 16 local governments across the Wasatch Front to talk about best practices and to view EV options from a variety of local dealers. Continue reading →

Utah Climate Action Network Nationally Recognized for Innovative Partnerships

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Vicki Bennett, Sustainability Director (middle) accepts the Innovative Partnership Certificate for the Utah Climate Action Network.

Last week the Climate Leadership Conference recognized eighteen businesses and organizations for their significant efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change.

The Utah Climate Action Network (UCAN) received an Innovative Partnership Certificate for bringing the public and private sectors together to find solutions for climate issues.

Continue reading →

Free EV Charging at Salt Lake City Level 2 Stations

o87560Salt Lake City is committed to advancing clean air and one of the most significant ways we can do that is to support the growth of electric vehicles (EVs).

Compared to a new gasoline car, an EV puts out 99% fewer local air pollutants. That makes EVs a big player in our work to clear the air– particularly as our population grows and more vehicles enter our roadways each year.

The good news is that Utahns are buying more and more clean vehicles, but we have a long way to go– these vehicles currently make up less than 0.45% of the market. (This is one reason we don’t want to see high annual registration fees).

One of the ways the City is encouraging the continued growth in EV ownership is by building public charging infrastructure to alleviate “range anxiety.” We currently have 28 public charging ports around the city and are building a couple dozen more this year, including at the Airport!

We’re also excited to let you know that the City Council– on the recommendation of the Administration–voted to waive charging fees, effective immediately.

The $1.00 connection charge and $0.10/kWh fee was put in place last spring to recover the cost for using the station, and to ensure the stations are not being monopolized.  We’ll continue to monitor usage and may re-institute the fee at an appropriate time.

But what’s this going to cost you might ask? We estimated an annual financial impact of up to $12,000 in utility costs associated with providing free electricity at existing stations. We also conservatively estimate it will cost $13,000 annually to cover electricity costs at the soon-to-be-unveiled EV stations at the airport.

Salt Lake City received a grant from the Department of Environmental Quality to install the latest round of charging stations– thank you! We’re now happy to continue supporting the expansion of clean vehicles and clean infrastructure in Salt Lake City with free charging.

Do you drive an electric vehicle? Are you on the fence about getting one? Let us know what you think!

CLICK HERE TO SEE STATION LOCATIONS

Salt Lake County Seeking Local Farmers to Develop Agricultural Land

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Do you know a local farmer or organization that is seeking agricultural land to develop?

As part of Salt Lake County’s vision to create more opportunities for locally produced food, the Open Space and Urban Farming programs are seeking local farmers to manage land at Wheadon Park and Big Cottonwood Regional Park. The three separate sites have a total of 20.3 farmable acres.

The County is soliciting proposals from qualified firms “Proposer / Contractor” to provide management and operation of commercial farming enterprise at Big Cottonwood Regional Park (7 acres) and at two parcels at Wheadon Park (3.4 and 9.9 acres).

Continue reading →

Help Clear the Air! Sign up for the February Challenge

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Transportation emissions are responsible for nearly 50% of the pollutants that make up our poor air quality. These pollutants become a serious concern during the winter months when normal atmospheric conditions (cool air above, warm air below) become inverted. This allows the air quality in the valley to become filled with particles that can quickly become unhealthy.

While there is much work being done to reduce those emissions (better transit, cleaner vehicles, more active transportation), the fact is– we can and should all help. We can each be a #CleanAirChampion.

There are many ways to participate! They all help the air and give you points in the Challenge:

  • Ride the bus or train
  • Bike or walk to work
  • Link your errands together when you are driving (aka “trip chain”)
  • Skip the trip by working from home or saving that errand for later

It all adds up!

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The Utah Division of Air Quality estimates that if every driver along the Wasatch Front were to give up driving for just one day per week, it would keep 6,500 tons of emissions (or 85 times the weight of the International Space Station) out of our airshed.

Continue reading →

Sustainability 2017 Year in Review

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2018 is here! Once again, it is time to take note of all the achievements we’ve made over the past year, with your help and the support of many other partners both in and outside of Salt Lake City government.

As we look back on 2017, we want to share with you what we have done, where we are now, and what our goals are as we look ahead.

We publish an annual report detailing our major accomplishments each year.  You can read the highlights from 2017 below, or download the full report here.

Thank you to our many partners who’ve helped us along the way. And happy New Year from all of us at SLCgreen!

Continue reading →

Preserving Our Dark Skies

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By Colin Green, SLCgreen Fall Intern

Can you remember a time when you lay on the ground under a cloudless night gazing up towards the heavens, making wishes on shooting stars? Have you ever done this within the city? Probably not, because of light pollution.

Humans have lived with dark starry skies for most of our history. This connection to the celestial bodies has helped guide the natural rhythms of our bodies, but recently, in tandem with rapid urbanization, dark skies are disappearing from our lives. Light pollution is taking overnight skies across the country, but it doesn’t have to.

Light pollution comes in a few different varieties that affect us and our environment differently. The first form is called SKYGLOW and it is what usually comes to mind when thinking about light pollution. This is the light that is projected towards the sky creating an illuminated dome in urban areas around the world (80% of World Population Lives under Skyglow).

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Skip the Wood Burning, Be a #CleanAirChampion

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Did you know? One wood fireplace emits the same amount of particulate pollution as 90 SUVs and one wood-burning stove pollutes as much as 3,000 natural gas furnaces.

This week’s Clean Air Champion tip is about wood burning.

Even though burning wood is festive at this time of year, it’s a significant polluter (estimated to contribute 5-26% of total pollution on a winter day, according to a presentation from Dr. Kelly Kerry to UCAIR).

Before you burn, make sure to check to see if it’s a no burn day.

The Salt Lake County Health Department prohibits burning solid fuel in fireplaces or wood burning stoves and bans outdoor fires (including bonfires, patio pits, and charcoal grill fires) on days that the State of Utah designates as either mandatory or voluntary air action (no burn) days.

Continue reading →