Boulder's Climate Commitment
In 2009, Boulder residents were frustrated with the slow pace of progress on the City’s climate action goals (and showing up at every Council meeting to express their views). The City Manager asked newly arrived Planning and Sustainability Director David Driskell to do something about it. David and his team responded by analyzing the data, reframing goals, and creating Community Tech Teams to help take on the challenge. The purpose of each Tech Team was to engage diverse stakeholders: vocal critics, subject matter experts, people who could benefit or be impacted by proposed actions, and key City and County staff. Each group was asked for new program designs that could work within the City’s resource constraints, were grounded in solid data analysis, and could be piloted with a clear plan for scalability.
One particularly successful example was the Energy Efficiency Tech Team, a group tasked with re-thinking the City’s energy efficiency programs. One of these programs provided free or very low-cost energy audits for homeowners and businesses. The problem: only about 20 percent of those audits turned into action. After a few meetings, the Team proposed a new “energy concierge” model: the person who did the audit would also facilitate next steps: getting contractor quotes, filling out rebate forms, connecting with low-cost financing, scheduling the work, and following up to ensure it got done.
Existing funds were repurposed to support the pilot, and a local firm was hired to run it. Long story short: audit-to-action ratios shot up from 20 percent to 80 percent; the energy advising model still operates today; and that small local firm was bought out by a national group that then implemented the Tech Team’s idea nationwide.
David also helped lead cross-department efforts to evaluate the City’s relationship with investor-owned utility Xcel Energy and to analyze options to achieve community energy goals. He authored the city’s guiding principles—Decarbonize, Decentralize and Democratize—that continue to guide the city’s energy efforts today. In more recent years the City tapped Community Planning Collaborative to design and facilitate three strategic planning retreats for the City’s energy future team, engaging key staff and City leadership in evaluating emerging challenges and new opportunities and help chart a path still focused on the community’s energy goals.