Decatur, GA — The Decatur City Commission, at its Sept. 26 meeting, adopted the clean energy plan, which sets goals for the city to transition away from fossil fuels and toward a resilient, renewable future.

When the city was working on the 2030 Strategic Plan, climate action became a top priority.

“This is a process that began really in earnest during the formation of the [2030] strategic plan,” Energy and Sustainability Manager David Nifong said. “The Decatur community made it known that climate action is one of their top priorities. With that, one of the action items included in the plan, which [the city commission] adopted in October 2021, was establishing clean energy and greenhouse gas reduction targets.”

Commissioner Kelly Walsh added that the timing and scale of the plan is right for the current moment.

“We have a bold strategic plan for 10 years, and I don’t know how we can credibly say we can achieve the goals of the strategic plan without having this to underpin it,” Walsh said.

The clean energy goals set in the plan are:

As the clean energy plan is implemented, the city will have to determine how to best put the plan into action.

Mayor Patti Garrett said she hopes the city will invest in energy efficiency improvements, weatherization programs, and items like community solar before the city purchases renewable energy credits, “because I think that, as a whole, really benefits our specific community and helps with the equity piece as well. We still have a lot of weatherization and energy efficiency needs that need to be addressed.”

A few items in the fiscal year 2022-2023 budget will give the city a starting point in implementing the plan, Nifong said.

“One is continuing to consider an energy savings performance contract and continuing to evaluate a possible solar energy procurement agreement,” Nifong said.

Over the next few months, city staff will work to get the city into a position to start making decisions during the next fiscal year budget process.

“There are ways for us to meet our municipal goals with minimal impact on the budget, there are ways to finance these systems, energy efficiency improvements over time that kind of reduce those really high upfront costs that we are seeing and continue to see,” Nifong said.

A solar energy procurement agreement allows a third party to install a clean energy system on a property and sell the energy to the property owner. Rather than buying energy from a utility, the property owner would purchase the energy from the third party, Nifong said.

“There are some other things, like fleet electrification, that remains to be seen a little bit,” Nifong said. “We do think that through 2035 electrifying all of our light and medium duty vehicles is certainly within reason. If you look at a 10-year usable life for those vehicles, and we have about 180 vehicles, that would mean replacing 18 vehicles every year. ”

In the near future, Nifong will be focused on educating residents about the offers and rebates Georgia Power provides, such as rebates for LED lighting and more efficient heating and cooling systems. Commissioner George Dusenbury also encouraged residents to weatherproof their homes and plant trees.