Outlining your journey: Houston's landmark Climate Action Plan, with Priya Zachariah, Ep #2

The Race to Net-Zero podcast is a six-episode series featuring conversations with energy experts and representatives from businesses that have committed to net-zero carbon emissions.

In this episode, host John Failla sits down with Priya Zachariah, Chief Resilience and Sustainability Officer for the City of Houston, and Greg Kandankulam, Director of Sustainability Advisory at NRG. They discuss the importance of the sustainability goal-setting process and programs the city of Houston has implemented to achieve its ambitious public commitments.

In today’s episode, we cover:

• Elements of goal setting [08:09]
• Keys to net-zero success [11:43]
• Public sector vs. private sector [14:53]
• Sustainability and resiliency in Houston [16:44]
• Advantages of a multidisciplinary approach [21:23]
• Current approaches and concerns [27:16]
• Effective partnerships [34:03]

Houston’s sustainability efforts

The practice of resilience and sustainability does not only involve a single actor or agency delivery system. The process requires multiple people, agencies, and scales of actors to come to the table. Selling a common vision from the beginning is critical to bring people and efforts together.

The city of Houston embarked on its sustainability journey in the days after Hurricane Harvey. The mayor brought people together under his vision to start looking at a resilience framework, and this led to the city adopting a plan called Resilient Houston, in 2020.

Under the umbrella of Resilient Houston, the city also has a Climate Action Plan. These efforts in parallel set the overarching vision of resilience and sustainability. The Climate Action Plan is driven by the mission of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and is based on key polluting sectors for the city of Houston. The ambition of this plan calls for Houston to be net-zero by 2050.

Equity in initiatives

The Resilient Houston plan takes the approach that underlying stresses in a community, particularly socio-economic disparities, put communities at an extra disadvantage as they deal with more frequent climate events. These events leave them in a constant cycle of need and recovery.

The energy industry must address building resilience, not just as a response to building climate resilience to climate events, but also to address those underlying socio-economic disparities and vulnerabilities. The Resilient Houston plan plays that role by placing equity at the center of many of its initiatives.

Houston recognizes that resilience and sustainability initiatives must be addressed at multiple scales simultaneously. That includes the scale of the individual Houstonian, or household, and large systems like the transportation network, the bayou network, and even the entire city.

Progress must be made across many scales with multiple actors under a shared vision. There also needs to be a clear articulation of the vision and the mission to start organizing people and operationalizing actions in implementing resilience and sustainability.

Effective partnerships

The work in Houston would not have been possible without multiple agencies and actors working together. Project delivery has changed into being partnership based. The Sunnyside Landfill Solar Project is an excellent example of private and public collaboration, as the city of Houston worked with the private sector, solar developers, utilities, and the community to create what will be the largest solar farm on an urban landfill in the country.

As part of NRG’s contract to take the city of Houston to 100% renewable powered electricity, NRG also provided value-added services for sustainability consulting and heat mitigation strategies. Part of that process was considering the resiliency needs in underserved communities.

NRG works within an ecosystem to seek partners to help strengthen their collective efforts with the city. Those partnerships are used to address a multitude of issues as the climate continues to evolve. Together, they are trying to create resiliency programs and understand what they’ll protect, whether that’s healthcare outcomes, economic viability, including providing resilience to anchor businesses, and even looking at the daily needs of citizens, ensuring bandwidth is up as they continue to work from home.

Resources & People Mentioned

• Resilient Houston
• Climate Action Plan
• ICLEI
• The State of Decarbonization
• Mayor Turner Announces TCEQ Approval of Largest Urban Solar Farm in the Country

Connect with Priya Zachariah

• On LinkedIn

Connect with Greg Kandankulam

• On LinkedIn