Understanding Los Alamos County’s first Climate Action Plan
Council will decide whether to adopt the plan on Tuesday 11/12/24: what you need to know
After more than a year of community input and technical analysis, Los Alamos County’s first-ever Climate Action Plan comes before the County Council on Tuesday, Nov. 12 (meeting at 6 p.m. at the Municipal Building). The plan’s goals are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare the community for climate impacts — so what does it mean for you? And does it adequately address the primary emission sources in Los Alamos County?
The big picture
The Climate Action Plan (CAP) aims to make Los Alamos carbon neutral by 2050, with interim goals of reducing emissions by 30% by 2030 and 80% by 2040. These ambitious targets align with scientific recommendations for avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.
“The draft Climate Action Plan provides an overview of climate impacts that New Mexico and Los Alamos County are already experiencing and will likely experience in the future due to climate change,” explained Andrea Martin of the Cascadia Consulting Group at a July Council meeting, presenting an earlier draft of the plan. “These include wildfire and air quality impacts, extreme precipitation and flooding, drought and water scarcity, and extreme heat.”
Key focus areas
The plan identifies six focus areas for climate action:
Buildings & Energy: Encouraging energy efficiency and promoting renewable power
Transportation & Land Use: Promoting electric vehicles and sustainable transportation options
Materials & Consumption: Educational campaigns about waste reduction and recycling
Natural Systems & Water: Promoting water conservation and tree preservation
Community Resilience: Preparing educational materials about climate impacts
Cross-cutting Issues: Education and partnerships
Responding to concerns from residents about mandates, the County has clarified that it “will not be mandating/requiring actions for residents/community, instead will be encouraging, educating, and promoting.” The only mandatory measures will apply to county operations, such as transitioning the County’s vehicle fleet to electric vehicles and implementing energy efficiency standards in County buildings.
Transportation and housing: Intertwined climate challenges
Community feedback identified transportation as a central concern, inextricably linked to Los Alamos’s housing shortage. With many Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) employees unable to find housing in the county, commuter traffic has become both an emissions challenge and a quality-of-life issue.
“Why is adding housing to reduce the number of commuters not one of the considerations?” resident Stephanie Haaser asked during the public input period. “I understand the community wants to maintain green spaces, but I would think greenhouse emissions from commuters would be a more serious concern.”
“More bike lanes, more public transit”
The data support these concerns: transportation represents the largest source of emissions across all measurement types. The CAP addresses transportation and housing, but only in a limited sense. For transportation, it encourages expanding bike infrastructure, improving transit services, and promoting electric vehicle adoption rather than instituting any mandates or robust funding commitments.
“This town has great potential for reducing car travel with more bike lanes, awareness of bikes and other alt transportation, and more public transportation options to make it easy for all users,” resident Cristina wrote. Echoing this, Eduardo Santiago noted that while Atomic City Transit (ACT) is valuable, “its hourly schedule makes it almost unusable for working professionals. A half-hour schedule would make it possible to go into town (from the mesas) for lunch, errands, Farmer’s Market.”
Does the plan match the problem?
Los Alamos County’s greenhouse gas inventory says that transportation represents 38% of local emissions—the largest single source. Much of this comes from commuters: According to a County analysis, of the 17,042 people who work in Los Alamos County, over 9,300 commute from outside the county. The analysis also found that 75% of these commuters report being interested in moving to Los Alamos but cannot do so due to insufficient, unavailable, or unaffordable housing.
While expanding bike lanes and similar measures focus on reducing in-town emissions, they do little to address the central role of long-distance commuting in Los Alamos’s emissions profile — or the housing limitations that force employees to live elsewhere. However, recommendation T2.1 does focus on making land-use policies “to promote affordable, transit-oriented, and mixed-use development [i.e., housing + commercial] to reduce urban sprawl.”
Some commenters argued that adding housing is a nonstarter because Los Alamos is “fully built out,” yet county land use analysis shows significant opportunity for higher-density housing: About 75% of residential land is zoned for low-density housing (4.5 units or fewer per acre). The county’s own analysis of vacant land shows that upzoning could accommodate up to 7,500 new housing units through “missing middle” multiplex development. As a starting point, the 2024 Affordable Housing Plan calls for a more modest goal of adding 1,300 – 2,400 new housing units.
Diverse views
Responses to the plan are as diverse as the community itself. Some residents strongly support ambitious policies: “This is an excellent plan, developed over years with input from the community. I support it fully,” wrote resident Jody Benson. “Thank you County Staff and Government, all the Boards and volunteers, for developing our Climate Action Plan.”
Others leaned into the practical challenges around housing and commuting. “I mean, it’s almost a joke to have a carbon plan when you have 10,000 people commuting 100 miles round trip,” Councilor David Reagor said at a March Council meeting. He called on LANL to work with Los Alamos County to solve the biggest source of emissions: transportation.
Some residents are worried about the unintended consequences of good intentions. “While I’m 120% in favor of electrification and very strong climate action, this will run into issues with homes already having maxed out service panels,” one commenter wrote. “Creating too strong a restriction might force homeowners to take on a $3-5k electrical panel upgrade just to replace a gas water heater.”
Others were more blunt: “People don’t like the government regulating them or telling them what to do,” wrote resident Richard Nebel. “The CAPS report is heavy on government regulation. That should be your last resort, not your first.”
“It is a step backwards”
Robert Gibson, chair of the Board of Public Utilities (BPU), raised structural concerns about the plan. In written comments on the draft CAP, he questioned whether the County got its money’s worth from the $280,195 contract with Cascadia Consulting Group. He argued that the resulting plan relies too heavily on vague recommendations rather than solutions tailored to Los Alamos.
“The report’s comments and recommendations often appear to be generic, not specific to LA,” Gibson wrote. He seemed especially frustrated that Cascadia didn’t build on existing work by the Los Alamos Resiliency, Energy, and Sustainability (LARES) Task Force, which had already developed specific climate recommendations for the county in 2022.
The CAP supports “existing recommendations and goals instead of providing actionable recommendations to implement them. It is a step backwards, not forwards,” Gibson wrote. “Sorry, I can’t do more. I’ve spent way too much time already trying to help Cascadia do a better job — without much to show for it.” Some of Gibson’s questions were asked and discussed during a presentation on the draft CAP at the July 17 BPU meeting. He gave a detailed presentation on his report “Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Los Alamos County, 2000-2023,” at the Oct. 2 BPU meeting.
Next steps
If approved Tuesday, implementation in 2025-2026 would begin with:
Expanding transit-oriented, mixed-use development policies
Conducting a climate vulnerability assessment
Building community partnerships
Developing electric vehicle infrastructure
Creating programs to improve building energy efficiency
The plan will be reviewed and updated regularly based on progress and changing conditions. Community input remains important — as Deputy County Manager Linda Matteson said, “Most importantly, public comment will be vital to the accomplishment of this plan.”
Residents can learn more about the Climate Action Plan at lacnm.com/sustainability. Weigh in at the meeting, either in person or by Zoom. The County’s new e-comment feature allows asynchronous public comment before noon on the meeting day. You can also email countycouncil@lacnm.us to let them know your feelings on any topic.
Thank you for your thoughtful, in-depth reporting on such an important issue.
Here is a letter I sent today to the County Council on this matter:
Dear County Council:
Re: Climate Action Plan
I am writing to suggest that the Council approve the Climate Action Plan, but only with the proviso that in the next six months the County completes an Action Plan concerning the health effects of climate change in Los Alamos County and how they can be addressed in doable, sustainable, cost-effective, and fair ways.
Climate change is here and will continue, despite what Los Alamos does to mitigate it. Climate change will lead, among other things, to:
• More extreme weather
• More days of high heat
• More fires
In the US last year, for example, more than 2,300 people died of heat-related injuries and the number expected to die of heat-related causes this year is likely to be higher than last year.
At a minimum, the County needs to ensure that its Climate Action Plan has:
• A local heat-health warning system
• Health actors that are organized to combat heat-related conditions in high-quality, well-coordinated, and resilient ways.
Without such a plan, the County might take steps to help address climate change – in the long run – while leaving its citizens exposed to potentially great harm in the short and medium run.
In addition, the prospects that the state Department of Health will carry out these measures for Los Alamos or any other county are probably zero.
Thank you for your attention to this matter,
Richard Skolnik