By Brian Trompeter
Fairfax County’s multifaceted environmental efforts are bearing fruit, but the battle is far from over, the director overseeing those initiatives told the Board of Supervisors’ Environmental Committee on Dec. 12.
“We’re making progress toward carbon neutrality, with successes in some areas and challenges in some others,” said John Morrill, acting director of the county’s Office of Environmental and Energy Coordination (OEEC). “We’re making strides in energy efficiency and have strong results in green-building construction, including the county’s first [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] Platinum building . . . which was the Woodlawn Fire Station.”
The county is attempting to address climate change using three plans:
– The Community-wide Energy and Climate Action Plan aims to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
– The Operational Energy Strategy seeks more energy-efficient governmental operations.
– The Resilient Fairfax initiative attempts to build resilience against climate impacts being experienced in the county, such as extreme heat, severe storms and flooding.
“Resilience means being able to bounce back fully from shocks and stressors that come our way, without suffering permanent loss,” Morrill said.
“It is also important to note that our resilience efforts may seem like running on a treadmill that is getting faster, as we continue to face warmer, wetter, weirder conditions,” he said. “There may not be such a thing as achieving 100-percent resilience. Nevertheless, the county’s resilience efforts are crucial to ensuring we do not fall off the back of the treadmill, which in this metaphor would mean permanent loss of life, property and resources.”
Since last presenting to supervisors a year ago, OEEC officials have implemented multiple programs, Morrill said. The county also is “very engaged with residents and the private sector on climate action and we have significant momentum for future gains,” he said.
OEEC coordinates efforts involving more than 25 agencies,150 staff members and many community stakeholders, and combines 158 strategies from the above three plans into a consolidated matrix involving six groups.
The initiatives so far have resulted in 30 percent fewer carbon emissions by the county’s population, which is about 5 percent less than where county officials had hoped to be in the process of achieving an overall 87-percent cut by 2050.
“That 30-percent reduction is due to a cleaner grid and reduced energy use in buildings,” Morrill said. Overall use of electricity and natural gas in public and private buildings across the county was 8 percent lower last year than in 2010, despite growth in the county’s economy and population, he said.
“That’s not just a pandemic effect,” Morrill said. “2019 energy use was lower than 2010 as well.”
The county is 10 percent of the way toward its goal of having all clean-energy sources by 2045 under the Virginia Clean Economy Act, but officials had hoped to be at 20 percent by now.
One bright spot: All new eligible buildings have a commitment to becoming “green” buildings. The county has retrofitted 37,633 housing units for greater energy efficiency, but is trying to reach 100,000 units by 2030.
Perhaps boosted by pandemic-related workplace shifts, the county is more than halfway toward its goal of having 30 percent of workers telework, take mass transit or use non-motorized transportation.
Only 1.9 percent of vehicle registrations in the county involve plug-in hybrid or battery-powered electric vehicles and officials hope to raise that figure to 15 percent by 2030. Just 1.5 percent of the county’s vehicles (50 electric vehicles and 224 hybrids) now are electric- or non-carbon-powered, although officials hope all the vehicles will be by 2035.
“We want to electrify our fleet, but we can’t purchase equipment if the vehicle manufacturers don’t make it,” Morrill said.
Four county buildings currently are outfitted with rooftop solar panels and another 18 facilities are slated to receive such equipment by 2025.
“One of the latest hurdles has been Dominion Energy requiring essentially ‘dark’ fiber-optic cable from large solar installations to the nearest substation,” Morrill said. “They argue that they need that for safety because they want to know if the output from a large solar [power] system goes down. And they want the customer to pay for that fiber installation.”
Regulators have put such rules on hold for smaller solar-power systems, but they’re still in effect for larger ones (above 200 kilowatts), which increases the cost of such facilities, he said.
The county has achieved 55.4-percent overall tree-canopy coverage, which is a long way toward its goal of 60 percent. Officials also hope all county census tracts will have at least 40-percent tree-canopy coverage by 2030 and so far 72 percent do.
Fairfax County currently diverts 48 percent of waste from landfills and incinerators and officials hope to boost that figure to 90 percent by 2040.
Officials soon plan to update the Climate Action Dashboard on the county’s Website. As for its goals in 2024, the county will seek to identify gaps in its emissions-reduction efforts and further publicize those initiatives; enhance storm-resilience efforts and measures to diminish flooding and heat risks; scale up its community-facing programs and enhance the visibility of those efforts, as well as their data and results.
“Emissions reduction is a national and global effort, and much is beyond our control or even influence,” Morrill said. The county will strive to define those factors out of its control to recalibrate its efforts and expectations to “make the most of what the county can do best,” he added.
Supervisor Walter Alcorn (D-Hunter Mill) said about half of county residents do not live in places where overnight electric-vehicle charging stations are available. He encouraged OEEC officials to look for ways to expand those options, because electric vehicles are “going to be one of our biggest challenges going forward.”
