Prairie Village expands climate action plan to the entire community

The City of Prairie Village plans to develop a community-wide climate action plan with the goal of reducing the City’s net carbon emissions to zero by 2050.

After launching a climate action plan focused on municipal operations last year with Indianapolis-based consulting firm Keramida, Prairie Village is now ready to expand its efforts to include businesses and residents.

This comes three years after the city joined the Cities Race to Zero, an international campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in which Prairie Village pledged to meet its goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The Prairie Village City Council voted 9-3 during a committee of the whole council meeting last month to advance the more comprehensive, community-wide climate action plan for final review at a later date.

This item is scheduled for the meeting on Monday evening.

Council members Terrence Gallagher, Nick Reddell and Lori Sharp had previously voted against the motion.

What are the differences to the previous development plan?

• The Municipal Operations Climate Action Plan focused exclusively on Prairie Village’s municipal buildings and operations, and Keramida has already completed the city’s carbon footprint analysis.
• As part of this inventory, emissions from the city’s public buildings, vehicle fleet and waste were examined between 2018 and 2022.
• Keramida noted that the two biggest opportunities to reduce emissions in municipal operations would be offered by the potential construction of a new town hall and a new community center.
• A community-wide climate action plan, which the city council gave the green light to last month, will now address how to reduce emissions from residents and businesses.

This is the second work phase per contract

• Nick McCreary, vice president of sustainability and climate services at Keramida, said the company will now conduct a greenhouse gas inventory for all of Prairie Village, including businesses and households.
• A community-wide climate action plan is a prerequisite for the “Cities Race to Zero,” he said.
• There will also be public input into the plan during this process, but it is currently unclear what form citizen participation will take, McCreary said.
• To measure emissions from homes and businesses, Keramida plans to use data from Evergy and WaterOne, McCreary said.

Next Steps:

• The Prairie Village City Council is scheduled to consider final approval of the community-wide climate action plan on July 1.
• The City Council meeting begins at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 7700 Mission Road.

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