Redmond sustainability staff on Tuesday presented a focused, five-year refresh of the city’s Environmental Sustainability Action Plan (ESAP), outlining draft strategies and actions to reduce greenhouse gases and build climate resilience and asking the City Council for feedback before a public draft is released next month.

Sustainability Program Manager Jenny Liebeck said the update narrows the plan to actions the city can implement over five years while keeping its longer-term 2050 goals in view. “These will be our climate and sustainability priorities for the next 5 years and keep us on track towards our 2030 2,050 greenhouse gas reduction goals,” Liebeck said.

Why it matters: The ESAP guides city programs that touch energy, buildings, transportation, waste and natural systems; staff said buildings account for about 70% of the city’s emissions and transportation is the second-largest source. The council’s Climate Emergency Declaration has also been integrated into the city actions identified in the draft.

Key proposals and near-term timeline
- Focus the plan around five “big moves” and 10 strategies that emphasize measurable greenhouse gas reductions and resilience over a five-year implementation window; staff said a public draft will be published next month with a target City Council adoption on Dec. 2 and an optional study session on Oct. 28.
- Buildings: scale technical assistance and incentives for existing buildings, expand the green building program, help owners comply with state clean building performance requirements, and coordinate with Puget Sound Energy on grid resilience.
- Transportation: increase walking, biking and transit use through the transportation master plan and Redmond 2050 land-use changes; expand EV infrastructure with emphasis on multifamily housing and parking-management aligned with the transportation master plan.
- Waste and materials: expand composting and recycling under the new Recology contract, pilot reusable/durable food-service programs, and support state extended producer responsibility (EPR) and organics management rulemaking.
- Community and natural-systems resilience: develop a water-resilience strategy and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to improve leak detection and water-use data, set tree-canopy protection/expansion goals, update floodplain maps, and develop a community wildfire protection plan.

Council questions and staff commitments
- Quantifying climate costs: Council Member Fields asked whether staff can quantify the city-level costs of climate impacts such as wildfire, drought and flooding so stakeholders can compare those costs with mitigation efforts. Liebeck said staff will add that request to the ESAP issues matrix and look for regional data to support a cost analysis. “There is a cost to extreme weather. There's a cost to droughts or flooding,” Council Member Fields said in explaining the request.
- Water supply and AMI: Council Member Stewart and others asked how water-supply issues fit in the five big moves. Liebeck said two proposed 5-year actions specifically address water resilience: a comprehensive water-resilience strategy and deployment of AMI meters to provide data and leak detection. She described AMI as a significant capital expense and said the five-year focus is on building the data and strategy to drive later investments. Council Member Stewart offered to pursue funding for an accelerated water-supply study.
- Electrification and HOAs: Council Vice President Forsyth raised a legislative barrier that can prevent multifamily and HOA properties from installing charging and asked whether the council should add an extension of the expiring RCW to its legislative agenda. Forsyth said, “there's RCW that expires 01/01/2026 that, prevents homeowners associations from having, like I say in multifamily, residential from installing.” Staff said they would track policy gaps and potential legislative options.
- E-bike rebates and funding: staff said the city is a co-applicant on a Puget Sound Energy grant (Bellevue leading) for a bike rebate program similar to a state program and expects to hear by year’s end; staff will follow up with details and add the item to the issues matrix.
- Net-zero city operations by 2030: asked whether the ESAP refresh on the table is sufficient to meet the city’s net-zero target for municipal operations, Liebeck said it is unlikely that the five-year package alone will achieve net zero by 2030 because decarbonizing city facilities would require major capital investments beyond the near-term action set.

Implementation notes and equity framing
Staff emphasized that equity is being integrated as a foundational value guiding implementation of each action rather than listed as a separate stand-alone action. The draft plan will include metrics for each big move, implementation details and an issues matrix summarizing council and community feedback. Staff said they will maintain an issues matrix to document and track council input and community comments through draft publication.

Next steps: staff will publish a draft plan for public comment next month, schedule an optional study session with council on Oct. 28, and return to council with a final draft for adoption on Dec. 2. Public comments and council feedback will be folded into the strategy and action matrix before publication.

The city’s presentation materials and the ESAP attachment C (community engagement summary) are available in the meeting packet for more detail.