Miami plans to slash carbon emissions: ‘How’ is still up in the air

Miami has plans to slash carbon emissions, and those plans could change the way its residents get around town, cook their food and cool their homes — soon.

Miami is committed to going carbon neutral by 2050, and now the city has identified a halfway mark: reducing greenhouse gas emission by 60% by 2035.

Getting there will require massive changes in a city where most people couldn’t imagine getting around without using a car. Changes like relying completely on renewable energy, eliminating natural gas hookups in all new construction and switching a third of all the cars in the city to electric vehicles. All within the next 14 years.

How — exactly — the city can convince its residents to make these often expensive switches to greener technology is still up in the air.

The phrase “ambitious but achievable” came up often in the Tuesday announcement of the city’s new interim goal, announced a year after the city originally committed to reducing its carbon emissions (the cause of climate change) to zero by 2050.

“Greenhouse gases are the greatest risk to the city of Miami and the entire globe,” said Alan Dodd, the city’s chief resilience officer. “I think the city can absolutely achieve the interim goal, however, it does require people to make choices and to change some ways of doing business.”

The city wants residents’ feedback on what kind of changes they would be willing to put up with, like more solar on city buildings, and which ones they wouldn’t. It’s hosting a series of meetings next week to find out.

Zelalem Adefris, a member of the Miami Climate Alliance, said she was encouraged by the city’s new focus on mitigating climate change rather than simply adapting to it with higher seawalls and more pumps.

“The opportunity to provide a lot of multiple benefits for our community really lies in mitigation,” she said.

She pointed to weatherization programs, which help homeowners plug gaps in leaky windows and upgrade inefficient air conditioners, as an example. Helping homeowners conserve electricity not only reduces emissions but also lowers power bills.

The 60% reduction figure would apply to the city’s 2018 levels of greenhouse gas emissions — about 3.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That includes all cars that travel through the city and the energy used by every home and office within city limits.

Drastically slashing emissions is a tall order, and the biggest piece of that puzzle is the electric grid. Miami’s plan to get to a 60% reduction requires a switch to 100% renewable energy.

In 2018, Miami received 24% of its energy from renewable sources. Most of that was from the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station, with only 1.8% from solar. The rest of the energy mostly comes from natural gas.

Florida Power and

Light, which provides power for most of the state, only plans on increasing that solar figure to 16% by 2030, according to figures provided to the city.

To get from 16% to 100%, the city is relying on President Joe Biden to enforce his executive order requiring a “carbon pollution-free electricity sector” by 2035. The administration has not released details on how to plans to make that happen.

If the city receives all of its energy from renewable sources by 2035, the work falls to eliminating natural gas and shifting the way people get around, said Alissa Farina, Miami’s resilience programs manager.

Natural gas makes up a majority of the state’s power grid, but it’s also used for water heaters and stoves. To meet its goal, the city has to change laws to require that all new construction use electricity to power those devices, not natural gas. Miami would also have to ensure that about 40% of all buildings in the city are retrofitted to convert those natural gas systems to electricity.

Farina sees the transportation side of the puzzle as the most challenging, especially since it makes up about 43% of the city’s total emissions.

Miami identified two changes to transportation by 2035: 36% of all cars in the city would have to be electric and 15% of people that use cars would have to switch to options like public transportation or biking for their daily commute.

The city can do some things independently, like switching its own fleet of publicly owned cars to electric, along with trolleys and buses, but the rest of that change will be tougher.

“There’s no direct way we can do that. It requires behavioral change,” Farina said. “We’re going to do what we can. We’re going to try and work as collaboratively as possible.”

Miami plans to release a draft climate action plan on April 22, Earth Day.

Sunday, the Florida Department of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard reported 5,539 new cases and 126 total deaths in the state, continuing trends for each number.

Current hospitalizations continued to decrease, a sign of progress against COVID or a factor of the state losing 100 to 200 people per day or a combination of the two. Positive test rates hopped up a bit in the state and MiamiDade, Broward and Palm Beach.

For the novel coronavirus pandemic, Florida has had 1,909,221 total cases, 30,852 resident deaths and 31,406 total deaths.

The state’s positive test rate Saturday was 6.40%, according to the daily COVID-19 report, after four consecutive days under 6.0%.

COVID VACCINES IN FLORIDA AND SOUTH FLORIDA

Florida: The state’s vaccination report says another 12,149 have received their second COVID vaccine dose, meaning 1,337,431 people are halfway through the vaccine and 1,680,230 are fully vaccinated.

Miami-Dade County: The state reported 1,145 people completed their vaccinations, meaning 179,447 in Miami-Dade have received both vaccination shots.

Broward: Another 203 people completed their vaccinations, putting Broward’s completed vaccine total at 148,919.

Palm Beach: After 131 people completed their vaccine treatment, 157,746 in Palm Beach County have received both shots.

Monroe: Ten people completed their vaccine shot treatment. Overall, 6,588 have done so.

CONFIRMED COVID-19 CASES IN

SOUTH FLORIDA

Miami-Dade County reported 1,501 more people who tested positive and seven more COVID-19 deaths, putting its pandemic totals at 410,717 cases and 5,429 deaths.

The positive test rate on Saturday was 7.91%, according to the county-bycounty breakdown, the highest in at least two weeks.

Broward County

reported another 756 cases and 16 deaths, moving its totals to 194,992 cases and 2,390 deaths.

The positive test rate was 6.73% on Saturday, almost exactly the average daily rate for the week (6.71%).

Palm Beach County reported 413 new cases (120,735 for the pandemic) and two deaths (2,457).

Saturday’s positive rate was 6.04%, the third consecutive day of the rate edging upward.

Monroe County reported 35 new cases and zero deaths. Pandemic totals in the Keys are 5,857 cases and 46 deaths.

CURRENT HOSPITALIZATIONS

Government officials use current hospitalizations to decide the next action in dealing with the pandemic. On the state level, this has been steadily falling over the last month.

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration reports the number of patients hospitalized statewide with a “primary diagnosis of COVID.” The data, which is updated at least every hour, does not distinguish between the number of COVID-19 patients in hospital intensive care units and those in acute-care beds, which require less attention from nurses.

As of 12:31 p.m Sunday, the agency said there were 3,682 people hospitalized, a 41-person drop from 11:30 a.m. Saturday and a huge plunge of 474 from last Sunday.

South Florida’s counties generally dropped: MiamiDade up 18 to 602; Broward, down 21 to 551;

Palm Beach, down 17 to 251; and Monroe, down one to three.