It’s been nearly a year since Denton adopted a Climate Action Plan to reach net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. The City Council-approved plan looks at communitywide emissions that could be avoided, reduced or replaced in three main areas: transportation, building and land use.
Reaching net-zero emissions means cutting carbon emissions to small residual ones that can be absorbed or stored by nature, as well as other carbon dioxide removal methods, to leave zero emissions in the atmosphere, according to the United Nations Climate Action.
Denton’s Climate Action Plan uses science-based targets to reach its goal and is structured into key areas of need, based on how much greenhouse gases are emitted.
City staff recently made reaching the goal more transparent by launching a new dashboard last week where the public can track completion of Denton’s climate action goals.
The path to get to net-zero, however, may still have a few roadblocks from local and state governments and general consumer interest.
At the council’s July 15 meeting, staff gave an update about the plan’s public dashboard and scorecard, which now tracks the climate plan’s alignment with other master plans, such as the Denton 2040 Comprehensive Land Use Plan, the Denton 2022 Mobility Plan and the Water Conservation Plan.
It also shows “all the good work the city’s already doing in advance of, and in the past of, continuation of the Climate Action Plan,” Michael Gange, the city’s director of environmental services and sustainability, told council members.
As of Tuesday, according to the public dashboard, the city is currently on track with 30.9% of transportation improvements, 37.8% in building efficiency and 48.5% of land-use enhancements to reach the goals of the Climate Action Plan.
“The dashboards, since we’ve been implementing them across the different departments, have been an excellent tool,” council member Brian Beck told Gange and other council members. “I really appreciate them. I do find it really informative when department heads of all flavors give us trends, and so like when you were showing us just the one rebate trend, we can see those trend lines.
“Those are nice because it’s nice to project them out to our anticipated zero goals.”
Last week, Gange highlighted several accomplishments the city had made in 2024, including a million-dollar investment in the GreenSense energy efficiency and rebate program; a 24% increase in solid waste diversion, which extends the life of the city landfill; and an increase in rooftop solar generation to 3.2 megawatts from April 2023.
Gange said Denton is one of five cities in the state to receive the gold standard from SolSmart, a national program that helps cities, counties and other regional organizations become solar energy leaders.
“We were still 100% renewable energy by DME, which is a huge lift,” Gange told council members. “A lot of cities are only doing that for their municipal complexes or portions of their city. We’re doing it for all of our customers.”
Denton isn’t producing renewable energy within city limits. Instead, Denton Municipal Electric is purchasing renewable credits, which means renewable energy was used from elsewhere in Texas to load the state’s electric grid.
Purchasing renewable credits allows cities to make the claim that they are using renewable energy without having to produce it via solar panels or wind turbines, for example, for local residents to consume.
Last month, the City Council directed DME to pursue exploring building or purchasing another natural gas-fired power plant to increase energy production as Denton grows. Critics have said that moving forward with a new plant would go against Denton’s Climate Action Plan.
At the July 15 council meeting, Mayor Gerard Hudspeth said he didn’t see 100% renewables as one of the goals in the Climate Action Plan. He requested a side-by-side comparison of the cost to maintain the renewable distinction versus lower electric rates.
“I just want to see what it looks like from a residential and a commercial component, because the commercial people that I’ve talked to are worked up,” Hudspeth said. “I’ve been trying to raise awareness on purpose because not one presentation do we have a commercial representative that comes in and talks to us. It is critical to have that voice at the table because you have a Peterbilt [facility] versus a 2,000-square-foot home. If we’re only listening to the 2,000-square-foot home on average folks and ignoring several, several thousand square feet, I think we do them a disservice.”
Gange replied that by offering 100% renewable energy, the city is “contributing to our overall climate action goal of reducing those emissions.”
To help reduce emissions on the municipal side, the city has cut carbon emissions produced by its fleet by adding 11 electric vehicles, six electric bikes for Denton police, one electric fire engine for the Denton Fire Department and electric vehicle options for the light-duty fleet.
On the community side, the city added 4.2 miles of trails, repaired almost 2 miles of sidewalks and issued 67 e-bike rebates. Gange said 57% of Denton residents live within a 10-minute walk from a city park.
The city is also working to decrease vehicle trips, encouraging people to use other forms of transportation, like buses, GoZone or the A-train.
In addition, utility usage has decreased in Denton: 5% per customer in electric, 1% communitywide in natural gas and 7% communitywide in water, according to the July 15 presentation.
The number of residents using the city’s GreenSense rebates also increased. Those increases led to 769 rebates in fiscal year 2023-24 issued to residents, including a 275% increase in HVAC rebates, a 54% increase in windows rebates and a 243% increase in insulation rebates.
GreenSense is a program DME uses to reward customers who perform qualifying energy efficiency and conservation improvements. It aims to reduce energy demand and consumption by promoting conservation and helping reduce the peak load of the city’s electric system, according to DME’s GreenSense brochure.
Beck said the program also seeks to increase adoption of electric engines instead of internal combustion ones by offering lawn mower and leaf blower rebates.
The program is divided into several categories: residential rebates, multifamily rebates, solar rebates and standard offer incentive.
In October, the council voted 4-3 to lower the solar panel rebate from 10.65 cents per kilowatt-hour to 3.79 cents per kWh.
“So right now we’re at the top tier on how much we’re investing in that regard,” Gange said. “I think it’s a great commitment. Whether it’s enough or not, I can’t say yet. We need to look — now that we’re two years into our new rebate structure — to see if we can tweak some of the rebates and get more customers in and stretch the money even further.”
Council member Brandon Chase McGee mentioned that the Committee for the Environment has been having tough conversations about running out of money. McGee wondered that if overall revenue from DME continues to increase, could the body look at using it to increase funding for GreenSense?
City Manager Sara Hensley, however, cautioned against it and pointed out that the city needs to pay down the electric utility’s debt, which Hensley called “quite high” due to the severe winter storm from February 2021.
“We need to be very careful in how we spend our money from the utility because it is on [the Legislature’s] radar that they feel like we are abusing the money from utilities to put into a general fund program or others,” Hensley warned.
On Monday, Beck said DME spent not only $120 million during the February 2021 storm, in part because they didn’t winterize the gas plant, but also another $30 million in summer 2023 because DME had underpurchased power due to the extreme variations of climate change.
“This is what we are doing to ourselves if we don’t follow our Climate Action Plan,” Beck said. “It isn’t easy. It is hard.”