Boulder, Colorado is making moves to support carbon removal as a city. Brett KenCairn, the City of Boulder's senior policy advisor for climate & resilience, and director of the Urban Drawdown Initiative, comes on the show to explain what is happening on the front range.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I’m Ross Kenyon. I’m lead strategist with the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me Brett Kinkaren, the City of Boulder Senior Policy Advisor for Climate and Resilience and the Director of the Urban Drawdown Initiative. Thanks for being here, Brett.
Brett KenCairn: My pleasure.
Ross Kenyon: Well, I asked you to be here because I read a Fast Company article that you wrote about the topic we’re about to discuss. The article is called How Boulder is Creating a Path for Cities to Scale Up Carbon Sequestration. Great evocative title. So what exactly is happening in Boulder, Colorado with regard to carbon removal?
Brett KenCairn: Ross, as you know, Boulder has been in the climate action game for quite a while. We’re a part of that early cohort of cities that recognized the lack of national leadership in the last decade and formed a climate action plan. So, as we’ve watched the science evolve around this, we have seen this emerging issue there. And which was actually basically summarized in the IPCC report that came out last October, which said that while we have to keep doing emissions reduction at this massive level, it’s not going to be enough. And unless we can start pulling a huge amount of carbon out of the atmosphere, We’re not going to be able to stabilize climate.
So a couple of years ago, actually, the city and the county both started parallel but slightly different efforts to look at our agricultural land holdings as areas where we... We’ve been working on that sort of working lands sort of approach to carbon drawdown for these last couple of years. But in the last year or so, it’s And so this work is really intended to build out those roles for cities.
Ross Kenyon: I think most people hear something like this and they’re used to hearing about big corporations or national governments talking about what they can do to move the needle on climate. But I imagine that some people might be skeptical that cities have the same amount of scale necessary to do much good in this regard. Are they missing something?
Brett KenCairn: Well, I think we need to think about where we are in the cycle of solution development. And so I’ll use an example around electrification. We were working hard on how we were going to decarbonize our energy system, and we started to realize that we were making great progress around the electricity side, but there was this big unanswered question of how we were going to get off natural gas, especially in the residential sector. We as a city launched an initiative to start scoping and analyzing strategies and solution sets for residential electrification.
That set of solutions got scaled up to a whole series of cities who were then working on it and adapting and innovating those solutions. Now we have a national network of cities that are leading on how to So these cities really acted as this kind of ground of innovation on which then we start to think about the more systems that are going to happen. We’re very much in that same sort of space now in carbon drawdown where unfortunately or fortunately, I don’t know which one, depends on which sector or field you’re in, but there’s a lot of uncertainty about what the I’m really talking about natural climate solutions here.
So anyway, there’s just this huge need for essentially research and development. And since cities, many cities at least, have a big commitment in their climate action plans, we need those solutions to be able to achieve our objectives.
Ross Kenyon: I think that’s a good point. And I asked in a little bit of a provocative way. But when I think about what cities can do to lead on environmental issues and climate issues, I think of, I’m pretty sure this is James Madison and maybe it’s from the Federalist Papers, but he called states laboratories up. And this is a chance for cities at a smaller scale to try things out that can maybe be bumped up to greater scales at the county, at the state, and maybe even at the federal level too.
This is a way of trying things out without betting the farm on it, so to speak.
Brett KenCairn: No, that’s exactly right. Just to use that electrification example again. So what we realized in Boulder was to do even half the 40,000 single family residences here and fully electrify them. We’re going to say that all households all across the country are going to suddenly have to cough up that kind of money. If we, however, then see that the things that we’ve learned and the solutions that we’ve developed and we put them into the context of a utility and compelling that utility to do it, but be able to actually spread those costs over 20 or 30 years, associate the obligation to the allowance.
So I think, again, the same kind of thing I see happening. We have very interesting conversations going on in the state of Colorado across this very diverse set of stakeholders from the cattle and corn growers to the local environmental organizations around how do we handle soils and soil health and what role do soils have in carbon drawdown, which ultimately might be able to move towards state policy. But at this point, we need a lot more innovation locally to see what works before we can start to move that policy discussion.
Ross Kenyon: That makes sense to me. One of the things I thought was very interesting in your article is the focus on land and how cities are actually surprisingly large landowners. Maybe it’s not that surprising to you, listener, but I don’t really think of cities in that way. What can be done with Boulder’s lands that can help in this way?
Brett KenCairn: This is a really important question, Ross. And I guess if I were just looking at this from the outside and I hadn’t been spending time with it, I would say, yeah, that’s really nice that you’re talking about cities and urban landscapes and carbon drawdown. But come on, let’s get realistic. If I really want to draw down thousands to millions of tonnes of carbon, I’m not going to do it in the relatively small ecological footprint of a city. I think that sort of approach, though, misses a few things. First of all, it’s a classically reductionist approach.
If now suddenly the concern is carbon drawdown, then the only things that we’re going to consider are the things that draw down the most carbon. Well, but the point I think, or the response that I would offer is that the value of a ton of carbons removed isn’t necessarily the same, at least from a whole series of other benefits between, say, a timber plantation versus an urban landscape. So let me offer an example. If in the urban context we can recarbonize by drawdown efforts that urban landscape and we do it in a strategic way, not only do we just bring down carbon, but we can accelerate the establishment of urban forests.
Which, as people may know, we desperately need to be creating more shade in cities to prepare for the urban heat island effects that we’re going to see because of climate change. So we can re-establish canopy much more quickly because of these richer, more productive soils. We can also, because there’s a relationship between carbon and water, hold more water in those soils, which actually helps to cool cities. But it also is incredibly important given the storm surges that we’re going to get with climate change. It also enables us to do soil remediation, enables us to grow more bio nutrient dense food.
So there’s this whole range of other benefits that stack into the value of that ton of carbon that we’ve sequestered in that urban landscape. So I would argue that if we were actually going to monetize that ton of carbon, That urban ton of carbon done correctly is worth significantly more, 10, maybe even 100 times more than that ton of carbon that we just sequestered in a forest somewhere. So I’m just saying there’s that. And then as you mentioned, Ross, we often underestimate... So the city of Boulder started buying open space lands back in the 70s.
And we have a pretty healthy stock of those lands, about 45,000 acres outside our urban boundary. About 20,000 of that’s in ag. So that’s great. But when we actually did the analysis of the arable land that’s inside the boundary of the city, now a lot of this is privately owned, but it’s 30,000 acres. So there’s a lot of land that’s being watered that has potential for a whole series of benefits that we just haven’t thought about in that kind of way.
Ross Kenyon: There certainly is a lot of opportunity. And how does this influence the way in which you’re thinking about co-creating a drawdown economy in Colorado, in Boulder? I imagine it sounds like you’re using systems thinking, you’re avoiding reductionist ways of analyzing this problem strictly in terms of carbon. What else are you thinking about and how else might cities be looking at the carbon problem?
Brett KenCairn: Yeah, thank you. The land management aspect is one of what we have identified as five entry points for cities into this carbon drawdown effort. So again, first one is action. And that could be parkland, could be urban right-of-ways, could be urban municipally owned open spaces. A second is that cities have a lot of material resources that are potentially useful in sequestration. So organic material. So the great work of the marine carbon farming efforts and so on, where they’ve shown that if you can take that organic material, turn it into a high productivity compost and get that compost into certain applications, you dramatically accelerate the capacity of that material.
So soil systems, especially to sequester carbon. So cities also have water, by the way. So organics and water, so the materials that cities have, that’s the second. A third is in money. Cities obviously are a concentration of capital. We have procurement systems, both So it’s basically, by the way, also making the possibility So that’s the third is financial. The fourth is policy. And this is a really interesting one. And we’re seeing it again as I mentioned. I mentioned in Colorado where cities may not have seen themselves as having that many intersections with rural constituencies around policy, but certainly water has been one of those places.
But it turns out soil is another. So we might find ways that there are Alignments of interests often across quite different political geographies between cities and rural areas around soil. And then the last one is around communications and engagement. There’s a whole level of literacy and awareness and sort of policy support that we need in our broader populace. And cities can often be an important sort of mechanism of education that way.
Ross Kenyon: Well, that’s a lot to think about. Definitely a lot of opportunity there. Hopefully you have a team there. It isn’t just you, Brett. It’s a lot of stuff you’re working on.
Brett KenCairn: Well, yeah. I think as somebody was saying to me earlier today, systems change happens through collaboration. It doesn’t really usually happen in other ways. And so I’m just a part of a whole series of networks. Colleagues that are working on this in different aspects. And so colleagues at the USDA that are working on a kind of new unified soil sampling and data aggregation system. Colleagues that are working at Trust for Public Land. And remarkable efforts like in Cleveland, the Riddall Green Partnership, this African-American urban ag group that’s now seeing themselves as actually the vanguard of a workforce to do this urban.
My role, and I think this is common with many folks and probably a lot of your listeners, is to try to be a sort of connecting point and sort of a resource developer to support a lot of these different pieces and then help link them together. Two, I think, networks I would call out in particular, the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, a network now of over 215 cities in North America that are bringing staff from all those different sustainability wings in those cities together to work on these kinds of issues. And then internationally, the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance is doing amazing work around the world with sort of leading innovation with cities around this type of work.
So I don’t feel in any way alone.
Ross Kenyon: It’s mostly just Yeah, there is a lot of activity, it seems. And then you also mentioned the Urban Drawdown Initiative, where you are the director. What exactly is happening there? And I imagine other cities are probably also thinking about sequestration and carbon removal in similar ways as yourself.
Brett KenCairn: Yeah, that’s exactly right. The Urban Drawdown initiative sort of emerged because it was clear that there were a lot of cities that are starting to think about this. It’s starting to show up in the new generations of climate action plans that are starting. And so that’s why this framework of five entry points. So it’s kind of a starting point. We’ve stood up a new sort of website that can be a repository of information for all these different pieces. You can find it at urbandrawdown. solutions. So it’s really about how we start to organize and resource a Do the innovation that they can do based on their particular circumstances and then keep knitting that together into a larger body of knowledge and action that gets to the point where it’s ready to start influencing systems.
Ross Kenyon: That’s great. If people wanted to follow what you’re doing, what the city of Boulder is doing, beyond what you’ve just mentioned with the Urban Drawdown Initiative, what might be a good way for them to do so?
Brett KenCairn: Yeah, two things I would mention. One is that there is a place on the urbandrawdown. solutions website to sign up and get into a distribution. In terms of boulders, we’re actually right in the midst of launching a whole new climate action project. Planning initiative with our community that I think people would find very interesting in terms of its breadth, because it’s not just about carbon drawdown and the typical energy systems change. We’re looking at financial systems change, land use, equity, and resilience. That can be found at the Boulder, Colorado website, but you could just pull up Boulder, Colorado and Climate Mobilization Action Plan.
And that’s where you’ll find this kind of very rich body of information about that effort as well.
Ross Kenyon: Great. I will put those links in the show notes. I will also put the original Fast Company link in there too. Well, thanks for being here with us, Brett.
Brett KenCairn: My pleasure, Ross. And thanks for the great work that you folks at Nori are doing. I just so appreciate your creating these platforms for disseminating this information. It’s just a way I’ve noticed that your whole initiative has always been kind of raising the whole community up at the same time. Thank you.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, thanks. I’m glad you like that. Of course, we’re all in this together. It’s a surprisingly small space, and it doesn’t make sense for us to be competitive in that sort of way. So I’m always happy to highlight what others are doing in this space. It isn’t just Nori. If you’re listening, hopefully you know that and have internalized that. Climate change is a team sport, as Christoph likes to say. Well, thank you for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts or on Stitcher.
And thank you so much for listening.
