Urban Villages and APARIUM Hotel Group | Populus Hotel GHG Emissions Dashboard
Populus Hotel GHG Emissions Dashboard
Lotus worked with Urban Villages and the APARIUM Hotel Group to create a public greenhouse gas emissions tracking dashboard in Microsoft PowerBI for the Populus Hotel. The dashboard tracks real and predicted greenhouse gas emissions and offset activities from the construction and operations of the hotel over time. The dashboard includes functionality that allows for easy data updates, transparency for specific operations (waste diversion, water, energy, etc.), and tracks whether Populus has achieved their carbon positive goal. Lotus also developed back-end calculations for the quantification of greenhouse gas emissions and documenting methods and assumptions for all calculations in a user guide.
preview of the Populus Hotel GHG Emissions Dashboard
Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) | Strong Communities Grant Program Impact Evaluation
Strong Communities Grant Program Impact Evaluation
Lotus, in partnership with Economic Planning Systems (EPS) is completing an analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of the Strong Communities Grant Program. The Strong Communities Grant Program incentivizes the adoption of policies that promote affordable housing and sustainable development. Lotus and EPS are developing a methodology and an analysis tool that assesses the environmental and economic impacts of the land use best practices that are supported by the program. The tool will provide insight into how these best practices can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, vehicle miles traveled, household transportation costs, local government and infrastructure costs. Additionally it will quantify how best practices can increase affordable housing and influence housing costs. Understanding these impacts will allow grantees to communicate the benefits of the land use best practices and provide other communities with insight into how they could benefit from implementing these practices.
In addition to the methodology and tool, Lotus and EPS will create individualized reports summarizing results of the analysis for each grantee. Lotus and EPS will also provide case studies of a sample of projects to enable DOLA to continue to communicate the benefits of the program and the included best practices.
Birmingham, Alabama | Sustainability Action Plan
Sustainability Action Plan
Lotus, alongside Hummingbird, are partnering to produce a Sustainability Plan that will promote efforts to adopt best practices that address equity, social justice, environmental justice, air quality, soil contamination, water quality and efficiency, water quantity, energy and resource use, placemaking and equitable land use, and community health. The plan will be grounded in sustainability that balances the triple bottom line of economic, social and environmental aspects
The work involves three tasks: 1) an inventory of existing conditions (socio-economic and energy efficiency and resource management inventories); 2) the development of a sustainability action plan and; 3) the development of tools to monitor progress and evaluate results of implementing the action plan.
All this work will be supported by an in-depth engagement plan including facilitating a Steering and Implementation Team composed of internal City stakeholders and external community stakeholders and a significant level of public outreach including town hall–style meetings, focus groups, and a website set up for public comment.
Commerce City, Colorado | Climate Action Grants Consultant
Climate Action Grants Consultant
In 2024, Lotus and One Small Step (OSS) worked with the City of Commerce City (C3) to support their sustainability-focused grant writing projects. Lotus has worked with C3 in the past to create their Sustainability Action Plan and support their Environmental Policy Advisory Committee. The grant writing services are a rewarding extension of this multi-year partnership, as we work to fund their sustainability goals. We work collaboratively with the city’s grants coordinator to identify opportunities aligned with the city’s goals and drive applications to completion. Lotus and OSS have helped to coordinate stakeholders to create coalitions that will improve the competitiveness of the application. Our grant writing team has also created streamlined processes to expedite the grant writing processes and has helped to create a prioritization methodology to identify strategies that will win funding. To date, we have applied for the EPA Community Change Grant, CDPHE Environmental Justice Grant, and Great Outdoors Colorado Community Impact Grant.
Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) | Climate Pollution Reduction Grant
Climate Pollution Reduction Grant
DRCOG was awarded a $1 million Climate Pollution Reduction Grant from the Environmental Protection Agency and hired Lotus as the sole contractor to fulfill the requirements of the grant including a Priority Climate Action Plan and Comprehensive Climate Action Plan. To date Lotus has led and facilitated multiple community and stakeholder engagements, facilitated an equity subcommittee, and completed 12 separate county-level GHG inventories for the region. The PCAP also included strategy GHG emissions reductions and cost modeling and an all-day implementation details workshop that brought together representatives from communities all across the 12 county region to plan out implementation details for the 8 PCAP strategies. Work is now underway for the Comprehensive Climate Action Plan, which will include strategies for all sectors of the GHG emissions inventory, as well as additional cost and GHG modeling and stakeholder and community engagement.
Deer Valley Resort | Climate Action Plan
Climate Action Plan
Lotus partnered with Deer Valley Resort to develop a climate action plan for their resort operations. The Deer Valley Climate Action Plan will help the resort address their operational carbon footprint, prioritize implementation strategies, and clearly communicate their climate action commitments to their visitors and staff. Lotus’s approach walked the client through the crafting of a set of prioritization metrics through which the resort can assess its next steps: from proactively addressing climate risks to tackling critical opportunities in their infrastructure to empowering staff to solve problems.
Lotus’s expertise in adapting climate plans to fit a specific culture, environment, and circumstance shines in this resort climate action plan. The scope of work includes workshops with the Senior Leadership Team, focus groups and informational interviews with staff, a site visit to meet with all resort departments, a business-as-usual emissions forecast, climate adaptation and mitigation strategies, and a designed climate action plan document.
Colorado Energy Office | Energy Code Board
Lotus contracted with the Colorado Energy Office (CEO) to facilitate the State’s Energy Code Board to create a Model Electric and Solar Ready code for the State of Colorado. A House Bill passed in the State’s legislature in 2022 requiring the Energy Office to convene an Energy Code Board with diverse representatives from across the state to develop a model code to be the new state minimum code in conjunction with the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code.
Lotus managed the code development process and facilitated the Energy Code Board (board), and an executive committee through a series of 18 meetings to discuss, deliberate, and finalize each code element within the State’s model code. Lotus conducted research on existing electric-ready, solar-ready, and EV-ready codes in the State, drafted the code elements for board review, facilitated an ongoing public engagement process that culminated in a live public comment session, and wrote the final Model code for the State based on the outputs of the facilitated process. Cost-effectiveness was a critical component of the readiness code discussions and Lotus pulled and summarized reports for the board to advance their understanding of the upfront and retrofit costs for electrification, EV charging, and solar installations. Finally, Lotus executed a voting process for all board members that was efficient and transparent to the public and produced the final code package for the State.
Lotus wrote the State’s Model Electric and Solar Ready Code, which is an immediately adoptable code standard for Colorado communities. In addition, Lotus developed an explanatory code package to help guide communities through the review and adoption of the code, and a final code report to provide an overview of the process and key elements of the Model code. Throughout the process, Lotus maintained strict adherence to the Colorado Open Records Act as well as, timeline and procedural requirements mandated by the House Bill.
“I truly can’t find the words to express how much I appreciate the work you all have put into this project over the past several months. I know that there have been a number of late nights and weekends spent on this project (as well as just long days in general!) and I want you to know how much it meant to me, and CEO broadly, knowing I had all of you that I could trust to get everything done well and on time while I was trying to juggle what felt like a million other things. I can’t tell you how many compliments I received from Board members, other CEO and agency staff, and members of the public on the incredible job you guys did managing this wild process and keeping the Board on track to meet its goals and deadlines. Seriously, it was a lot. So I just wanted to say thank you again for everything, and I look forward to getting everything done in the coming couple of months! This code is a pretty monumental step forward for Colorado and will have a lasting impact that we can all be very proud of. ”
Georgia Tech | Climate Action and Sustainability Projects
The Offices of Sustainability and Innovation at Georgia Tech contracted with Lotus to review, reorganize, and rewrite their existing sustainability action plan. Lotus synthesized the existing work to identify opportunities to increase clarity and streamline the narratives, goals, and strategies while ensuring the plan connects seamlessly with Georgia Tech’s overall guiding strategic plan. Through this review process, Lotus produced a revamped and designed plan that effectively communicates Georgia Tech’s sustainability goals and forthcoming work to internal and external stakeholders.
The Georgia Tech Sustainability Team also contracted Lotus to lead the creation of a Climate Action Plan. Lotus reviewed all materials to consolidate them into one plan that connects focus areas with the existing strategic plans through the narrative, as well as designing a plan that would work in conjunction with the Sustainability Next Plan. As part of this plan, Lotus developed a business-as-usual (BAU) forecast through 2050 to show projected emission changes that are relevant to the Georgia Tech campus and population. The BAU forecast was then used to model the impacts from a list of key GHG reduction strategies.
Lotus also completed a QA/QC of Georgia Tech’s greenhouse gas inventories going back to 2008. After this work was completed, Lotus created a new GHG inventory template for the FY2022 inventory that will be used in future years.
The Offices of Sustainability and Innovation at Georgia Tech also contracted with Lotus to create a Tableau dashboard that mimics the full functionality of the Impact Summary tab of the GHG modeling Excel tool developed for their Climate Action Plan. This dashboard includes the ability to turn strategies on and off and select key parameters for each strategy such as implementation dates and target values. Lotus created individual parameters for each strategy that allows users to adjust modeled emissions with full flexibility.
“The creation of this our university strategic sustainability plan was presented with many challenges including a wide variety of stakeholders, difficult timelines, and working within state institutional regulations. The team at Lotus stepped up to each challenge and worked with our needs to create a beautiful and engaging document. We are truly proud to be able to demonstrate our commitment to sustainability efforts by sharing our plan with the campus community and with the world.”