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
City of Fort Collins | Under-Resourced Buildings Engagement
under-resourced buildings engagement
Lotus worked with the City of Fort Collins to engage under-resourced building (URB) stakeholders. The core purpose of the engagement was to gather insight into specific tools, resources, and other support mechanisms that Fort Collins could deploy to support commercial and multifamily building owners and tenants in achieving greater energy efficiency. Lotus delivered a final report to the client that compiled current stakeholder challenges in pursuing energy efficiency and provided research-backed recommendations for programs that could overcome those challenges. The team successfully engaged all stakeholder types, including, but not limited to, affordable housing providers and nonprofits supporting affordable housing providers, multifamily tenants, business tenants and commercial developers, collecting critical data and program or policy recommendations specific to these building types.
The team applied community-centered principles throughout the engagement process to ensure reach with key URBs. Lotus developed a context guide that documented the factors and processes for the City to consider when developing the engagement strategy, resources, and support services to help URB communities make building improvements. The context guide served as the foundation for fair and defensible engagement throughout the project.
Lotus also developed a stakeholder map of URBs based on the City’s specific, data-driven definition. Our team spearheaded the creation of the matrix of data criteria defining and categorizing URBs. Following that, buildings were specifically identified and targeted for engagement based on their criteria score.
Lotus facilitated a number of engagements, including in-person focus groups, virtual focus groups, informational interviews, and listening sessions. All engagements were planned with a focus on bringing the community together, including providing participant stipends, food, and childcare while ensuring all materials and presentations were translated and interpreted into languages most appropriate for the audiences. Lotus conducted all Spanish written translations in-house. We contracted with the Community Language Cooperative (CLC) to provide interpretation services for in-person meetings in Spanish and for translation services in Vietnamese, Arabic, and Mandarin Chinese.
Denver International Airport | Net Zero Emissions Plan
Net Zero Emissions Plan
Lotus completed a full QA/QC analysis of all past DEN greenhouse gas inventories. This work cumulated in a deeper understanding of recent reductions and increases in emissions and the creation of a process improvement plan to identify gaps and improve data collection. Alongside this work, Lotus completed research and interviewed staff to identify gaps, opportunities, and current and future successes. The result was a list of recommended strategies (High Impact Actions) to achieve our proposed science-based targets including:
Identifying possible activities and associated emissions reductions.
Identifying potential barriers including such as estimated costs; awareness/attitudes; countervailing priorities/projects; technology/scale limitations; areas outside of DEN control (Electric supply limitations); and areas where DEN has partial control (vendors).
Identifying potential tailwinds such as policy and regulatory changes; funding Increases; grant opportunities; partnerships; and City and County of Denver initiatives.
Mission, Kansas | Community-Wide and Municipal GHG Emissions Inventories; Climate Action Task Force Facilitation
Community-Wide and Municipal GHG Emissions Inventories; Climate Action Task Force Facilitation
Lotus worked with the City of Mission, Kansas to complete the City’s 2022 community-wide and municipal operations greenhouse gas emissions inventories. Additionally, Lotus was tasked with creating inventory management plans for each inventory for the City to use in updating the inventories in future years. Lotus summarized the results of both inventories in a final report and developed a Storymap to communicate the results of the inventories to the wider community. Rachel also presented the results to the City Council and helped facilitate a community meeting aimed at gathering input from community members about sustainability efforts in the City and greater Kansas City region.
Additionally, Mission contracted with Lotus to help assist the newly hired City Administrator with updates to the greenhouse gas emissions inventories as well as to facilitate the City’s Climate Action Plan Task Force. The Task Force is charged with helping City officials to prioritize and implement actions within the City’s climate action plan. Lotus facilitated 4 meetings with the Task Force and assisted the Task Force in developing a Prioritization Matrix for the City’s climate action strategies.
City of Boulder | City of Boulder Annual GHG Emissions Inventories (Community and Municipal)
City of Boulder Annual GHG Emissions Inventories (Community and Municipal)
Lotus completed the City of Boulder’s community and municipal GHG inventories in 2012, and from 2015 through 2022. Since 2016, Lotus has been preparing the city of Boulder’s community GPC-compliant greenhouse gas emissions inventories. Lotus develops community and municipal GHG inventories in separate Excel-based tools which include information regarding data sources, documentation of calculation methodology, and easy-to-digest data visualizations communicating inventory results. Lotus also writes final reports for the community and municipal inventories for Boulder. Lotus updates the inventories each year and in 2018, started updating the municipal GHG emission inventories. In 2018, Lotus also provided the city with an infographic describing the results of the city’s 2018 GHG emissions inventory for use by the city’s residents.
The 2023 inventory work is currently underway.
New 2023 GHG inventory results published in Winter 2024 report that Boulder achieved an impressive 24% reduction in GHG emissions since 2018. The community continues to see declining GHG emissions as they make progress towards a resilient and sustainable future. The City’s GHG emissions reduction work has been highlighted by the press:: City of Boulder News, CBS News, Daily Camera Press Release.
“The Lotus team are greenhouse gas accounting wizards! The City of Boulder has been working with Lotus on our community and municipal GHG inventories for multiple years now, and we are endlessly impressed by the engaging, knowledgeable, helpful, and reliable team that always delivers on quality, accuracy, and customer service. The Lotus team is such a pleasure to work with and their passion and commitment to the work is evident, always seeking to find solutions to meet unique needs or requests as they arise.”
Grand Junction | Community GHG Inventory
Lotus developed Grand Junction’s 2018 and 2021 community GHG inventories; developed a business-as-usual forecast through 2040; completed a carbon sequestration analysis of the City’s urban forest and parklands; developed a dashboard to display the results of the emissions inventories; entered the emissions inventory data into ClearPath and CDP; and researched relevant resilience and climate adaptation metrics for the city to consider tracking. Additionally, Lotus synthesized the results of all deliverables into a final report while simultaneously providing high-level policy recommendations for the primary GHG sectors to help reduce emissions.
