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.
Lafayette, Colorado | Sustainability Report
2021 Sustainability Report
Lotus wrote Lafayette’s 2021 Sustainability Report, communicating the progress Lafayette has made on the goals laid out in the City’s 2021 Sustainability Plan. This work included informational interviews with several Lafayette community members involved in sustainability work. Additionally data to track the progress toward each goal were collected, organized, and analyzed. The final report was designed to be data visualization and graphic heavy to effectively communicate results.
YMCA of the Rockies | Sustainability Action Plan And Cost-Analysis
Sustainability Action Plan And Cost-Analysis
Lotus worked with YMCA of the Rockies to support the development of a Sustainability Action Plan that addressed the sustainability objectives of the YMCA of the Rockies strategic plan. The project actively engaged YMCA of the Rockies staff to foster a culture of sustainability within the organization and facilitate the implementation of effective climate action strategies. To support this work, Lotus conducted a comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions inventory of both campus locations, as well as emissions modeling of sustainability strategies to gain insights into YMCA of the Rockies' environmental footprint and which strategies would be most impactful. Furthermore, Lotus developed a cost evaluation of carbon emission reduction strategies for the YMCA of the Rockies. The strategies evaluated for implementation costs were also those that were modeled by the Lotus team for their anticipated carbon reduction impact. To ensure holistic implementation of the Sustainability Action Plan, Lotus worked with guest-facing staff to develop a Best Practice Guide and Lesson Plan for guest engagement in sustainability initiatives.
Finally, Lotus worked strategically with YMCA staff to bring forward a GHG reduction goal to the YMCA Board of Directors and Senior Leadership to ensure the plan and associated goal were aligned with the mission and values of YMCA of the Rockies and that the Board understood the responsibilities associated with setting a GHG target for the organization.
“Over the past year, YMCA of the Rockies has had the pleasure of working with Lotus on the creation of our comprehensive sustainability action plan. Through this process, Lotus has helped us to create a plan that aligns with our needs as a mission-based organization. Their thoughtful approach to creating a plan that encompasses all aspects of our needs has ensured that we are setting goals we feel confident in. From understanding our unique needs as a non-profit, to facilitating meaningful conversations with stakeholders of varying climate expertise, Lotus has successfully navigated through the process of developing a plan molded specifically to who we are as an organization. We are glad we chose to work with Lotus on such an important aspect of our mission.”
Alpine Bank | Annual Sustainability Audit
Annual sustainability audit
Lotus has been collaborating with Alpine Bank since 2014 to help maintain and update Alpine Bank’s Utility Tracking Database on an annual basis, calculate emissions from facilities, and normalize energy use for the weather.
Lotus performs a quality check on Alpine Bank’s energy and water use tracking spreadsheet. The tracking spreadsheet has records of monthly electricity, natural gas, and water usage at all of Alpine Bank’s locations across the state of Colorado. Once a quality check is completed, Lotus reviews the results and errors found with the project team at Alpine Bank. Finally, Lotus writes a section reviewing the emissions and activity data trends across the organization to be included in the annual report.
“Hillary was tasked with creating a new Excel-based tool that empowered Alpine Bank’s energy managers to normalize energy data for weather from 2006 moving forward. The tool, which was designed to complement our internal energy tracking spreadsheet system, not only enables us to better understand our energy usage across our 38 locations but also helps us meet ISO 14001 goals, the results of which are published in our annual Environment Report. We continue to rely on Hillary as a key technical resource for various Alpine Bank sustainability initiatives. We highly recommend Lotus’s services for comparable projects.”
Alterra Mountain Company | GHG Inventory and Sustainability Strategies
GHG Inventory and Sustainability Strategies
Lotus developed greenhouse gas inventories for the 16 resorts owned by Alterra, Canadian Mountain Holidays, Alpine Aerotech, and Alterra’s Denver headquarters. Included in this was a detailed analysis of the emissions impact of visitor travel to the resorts. Lotus partnered with McKinstry to develop specific climate action strategies and an interactive Storymap detailing the results and recommendations. Lotus is currently updating the induced travel analysis for the latest fiscal year.
“Alterra Mountain Company is one company of many unique brands, and Lotus embraced the challenge of working effectively within our organizational structure. For each destination in the Alterra portfolio, the Lotus Team developed custom greenhouse gas inventories and inventory management plans using diverse data inputs. They synthesized complex data sets into manageable workflows that could be easily explained and replicated year over year. Guided by the incredible body of work from Lotus, we have been able to prioritize data-based actions that maintain the unique character of each destination and community, advance climate action policy, and aggressively reduce emissions. We are incredibly grateful to work with the Lotus Team and highly recommend them to other clients, especially those with complex operations.”
City of Colorado Springs | Sustainable COS Plan
Lotus supported the development of Colorado Springs’ first Sustainability Action Plan. This data-driven and community-focused planning effort involved the integration of the City’s first community-wide and municipal greenhouse gas emissions inventories, the analysis of current and past planning efforts in the City and region, and the engagement of a wide network of Colorado Springs’ staff, stakeholders, and partners to identify measurable and actionable strategies and actions that the City can take to enhance sustainability across the community. Equity considerations were woven throughout the process, with specific strategies and actions focused on improving access to resources and forthcoming development opportunities in disproportionately impacted communities across Colorado Springs. The final plan will be a graphically designed document that informs the City and its partners on the work to be done over the next 5-10 years. In 2023 Lotus will be completing emissions strategy modeling to determine the greenhouse gas emissions impact of the strategies within the Sustainability Action Plan.
The Sustainability Action Plan focuses on ten sustainability elements:
Equity
Agriculture and Food Availability
Natural Environment, including ecological health, water, and air quality
Built Environment
Energy
Materials Management
Transportation
Economic Development
Health and Well-Being
Arts and Culture.
Lotus facilitated focus groups for each of the 10 elements to help draft the narrative that will be integrated into the City’s Plan.
City of Commerce City | Sustainability Action Plan
Lotus led the development of sustainability and community health recommendations that are woven into the first Sustainability Action Plan for Commerce City, Colorado. An environmental justice priority community, the City wished to ensure that recommendations were derived from community input and informed by data. Lotus facilitated a citizen-led Environmental Policy Advisory Committee to develop recommendations that will result in a healthier, more sustainable community. Additional community outreach occurred in the form of community meetings, civic engagement training, a community survey, and workshops with City staff and business and industry leaders. As part of the process, Lotus also completed the City’s first GHG inventory and business-as-usual forecast, modeling the GHG impact of strategies, identified the cost impacts of strategies and funding resources, and met with City staff to develop internal sustainability recommendations. Subcontractors on the project analyzed and made recommendations specific to air and water quality issues in Commerce City, which were woven into the full recommendations report.
In addition to completing the City’s first community-wide greenhouse gas emissions inventory as a part of the Sustainability Action Plan development, Lotus developed the City’s first municipal operations greenhouse gas emissions inventory. Lotus utilized the Local Government Operations Protocol to complete the inventory. The development of this inventory will help the City government create and monitor sustainability actions outlined in the Sustainability Action Plan. Lotus continued supporting the Commerce City Department of Energy, Equity and the Environment with facilitation of the Environmental Policy Advisory Committee and designing program collateral for one year after the plan was finalized.
“Commerce City unanimously passed a Sustainability Action Plan which was the culmination of input from multiple community and business meetings. Lotus was instrumental in facilitating the process as well as preparing technical documents such as an Air Modeling Threshold Report; Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Stormwater Management Plan. The Sustainability Action Plan was translated into Spanish for increased stakeholder engagement. Lotus has provided outstanding service””
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.”
Town of Erie | Sustainability Master Plan and community-wide GHG Inventory
Lotus worked with the Town of Erie to create the Town’s first Sustainability Master Plan. The process included in-depth research; informational interviews with staff, community members, and partner agencies; a series of advisory board meetings; stakeholder workshops; and community outreach at community events and a project open house. The result was an actionable plan for strategies that the Town and its partners can implement over the coming five years to enhance sustainability as the community grows. This Plan will serve as a decision-making tool and includes information on potential funding sources, partners, and actions that the Town can pursue in the areas of energy, recycling, transportation, and education and outreach.
Since completing the Town’s Sustainability Master Plan Lotus has also supported work on behalf of the Town to obtain grant funds for charging stations, support community engagement efforts related to waste diversion policy, and is embarking on completing the Town’s first GHG emissions inventory.
In 2022, Lotus developed the Town of Erie’s first-ever 2020 community GHG inventory and 2020 municipal GHG inventory. Lotus synthesized the results of the community and municipal inventories into a report as well as a dashboard to visually communicate the results of the inventories. Lotus also created inventory management plans for the two inventories, trained the Erie team on how to update the inventories in future years, and presented the results in person to the Town’s Sustainability Board.
“Julia Newman, Senior Associate at Lotus Engineering and Sustainability has led the Town of Erie Colorado’s effort to develop a community-focused Master Sustainability Plan. Community input along with the Town Administration and the Sustainability Advisory Board was critical in this process. Julia was masterful in her ability to facilitate a diverse group of people and opinions in public forums along with small teams sessions. Our success was due to Julia’s attention to detail and ability to help all contributors feel heard and understood.”