After two consecutive weeks without a meeting, Ames City Council will dive into a packed agenda tonight and will look to award a contract for its much-anticipated greenhouse gas inventory study.
In March, council approved plans to conduct a greenhouse gas inventory study into their fiscal year 2019-2020 budget, addressing a task in their list of long-range sustainability goals to evaluate the city’s greenhouse gas impact and identify solution to reduce it.
According to city documents, The Community Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory, Forecasting, and Recommendations Report is expected to take six months to complete, and will cost $24,960, funded through Council’s contingency for this project.
The schematic of the greenhouse gas inventory is a forecast projections related to impacts of status quo actions, creating an Ames-specific carbon emissions baseline and identifying opportunities for the city to reduce carbon emissions.
Discussion in March and city staff said that the inventory study is a first-step toward the development of climate-action plan in Ames, an effort that has been heavily-petitioned for by Ames’ environmentalist and student communities over the past year.
Tuesday’s meeting could see the council take their first step in the project, by awarding a contract to a greenhouse gas analyst group PaleBLUEdot, based out of Maplewood, Minnesota.
The city received six proposals for contract, ranging from lowest-fee $18,960 to the highest-fee of $29,805, with PaleBLUEdot proposing a middle-ground fee of $24,960.
According to city documents, PaleBLUEdot team has also offered optional services including a Climate Vulnerability Assessment for an additional $4,000 and a Renewable Energy Potentials Study for an additional $2,000.
City staff notes that the additional studies would be useful and still remain withing the city’s budgeted amount for the project.
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