City of Lawrence staff will make recommendations to commissioners to repeal a 2020 renewable energy ordinance and instate a new resolution aiming to attain climate neutrality by 2050, which would be tied to a countywide climate plan.

Kathy Richardson, the city’s sustainability director, said that climate neutrality is defined by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and avoiding greenhouse gas use in government operations and throughout the community. This would mean Lawrence has a net-zero emission level.

The resolution hasn’t been drafted yet, as staff members want to first gauge commissioners’ interest in pursuing a revised project while sunsetting the ordinance. 

During a meeting in October 2024, commissioners asked members of the Connected City and Environmental Sustainability advisory boards to work together to create revisions to Ordinance 9744. The two groups convened Thursday to hear updates on city sustainability initiatives and provide feedback on staff proposals.

Ordinance 9744 declares the city’s goal to achieve 100% clean, renewable energy in municipal operations and citywide by 2035. It was proposed by ESAB, then known as the Sustainability Advisory Board, and adopted by the city commission in March 2020.

Richardson said there was no road map at the time to enact the ordinance. Since then, city staff determined its aims are not realistic and achievable, hence their desire to sunset it. 

One of the sub-goals of the ordinance was to replace all electricity in municipal operations with 100% clean, renewable energy by 2025. Richardson said there was some debate as to whether or not that benchmark was met.

She said that the city’s municipal operations are covered at 100% of its electricity use with wind renewable credits through a partnership with Evergy. The utility company also operates the Lawrence Energy Center, a major coal plant on the Kaw River.

“Lots of folks will say, ‘No, City of Lawrence, that doesn’t mean you were powered by clean, renewable energy. You’re still powered by the coal-fired power plant, and you purchased these credits from wind energy,’” Richardson said. “Other folks felt like we checked off that goal, that that should count.”

The ordinance also suggested that all operations citywide would use renewable energy by 2035. That means that every residential and commercial building using non-renewable energy would transition their energy sources, and every vehicle on the road would be electric, charged with a renewable source.

The city has some relevant projects in the works, like powering Fire Station 6 with solar and installing a solar array at Prairie Park Nature Center. However, staff found that it would be financially prohibitive to make the full transition on the municipal level, let alone citywide. Simply trying to transition the city’s full fleet of heavy duty machinery to electric isn’t in the budget.

“When the ordinance was passed in 2020 — if I was told that in five years, I needed to figure out the city budget so that 100% of our facilities would be running on on-site, clean renewable energy — how you do that in five years is not possible,” Richardson said. “We like challenges. It’s just, this is past a challenge.”

Nick Kuzmyak, a member of CCAB, asked why the ordinance was established at all if it was “doomed to fail.”

Richardson said they’ve learned a lot since 2020.

“Back in the day … there was a high trend, it was trendy — I guess I’ll put it that way — to make these kind of statements, that ‘Our city or our county is going to be 100% clean renewable energy by the year blah, blah, blah,’” Richardson said. “… Lawrence got that bug and wanted to be one of those cities, too.”

She said that it’s still important to have a goal of using more clean, renewable energy, which is why that was prioritized in the city’s strategic plan.

Members of both convened boards felt that they needed realistic overarching goals with yearly evaluations and milestones in order to ensure the success of a new potential resolution.

Richardson said that the resolution would likely be simple: reach climate neutrality in Lawrence by 2050. By codifying more granular stepping stones, they would open themselves up to constant revisions as knowledge and goals shift over the next 25 years.

Instead, Richardson said they would stay on track by tying the resolution to the county’s Climate Action and Adaptation Plan.

That plan establishes the objective of climate neutrality by 2050 throughout the region. It suggests steps for implementation, such as developing and promoting programs for energy conservation and cost savings; advancing infrastructure to be more energy reliable; advocating for policies that decarbonize the grid while keeping rates affordable; and more. 

Douglas County adopted the plan in March 2024, and city commissioners followed suit in October 2024. A new resolution could offer a mechanism to put the wheels of the plan in motion.

Kim Criner Ritchie, the county’s sustainability manager, said that they recently launched a one-year evaluation of progress the county has made on the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan at this link. She and Jamie Hofling, the county’s sustainability impact analyst, said the document is drafted to be highly adaptable to an individual city’s fluctuating needs.

“We’re seeing momentum here where we didn’t even think that was maybe possible when we started, or, as you guys have already brought up some good examples of, well, maybe that’s not going to go as far as we thought it would,” Criner Ritchie said. “So we’re able to constantly adapt our approach every few years, with the help of all the groups who are working on this in the community, so that we can react in realtime.”

Mohsen Fatemi, a member of ESAB who attended the Thursday meting, sent a personal statement to this publication via email voicing concerns about the proposal.

“Framed as a pragmatic course correction, the proposal replaces a clear — if imperfect — legal commitment with a broader, more flexible roadmap,” Fatemi wrote. “The concern is not whether Ordinance 9744 should remain unchanged; it should not. The concern is whether this shift fully reflects the lessons of the past five years, or whether it risks lowering the level of accountability needed to govern complex energy systems effectively.”

He agreed that the ordinance had flaws, such as lack of enforcement mechanisms, implementation tools and clarity on what city entity was responsible for meeting the ordinance’s goals. He also wrote that the city is limited because it doesn’t have direct control over main energy supplies.

“Ordinance 9744 did not fail because its goals were unreasonable; it faltered because the city never built the governance capacity required to pursue them,” Fatemi wrote. “Replacing it with a less binding framework does not resolve that mismatch — it normalizes it.”

He said that the shift from more a defined and specific clean energy ordinance to the broader concept of climate neutrality could be freeing, or it could allow the city to sidestep its environmental responsibilities.

“A neutrality target can be met through accounting choices, future grid changes, or offset mechanisms that require little local intervention,” Fatemi wrote. “In this way, the proposed framework lowers the pressure to engage directly with the difficult questions of energy governance that Ordinance 9744, for all its flaws, at least forced into view.”

Richardson said the next step will be for city staff to establish a work session with the commission to ask for direction on their recommendations before the legal team starts writing a resolution. Staff will revise their approach based on commission feedback, and then bring the recommendations back to a future commission meeting.

Watch a video of the full meeting on the city’s YouTube channel at this link.

Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at wulfe@lawrencekstimes.com.

Read their complete bio here. Read their work for the Times here.

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