The city of Ketchum and Blaine County are aiming for 75% of their energy used in municipal operations to be clean by 2025.
“The community adopted very ambitious clean energy goals. We’re on a short timeline, so our first order of business is to try to find a path forward for that,” Blaine County Sustainability Manager Lynne Barker said at a Nov. 21 meeting with Ketchum City Council.
By 2030, the city and county hope to be using 100% clean energy for municipal operations. By 2035, the plan aims for 100% clean energy use by the community at large. By 2045, the city and county hope to be completely off non-renewable energy in all forms, including their vehicles.
“Our long term goal is by 2045 to be 100% clean energy. Something that many cities are starting to do is take a real data driven approach to achieving these goals,” Barker said.
The governments are taking on a couple of strategies to achieve this, Barker said. To address building, the first step is to evaluate energy efficiency gains from the BUILDSMART Code, which is a guide for green construction. The next step is to reduce the carbon footprint of existing commercial and residential buildings, in some cases, retrofitting buildings with green features. Then, they will work to encourage builders to engage in low-carbon construction.
“We need policies that encourage the development community to build low carbon buildings, both commercially and residentially,” Barker said.
These will be incentive based policies, she said.
“One thing I have heard from communities like Aspen and Vail who are further along in their sustainability planning than we are is that we have a great opportunity to demonstrate the importance of sustainability to more people than just those who live in our community,” Councilmember Courtney Hamilton said. “Educating people on why we want to have snow for their grandkids to ski on—this is a great opportunity.”
Barker also presented ideas for transportation, which, according to county estimates, accounts for 44% of overall emissions. The county and city’s primary goal is to reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled by encouraging people to take alternate forms of transportation. The two entities will also begin working on a campaign to encourage people to purchase electric vehicles.
“All together, if we implement best-in-class practices, we can reduce our emissions for the energy sector up to 62%,” Barker said.
“I feel like we need programs that are incentivized, but also just informational,” Councilmember Jim Slanetz said. Right now, “people are going at this alone, but I think if there is more of a push, we can make making an investment [in green energy] easier.”
None of the statistics includes emissions from planes at Friedman Airport in Hailey, data which the county has but did not share in the presentation.
“It’s a lead-by-example strategy where we demonstrate to our community what we would like them to do,” Barker said. 
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