South Burlington Poised to Lead Nation in Climate Action

South Burlington, a suburb of the well-known Burlington, Vermont, is pushing local climate policies to new heights, beyond what has previously been seen on a municipal level. Originally taking inspiration from climate policies in Burlington, the smaller, more conservative South Burlington has adopted, reinforced, and made stronger many of its neighbor’s efforts. Now, they are eclipsing Burlington, passing even more aggressive policies than their larger, more progressive neighbor.

With no mayor, political power in South Burlington resides mainly in the hands of its city council, comprised of five elected officials who are essentially volunteers (councilors receive an annual stipend of $1,600 for their service). For the first time in the City’s history, the majority of councilors are proudly dedicated to aggressive climate action, allowing the City to move forward unimpeded with strong policies to achieve their climate goals. South Burlington City Councilors Meaghan Emery and Andrew Chalnick both shared their insights and hopes for the City with Run On Climate in July. 

“I’ve always been deeply concerned with our natural environment,” reflects City Councilor Andrew Chalnick, as we sat by the Burlington waterfront overlooking Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains, obscured by rain as they have been for much of Vermont’s rainiest summer in a century. “When I was much younger, I was concerned about acid rain and old growth forests and, you know, all those causes in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. The past few decades, I realized that unless we address climate change, nothing else really matters — that burning fossil fuels was really the existential threat to everything that we love and hold near and dear.” 

This realization has guided Councilor Chalnick’s work as a climate activist for decades. In his former hometown of Millburn, New Jersey, Chalnick served on the environmental commission, and was active with Citizens’ Climate Lobby, an organization that advocates for Congress and State Legislatures to enact a price on carbon. Chalnick moved to South Burlington in 2015 and quickly joined the all-volunteer town energy committee. That position led him to becoming the vice chair of the Climate Action Task Force, a city commission tasked with working with state, regional, and local partners to develop a Climate Action Plan for the city of South Burlington. After years of making recommendations to the City Council, Chalnick decided late last year to run for a seat on the Council himself, with support from Run On Climate. He was elected in March with 82% of the vote.

“Now,” says Councilor Chalnick, “I’m on the South Burlington City Council hoping to affect good, strong policy to both mitigate emissions and hopefully build a sustainable city.” To do this, he hopes to leverage the framework he helped develop in the city’s “aggressive and ambitious” Climate Action Plan.

Driven by support from the community, and adopted by the City Council in October of 2022, South Burlington’s Climate Action Plan includes many policies and supporting actions that will transform the city. It details a comprehensive and aggressive breakdown of the city by sector, describing what steps are needed to reduce climate-causing pollution in each area. The plan took the Climate Action Task Force over a year to create. 

“The Climate Action task force very methodically, carefully, and with science, rigor, and data, developed a plan for South Burlington to meet or exceed the goals of the Paris Climate Accords. The first thing we did was baseline the city’s emissions from all sectors. We were then able to break that down into various high level targets,” describes Councilor Chalnick.   

The overarching target is to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions 95% below 2019 levels by 2050, with an intermediate goal of a 60% reduction by 2030. The Climate Action Plan details mid-level targets and the supporting actions needed to achieve that goal. Many cities across the U.S. have developed similar plans for reducing emissions, yet very few have the political support to pass strong enough policies to meet their goals. South Burlington is determined to follow through, with a majority of their City Council eager for the City to lead on climate nationally.

South Burlington’s largest source of emissions, by far, is transportation; it accounts for a massive 65% of South Burlington’s total emissions, according to data collected in 2019. 

Councilor Meaghan Emery is passionate about transforming transportation systems in the City. “Looking around me I’m seeing all these single occupancy vehicles. We have to develop our transit system. The way to do that is not just to have fewer cars on the road, it’s to have lots of housing on that road.” She elaborates, “this means building up our main transit thoroughfare, where there's that density of people there. This will create the tipping point where we can say, okay, now it makes sense to put in a new bus line, or to not only have it going into Burlington but through South Burlington, and connecting the different parts of our city together.” 

One of the largest ongoing transportation projects in the city is to build up a comprehensive network of walking and biking trails. In 2018, South Burlington residents voted to adopt Penny for Paths, dedicating one cent of the sales tax to improving biking and pedestrian infrastructure in the city, providing the City $3 million per year to spend on various projects. This initiative was led by South Burlington’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee, and the areas of development towards which the funds are being allocated are chosen and ranked by priority by South Burlington residents. The idea is to make it easier for residents of all ages and abilities to navigate the City without relying on cars.  

The City isn’t just adding bicycle and walking facilities, but also reducing infrastructure that caters toward the individual automobile. South Burlington has been transitioning industrial lots to multi-use and has abolished minimum parking requirements for all new developments (except multi-family). This means less space and money is going into building large parking lots, allowing for more affordable housing and commerce and less cars.

“My take on it,” explains City Councilor Meaghan Emery, “is that slowly we’re trying to return to a lifestyle that was friendlier to the environment, where people live close to their businesses, and they walk there. We’re turning the dial back away from suburban living to a walkable, bikeable life, where people use shopping baskets that they own to walk to the grocery store.”  

One of the vehicles for enacting the goals of the Climate Action Plan is through the City’s ever-evolving Land Development Regulations, which govern how land in South Burlington is developed or redeveloped. “The Land Development Regulations that we passed in 2022 were a huge step towards maintaining open space and making housing much denser, so that we can both serve the needs of our growing population, people of all income levels, and really make sure that we tend to our natural infrastructure,” reflects Councilor Emery. 

The Land Development Regulations were further updated this summer, accomplishing one step of the Climate Action Plan by adding a requirement that all new commercial buildings have solar photovoltaic systems installed on their rooftops — a move that only a few cities in the country have made. Commercial and residential buildings combined account for 36% of South Burlington’s total emissions, according to data collected in 2019. The new ordinance, officially named the “On-Site Solar Photovoltaic System,” requires commercial buildings to allocate 40% of their rooftop space to solar PV systems. The requirement was built upon a 2022 ordinance requiring all new commercial buildings to be “Solar-Ready” (five stories or less, with low slope roofs oriented between 110 and 270 degrees of true north). The new ordinance requires buildings not just to maximize their solar potential, but to actually install solar systems. 

While the solar ordinance is one of the first of its kind, it’s not the only policy South Burlington has passed to reduce infrastructure emissions in buildings. South Burlington has mirrored and strengthened multiple building decarbonization policies that Burlington spent years developing – replicating and advancing them in a matter of months. For example, in May of 2022, Burlington required new buildings to have renewable primary heating systems. Six months later, South Burlington passed the same requirement, but also added a requirement for renewable hot water systems.

Another policy South Burlington hopes to adopt from Burlington would require landlords to separate the cost of rent from the cost of parking. This policy is relevant to both transportation and buildings, as it allows for cheaper, denser development. Many renters – in South Burlington and in most communities across the U.S. – don’t have a choice to pay for parking, as it is included in the cost of rent. This means that even tenants who can’t afford a car, or choose not to have one for environmental reasons, are burdened with higher rents to pay for an empty parking spot. The idea, Chalnick describes, is that “a renter who has that choice may conclude that the better option for him or her is to save the money on the parking, invest it somewhere else and maybe walk or buy an electric bicycle, take public transit, share a car.” 

South Burlington plans to further decarbonize buildings by introducing a framework for regulating rental buildings and gradually improving weatherization and insulation. The council is also working on providing incentives for moderate-income individuals to transition to heat pumps and improve home energy efficiency. These municipal incentives would stack on top of state, federal, and utility incentives.

As these actions come into effect, South Burlington will have one of the most robust combinations of climate policies of any U.S. City. Councilor Chalnick hopes other communities will follow South Burlington’s lead. While South Burlington is a small city in a small state, taking an aggressive local-level approach is essential, says Councilor Chalnick; 

“I know that South Burlington, and even Vermont, what we do here will not make a difference in isolation, obviously. That's the argument you hear from people, right? Why should you do it, it won't make any difference, look at China, look at this, look at that, why is it important?

Climate change is a collective problem and it needs to be solved by everyone. If we each wait for everyone to act, that's a recipe for disaster. Everyone needs to act and it's not sufficient to say I'm not gonna act unless you act — then no one will do anything.

On the municipal level, you can really do stuff because you've got a small world that you're working with. You can talk to the builders, you can change the transportation system, you can actually do stuff. 

That's where it happens. That's where we can make real change.”