School of Sustainability Graduate Culminating Experiences

Cities in the Southeast region of the United States have chosen to become climate leaders through setting emissions reduction goals and creating climate action or sustainability plans to address climate change threats. The City Winston-Salem in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, however, had not taken those actions to address the increasing threat of climate change, indicating the city lagged in climate best practices. While the City of Winston-Salem Office of Sustainability was created in 2010, the office had not implemented sustainability efforts beyond annual benchmarking and reporting efforts for local government operations. But beginning in 2017, the local government started showing more interest in sustainability initiatives. That year, the Office of Sustainability had completed a thorough sustainability gap analysis and the mayor signed the Climate Mayor’s Agreement in support of the Paris Climate Agreement. The Office of Sustainability decided to use the growing momentum and their previous benchmarking efforts to create the first sustainability plan for internal local government operations. The plan was created through a detailed planning and review process involving feedback from relevant city staff, research of plans from other cities, and research of other plans Winston-Salem’s local government had. The ultimate goal was to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from local government operations through action in transportation, energy systems, green space and waste goal areas. The plan will be submitted to City Council to pass in favor of the Internal Sustainability Action Plan and begin implementation.