Fishers Greenhouse Gas Inventory

Outcomes and Conclusions

From 2015 to 2018, population increased five percent while community-wide greenhouse gas emissions increased one percent, meaning that per capita emissions declined over the time period. 2015 per capita emissions were 14.09 MT carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), and 2018 per capita emissions were 13.57 MT CO2e. However, total greenhouse gas emissions are the most important metric, and the City expects total emissions to increase as the population grows if the City does not mindfully work to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions.

With 43 percent of community-wide emissions in 2015 and 44 percent in 2018, residential energy was the highest emitting sector, followed by transportation and commercial energy. Government operations emissions accounted for one percent of total community-wide emissions and increased by four percent between 2015 and 2018. The main source of the government operations emissions was water and wastewater treatment facilities, comprising 55 percent of City emissions in 2015 and 54 percent in 2018.

Main takeaways include an opportunity for the City government to lead by example by reducing emissions from its operations and addressing large emission sources in the community. For example, transportation is expected to be a growing sector of emissions in Fishers and therefore should be prioritized in emissions reduction efforts. Prior to the inventory, the City had implemented some strategies to combat rising greenhouse gas emissions, including replacing old bulbs with LED lighting in municipal buildings. With the 2015 inventory, the City established an emissions baseline and proposed the long-term goal of reducing government greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

The City also participated in the 2020 Resilience Cohort. As part of the Cohort, the City conducted a climate vulnerabilities assessment and started integrating climate action planning into the update of its comprehensive plan.

Challenges

Some challenges associated with the project included having to extrapolate and estimate some of the data. In some instances, stakeholders were reluctant to provide data due to privacy concerns. City staff had to scale down statewide data to obtain the relevant information, which is common in the greenhouse gas inventory process. For example, transportation data was not available for Fishers specifically, so staff used figures on average vehicle miles traveled state-wide to estimate local data based on population.

Takeaway message

Steven Chybowski, the City of Fishers Public Administrations Fellow who conducted the greenhouse gas inventory gave the following advice: 

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure, so you need to get a baseline before you implement reduction actions. You also may not always get the exact data you’re looking for, so you need to make a plan B, make adjustments, and don’t give up.”

Additional resources

For more information on Fishers' greenhouse gas inventory, contact:

Trevor Preddy
Planner II, Planning and Zoning
City of Fishers, IN
preddyt@fishers.in.us 
317-595-3137