PORT TOWNSEND — The Jefferson County Climate Action Committee is working to keep the county and the city of Port Townsend aligned with international and state-level goals.
The committee (CAC), a joint county and city group, is composed of 15 members from the county, city, the Jefferson County PUD, Jefferson Healthcare, Jefferson Transit, the Port of Port Townsend, the Port Townsend Paper Corporation and the community at large.
The CAC’s primary role is to advise the government agencies on updating and implementing climate action plans.
Presenting committee history, recent progress and future plans to Port Townsend City Council on Monday were the CAC’s chair and vice chair, Cindy Jayne and county commissioner Heather Dudley Nollette.
The CAC formed in 2008, following the county’s adoption of a greenhouse gas reduction goal in 2008, according to a presentation slide.
The CAC completed a climate action plan in 2011, adopted by the city and county with a goal of reducing emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050.
Dudley Nollette joined the CAC last year, sitting on the food systems resilience sub-committee.
The sub-committee spent time in 2025 collaborating with local food systems advocates and stakeholders trying to get the lay of the land, Dudley Nollette said.
“It’s been a really robust conversation,” she said.
The work included early planning for a countywide food resilience plan, something which Dudley Nollette compared to the Community Wildfire Protection Plan. The food resilience plan has been noted in draft comprehensive plans, Dudley Nollette said.
The county will be working on passing a comprehensive plan this year.
Dudley Nollette noted that another joint city and county board she sits on, the Housing Fund board, recently passed its Jefferson County Homeless & Affordable Housing Services Plan.
“One of the elements that we added to that plan, as compared to the previous ones, was a real focus on assigning accountability and assigning timelines, as opposed establishing a plan that we just set on a shelf and don’t refer back to,” Dudley Nollette said.
Establishing a food resilience plan would include a similar section, she added.
Port Townsend City Council member Neil Nelson asked about metrics being tracked.
The 2018 emissions data such as vehicle miles traveled, electricity and propane used were gathered from a number of sources, including the state, which tracks state road usage. The multiple PUDs, which provide power to the county, and the agencies involved in the CAC all provided data, Jayne said in a later interview.
Data for propane usage in households, which the census tracks, allowed for an estimation of the carbon footprint of propane, she added.
The CAC plans to do more inventories in the future and will consider tracking other metrics.
Jayne acknowledged that the committee’s goals, along with the goals of the city and the Paris Climate Accord, are ambitious.
“Certainly I think the Paris Climate Accord goals are ambitious across the board,” Jayne said. “But when you look at the need, you might say they’re not ambitious enough.”
The CAC meets from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on the fourth Tuesday of even months at Jefferson County Public Health, 615 Sheridan St. Meetings are open to the public. The next meeting will take place at 3 p.m. Feb. 24.
A Zoom link and information on entering public comment can be found at tinyurl.com/5cyn96ac.
A list of CAC documents, including the inventories and the 2011 Climate Action Plan, are at tinyurl.com/ys4snk32.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com.
