Eagle Era

How Fremont aims to combat climate change

By Anthony You

Since its adoption in 2023, Fremont’s Climate Ready Fremont initiative aims to promote environmentally sustainable practices across the city. The program, intended to be fully implemented by 2030, plans to expand public parks and green spaces while promoting clean energy, investing in electric vehicle infrastructure, and supporting active transportation. Together, these efforts reflect Fremont’s broader commitment to creating a greener, more livable community for the future.

According to the Fremont City Council, the city hope their actions can reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Fremont by 55%. So far, they have streamlined solar power programs, led environmental restoration initiatives, and rolled out more city-wide EV pumps, but plans to address climate risks like extreme heart and implement biker-friendly infrastructure are still in progress.

According to the City of Fremont website, transportation accounts for more greenhouse gasses than any other producer of carbon dioxide. Transportation accounted for 783 thousand metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2018. The city of Fremont aims to cut that to 550 thousand metric tons by 2030 according to their website. Timothy Lin (12) said  “I make sure that my trips around town are efficient so as to minimize my car’s pollution.” They want to fight climate change by promoting active transportation like walking and biking rather than driving.    

Waste is another huge issue; Fremont only has so much space for landfills. Waste has been increasing every year from 2010 to 2018 from 150 thousand tons in 2010 to 196 thousand tons in 2018. Fremont aims to cut waste to 116 thousand tons by 2030. According to their website efforts to reduce waste are already underway. Lin said “I noticed that in Fremont, there has been a growing movement for residents to make sure they have green waste, and aren’t just throwing everything in the landfill bin.” Fremont is promoting more recycling and composting in the past few years to combat climate change. 

According to their website, Fremont seeks to reduce the amount of electricity and natural gas. They want to install more green energy solutions to help reach this goal. Fremont aims to build more public parks where people can go outside and save on electricity consumption. Encouraging more citizens to use air conditioning and heating when necessary,  air drying clothes on a line rather than in a washing machine, equipping more buildings with solar panels to generate clean electricity, building new buildings using clean electricity, building new EV charging stations and more public transportation.