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In February 2024, Menlo Park’s sustainability manager, Rachael Londer, started in the newly created role. Her job: manage the city’s wide-ranging sustainability programs and get the city on track for carbon neutrality by 2030, 15 years before the state’s goal.
Now, a year later, and five years before the city seeks to be carbon neutral, the department celebrates Earth Month. It is also serving notice that it’s not going to let up.
“We’re really fortunate to have such an active community working to promote sustainability. When I worked at the county, we looked to Menlo Park as a leader in climate action,” Londer said.
On April 26, Menlo Park, in collaboration with the city of East Palo Alto and various community organizations, hosted the fourth annual Love Our Earth Festival. The event served as a way to educate and motivate community members to take action on climate change, as well as celebrate the city’s progress so far.
It also connected residents with resources, public and private, to help lower their carbon future.
“The event was a massive success,” Londer said. “So many more families than we expected chose to spend their Saturday learning about what they can do to be more sustainable.”
“While I love celebrating the progress we’ve made and the tremendous work we’ve done, we have to really step it up and forge a new path forward if we want to meet the 2030 goal,” Londer said.
The goal uses 2005 as a baseline. That was the year the city calculated it generated 349,284 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. In 2021, the most recent year the city studied emissions, Menlo Park had reduced emissions by 19%. The city’s goal is to reduce emissions by 90% from the baseline and makeup for 10% through carbon recapture.
To meet its goal, Menlo Park hopes to electrify as much as 95% of homes, decrease gasoline sales by 10% annually, expand access to EV charging stations, reduce vehicle miles traveled by 25% and eliminate fossil fuels from city operations.
The city estimates that 43% of emissions are generated by the use of natural gas in homes so it has prioritized electrifying buildings. City staff constantly look for grants and programs to fund electrification for community members.
One grant came from the state for $4.5 million. However the grant, slated to fund community electrification, required the city to spend the first half before receiving the rest, and required the city to use all funds by June 30, 2026 or it would have to return unused funds to the state.
The city worked with Peninsula Clean Energy to use the grant on a home electrification program that allows income-qualified residents to electrify their entire homes at no cost. However, the city has struggled to use those funds.
Since the program soft launched in August, 2024, 21 homes have scheduled assessments, 17 homes have been assessed, 11 have agreed to participate and two have been upgraded as of February. Assuming all 49 homes are upgraded at the average cost of $29,000 per home, Menlo Park would still be over $700,000 short. To stay on track, an additional 25 homes plus the 49 already in the pipeline need to be upgraded by this summer or the city risks not utilizing the full amount.
“I always tell people, ‘Anytime you need an appliance replaced or need repairs, do a Google search as there is probably a program out there for it,” Londer said. “The PCE program is really cool because not only can residents get appliances replaced, they can also get free assessments of their home’s energy efficiency.”
The city council has since expanded the eligibility requirements of the PCE program in hopes to use more of the grant money before the deadline next year.
Many of Menlo Park’s sustainability programs use grants from state, regional and federal organizations to avoid significantly impacting the city’s budget. The sustainability team works on submitting applications and collaborating with other city departments to fund programs related to sustainability.
Even though the federal government has canceled many grants to local governments, Londer is not worried it will halt the city’s progress.
“In November, California voters passed Prop 4 and due to the changes at the federal level, the state has really worked on dispersing funds to cities quickly,” Londer said.
Proposition 4 was a $10 billion bond for environmental and climate initiatives state voters approved in 2024.
Menlo Park’s sustainability efforts are centered around not only addressing climate change, but also improving resident’s lives. “When I think about something as big as climate change, it’s easiest for me to envision what sort of life I want to have and what sort of experience I want to have with my neighbors: a healthy community…, a neighborhood garden, a place where our homes don’t have indoor air pollutants, where we’re able to be really mobile and get to anywhere we want to get to in this city easily,” Londer said.
In July 2023, Menlo Park adopted an ordinance to ban gas-powered landscaping equipment within the city and since then, the sustainability team has worked on providing rebates to asset landscape workers and residents with purchasing new equipment.
“We’ve distributed $70,000 to landscapers and to eligible residents to be able to switch their equipment out to electric and we’ve really moved the needle on concerns people have at the neighborhood level. You don’t always realize but gas-powered landscaping equipment creates a lot of noise and pollution, which has now gone away,” Londer said.
“I see Earth Day as a call to action for our residents: it’s not just the city who’s gonna deliver you all these programs and policies. There’s a level of proactiveness to engage with us and we want everyone to engage with us,” Londer said.
The sustainability team’s next big effort: updating building code to promote zero emission buildings. Londer’s team will be hosting two workshops on potential changes slated to go into effect in 2026. They include an in-person workshop on May 6 at the Belle Haven Community Campus and a virtual workshop on May 8. Interested participants can register on the city’s website.
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