Drawing Down Emissions
This area of our website organizes information on how you can improve your household and what our local government is up to when it comes to reducing polluting emissions.
What are we talking about here? Burning gas from cars and fuel oil to heat homes, burning gas in our cars, and food waste decomposing in landfills — these are just a few examples, but all things you and our local government can make better!
Climate change is caused by the “greenhouse effect”: gasses in the atmosphere trapping the solar heat from the sun. Pollution such as carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and methane from organic decomposition are a couple of the most well-known.
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Learn more and register for our free municipal food scrap drop off program, Village Compost.
Access our free How-to Backyard Compost Guide.
Learn more about food waste, bio-solids, and yard waste recycling.
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Check out news and resources related to reducing our dependence on cars.
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Learn more about making the switch
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Get free 1:1 consultations to aid your decision-making
NEWS:
NYSERDA Awards the Village $603,000 in Match-free Funding to Make Village Hall/Firehouse More Energy Efficient
Timeline September 2025 - September 2026
Village Board adopts the Communitywide Climate Action Plan
May 2025
Village received TAP Safe Routes to School federal funding of $1.6mm towards a $2mm project to install sidewalks and crosswalks
Timeline 2024 - Fall 2027
Village Board Adopts Communitywide Climate Action Plan
Adopted in May 2025, this plan came from an over yearlong process. The Climate Smart Task Force volunteers worked to identify the most crucial actions. We had a kick-off meeting with stakeholders from the community including the school district, Northern Dutchess Hospital, Rhinebeck At Home, the Starr Library, Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce, and more. We hosted additional smaller meetings as well and tabled at the Farmers Market and at Thriving in Rhinebeck and the Earth Day Celebration. On September 22, 2024, Village Trustee Vanessa Bertozzi presented a proposal for how the community might align around a goal at a “Step by Step” workshop at Starr Library.
Community-wide Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory
Starting in Fall 2023, Trustee Bertozzi was joined by volunteers Michael Forlenza, Tom McKibben-Vaughn, and Mimi Joh-Carnella to undertake a community-wide GHG emissions Inventory. We were supported by Hudson River Valley Council (HRVC) as part of the Climate Action Planning Institute (CAPI) cohort of Towns and Villages across the mid-Hudson region. This data was the basis for our Communitywide Climate Action Plan.
Do you know what our community in the Village of Rhinebeck generates in terms of greenhouse gas emissions? Over 27,000 metric tons of CO2e!
The #1 contributor is transportation (44%).
We should walk and bike more. Switch to electric vehicles. And fly less.
The #2 contributor is heating and cooling our homes (23%).
We should tighten our houses’ envelopes and add insulation. Switch to heat pumps or geothermal to get off oil or propane. And subscribe to a solar farm for electricity.
Did you know the Village converted all its cobrahead streetlights to LED?
Or that all the muncipal buildings’ CenHud accounts subscribe to community solar?
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Municipal Operations Climate Action Plan
In Fall 2023, with help from volunteer Michael Forlenza, Trustee Bertozzi created the Climate Action Plan (CAP) for the municipal operations of Rhinebeck Village. The project used the ICLEI Clearpath tool to do trend forecasting and visualize which actions would result in reductions of emissions. The plan was based on data from our Government Operations Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory.
The Village has set a goal of 40% reductions in emissions from 1990 levels by 2030. The goal matches that of NY State's ambitious and nation-leading Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
The plan details 3 core reduction strategies the Village would need to do to hit our goal by 2030:
Pass a CCA
Convert Village Hall/Firehouse off of fossil fuel heating/cooling
Start transitioning the municipal fleet to EV
For Projected Values, you see our “Business as Usual” (BAU) forecast. This is what we will see if we take no proactive actions. Interestingly, the emissions slope downward, mainly due to the decarbonization of the electrical grid in our area. If we can do these things above, plus a few things already planned and accounted for, then here’s what hitting our goal would look like.
CCA
The Village of Rhinebeck was exploring a Community Choice Aggregation program for Village ratepayers before the NYS Public Service Commission effectively halted this option. This would have enabled the Village Board to broker a rate for 50-100% renewable electricity by default. Please explore this section to get more background.
We encourage ratepayers to explore subscribing to a community solar farm and save up to 10% off their electricity and support expansion of clean energy.
CCA 3.0
This enabling legislation would provide a framework for addressing the climate crisis beyond simply the source of our electricity. The enabling legislation provides language around Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), which gives the Village of Rhinebeck CCA options for group purchasing for on-site interventions such as rooftop solar, heat pumps, weatherization and insulation measures, energy management systems, and microgrid backups. Watch this space as these programs emerge in partnership with the CCA Administrator and Program Organizer. View Mid-Hudson Energy Transition’s Village Board presentation in July 2023 (PANDA video, slides).
Benchmarking
Benchmarking means publicly reporting the energy use of our municipal properties and seeing how energy use compares year over year. As we and other municipalities share our data, we see how our buildings compare to similar ones.
Benchmarking 2023 & 2022
Benchmarking 2021 & 2020