Climate Partners' Forum
Metro has established the Climate Partners' Forum, a group of agency and non-profit staff from around greater Portland, to guide the development of the Priority Climate Action Plan and help ensure that it reflects partners' prior climate work and plans to apply for future climate funding.
Contact Eliot Rose at [email protected] to learn more.
About the CPRG planning grants
This program offers four-year grants to regions and states to create plans and identify strategies that:
- Significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a manner that improves equity and community health and advances other agency goals
- Can be readily implemented by public agencies and non-agency partners
- Are aligned with federal and state funding sources.
As part of the CPRG grant. Metro is producing two plans:
- A Priority Climate Action Plan, due March 1, 2024, that identifies high-priority, implementation-ready greenhouse gas reduction actions that can be funded with available resources – including a separate set of CPRG implementation grants that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is making available to public agencies in spring 2024.
- A Comprehensive Climate Action Plan, due at the end of 2025, that includes a comprehensive inventory of greenhouse gas emissions for the metropolitan area and a broader set of strategies to reduce emissions.
For more information about the CPRG grant program, visit the Environmental Protection Agency's website.
Priority Climate Action Plan (PCAP)
In March 2024, Metro submitted the final PCAP to the Environmental Protection Agency. The PCAP focuses on identifying high-impact greenhouse gas reduction measures that can be readily implemented by public agencies with funding from EPA's CPRG implementation grants and other federal and state resources. The plan includes:
- An inventory of greenhouse gas emissions in the metropolitan area
- A list of priority measures to reduce these emissions
- An assessment of whether each measure is ready for implementation
- An analysis of the greenhouse gas emissions and other benefits of each measure.
The PCAP is focused on measures that:
- Have already been developed
- Can be implemented within the next five years
- Have been endorsed by public agency partners and the public through the climate action plans that are in place throughout the metropolitan area
Comprehensive Climate Action Plan (CCAP)
Metro is working with partners to develop the CCAP through the end of 2025. The CCAP is similar to the PCAP, but it includes additional elements such as:
- Projections of future greenhouse gas emissions
- Targets to reduce these emissions
- An analysis of workforce’s capacity to support planned greenhouse gas reduction measures
The CCAP will also consider a wider range of greenhouse gas emissions and reduction measures than were covered in the PCAP, including:
- Greenhouse gas emissions from forestry, land management and other sectors not covered in the PCAP
- Measures that can be led by public agencies, businesses or community organizations
- Measures that can be implemented within the next twenty years
- Measures that were considered for the PCAP but not included because they were in need of more development
Opportunities for collaboration
In addition to the Climate Partners’ Forum, Metro collects feedback on the CPRG grant through policy and technical committees at Metro, local partner agencies and the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Commission, which is the regional planning agency for the Washington side of the metropolitan area.
Metro is not the only agency leading a CPRG planning grant that is relevant to the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area. The states of Oregon and Washington also have received CPRG planning grants that relate to communities in the metropolitan area, and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians is leading a planning grant that covers tribes throughout Oregon and Washington. Any of these plans may identify greenhouse gas reduction strategies that support agencies in the metropolitan area in meeting their climate goals.
There are several new state and federal funding programs focused on climate, and the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program will help partner agencies within the metropolitan area pursue funding to meet their climate goals.