The District of Columbia, created by an Act of Congress in July 1790, is not a state although there is a political movement to make it one. Commonly known as Washington, D.C., it is our nation’s capital occupying 68 square miles, with a population density greater than any U.S. state – around 714,153 people. Although some politicians like to say that D.C. is a swamp, this is actually not scientifically correct. The city was built on a firm and dry riverbank. It is, however, mostly in a humid subtropical zone with steaming summers and winters featuring snow and ice.
D.C. is absolutely no stranger to climate change. Since the city was founded (as part of Alexandria, Virginia in 1749), the Potomac River has risen roughly one foot, twice as fast as the global average for sea level rise. Although DC is not on the ocean, the Potomac and Anacostia rivers are influenced by sea level. The rivers seem to be rising extra fast because land in DC is also sinking due to a geological phenomenon called subsidence. Flooding has become a part of life for the city’s residents, and it’s only going to get worse. D.C. is predicted to experience nearly two feet of sea level rise by 2050, and nearly five feet by 2080.
Storms are also accelerating. There have been plenty of tropical cyclones, like the derecho of 2012, and on a random Monday in July of 2019 a storm dumped a month’s worth of rain on the city in one hour. Suffice to say, this isn’t normal and the future doesn’t look better.
Climate change has already caused a rise of 2°F over the last 50 years, more than the national average. Summers have also been 5-10% more humid than they were in the 1970s. D.C. experienced 34 heat emergency days in 2022, and is predicted to experience 45 per year by the 2030s.
Thankfully, The District has been taking action. Already in 2005, they adopted a renewable portfolio standard (RPS), which has been amended several times subsequently. In 2016, their commitment expanded to require that 50% of all retail electricity sales in the District come from renewable sources by 2032, with no less than 5% of retail electricity sales to be generated by solar sources. In 2019, the RPS was amended again to 100% of electricity retail sales by 2032, with the solar energy requirement increasing to 5.5% by 2032 and 10% by 2041. In 2023, the Local Solar Expansion Amendment Act increased the solar energy requirement to 15% by 2041. The 2024 RPS Implementation Report notes that while total retail electricity sales were behind target, there was significant solar facility expansion in 2023.
Additionally, the District drafted Climate Ready DC, a comprehensive plan to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The plan covers water management systems, resilience of energy, communication, and transportation infrastructure in regard to more frequent and more powerful storms. It also addresses ways to combat extreme heat, like increasing green space and tree cover.
In 2018, they passed the Clean Energy D.C. Act, accelerating the District’s move to 100% renewable energy by 2032, with the solar energy requirement increasing to 5.5% by 2032 and to 10% by 2041, an ambitious goal. The measure incentivizes electric vehicle purchases and toughens efficiency requirements for new and existing buildings, even helping to fund some of these upgrades.
In 2019, Mayor Muriel Bowser released Resilient DC: A Strategy to Thrive in the Face of Change, as part of the 100 Resilient Cities initiative. Resilient DC includes a chapter on Climate Action which aims to focus on “implementation and measures to institutionalize climate action.” Some of the objectives listed in the chapter include incorporating climate projections into land use and building regulations, tracking climate risk and adaptation progress, and increasing resilience to climate change at the neighborhood and household level.
In 2021 the District launched the DC Flood Task Force, along with a Flood Risk Portal, and in 2022 released Keep Cool DC, an extreme heat adaptation strategy. Keep Cool DC includes four main strategies: Increase Cool Spaces, Design for Heat, Enhance Tree Equity and Keep Learning.
The Department of Energy and Environment and the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency are currently revising Climate Ready DC. Combining revisions of Climate Ready DC and the Resilient DC Climate Action chapter, the plan will be called Climate Ready DC 2.0.
D.C. has no coal reserves, no crude oil reserves or refineries, no natural gas reserves, and consumes less petroleum in total and per capita than any state. In 2022, solar energy generated over half of the city’s electricity. D.C. built its first utility scale solar power facilities in 2019, and by 2023 had 10 of these sites. The remaining electricity was generated from natural gas (24%) and biomass (17%).
Although the District consumes more energy than it produces, it still uses less than any state except Vermont. Most of the energy used in the District is consumed by the commercial sector, which includes federal buildings, museums, and universities. Because of its heat and humidity, air conditioning is a significant consumer of energy usage in the city.
D.C. has become a significant market for EVs with more electric vehicle charging stations than gasoline stations, resulting in the city’s per capita gasoline expenditures to be lower than those of any state. There are more EVs in D.C. than in any state besides California. Additionally, in June 2021, Metro announced that they will transform their 1,500 buses to electric by 2045. As of 2024 there are two battery-electric buses currently in service, Metro estimates they are ahead of their goals by three years, and they have also announced the reconstruction of a garage to operate a battery-electric bus fleet. In October 2024 the D.C. Council passed the Comprehensive Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Access, Readiness and Sustainability Amendment Act of 2024, which will leverage investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to install more EV chargers in the D.C. area.
CREDIT: Sustainable DC Progress Report 2024, Department of Energy & Environment.
