Will the Next Austin Bond be Green?
Case Studies that Support Including Energy Upgrades in Austin’s Next Bond Election
By Sonia Joshi
Bond elections allow voters to allocate funding towards various city projects. Because voters are asked to approve tax increases to fund specific projects in bond elections, public support for different types of projects is key. Infrastructure investments that yield environmental benefits have proven to be successful bond proposals time and time again.
In 2021, the Austin City Council adopted the Climate Equity Plan, which aims to reach net-zero community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, with about 75% of set for 2030. The plan calls for increased awareness, action, and community engagement to reduce emissions. The plan has numerous potential bond projects, including creating a green fund, expanding electric vehicle charging stations, and installing LED lighting and solar panels at city facilities. Allowing voters to decide on these projects in the next bond election will allow Austin to advance its position on climate action.
Other Texas, Florida, and Seattle jurisdictions have shown how it could be done.
Allen Independent School District
In 2024, voters in the north Texas city of Allen approved a $419.1 million bond package to renovate seven schools in the local public school district. The renovated buildings will have upgraded their flooring, walls, lighting, plumbing, and HVAC systems.
The school district’s Activity Complex Center will receive multiple mechanical and electrical repairs to improve energy efficiency. This includes roofing repairs such as waterproofing and concrete work to prevent water infiltration into the building envelope. Renovations will also focus on ground and irrigation replacements, adding LED lighting, and life safety systems such as fire alarms and AEDs. Additionally, the center will get HVAC repairs incorporating a new cooling tower that circulates cool water through magnetic motors, allowing for efficient heat rejection and cooling with a smaller energy footprint.
Seattle, Washington
In 2020, Seattle, Washington voters approved a $198 million bond for municipal light and power improvements. The bond-funded various investments in hydroelectric power facilities to increase energy generation. This included upgrading a unit in the Boundary Hydroelectric Project, a hydroelectric dam responsible for 30% of the city’s light power, by installing a new 772,000 pounds rotor. This upgrade increased generation to 180-megawatt output, creating a sustainable supply for 40+ years. Money was also allocated towards relicensing the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project, which comprises three dams responsible for generating 20% of the city’s power. Relicensing this project includes reviewing the project’s safety, costs, and environmental impacts to ensure reliable power for the next few decades.
The bond also funded grid modernization plans to enact future enhancements as the city’s energy usage increases. Seattle City Light created a Grid Modernization Plan and Roadmap that integrates advanced technology to guide areas for improvements. Some of these improvements include upgrades to transmission lines and expanding electric vehicle charging stations.
Margate, Florida
In 2024, Margate, Florida voters approved a $120 million bond for water efficiency upgrades.
Margate has two major water treatment plants responsible for dispersing clean wastewater into the environment. The bond package allocated $60 million to pay for upgrades at the city’s west wastewater plant, including increasing storage size to hold an additional two million gallons of water, a new system that uses rotating discs to remove pollutants, and enhancing biosolid management. The bond will also pay for repairing and relining chambers, filters, and several water lines with stronger material. This was a crucial point in the election as around 35% of the water lines are currently made from asbestos, a brittle cement over 60 years old that frequently breaks, creating extra expenses in repairs.
Improving the older wastewater treatment plant eliminates the need for the eastern wastewater plan, which can now be repurposed to solely treat regulating drinking water. The remaining money will be used to implement different technological advancements and water projects, upgrading sensors, programmable logic controllers, monitors, cables, and new network components or servers. The bond addresses new EPA regulations concentrated on advancing filtration technology to minimize PFAS/PFOA levels in drinking water, ensuring cleaner water citywide.
El Paso
In 2022, El Paso voters approved the $5 million Proposition C to fund the city’s Climate Action Plan. The bond funded the creation of the Office of Climate & Sustainability to coordinate various renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. The office addresses numerous impacts of an urban desert environment, provides a space for collaboration of ideas from different stakeholders and community members, and advances climate-related policy changes. By collecting ideas through public surveys, meetings, and forms, they created 10 measures of focus:
- Increase Native Trees and Natural Spaces: Implement a utility-wide carbon sequestration project to expand native plant life and effectively capture and store carbon. This project reduces air pollution, increases rainwater filtration, and boosts natural space in neighborhoods.
- Expand and Improve Active Transportation Infrastructure: Expand sidewalks, bike lanes, trains, and greenways to provide more accessible and safer active transportation methods.
- Utilize Sustainable Land Use Planning: Implement sustainable land use planning techniques to develop higher-density communities around public transport systems to lower utility and travel costs.
- Expand and Improve Transit Service: Provide free transit fares, build park-and-ride systems, and expand transit areas to reduce single occupancy vehicle emissions.
- Increase Energy Efficiency and Decarbonize Buildings: Implement regional envelope retrofit and energy efficiency projects for public buildings by retrofitting windows, external walls, doors, floors, or skylights. High-efficient envelope components prevent air leaks and prevent energy leakage.
- Install Renewable Energy Systems: Add solar to trail lights, public parking lots, and the Fed Hervey Water Reclamation Plant. Also worked on promoting solar batteries and incentivizing solar installations.
- Evaluate Sustainable Waste Management Practices: Reducing the total amount of waste thrown away or diverting waste to reduce landfill-related GHG emissions by implementing community-wide composting and recycling systems.
- Support the Electric Vehicles Transition: Install an estimated 40 public fast charging stations citywide and incentivize electric vehicles and home charging stations to promote electric vehicles. Electrify airport shuttle buses and pickup trucks to reduce emissions.
- Optimize Freight Transportation: Optimizing freight transportation routes, driving practices, and trucking regulations to reduce idling, travel times, fuel usage, and miles driven to reduce GHG emissions and air and noise pollution and improve traffic flow.
- Promote Sustainable Food Production and Distribution: Construct food hubs to emphasize local food production with an aquaponic facility that uses approximately 90% less water.
With the creation of the Climate Action Plan, this bond-funded supplemental electric vehicle stations compensated home or business owners for solar and energy efficiency upgrades, mitigated negative flooding impacts, and increased El Paso’s tree canopies and green spaces. These projects are reducing air and noise pollution, improving access to transportation, decreasing costs, and increasing the city’s efficiency to reduce waste overall.
What about Austin?
City Council has identified a bond election – which will probably be in 2026 – as one important step towards reaching the goals of the Austin Climate Equity Plan. City Council established the Bond Election Advisory Task Force to review city and community needs and provide recommendations on what to put on the ballot. City staff and the task force will ask for community input via an upcoming survey and town hall meetings. Members of the public can also speak at the start of Task Force meetings. Here are some of the climate-friendly projects that could be on the ballot in Austin:
| Project Name: | Funding: | Details: |
| City Facility Lighting | $15,000,000 | Replacing all lighting in city-owned facilities with LED or high-efficiency, long-life induction |
| City Facility Chiller & Pump Upgrades | $3,030,000 | Installing variable frequency drives on chillers and various air handling units on pumps
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| Implement refrigerant management and leak prevention | $249,000 | Lower Refrigerant emissions through tracking wastage, implementing leak detection programs, & replacing outdated appliances
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| Create a Climate “Revolving Fund” | $2,136,000 | Creating a fund to invest in energy upgrades, additional projects, and capture savings
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| Install rooftop solar on City facilities | $45,000,000 | Use the General Fund and 75% of the roof space of 114 buildings to install rooftop solar panels, generating 10 MW
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| Build New Bikeways | $10,800,000 | Fund designing and installing citywide bike pathways; specifically, 4 miles of bikeways in residential areas, seven miles of protected bikeways, and increasing intersection protection |
| Expand Charging Infrastructure at City facilities | To be Determined
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Installing supplemental electric vehicle chargers to meet growing demand
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| Establish a Building Materials Reuse Facility | $400,000 | Fund a new warehouse to reuse various architectural materials such as doors, frames, etc.
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| Reforest Floodplains | $360,000 | Reforest floodplains by planting trees and increasing green space with tree sourcing
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| Restore currently owned natural areas | $5,150,000 | Increase investment to restore natural areas and support Parks and Recreation land Management Programs to reduce biodiversity loss and wildfire risk and improve tree mortality.
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Sonia Joshi is a University of Texas at Austin student and an Environmental Policy intern with the Texas office of Public Citizen.