King County Housing Authority – Sukirti Vinayak – 2018

Goals

The King County Housing Authority (KCHA) helps provide over 19,000 families with affordable housing across 33 cities in Washington State. Although they had established a preliminary GHG reduction goal in their current Environmental Sustainability Plan, it only pertained to emissions associated with the energy use in buildings. The Resource Conservation team enlisted EDF Climate Corps fellow Sukirti Vinayak to develop a GHG inventory with a tracking mechanism that would include other sources of emission associated with operations, residents and employees. This would help align the organization with King County’s Strategic Climate Action Plan.

Solutions

In cooperation with the Resource Conservation team, Vinayak canvassed the length and breadth of activities at KCHA offices and properties to create the boundaries of the inventory. He assessed KCHA’s existing GHG protocols and other critical sources of emission such as solid waste and construction material. Those are largely managed by third party stakeholders without any significant data reporting mechanism. Vinayak developed estimation methodologies for those sources and created the final GHG inventory. Once completed, Vinayak outlined the department-specific data capture methods needed to increase the scope and precision of the inventory going forward.

Potential Impact

Vinayak’s GHG inventory now goes beyond buildings’ energy consumption and captures emissions data from its construction work, fleet, solid waste, employee commute and air travel. This will make KCHA a frontrunner, among housing authorities, in climate change mitigation strategy. With time, this inventory will become more robust and KCHA’s senior management will gain a deeper understanding of the various sources of GHG emission. This will encourage steps toward implementation of more innovative conservation programs.