The ClimateWise program continues to serve as a resource and an avenue for businesses to engage with the City on triple bottom line actions and results.  In 2015 City Staff completed a comprehensive restructure of this program using input from ClimateWise Partners, City Staff, Community groups, consultants and others in the community. This restructure not only resulted in a number of efficiencies and cost savings which significantly benefited the program, but also provided a consistent amount of support for existing Partners, strengthened the sustainability of the program and increased the ease of participation for new and existing businesses.  Following are a few key points which we hope will help to answer your questions.

• As a part of a strategic optimization within Utilities, the administration of ClimateWise was moved into the newly created Community Engagement department (operating under the Utilities Customer Connections Service Area) in 2014. Staffing support for the ClimateWise program was integrated into Customer Connections to provide additional resource support in order to manage expansion and rebranding of the program.  Thus, the budget formally allocated to ClimateWise was merged into the new Community Engagement budget, and ClimateWise no longer has a separate operating budget.

  • Working with Partners, ClimateWise staff restructured and launched a revised program in October 2015 featuring a new “badge” system. Badges reflect the primary emission areas targeted in our Road to 2020 effort (old CAP program), and businesses can choose to participate in energy, waste, transportation, water, and social responsibility projects that align with their operations and vision.
  • The re-branding of ClimateWise was such a great success it was recently recognized by the City-County Communications & Marketing Association (3CMA) by being selected as the winner of a Savvy award and the President’s award! For more information, visit http://www.3cma.org.
  • The ClimateWise program’s primary metric was revised in 2016 to focus on savings from actions by partners in a given program year.  The prior metric, which was published to the community dashboard (ENV23), reported savings which was, in part, duplicated in other energy efficiency, renewable energy and solid waste metrics. The revised metric better reflects the objectives of the program regarding engagement with Fort Collins business community and Fort Collins sustainability goals. ClimateWise no longer uses a third party to quantify program GHG reductions, rather numbers are now reported from first year savings of implemented projects and actions which align to our Road to 2020 (old CAP program), Energy Policy and Water Efficiency Policy. Along with the utilization of in-house resources, this resulted in a cost savings of nearly $100,000 annually.
  • Program results are made available in the annual ClimateWise Operations Report. Once again, Partner’s delivered – reducing over 16,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases, saving over 1 million dollars, and reducing over 61.5 million gallons of water.
  • When the program relaunched in 2015, interested businesses, regardless of former ClimateWise partnership, were asked to re-pledge to the program. This was due to the fact that the program historically had over 360 business Partners, however less than half had reported their impact in 2014. At the end of 2015 reporting season, 128 business Partners had pledged or re-pledged to the updated program with 100 completing the annual reporting process and earning a program level.  To date, the updated program has 148 active Partners. A list of all business Partners can be found here along with their 2015 accomplishments.The ClimateWise program continues to be an integral part of engaging and recognizing businesses efforts to support the triple bottom line in our community.  In May 2016, over 200 business Partners and community members came together at the annual ClimateWise recognition event, EnvirOvation. Feedback from the first complete year of the restructured and re-branded program is consistently positive.