Climate ACTION STRATEGY

About the Climate Action Strategy

The Port of Bellingham has adopted a Climate Action Strategy (CAS) to mitigate for and adapt to the effects of climate change, with an early focus on greenhouse gas mitigation and sea level rise. 

The Port has already taken significant steps on these issues, by increasing energy efficiency and reducing waste across its extensive aviation, maritime and real estate operations, and beginning to integrate new sea level rise modeling in capital projects. The Climate Action Strategy helps the Port build on these important efforts and enhance community, environmental and economic health for future generations. The Strategy is adaptable and iterative as Port operations change and mitigation and adaptation approaches evolve. The CAS will be integrated into our master plan, the Comprehensive Scheme of Harbor Improvements in 2024. 

Recently, we finalized our Vulnerability Assessment to include a detailed Exposure, Sensitivity and Adaptive Capacity Analysis (ESA) focused on sea level rise and storm surges for a high priority area - our Maintenance shop and yard. This ESA will be used as a pilot for other high priority areas. In addition, the Port has developed a GIS-based sea level rise web viewer based on the USGS Coastal Storm Model (CoSMoS). Click here for the viewer, and If prompted for log in credentials please refresh your browser and accept the disclaimer to open without logging in. 

The Port's Climate team has worked with all divisions to identify specific actions to accomplish the climate action goals and strategies. 

See Key Work Products Page for the links to these completed documents. 

What’s Happening Now

Currently, the Port project team is working to implement priority actions such as:

1. Finishing the inventory for 2022 Greenhouse Gas emissions,
2. The EV charging stations program,
3. Incorporating Sea Level Rise modeling into construction projects,
4. Performing numerous feasibility studies for solar array installations throughout Port property,
5. Evaluating all of our buildings energy use and efficiency in our Building and Infrastructure Energy Management Program (the BIEMP), and
6. Monitoring grant opportunities for renewable energy projects.