Fremont completed its baseline greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory in the year 2008, quantifying the GHG impacts of activities in Fremont associated with energy consumption, transportation, water distribution and treatment, and waste generation and disposal for the year 2005. Emissions for that year from all Fremont community activity exceeded 1.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e). 

Emissions inventory updates were conducted again in 2014 and in 2017 for the years 2010 and 2015, respectively, demonstrating an overall decline of over 10% between 2005 and 2015—even with a 7.5% population increase during the same period. 

Favorable policies and programs that encourage energy and water efficiency, incentivize low carbon construction, enable high adopt rates of clean technologies, and reduce waste have helped to keep Fremont on track toward achieving its 2020 GHG emissions reduction goal. As part of the Climate Action Plan update process, the City has recently completed its GHG inventories for the years 2017, 2018, and 2019. Significantly, Fremont had surpassed its 25% GHG emissions reduction target by the year 2017, 3 years ahead of schedule!

These trends can be seen in the charts below:

In early 2019, the Fremont City Council deepened its commitment to robust climate action by adopting a Post-Carbon Framework with ambitious goals of 55% GHG emissions reductions by 2030 and 100% emissions reduction by 2050, known commonly as carbon neutrality. 

The Post-Carbon Framework establishes guiding values and key strategies that will provide for economic and social opportunity across all ages, cultures, and abilities while at the same time producing no net GHG emissions and protecting and enhancing a healthy and functioning local and global ecosystem.

​Guiding Values

• Equity & Access: Ensure that all people have the opportunity to benefit equally from climate solutions, while not taking on an unequal burden of climate impacts.
• Efficiency & Innovation: Promote the efficient use of resources and the adoption of clean and climate-smart technologies and techniques.
• Health & Wellness: Safeguard and enhance the ability of the community to live, work, play, connect, and thrive in a healthy social and physical environment.
  
• Resiliency & Capacity-Building: Provide education and training on the opportunities offered by a more resilient future and encourage sustainable behaviors across all sectors of the community.

Key Strategies

1. Clean & Renewable Power: Deploy and efficiently use clean, renewable, and locally-sourced electricity generated onsite or transmitted through the power grid.
2. Electrification & Fossil Fuel Phase-Out: Upgrade and replace carbon-intensive, fossil fuel-based infrastructure and combustion power throughout the transportation and building sectors with clean electric power.
3. Carbon Sequestration: Drawdown carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere through ecological and/or technological methods and capture and store in plants, soils, water systems, and other solid forms.
4. Mobility & Connectivity: Develop and enhance safe, multimodal, accessible, equitable, intelligent, and clean motorized and non-motorized travel options, transit modes, transportation infrastructure, and community connectivity.
5. Resource Conservation & Elimination of Waste: Conserve natural and manufactured resources by means of the responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials.
6. Restorative Ecology & Green Infrastructure: Restore, rehabilitate, and repurpose degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems and habitats through active interventions. Incorporate green infrastructure and ecosystem services into community design.
7. Climate Adaptation & Resilience: Prepare for, limit, learn from, and adapt to the negative effects of climate change through proactive and holistic planning and response at infrastructural, cultural, and institutional levels.