Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) | Strong Communities Grant Program Impact Evaluation
Strong Communities Grant Program Impact Evaluation
Lotus, in partnership with Economic Planning Systems (EPS) is completing an analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of the Strong Communities Grant Program. The Strong Communities Grant Program incentivizes the adoption of policies that promote affordable housing and sustainable development. Lotus and EPS are developing a methodology and an analysis tool that assesses the environmental and economic impacts of the land use best practices that are supported by the program. The tool will provide insight into how these best practices can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, vehicle miles traveled, household transportation costs, local government and infrastructure costs. Additionally it will quantify how best practices can increase affordable housing and influence housing costs. Understanding these impacts will allow grantees to communicate the benefits of the land use best practices and provide other communities with insight into how they could benefit from implementing these practices.
In addition to the methodology and tool, Lotus and EPS will create individualized reports summarizing results of the analysis for each grantee. Lotus and EPS will also provide case studies of a sample of projects to enable DOLA to continue to communicate the benefits of the program and the included best practices.
Commerce City, Colorado | Climate Action Grants Consultant
Climate Action Grants Consultant
In 2024, Lotus and One Small Step (OSS) worked with the City of Commerce City (C3) to support their sustainability-focused grant writing projects. Lotus has worked with C3 in the past to create their Sustainability Action Plan and support their Environmental Policy Advisory Committee. The grant writing services are a rewarding extension of this multi-year partnership, as we work to fund their sustainability goals. We work collaboratively with the city’s grants coordinator to identify opportunities aligned with the city’s goals and drive applications to completion. Lotus and OSS have helped to coordinate stakeholders to create coalitions that will improve the competitiveness of the application. Our grant writing team has also created streamlined processes to expedite the grant writing processes and has helped to create a prioritization methodology to identify strategies that will win funding. To date, we have applied for the EPA Community Change Grant, CDPHE Environmental Justice Grant, and Great Outdoors Colorado Community Impact Grant.
Albuquerque | Climate Pollution Reduction Grant Data Consultant
Climate Pollution Reduction Grant Data Consultant
Lotus is working with the City of Albuquerque, New Mexico to complete several data-related projects to support the City’s Comprehensive Climate Action Plan (CCAP) as a part of Albuquerque’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grant (CPRG). Data related work for this CCAP includes the creation of a four county-wide community greenhouse gas and co-pollutant emissions inventory, a business as usual model, and greenhouse gas emissions reductions forecasting for all measures included in the City’s CCAP. Lotus will also support Albuquerque in developing several other deliverables necessary for the CCAP, including a workforce analysis and a cost analysis for the measures included in the CCAP.
Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) | Climate Pollution Reduction Grant
Climate Pollution Reduction Grant
Lotus is currently working with DRCOG to fulfill the requirements of the agency’s $1 million Climate Pollution Reduction Grant (CPRG) from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As part of this process, Lotus supported data collection, emissions calculations, modeling, stakeholder engagement, and strategy development and prioritization for DRCOG’s Priority Climate Action Plan. Currently, Lotus is supporting stakeholder engagement and related tasks to develop the regional Comprehensive Climate Action Plan.
To date, Lotus has led and facilitated multiple community and stakeholder engagements, and facilitated an equity subcommittee. Lotus conducted an all-day workshop that brought together representatives from communities across the 12-county region to organize implementation details for the eight PCAP strategies. The stakeholder engagement process that was deployed for the PCAP and will continue for the CCAP, has ensured that a broad constituency of community members from across the DRCOG region are engaged in, and empowered to participate in the resulting PCAP strategy implementation process. The creation and participation of the equity subcommittee as part of the PCAP process helped to ensure that the final implementation details for the PCAP strategies are informed by the communities that will be most impacted by this work.
DRCOG’s Priority Climate Action Plan was submitted to the EPA with the corresponding grant application for CPRG Implementation Funds. DRCOG secured grants funds for the Decarbonize DRCOG Program, the funding mechanism for the program related to this RFP and proposal.
Town of Erie | Sustainability Master Plan and community-wide GHG Inventory
Lotus worked with the Town of Erie to create the Town’s first Sustainability Master Plan. The process included in-depth research; informational interviews with staff, community members, and partner agencies; a series of advisory board meetings; stakeholder workshops; and community outreach at community events and a project open house. The result was an actionable plan for strategies that the Town and its partners can implement over the coming five years to enhance sustainability as the community grows. This Plan will serve as a decision-making tool and includes information on potential funding sources, partners, and actions that the Town can pursue in the areas of energy, recycling, transportation, and education and outreach.
Since completing the Town’s Sustainability Master Plan Lotus has also supported work on behalf of the Town to obtain grant funds for charging stations, support community engagement efforts related to waste diversion policy, and is embarking on completing the Town’s first GHG emissions inventory.
In 2022, Lotus developed the Town of Erie’s first-ever 2020 community GHG inventory and 2020 municipal GHG inventory. Lotus synthesized the results of the community and municipal inventories into a report as well as a dashboard to visually communicate the results of the inventories. Lotus also created inventory management plans for the two inventories, trained the Erie team on how to update the inventories in future years, and presented the results in person to the Town’s Sustainability Board.
“Julia Newman, Senior Associate at Lotus Engineering and Sustainability has led the Town of Erie Colorado’s effort to develop a community-focused Master Sustainability Plan. Community input along with the Town Administration and the Sustainability Advisory Board was critical in this process. Julia was masterful in her ability to facilitate a diverse group of people and opinions in public forums along with small teams sessions. Our success was due to Julia’s attention to detail and ability to help all contributors feel heard and understood.”