On August 25, Virginia Clean Cities executive director Alleyn Harned spoke on one of the first panels of the 2021 Resilient Virginia Conference. This year’s conference was virtual and took place from August 25 – 27. It featured a wide range of speakers discussing the idea of resiliency and how Virginia can work to analyze its strengths and weaknesses in its ability to handle man-made disasters, public health challenges, and socio-economic stressors.
As we feel the effects of climate change more and more, it is becoming increasingly evident that we need to plan how to deal with the consequences. Depending on the regional location – coastal, urban, or rural – as well as local socio-economic and other community factors, local governments will need to identify and prioritize how they go about formulating equitable resiliency solutions.
Speakers discussed various topics ranging from the causes of climate change, identification of particular hazards and risks in Virginia’s communities, to ways that Virginia can implement resilient design into future building projects and infrastructure.
One idea that was confirmed repeatedly is that drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions in our environment is necessary for building resiliency and limiting the number of climate disasters likely to occur in the coming years. Seeing as the transportation industry is the leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, it is a great place to start in those reduction efforts.
VCC was proud to participate in this year’s conference to offer solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with the transportation industry. In addition, Alleyn discussed the opportunity to implement EVs and other low emission vehicles here in Virginia. To learn more about those use cases and see additional information, check out VCC’s Fuels/Tech page.