By Cathy Cowan Becker

Are you ready for the city of Columbus to commit to 100% renewable energy? We are! And we are doing something about it.

Last fall the Sierra Club Central Ohio Group launched our Ready for 100 campaign to ask the city of Columbus to commit to transitioning to 100% renewable energy by 2050 or before.

Since then we have:

• Assembled a team of a dozen lead volunteers to handle reaching out to community members and community leaders, as well as communications and digital presence.
• Put together a fact sheet about current energy consumption in Columbus and how the city could attain 100% renewable.
• Conducted a campaign that got more than 700 people to sign postcards asking the city to commit to 100% renewable and up to 200 possible new volunteers.

Next year we will move into the public phase of the campaign. Our goal is to spend the coming year building a consensus among organizations, businesses, and citizens across Columbus in support of committing to 100% renewable energy.

We don’t think this consensus will be hard to achieve. Polls consistently show that up to three-fourths of the public across the political spectrum support renewable energy. What most people don’t know is how attainable 100% renewable energy is, so that is where our campaign comes in.

We plan to have grassroots efforts to reach out to various sectors of the community -- such as health care, education, labor, faith groups, and non-profits – to find out what their concerns are and ask for their support in asking the city to commit to this transition.

At the same time, we also plan “grasstops” efforts in reaching out to government and elected officials to see what their concerns are and where we have an opportunity to move forward. The city of Columbus is doing a lot of things right with renewable energy. It’s just that the climate crisis demands we all do more.

So far nationally, more than 50 cities have committed to 100% renewable energy, many by 2035, and mayors of 165 more cities, including Cincinnati, have pledged to pass legislation for this commitment. Committed cities include Pittsburgh; St. Louis; Madison, Wis.; Columbia, S.C.; and Orlando, Fla.

If you would like to become involved in the Ready for 100 campaign in Columbus, please contact us at cog.conscom@sierraclub.org. We meet on the fourth Thursday of every month at 6 p.m.

To follow news about the Ready for 100 Columbus campaign, and about climate change and renewable energy in general, please like our Facebook page at facebook.com/Readyfor100Columbus.