Resilient Pinellas Action Plan Highlights

Pinellas County is a highly desirable place to live, work, play and visit. As Florida’s most densely populated county, environmental stewardship, community resiliency, hazard mitigation, and climate change adaptation are critical to ensure we thrive both today and into the future.

Pinellas County Government recognizes that the low-lying peninsula is at greater risk to changing future conditions such as sea-level rise, storm surge, man-made disasters, and extreme weather events. The County is continuously working to reduce vulnerability to these threats and maximize resources to help us live more sustainably and overcome our economic, environmental, and social challenges.

This Story Map highlights some of the of the County’s resiliency and sustainability work and showcases the evidence-based considerations that went into the creation of the Resilient Pinellas Action Plan, which will help us all to become more sustainable in our actions and resilient to life’s future challenges. Below you can learn more about the initiatives in the plan’s six Focus Areas

The initiatives outlined in the action plan will help to reduce our carbon footprint and vulnerability by reducing our energy and water needs, helping us build smarter, and increasing our understanding of the benefit of these solutions.

Our team started development of Resilient Pinellas Action Plan in Fall 2020, and implementation began in Spring 2023. We collaborated extensively with internal and external stakeholders to develop the foundations and best practices of the action plan. Throughout the project, we focus on data and scientific evidence and take into account the unique circumstances of geography, weather, and life in Pinellas County.

The vision and mission statement, guiding principles, focus areas, goals and initiatives make up the Resilient Pinellas foundational elements. Throughout development, these elements were correlated with needs identified by the community and insights shared by County staff and the Sustainability and Resiliency Advisory Committee (SRAC). The slideshow below provides an overview of the foundational elements.

To inform Resilient Pinellas, the project team established an External Stakeholder Engagement Strategy, which provided structure for planning and implementing community outreach and engagement to support plan development, implementation, and achievement of the County’s sustainability and resiliency goals.

Two key parts of the action plan outreach were a public opinion survey and an external advisory committee. Feedback received through both of these efforts has proven invaluable in learning about the needs and desires of the community and helped us develop and prioritize the initiatives in this plan.

The slideshow below provides an overview of these external engagement activities.

Two key parts of the action plan outreach were a public opinion survey and an external advisory committee. Feedback received through both of these efforts has proven invaluable in learning about the needs and desires of the community and helped us develop and prioritize the initiatives in this plan.

In addition to the existing best practices and new initiatives outlined by the Focus Areas in the action plan, there are three essential initiatives that were developed alongside the Resilient Pinellas Action Plan that will continue to play an important role in advancing the County’s sustainability and resiliency Vision and Mission: the Pinellas County Sea Level Rise and Storm Surge Vulnerability Assessment, the Return on Investment Guidance Document, and the Pinellas County Clean Energy Roadmap. Each of these important measures will help departments reach their sustainability and resiliency goals and provide opportunities for measuring the success of each of the action plan goals.

As global temperatures rise, Pinellas County and its residents will be at an increased risk of future threats that can affect the community’s health and economy. As a low-lying peninsula, Pinellas County is especially at risk from rising sea levels and storm surge. These climate hazards require special consideration of the potential consequences to the county, its communities, and its infrastructure.  As the densest county in the Florida, anticipated to become more urbanized over time, the County will continue to see a high demand for community services and an increased vulnerability to coastal hazards.

To better understand these risks and prepare for the future, the County recently completed a  Sea Level Rise and Storm Surge Vulnerability Assessment . The study researched the following key questions:

• What is the timing associated with climate impacts and environmental changes?
• When can impacts be expected to worsen throughout the county, and where should action be taken?
• What types of costs to Pinellas County Government can be anticipated from the impacts of sea level rise and storm surge?
• How should investment decisions be made while taking future conditions into consideration?
• How can these changes be defined to create foundational data to support Pinellas County Government decisions?

This assessment provides the County with a sound basis of data and technical information to understand our threats and vulnerabilities, as well as specific actions to take to better protect us from these hazards, which are further outlined in the action plan.

As reflected in the figure above, through the development of the Sea Level Rise and Storm Surge Vulnerability Assessment, Pinellas County Government completed the following:

• Assessed county infrastructure like roads and wastewater treatment facilities to see where future flooding could have serious impacts
• Determined where in the county could be fully underwater or frequently flooded during future high tides
• Evaluated county locations most at risk from current storm surge impacts and explored how sea level rise could increase those risks
• Calculated the economic impact and costs to the County of flooding worsened by sea level rise to County roads, wastewater treatment facilities and other county infrastructure
• Identified steps to prepare for and reduce the impacts of future sea level rise and storm surge on our communities

This data-driven analysis will continue to help the County prioritize the most important and feasible adaptation and mitigation steps as outlined in the action plan to make Pinellas County communities more resilient to the impacts of future climate impacts.

The County's Sustainability and Resiliency Program will also continue to provide opportunities for our communities to learn about the data generated in the Pinellas County Sea Level Rise and Storm Surge Vulnerability Assessment.

View the  Sea Level Rise and Storm Surge Vulnerability Assessment Executive Summary 

Local governments around the world are increasingly setting bold targets and actions to address the impacts of climate change, while seeking to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs associated with energy use. Pinellas County Government is working to set actionable goals to reduce energy demand and increase opportunity for clean, renewable energy sources. As such, we have adopted a Clean Energy Roadmap, which outlines specific steps the County might take to reach its clean energy goals of:

• 50% clean energy for County government operations by 2030;
• 100% clean energy for County government operations by 2040; and
• 100% clean energy countywide by 2050.

The County's Clean Energy Roadmap aims to expand the impact of the County’s Energy and Water Conservation Program, providing guidance and strategic opportunities to increase energy conservation and future investment in clean energy solutions. Steps identified in this Clean Energy Roadmap are designed to align with other Pinellas County strategic initiatives and commitments, such as Administrative Directive 6-11, the Board of County Commissioners  Ready for 100 Resolution ,  and the Resilient Pinellas Action Plan.

Reaching the County’s clean energy goals will require a comprehensive approach. This will only be achieved through strong leadership and decisive, immediate action to create an energy network and building stock that is clean, reliable, affordable and equitable.  While making a transition to 100% clean energy today can be more easily accomplished as innovations in the energy sector continue to advance, no singular approach alone is comprehensive enough to allow the County to make the transition. Pinellas County will need to pursue multiple, integrated pathways to achieve its near- and long-term clean energy goals. The figure to the right displays the six “ABCDEF” pathways presented for Pinellas County to reach its 100% clean energy goal.

As an important step in understanding which action plan strategies might have the biggest positive impact in reaching the County's Sustainable Systems goals, Pinellas County recently conducted greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventories for both government operations and the unincorporated area as a whole. GHG inventories help organizational leaders and stakeholders understand how and in what quantities their activities generate GHG emissions. This assessment will help Pinellas County reach its goal to become a more resilient community through improved building standards, waste reduction, increased efficiencies in capital improvement projects, and continued outreach to educate residents on how they can reduce their own carbon footprints.

The figure below reflects community sources of GHG emissions. Total community-wide emissions within the unincorporated area of Pinellas County in calendar year 2019 were 2,587,335 mtCO2e .

As seen above, the largest contributor to community-wide GHG emissions is the Transportation sector, accounting for 48.6 percent of total emissions. The second largest contributor is the Stationary Energy sector, attributable to 45.5 percent of total emissions. In review of total emissions and understanding that a primary goal of the County is to reduce its carbon footprint, equal attention has been taken to identifying strategies that reduce auto-dependency and improve the operational efficiency of the built environment .

The continued assessment of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced by daily activities by local government operations and the community will be important in reducing climate impacts. It will also support more sustainable and affordable living in the coastal community.  The Resilient Pinellas Action Plan recommends that the County continue to conduct GHG emissions inventories at least every five years to monitor progress toward our clean energy commitments.

As a part of the development of the Resilient Pinellas Action Plan, the Project Team has created a Sustainability and Resiliency Return on Investment (ROI) Guidance Document and Checklist that can be used by County staff to review projects for potential sustainability and resiliency outcomes. This is an important part of plan implementation that will facilitate enduring support for the program after Action Plan adoption.

As reflected in the figure above, the ROI guidance document was designed following a triple bottom line approach, which provides a holistic analysis common in sustainability practice that looks at potential ROI based on three criteria:

• Economic Prosperity, or Profit
• Social Responsibility, or People
• Environmental Stewardship, or Planet

This guidance checklist will assist County staff in reviewing projects through the lens of all three Triple Bottom Line components and will better provide more comprehensive value for the environment, community and economy. Future capital investments should be reviewed following this Triple Bottom Line approach as a means of identifying opportunities to increase natural habitat function, provide environmentally friendly design, reduce long-term maintenance needs, reduce demand on environmental resources for human need, and better provide sustainable and resilient outcomes for both county operations and the communities the County serves.

The development of the action plan took a data-driven approach, offering opportunities to integrate publicly available data and recent analyses completed by Pinellas County to better inform initiatives adopted in the plan. The following series of maps reflect the type of data that helped to inform the plan and will continue to be analyzed to prioritize projects, programs and policies adopted in the plan.

The map below shows the history of development in Pinellas County by decade. The age of the built environment and surrounding infrastructure is an important factor in the resilience of our communities.

Hit play at the bottom center of the map to view parcels.