Governor’s Task Force on Climate Change

By Robert Montgomery | August 15, 2020

All of the WICCI working groups were asked to provide input to the task force on climate change. The Infrastructure Working Group (IWG) provided two sets of input.

The first was a comprehensive list of infrastructure climate change issues and potential solutions (pdf). This was circulated to the working group members for comment and additions, and was issued in June 2020.

As a followup, WICCI requested a priority list of the top three recommendations for the state to implement. This set of recommendations combined several of the issues in the first list and was produced mainly by Rob Montgomery, Daniel Wright, and Maria Hart, with communication with Steve Vavrus (WICCI co-director and member of the Climate Working Group) on recommendations for a State Climate Office. The priorities include:

1. Creating a Comprehensive Present and Future Climate Database for Wisconsin (pdf)
2. Create an Office of Climate Resilient Infrastructure (pdf)
3. Defining the Carbon Content of Construction Materials for Wisconsin (pdf)

Information from all of the WICCI working groups was combined into the Report to the Governor’s Task Force on Climate Change – Strategies to Improve Wisconsin’s Climate Resilience and Readiness (pdf) and released July 31, 2020.

The Governor’s Task Force is now assembling its final recommendations and will submit those to the governor on October 31, 2020.