Strategic Climate Action Plan

About the 2025 Strategic Climate Action Plan

The 2025 Strategic Climate Action Plan (SCAP) was sent to the King County Council on June 11, 2025. The 2025 SCAP strengthens a commitment to climate action that yields tangible results for people and places in the region, through a comprehensive approach among county departments and in collaboration with our partners.

Download the SCAP here.

King County has made significant progress on climate, including a 16% decrease in per-capita emissions since 2007, and the creation of a climate equity framework to ensure its approach benefits the people who are most impacted by climate change. Additional partnerships have been made to scale up the work, including the King County-Cities Climate Collaboration (K4C), the Puget Sound Climate Preparedness Collaborative, and the Coalition for Climate Careers. Updated state policies and regulations have also paved the way for local action by King County to deliver benefits for communities.

Still, substantial work remains to ensure King County is ready and equipped for climate impacts. Our region is already experiencing hotter summers, rising sea levels, and heavier rain events. By the 2050s, climate change is projected to lead to three times the number of days over 90°F in King County, ten inches of sea level rise, and a 13% increase in the intensity of heavy rain events.

Flagship outcomes

Many people are already feeling the impacts of climate change, and not all communities have the same ability to adapt and recover.

The 2025 SCAP addresses the urgent need for action and centers the voices of frontline communities – those most impacted by climate change -- by charting a path toward nine flagships. These flagship issues show that climate action is not a set of individual goals, but a coordinated effort to create lasting change.

• Put communities first: Investing in community leadership, local partnerships, and community preparedness to strengthen frontline community resilience and support community-driven climate action.
• Safe, Healthy, and Climate-Ready Homes and Buildings: Fostering a transition to clean energy, strengthening housing and workplaces to withstand extreme heat, wildfire smoke, or flooding, while ensuring affordability and preventing displacement.
• Connected and Accessible Transportation: Expanding sustainable mobility options like transit, biking, and walking to reduce car dependency while improving access to jobs, schools and services.
• Economic Mobility and Career-Building Opportunities: Ensuring that the economic opportunities created by the clean energy transition benefit historically excluded workers and local communities.
• Fresh, Local Food for Everyone: Strengthening food security and sustainable agriculture by supporting farmers, reducing food waste, and increasing access to fresh, healthy food.
• Design Out Waste: Redesigning our systems to reduce consumption, prevent waste, and increase the reuse of valuable materials.
• Clean Air, Water, and Healthy Ecosystems: Protecting and restoring forests, waterways, and green spaces to improve climate resilience, public health, and biodiversity.
• Reliable and Future-Ready Infrastructure: Changing how we design, build, and maintain roads, utilities, and public services to withstand climate extremes while ensuring equitable access to essential infrastructure.
• Collaborative and Community-Led Solutions: Centering climate action and equity in climate governance by ensuring frontline communities, tribes, and local organizations help shape and lead climate solutions.

The 2025 SCAP is the fourth iteration for King County, and builds on progress made over the past two decades. It reinforces past commitments and breaks new ground by offering an updated, integrated vision of King County’s approach to climate action.

SCAP Sections

The flagships are guiding outcomes for the SCAP, and the SCAP "sections" organize actions to achieve three key goals:

• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions
• Supporting sustainable and resilient frontline communities
• Preparing for climate impacts

Each section contains several "focus areas" that break down big issues into action items.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the SCAP?
The Strategic Climate Action Plan (SCAP), updated every five years as required by the King County Code, formalizes King County’s commitment to climate action.

The SCAP serves as 1) a strategic planning document, outlining priorities and commitments across a range of action areas to our community and partners; and 2) a workplan for County staff to achieve our collective goals.

Reading the SCAP also offers an introduction to the climate risks King County faces and an invitation to partner with King County on resilience, preparedness, and emission reduction efforts.

What kinds of climate risks does King County face?
Climate change is expected to lead to more hot days, less snowpack, less full rivers in the summer and more flooding in the winter, more extreme precipitation, sea level rise, and the potential for more wildfires on the western side of Washington. Climate change is also a threat multiplier for many of the challenges frontline communities already face, from food security to affording utilities.

The SCAP is meant to outline strategies to prepare for the impacts of these risks on County properties and infrastructure, and to support resilience efforts in the communities most affected.

What do you mean by frontline communities?
Frontline communities are people disproportionately impacted by climate change due to existing and historic racial, social, environmental, and economic inequities. They often experience the earliest and most acute impacts of climate change, but they also often have experiences that empower unique strengths and insights into climate resilience strategies and practices.

Frontline communities include Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, immigrants and refugees, people living with low incomes, communities experiencing disproportionate pollution exposure, women and gender non-conforming people, LGBTQIA people, people who live and/or work outside, those with existing health issues, people with limited English skills, and other climate-vulnerable groups.

Is there anything I, as a community member, can do to help? What if my group is already working on some of these type of actions?
King County invites involvement and partnership to make the actions in the SCAP a reality! One of the best ways to get involved is to read the SCAP, find actions that you’re excited about, and connect with the agencies and partners assigned to them. The SCAP must first be adopted by King County Council before official implementation begins; subscribe to our King County Climate Action newsletter to learn more about getting involved once that happens.

In the meantime, visit the Executive Climate Office (ECO) website to find out about some of the programs already underway!

How do I read the different sections of the SCAP? What do they mean?
The SCAP begins with an Executive Summary, available in 11 languages, that offers an overview of King County’s main objectives and desired outcomes. It gives a summary of each section, explaining key focus areas and describing how King County will measure performance.

Flagships: The Flagships Section in the SCAP represents King County’s most visible and community-focused outcomes. They connect actions across the SCAP’s sections to broader goals that improve the lives of those who live, work, and visit King County. The flagships show how climate efforts are integrated solutions, not isolated policies, delivering meaningful benefits to people, communities, and the environment. Through the 2025 SCAP development process, King County identified nine new flagship outcomes:

• Put Communities First
• Safe, Healthy, and Climate-Ready Buildings
• Connected and Accessible Transportation
• Economic Mobility and Career Opportunities
• Fresh, Local Food for Everyone
• Design Out Waste
• Clean Air, Water, and Healthy Ecosystems
• Reliable and Future-Ready Infrastructure
• Collaborative and Community-Led Solutions

The flagships are followed by three sections organizing actions King County and partners will take to achieve the visions laid out in flagships:

• Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• Sustainable and Resilient Frontline Communities
• Preparing for Climate Impacts

Each section includes an introductory section to help readers understand the issues involved, followed by several focus areas meant to organize the actions in the section. Actions outline what work will be pursued, who will pursue it, and other important information.

The plan also includes an Appendix with a glossary of key terms, 2025 Operational Energy and Greenhouse Gas Guidance, an update on 2020 SCAP Priority Actions and Performance Measures, a summary of 2020 SCAP Performance Measures; and three associated plans: the 2025 Climate and Workforce Strategy, the 2024 Extreme Heat Mitigation Strategy, and the 2022 Wildfire Risk Reduction Strategy.

Whose input played a role in creating the SCAP?
Climate equity is embedded throughout the plan, with an entire section (Sustainable and Resilient Frontline Communities) guided by the Climate Equity Working Group, a group comprised of members of the Climate Equity Community Task Force and of additional frontline community leaders recruited to expand community voice in the SCAP. The group also screened the Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Preparedness sections for equity objectives and concerns.

In addition, King County underwent a robust public engagement process, including coordinating with cities across the region through the King County-Cities Climate Collaboration (K4C); soliciting input during three in-person workshops, community road show events with nonprofit commissions, and virtual public meetings; hosting online public surveys; and asking key partners directly for their input, including the Re+ Community Panel, Regional Code Collaboration, King County Agricultural Commission, King County Forestry Commission, King County Urban Forestry Forum, and internal workgroups including the Capital Project Management Working Group and Steering Committee, Green Building Taskforce, Building Energy Taskforce, and Fleet Planning Committee.

The King County Climate Team – made up of SCAP section leads in the King County Executive Climate Office, and staff from across County departments – then met regularly and worked together for months to write the workplan.

Is there anything different about the 2025 SCAP, as opposed to the 2020 SCAP?
Every SCAP builds on lessons learned from previous plans and meets the moment with its priorities and objectives. Structurally, the 2025 SCAP adds the “flagships” section discussed above that provides a shorter, more accessible overview of the priorities, objectives, and responsible parties mentioned throughout the SCAP.

Materially, staff aimed to ensure the 2025 plan was more focused, streamlined, and accessible than previous plans. Some of the action items carry over from previous plans, while others are new; King County’s values and commitment to its True North – making King County a welcoming community where every person can thrive – remains.

Are any of our current projects seeing federal cuts or impacts?
We are closely monitoring policy changes from the federal government, ongoing litigation, the congressional budgeting process, and action by the courts related to federal funding and contracts. King County is also exploring alternative options, including continued legal actions, and planning with our departments to better understand any potential impacts or reductions in federal funding or grant opportunities. We won’t have a definitive understanding without final decisions regarding funding from the federal government and the courts.

The SCAP is very broad. How do items such as food access or housing affordability fit into a climate plan?
Climate change is a threat multiplier. This is especially true for frontline communities (those who are BIPOC, immigrant, refugee, have low-income, have existing health conditions and disabilities, are LGBTQIA+, and work or live outdoors). Frontline communities are especially susceptible to health impacts from climate change, food and housing insecurity, carrying a disparate and severe cost burden (i.e., cannot afford energy and utilities bills, rent, and groceries). Many also lack access to meaningful career pathways as our region takes action to reduce GHGs and grow a clean energy economy. Learn how we’re trying to address this in the Climate and Economic Opportunity focus area of the SCAP (find within the Sustainable and Resilient Frontline Communities section) and the Climate and Workforce Strategy section.

Focus areas such as food systems and food security, for example, fill this need. Globally, climate change is expected to impact agricultural systems through increased heavy rains, flooding, wildfires, and extreme temperatures. Changing climate patterns are also putting a strain on systems like food production, transport, processing, packaging, storage, consumption, and loss and waste. Most of King County’s food is grown and processed outside of the region making us vulnerable to these disruptions. We also know the number of people experiencing food insecurity is growing in our region. Strengthening our local food system is an important step in building climate resilience. Equitable climate action means balancing the needs of farming with ecosystem restoration while making food access available to all communities.


Is the Climate and Workforce Strategy part of the SCAP? How is workforce development connected to climate change?
The clean energy sector in King County is one of the fastest growing economic sectors in our region. This presents the potential for significant economic growth and presents an opportunity to address economic disparities (i.e., root causes) through equitable workforce development. Many local communities are missing out on the economic opportunities the clean energy transition presents.

According to a Seattle-King County Workforce Development Council report, 28 percent of working-age households in Washington live below the self-sufficiency standard, a measure of income adequacy based on the real cost of all basic needs, including taxes and savings for working families. Including equitable workforce development through skill-building, training, and career pathways can help prevent deepening economic disparities during a clean energy transition.

While actions concerning workforce development are weaved throughout the main SCAP document, including the Climate and Economic Opportunity focus area (page 229). King County Council also directs staff to transmit a Climate and Workforce Strategy specifying actions and approaches in one document. The 2025 Executive-proposed Climate and Workforce Strategy can be found here.