Water and wastewater infrastructure can be managed to reduce the energy needed to transport water and wastewater, and associated GHG emissions. Residential and commercial buildings use water both indoors for cooking, cleaning, bathing, and toilet flushing, and outdoors to irrigate landscaping and maintain pools and fountains. Water efficiency measures not only reduce the amount of water used but also reduce the amount of energy needed to convey, treat, and distribute water.

Sustainable solid waste management is a critical component to a healthy and inclusive community. Hayward defines zero waste as an ongoing set of practices to conserve resources and protect humans and the environment by responsibly producing, consuming, reusing, and recovering food and goods. Striving toward zero waste can create climate benefits beyond Hayward’s borders and the measures in this section support Hayward’s overall goal of working toward zero waste of resources.

Transportation accounts for the largest portion of GHG emissions in Hayward.

The City of Hayward strives to promote transportation options that provide a robust set of health, mobility, and livability benefits for all community members. The City is committed to developing a thriving transportation network to encourage residents to make more sustainable and healthy choices.

Structure of GHG Reduction Measures

As part of the CAP Update process, the City developed a comprehensive set of measures to reduce communitywide GHG emissions and achieve the City’s climate action targets. Each measure is supported by a set of actions that provide measurable GHG emissions reduction that is supported by substantial evidence.

Climate Equity

Community members experience disproportionate impacts from climate change due to existing vulnerabilities, historical patterns of inequity, systemic environmental injustices, socioeconomic disparities, and historical patterns of inequity. Hayward is committed to developing and implementing equitable solutions to mitigate climate change.

Progress to Date

The City of Hayward has conducted a GHG emissions inventory of communitywide GHG emissions for 2005, 2010, 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2019. In addition to these inventories, the City adopted its first CAP in 2009 and updated the CAP in 2014 and incorporated it in the City’s General Plan. See Appendix B for more information about the data used and how GHG emissions were calculated for Hayward’s 2019 GHG emissions inventory. Figure 2 shows some of the major milestones from recent history in Hayward’s climate actions.

Hayward GHG Emissions Inventory

Community GHG inventories measure the GHG emissions generated by residents and businesses operating in the community, as well as municipal operations. The process of creating a GHG inventory includes first identifying activities that are major sources of emissions and collecting summary data on those activities for a calendar year. Then, the City uses science-based GHG emissions factors to convert the collected activity data into GHG emissions produced.

In 2021, the Hayward People’s Budget awarded a total of $350,000 to fund community-generated, community-led projects. Through community voting, residents picked their top 12 proposals for projects they wanted to see in their neighborhoods. Following the results of the votes, City of Hayward's staff have met with project leads to implement their projects' vision in order to increase community connections across Hayward neighborhoods.

Over the last five months, the City of Hayward has been working diligently to understand the causes of and find solutions for a structural deficit in our General Fund that pays for most non-utility-related municipal services.

We have looked at decisions that contributed to the deficit, identified budget and fiscal practices that needed shoring up and ways to reduce spending and bolster revenues in the short term while beginning work on more structural change—change in how we serve the Hayward community that will be necessary to restore our financial stability and sustainability.