Christie Abdul-Greene swiped along her iPad on a City of Omaha website describing its roadmap to address climate change.
The city promised to build “climate resilience” and “a more sustainable future” in Omaha. It was serious about bettering the lives of its citizens, according to a quote highlighted on the website from Mayor Jean Stothert.
Two problems: The city passed the plan in 2024 and Stothert left office more than a year ago.
“Gosh,” sighed Abdul-Greene, co-chair of a city task force charged with addressing climate change.
Since passing its climate action and resilience plan in December 2024, the city has been quiet on how it’s preparing for an increasingly volatile environment. The plan’s bold 2050 goal calls for Omaha to reach net zero emissions — meaning the majority of the city’s energy would come from renewable energy or fuels that don’t create greenhouse gases.
City officials say they’re investing in climate-related projects for biking and walking infrastructure, flood management and urban forestry. But in the last two years, they have also lost the city employee supposed to oversee the work while the federal government paused a promised federal grant that may never arrive.
The city hasn’t done enough, argued Omaha City Council member Pete Festersen, a Democrat who has represented north-central Omaha, including neighborhoods like Dundee and Benson, since 2009. The City Council has passed policies, like allowing denser, less car-centric development, but those have been “one-off’s” rather than steps along a designed path, he said.
Meanwhile, neighboring cities like Lincoln seem to have left Omaha in the dust.
“I’m concerned we haven’t made more progress,” Festersen said, “and that it’s not being actively managed or measured.”
The city is moving toward that, Abdul-Greene said.
For the last year, a climate risk and resiliency task force has met to decide where to start among the 10-year plan’s 46 strategies and 173 potential actions. Many of those actions were designed to be initiated within Phase 1 of the plan, which ends next year.
This year, the city hired a consultant to prioritize action steps and target easier wins.
“I’m both frustrated and excited,” said Abdul-Greene, who is the executive director of Keep Omaha Beautiful. “I think there’s a lot of potential. I think the climate is right for us to move forward.”
Mayor John Ewing said he can’t be responsible for what did or didn’t happen prior to his election in May 2025. He does believe the city is on the right track now.
Its current priorities are to figure out how to make City of Omaha buildings run on renewable energy and electrifying its non-emergency vehicles by 2035 as well as create an online hub where citizens can track progress toward goals.
“We have raised the bar to where this is one of the most important things we’re working on in the city,” Ewing said.
Unexpected setbacks contributed to the slow start, said Marco Floreani, also a co-chair of the city’s task force.
The city developed its plan through a federal grant offered by President Joe Biden’s administration. The plan showed Omaha’s greenhouse gas production and identified the city’s risks to a warming climate, including a 12-degree increase in average temperatures by 2100 if global emissions are not reduced, 70 additional days over 95 degrees and more heavy rainstorms.
To curb climate change and protect from its effects, the city set myriad goals, including designing 100 miles of new biking routes and requiring airtight building construction for energy efficiency.
The city hoped to have more federal money available for implementation, Floreani said. But the month after the Omaha City Council approved the plan, President Donald Trump took office. In March, his pick to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency promised to “drive a dagger through the heart of the climate change religion” by “launching the biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
The federal government awarded the City of Omaha a $461,600 grant for solar charging stations for the city’s bikeshare program, weatherization programs and electric vehicle infrastructure and planning, but the city never got the money. The grant has been under review for more than a year, Floreani said. The U.S. Department of Energy did not return a request for comment.
The city also lost its staff member overseeing climate work. Robert Laroco, previously a city planner and project manager for the climate plan, said he left for a job in Sarpy County soon after Trump began his second term. He did not respond to additional questions.
Last year, Ewing restarted work by creating the risk and resilience task force. But the duties still fell to people like Floreani, who’s primarily the mayor’s deputy chief of staff for economic development and development services.
Ewing said the city is preparing to hire someone to implement climate action in the next several months.
Said Abdul-Greene said, “That is absolutely necessary. This is more than a full-time job.”
Omaha was one of the last big American cities to adopt a climate action plan. It passed an environmental chapter to the city’s master plan in 2010, which included similar goals but largely went unimplemented.
Ryan Wishart, an assistant sociology professor at Creighton University and one of many people who helped develop the plan, is frustrated. But he doesn’t blame the city — yet.
He understands the challenges presented by the Trump administration and new local leadership. But with the Ewing administration established, he’s waiting to see what happens this year.
“We’re going to see more clearly what kind of commitments are being made,” he said. “Are they putting in the staff time? Are they putting in the resources to take this seriously? It has been two years, so now it’s time to start seeing what we’re going to do about it.”
Craig Moody has also been disappointed before. But the managing partner at Verdis Group, a local environmental consultant that the city has hired to work on its climate plan, believes this time will be different.
But he said the city still needs someone to oversee implementation.
“Governance is massively critical to successful execution,” he said. “Absent it, you lose accountability, you lose direction.”
Lincoln shows the effect of that kind of hire, Moody said.
The city passed its climate plan in 2021 and hired Kim Morrow to be its chief sustainability officer the next year. This year, a progress report showed the city cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% compared to 2011. Of the plan’s goals, 76% are either completed or in progress, according to the report.
Morrow said Trump’s election hasn’t affected the city much. While it did lose some funding, most projects have continued normally.
The city added more than five miles of bike lanes and six miles of trails. Along with Lincoln Electric Systems, it spent $600,000 to help residents install energy-efficient heating and cooling systems. The City of Lincoln also restarted a program to offset the costs of adding renewable energy systems, electric vehicle charging stations and other upgrades to commercial, industrial or multifamily properties.
In July, the city received the highest certification for energy efficiency from the U.S. Green Building Council. Lincoln is only the 10th city to receive the platinum award from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.
The plan has helped the city evaluate data centers, too. It denied an application a few years ago because the server hub’s potential draw on resources didn’t align with city environmental goals, Morrow said.
Recently, Morrow also got two full-time employees, one fellow and an intern to keep up with the evolving work.
“Moving forward in this direction has been a priority of the mayor’s from the very beginning,” Morrow said of Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird who, like Ewing, is a Democrat. “The fact that she created my position and put me in her executive office makes a huge difference.”
Once Omaha hires that employee, progress will follow, Abdul-Greene said. And once the city starts posting some wins, the community will see there’s momentum.
The signs may be starting to show.
Its website now lists progress, current priorities and the people leading the effort. After Flatwater Free Press inquired, the attribution on Stothert’s quote on the website was updated to: “Former Omaha Mayor.”
On Oct. 29, the city awarded 12 grants of up to $5,000 each to teenagers and young adults to do climate work. The projects, which range from composting to wetland cleaning, align with the city’s climate plan.
But more importantly, Ewing said, the city is showing the community, particularly environmentally conscious young people, that it’s committed to this issue.
“We have to be responsible and listen to the science that says that our climate is changing and it’s warming, and if we don’t do something to address that,” he said, “then we are going to have a long-term problem.”
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