A2Zero—OSI Missed Goals Mean in 2028 Taxpayers Will Begin to Spend Public Money to Buy Carbon Offsets

by P.D. Lesko

To her credit, the City’s sustainability czarina Dr. Missy Stults, is tracking the progress of her dept.’s work to have Ann Arbor reach carbon neutrality by 2030. In an email in response to questions about the Office of Sustainability and Innovation (OSI) Performance Metrics Dashboard data, Dr. Stults said, “And thank you for checking out the dashboard! It’s been a work in progress for a long time now and I’m glad to know people are using it and finding it valuable!” The dashboards are a treasure trove of data that, in several instances, are a bad news buffet for Stults, her dept., and the City which has spent over $25 million since 2021 to reach a multitude of ecological goals by 2030 (reducing by 50 percent miles driven in the city, for example).

Here are some recent ways OSI has touted advancing sustainability from its Facebook page in reels titled “Keeping it Reel”:

• July 10, 2026 Reel: Contract with “collaborator” VegMichigan. “In the first three years of contracting with them we have reached over 9,500 residents…and nearly 2500 of them…have taken the plant-based pledge”; “We have closed out our circular economy action plan survey having heard from over 50 local businesses and institutions….We are compiling that feedback”; “We hosted a tree walk in Wurster Park along with A2 Wild Ones for over 20 participants who learned to identify native tree species.” (When a Facebook commenter responded to the July 10, 2026 reel with “What a scam,” the OSI closed commenting.)
• July 13, 2026 Reel: “Our Office was there on the kickoff [at Art Fair] celebrating art in all its beautiful formats”; “This week we hit 500 rental properties being in full compliance with our Green Rental Housing Ordinance….about 54 percent of all housing in Ann Arbor are rentals” (31,500 units); “We met and did some strategic planning around a Circular Economy Action Plan.”

In 2022, Gov. Whitmer committed Michigan to carbon neutrality by 2050 with her MI Healthy Climate Plan. Republican lawmakers and industry groups, including the Big Three automakers, oppose the clean-power legislation. They argue wind and solar are unreliable and will, ultimately, raise the cost of electricity for the State’s residents by over $350 billion. While local elected officials dine out politically on their support of the A2Zero plan and the City’s Office of Sustainability and Innovation (OSI), Dr. Stults is providing taxpayers with a clear-eyed look into precisely what the goals are, what has been accomplished and which goals remain aspirational.

On June 8, 2026, in an interview related to his bid for re-election, Mayor Chris Taylor told the Ann Arbor Observer: “With A2Zero we have implemented curbside recycling for everyone, year-round curbside composting, and a zero-waste Materials Recovery Facility. Solar panels, rebates, heat pumps, district geothermal. The Sustainable Energy Utility is launching in 2026, delivering 100% renewable power to residents who opt in at rates at or below DTE’s. My opponent says he wants to municipalize the energy grid. We didn’t wait. We built something real.”

Taylor’s sweeping claims gloss over ecological failures, however. Despite the expansion of composting and recycling programs, more tons of recyclables and organics are going to the landfill today than in any other year going back to 2018, according to the City’s data. Ann Arbor residents are producing slightly fewer pounds of trash per capita than in 2021 (827.27 versus 825.5 pounds per person) but the pounds of that trash produced that are composted and recycled have fallen sharply from pre-A2Zero levels, according to the City’s metrics.

Dr. Stults points to the fact that “we’ve actually stopped emissions from increasing.” The data confirm her statement. She added, “That may not seem like a big deal, but before you can reduce emissions, you have to level them off. Put another way, in a flood, the first thing you do is turn off the hose (you stop the water from aggregating). Then you start removing it. We’ve been successful at stopping emissions from rising and are now focusing on removing them. It’s an important part of the story but one we haven’t yet told through our analysis, inventories, or dashboard. I hope to have this data by end of the year.”

OSI Far Off A2Zero Goals While the Climate Action Millage Capture Increases Annually

Ann Arbor’s 2027 budget documents the rising cost of the Office of Sustainability and Innovation to taxpayers. According to the City’s webpage that outlined the details of the Climate Action Millage, “In 2021 dollars, the Millage, which is up to 1-mill, would generate an estimated $6.8 million per year fo​r 20 years.​”

The Climate Action Millage passed by Ann Arbor voters in Nov. 2022 is projected to bring in $8.8 million in 2026, up from $4.4 million in 2023, and $7.2 million in 2024. By 2027, the Climate Action Millage is projected to cost taxpayers $11.3 million, almost double what taxpayers were told in 2022 the millage would generate. Prior to the passage of the Millage, in 2021 the City of Ann Arbor spent $653,030 on sustainability programs and initiatives, according to the City’s budget.

Dr. Stults remains cautiously hopeful. “The millage will raise around $140-$150 million over its life. [W]e leverage the millage (or have historically and plan to in the future) as match for grant funding. Of course, cuts in federal programs, staffing, and initiatives are having a local impact but thanks to the millage, we are able to keep programs moving (just not as fast as desired).”

In 2024, OSI was allocated $2.4 million. That rose to $2.86 million in 2025 and is projected to increase to $3.86 million in 2026, an over 50 percent increase in just the past two years. The OSI has 21.5 employees as of 2026. In 2021, the City employed 8.5 people who worked on sustainability. In comparison, the Water Treatment Plant has 29.26 employees, the Parks Dept. has 41.91 employees and the Fire Dept. has 88 employees. In total, in 2026 Ann Arbor has 862.8 employees.

In 2022, to sell the 20-year millage voters were told, “Right now, funding does not exist at the scale needed to address l​​ocal climate change-related needs and create local climate programs. The City continues to pursue federal grants, state support, philanthropic dollars, and donations to advance climate work, but a millage provides a guaranteed and regular source of funding.”

With 2030 bearing down, what are the projections and results thus far?

Residents Generating More Solid Waste Per Capita, Recycling and Composting Less of It

Put simply, the City’s A2Zero goal is to divert trash and organic matter (i.e. food and leaves) from the landfill. The City’s Dashboard explains it like this: “Per-capita tonnage is another important part of the story. What if our community sent less to the landfill, bought fewer things (generating less recycling), and reduced food waste and mulched leaves on-site (generating less compost)? The diversion rate would remain constant, but per-capita tonnages would reveal an all-around a success.”

As food rots in our landfill it releases methane, a greenhouse gas exponentially more potent than carbon dioxide.

Data from the City show that since 2022, each resident of Ann Arbor has increased the amount of solid waste (trash) they produce from 808 pounds to 825 pounds. Of that trash, 15 percent or 177 pounds are recycled, down from 188.2 pounds recycled in 2022. In 2021, prior to the passage of the Climate Action Millage and the establishment of the Office of Sustainability and Innovation, Ann Arbor residents produced 827.2 pounds of trash per capita and recycled 206.3 pounds of that trash (17 percent).

According to the OSI Community Engagement Dashboard, in 2021 the City’s 8.5 sustainability staffers held 83 community events and 27 Sustainability Commission meetings to engage residents. In 2024, the OSI’s 21 employees held 231 events and 24 Sustainability Commission meetings. Unfortunately, more meetings and community events haven’t translated into ecological goals being met.

According to public records, in 2021 the citizens of Ann Arbor sent 49.2 tons of solid waste to the landfill. Of that total, 12.3 tons were recycled and 11.1 tons of organics were diverted. In 2025, residents sent 46.9 tons of solid waste to the landfill. Of that amount, 10 tons were recycled and 9.9 tons of organics were diverted. While the tons of solid waste have decreased overall, the number of tons landfilled have increased from 25.5 (in 2021) to 27 tons.

Dr. Stults has a theory and wants Ann Arbor residents to change the way they shop for groceries.

Stults says, “It’s fascinating to me but I also think the current economic conditions present an opportunity to really discuss this issue [organics and food waste] intimately. For example, food prices are incredibly high. And the average American still throws away nearly 1/3 of the food they buy. Yes, we want them to compost as opposed to throwing it away. But even more than that, we want people to eat the food they buy. And with prices being high, people are really open to conversations about reducing food waste (and saving money in the process). If we can get people to ‘right’ size their grocery shopping to what they will likely consume, we can reduce waste in the system while also feeding people…If we can’t get food to people, then we say food should feed the soil (aka, compost).”

According to regional spending data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and local cost estimates, food expenditures are generally divided as follows: Groceries (Food at Home): Accounts for roughly 64 percent of local food budgets. A single resident cooking regularly typically spends $55 to $120 per week on groceries. Eating out in Ann Arbor accounts for 36 percent of a typical Ann Arborite’s budget. Even if Dr. Stults could get residents to “right” size their grocery shopping, the local restaurants play an equally large role in sending food to the landfill.

According to a 2025 piece in Planet Detroit about food waste across Michigan, “An average restaurant spending $500,000 on food tosses $35,000 in the trash. When you scale that across the state, Michigan households lose $80 billion annually, and restaurants lose $700 million, just from uneaten food.”

On the Sustainable Food Programs page of the OSI website, the language is compelling but describes a system that doesn’t yet exist after four years and tens of millions of dollars of Millage money: “The Ann Arbor Office of Sustainability and Innovations envisions a local food system that is sustainable, equitable, and resilient – minimizing negative environmental and social impacts and serving as a model for the broader community.”

Getting Around Ann Arbor (More By Car, Less By Bike and Walking)

According to the OSI Greenhouse Gas Emissions By Source Dashboard, between 2015 and 2022, greenhouse gas emissions in Ann Arbor decreased by 12.4 percent. Between 2022 and 2024, greenhouse gas emissions decreased approximately 10 percent. However, between 2021 and 2024, OSI data show that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle fuel jumped from 521,000 metric tons to 618,000 metric tons. 618,000 metric tons of vehicle fuel carbon dioxide is equivalent to the emissions produced by roughly 3,300 flights from New York to London.

Vehicle miles traveled within Ann Arbor increased from 955 million in 2021 to 1.11 billion in 2023 (the same number of vehicle miles travelled in 2018). The A²ZERO goal is to reduce the miles traveled in vehicles by 50 percent by 2030, or to 555,000,000 vehicle miles travelled.

The OSI Dashboard says, “Transportation accounts for one third of Ann Arbor’s greenhouse gas emissions. Alternative forms of transportation like walking, biking, or taking the bus play an important role in reducing our community’s emissions and achieving A²ZERO.” The Dashboard says, “The City of Ann Arbor has achieved its goal of 25% of trips being conducted by walking or biking!”

In 2018, before the Climate Action Millage and the OSI, 50.5 percent of trips in Ann Arbor were conducted by walking or biking. In 2025, 38.5 percent of trips in Ann Arbor were conducted by walking or biking. On a mailer sent in support of his re-election, Mayor Taylor writes he has been instrumental in “implementing miles of new sidewalks and bike lanes.” Taylor glosses over the fact that, despite spending to install additional bike lanes a sidewalks, residents are making fewer trips by biking and walking than they did seven years ago.

After the Climate Action Millage was passed in 2022 and the OSI had staffed up to 21 employees, after spending tens of millions of millage money, the data published by the OSI on its Transportation Dashboard show that trips by automobile have risen significantly. In 2018, 48.6 percent of trips within Ann Arbor were by car. The most recent OSI data show 58 percent of trips within Ann Arbor are by car.

One bright spot is that trips by bus have doubled from 1.5 percent to 3.2 percent. To put that in perspective, in Boulder, CO 4 to 5.4 percent of resident trips are made by bus, while in Madison, WI 9.3 percent of residents commute using the bus and in Berkeley, CA approximately 14 percent of commuters use the bus to get to work.

The A2Zero Plan has the 2030 goal for “40 percent of in-city trips not conducted by walking or biking to be conducted using transit.” In Seattle, WA 40 percent of downtown commuters use the bus to get to work and in New York City 46 percent of commuters do.

Can bus ridership in Ann Arbor increase more than ten-fold in the next four years to rival that of Seattle and New York City?

Given that car ridership in Ann Arbor has increased ten percent since 2018, that trips by walking have declined from 48.2 percent of all trips in 2018 to 35.6 percent of all trips now, it would appear that the A2Zero 2030 transit goal is unattainable.

Missed Greenhouse Gas Emissions Goals Means Buying Carbon Offsets (Environmental Indulgences) Annually

On the OSI Dashboard, it says, “A²ZERO Goal: 100% of Citywide Greenhouse Gases will be eliminated or offset by 2030.” The goal of carbon neutrality and zero emissions by 2030 is clearly out of reach, according to the OSI Greenhouse Gas Emissions Dashboard.

Dr. Stults says, “I don’t think it’s accurate to say we aren’t going to meet our goal by 2030. We always knew we had to do as much as we could to reduce direct emissions first and then we’d have to use offsets to get the rest of the way to the 2030 goal. We also know that the goal and the work don’t stop in 2030 but continue forward. That’s why we will be launching a community conversation and engagement series this summer around offsets. In this way, we hope to really engage stakeholders in thinking about what offsets are/can be, what we value the most when we think about offsets (aka, what characteristics do we want in our offsets), and also have conversations about how we will have to continue doing the work of reducing local emissions directly so that we minimize (and reduce) the amount of offsets we’ll use as we move this work forward.”

The cost of offsetting carbon emissions ranges from $1 to over $500 per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent, heavily depending on whether you choose cheap renewable energy credits, nature-based forestry projects, or expensive high-tech permanent removals.

Dr. Stults wants to engage Ann Arbor residents and have them decide what kind of carbon offsets should be purchased.

Purchasing offsets is essentially a way of outsourcing climate action. It’s the promise that somebody else, somewhere else did something good for the climate, and somebody should be able to purchase the right to claiming that they did the good thing by buying the certificate. The carbon offset market is a system where polluters pay to remove or reduce greenhouse gases elsewhere to balance their own emissions.

In 2023, voluntary carbon markets, where the OSI proposes spending millions of millage tax dollars, attracted nearly $2 billion from companies seeking to zero-out emissions. The markets are unregulated and, as such, fraud abounds. Renewable energy credit researchers at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy call carbon offsets and energy credits little more than a bogus “corporate messaging tool used to dodge environmental responsibilities.” Researchers point to greenwashing facilitated by phantom credits, double counting, overstated impacts, and fake data.

The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy is a non-partisan nonprofit that supports transitions to sustainable energy. The Center researches carbon offset market fraud. In 2024, the Center published a piece which examined what it called the “crisis of confidence” in the carbon offset market.

“Last year, an investigation by the Guardian and Corporate Accountability found that most of the world’s largest carbon dioxide offset projects failed to deliver promised climate benefits. The report is among several questioning the integrity and effectiveness of voluntary carbon offset programs in achieving net-zero emissions,” said Kleinman Center Senior Fellow Danny Cullenward.

Cullenward said, “This [carbon offset] market is relatively opaque. There is very little public transparency. Time and time again, when people dig into these opaque systems, they find that most of the money isn’t actually going to the landowners and the local communities. It’s going to all of the industry participants, from the consultants who help prepare the paperwork, to the verifiers who check in on this, to the brokers who buy and sell these activities. Most of the money doesn’t actually go to the end use, the sort of claimed-worthy climate project. A lot of it ends up in the hands of the intermediaries.”

Danny Cullenward says, “I think we need to move away from offsetting. Don’t make the claim that your offset reductions are the same as CO2 emissions. They’re not. Stop doing it. They [carbon credit purchasers] say, ‘Well, it’s okay I put CO2 in the atmosphere because I bought and retired this carbon credit.’ And I think there could be really important and valuable roles for high-integrity carbon crediting, if it’s done well — but it is not done well today.” 

Dr. Stults was asked to comment on Cullenward’s warning. She said in an email: “We could look for investments that are truly additional, meaning they would not have happened if not for our investments. We can look for opportunities that are verifiable in terms of the impact they are supposed to have. We can look for opportunities that provide a multitude of benefits – inclusive of reducing greenhouse gas emissions but maybe also providing ecosystem benefits. Basically, there are many paths we can take but we want to initiate a public engagement process to understand what the public wants to see in any future offsets we consider.”

Public engagement can’t solve the systemic problems associated with the purchase of carbon offsets. Barbara Haya is a researcher at the University of Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. “Offsetting is a misnomer — you can’t ‘offset’ your emissions,” she said. “We need alternative ways of supporting climate mitigation because the current offset market is deeply not working.”

From the A2Zero Plan, “Offsets are only used to close the greenhouse gas emissions gap between what we are able to do locally and what needs to be offset to achieve our goal of carbon neutrality by 2030.” The Plan projects spending $9.4 million ($32 per metric ton) to offset a projected gap of 13.6 percent of emissions not reduced by local programs and services by 2030. In 2028, the A2Zero Plan says Ann Arbor will “undertake first greenhouse gas emissions offset purchase and continue as needed.”

Ann Arbor is presently generating 1.8 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions above its stated 2030 goal (zero); the gap between what Ann Arbor has achieved thus far and zero emissions is nowhere near the modest 13.6 percent gap (298,500 metric tons of carbon dioxide) predicted in the A2Zero Plan. The gap is a multiple of 13.6 percent and, as such, offsets would cost a multiple of the projected $9.4 million, an amount that is almost 85 percent of the total $11.3 million in revenue city officials project will be generated by the Climate Action Millage in 2027.

Dr. Stults says, “I’ve initiated a working group within the Sustainability Commission that is helping us craft an offset engagement process so we can gather public insights and ideas to help shape our offset recommendations. We just began this working group and are early in process design, but I hope to have some materials and a public website launched by end of August.”

Public opinion engagement isn’t going to solve the problems in a carbon offset purchase system that suffers from pervasive fraud, lacks transparency and results in 90 percent of all investments ending up in the hands of middle men, according to recent research.

Dr. Stults was asked how many metric tons of carbon dioxide she predicted would need to be offset beginning in 2028, because the 13.6 percent “gap” figure of 298,500 metric tons in the A2Zero Plan is clearly off the mark. She said: “Unfortunately, I cannot answer it yet. We are still waiting on data from multiple sources (e.g., Google EIE, DTE, WATS) just to get our 2025 inventory complete. We also need data on future planning and projections (e.g., Integrated Resource Plans from our utilities, EIA projections) so we can figure out what emissions are likely to look like in 2030 to base decision making on. This is all part of the work we are doing behind the scenes as part of the offset work.”

OSI’s Dashboard shows a 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions between 2022-2024, leaving total greenhouse gas emissions in Ann Arbor standing at 1.8 million metric tons. Assuming another 15 percent reduction in Ann Arbor’s greenhouse gas emissions between 2024-2027, Dr. Stults will still be left with 1.53 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions to offset with taxpayer funds used to purchase carbon credits. At a cost of $32 per metric ton, as proposed in the most recent A2Zero Plan, offsetting 1.53 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions would cost Ann Arbor taxpayers $48.9 million in 2028, plus the cost of the Climate Change Millage, somewhere north of $60.9 million. The City’s 2027 General Fund stands at $170 million, including a $34.5 million budget for police and a $21.3 million budget for firefighters.

Dr. Stults said in her email, “I’m looking forward to engaging with the public on this topic so we can, together, decide what Ann Arbor wants its offsets to look like.”

“Don’t make the claim that your carbon offset reductions are the same as CO2 emissions. They’re not. Stop doing it,” said Danny Cullenward. He added that equating carbon offsets to reductions in CO2 are a “false equivalence.”

Lobbying work done by Dr. Stults and her staff is not reflected in any OSI Dashboard, but nonetheless Stults points to OSI’s successes in changing “the regulatory landscape,” as she puts it. “[We]’ve been successful in working with numerous organizations to change the regulatory landscape in ways that benefit the whole state in ways that will lead to significant emissions reductions in the near term. For example, we worked with state legislators on many of the clean energy bills that were introduced in 2023 and signed into law in 2024. These packages will require 50% of all electricity in the state to be from clean energy sources by 2030 (a goal nowhere in conversations before we (collective we) worked on these bills). And the bills require 100% clean electricity by 2035.”