The ABQ Accent · City of Albuquerque - Office of Civic Engagement

The ABQ Accent | EP 39 - Alice Main

·38 min·2 clips

Alice argues the plan should measure how organizations buy goods and services, not just tailpipe emissions.

1. The ABQ Accent episode with Alice Main focuses on the City of Albuquerque's Climate Pollution Reduction Grant work and the city's comprehensive climate action plan. 2. Host Mariah interviews Alice Main, the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant Manager in the Office of Sustainability, and her role matters because she manages the city's EPA-funded climate planning process. 3. The episode asks what it takes for a regional climate plan to be technically compliant, community-driven, and useful for New Mexico governments. 4. Alice says she came to Albuquerque for love after meeting her husband in Alaska, and that move shaped the start of her city career. 5. She describes growing up in a ranching family in Alberta and learning about land management, hard work, and neighbor relationships from that background. 6. She says her father brought geothermal and solar thermal projects into dinner-table conversations, which pushed her toward climate change work while she was in high school. 7. Alice studied in the first sustainability program in Canada and initially thought climate solutions would only fit the nonprofit sector. 8. At the Kenai Watershed Forum in Alaska, she worked as a program coordinator with volunteers and saw burnout, turnover, and funding limits in nonprofit work. 9. After a month-long road trip back to Albuquerque and the start of COVID-19, she applied to UNM's Anderson School of Business and chose the MBA route. 10. She joined the City of Albuquerque in 2020 as an executive assistant in the Environmental Health Department while the Office of Sustainability was still a one-person operation. 11. She says the EPA's Climate Pollution Reduction Grant has two parts, a planning grant and an implementation grant, and the first one reached every state, many metro areas, tribes, and tribal consortium. 12. She names six New Mexico recipients and says that structure helped cover much of the U.S. population through climate planning initiatives. 13. Alice says the city had to move quickly because hiring delays left little time to prepare the first deliverable for the implementation grant. 14. She credits the Justice40 oversight coordinating committee and colleague Sandra West for helping the office reach community members under a short timeline. 15. The comprehensive climate action plan required a greenhouse gas inventory, technical compliance with the Global Protocol for Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and community engagement at the same time. 16. Alice says the community task force pushed the city to look beyond local fossil-fuel emissions and examine procurement, supply chains, and institutional behavior. 17. She presents the plan as a regional tool built through education, communication, and a focus on long-term outcomes rather than short-term gains. 18. Alice says the work is still being finalized for ADA compliance and will appear on both the sustainability office website and the Resilient Futures campaign site. 19. People interested in New Mexico climate policy, environmental justice, and city planning would get the most from this episode. 20. People looking for a light, low-detail conversation about climate administration may skip it.

As heard by us

A grounded climate planning conversation that turns grant details into a local civic story.

Alice Main's conversation is grounded in the slow, practical work of turning climate planning into something a city can actually do. She talks through the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant Manager role, the pressure of basic data collection, and the harder job of getting real…

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Why you'd press play

You want the city behind the climate plan, not just the headlines.

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