People walk, roll, and ride transit along a downtown Seattle street lined with trees. Share OSE’s 2025 Wrapped series on social media:
It’s been a big year for our office! Our team embarked on a new update to Seattle’s Climate Action Plan and increased access to healthy foods and nature for communities. Every year, we support community-led environmental justice programs to empower, protect, and strengthen communities hit first and worst by climate change. We helped community members, organizations, and partners reduce pollution from buildings and transportation, the top contributors of emissions in Seattle.
This work was made possible thanks to close collaborations with our partners, City departments, nonprofits, and neighbors. Check out the 2025 highlights below!
Writing a New Chapter in Climate Action
In the spring, we kicked off the development of a new Climate Action Plan for Seattle, to be released in 2026. Over the last year, we’ve been coordinating with dozens of City departments and partners to update the plan with a focus on building climate resilience, creating good-paying jobs, protecting public health, and reducing emissions from transportation.
In September, we released the 2013 Climate Action Plan Progress Report, evaluating what has been working and where we need to accelerate actions. We also partnered with Seattle’s Green New Deal Oversight Board and People’s Economy Lab to host two community assemblies to inform actions — one with youth leaders through the Washington Bus, and an Indigenous-led conversation with Rising Tides (sləp̓iləbəxʷ).
Subscribe to our newsletter for opportunities to get involved in 2026!
Advancing Climate Justice
In 2025, we awarded $1.2 million through the Environmental Justice Fund, the largest annual investment to date, to 26 community groups for projects ranging from youth education to empowering low-income people and communities of color to directly shape environmental equity for their neighborhoods. We also celebrated seven years of the Environmental Justice Fund at a fun and inspiring community gathering.
Seattle’s Duwamish Valley Program, a close collaboration between community and City partners, recently celebrated 2025 progress for the South Park and Georgetown communities. A major highlight was helping the Duwamish River Community Coalition (DRCC) secure land for a future Youth Development and Climate Resilience Hub.
The City funded a critical climate workforce program when federal support was unexpectedly paused. Twenty-four students completed Emerald Cities Collaborative’s Electrical Pre-Apprenticeship Program, and the nine top graduates received direct-entry offers into local union apprenticeships for well-paying climate careers like electric heating installation.
Cutting Climate Pollution from Buildings and Transportation
In 2025, Seattle’s Clean Heat Program helped 310 homes transition from oil heating to a clean electric heat pump by providing thousands of dollars in rebates. That’s the equivalent of taking 7,000 gas cars off the road for a year!
We awarded nearly $4.7 million in Building Decarbonization Grants to help 18 community, nonprofit, affordable housing, and other building types reduce pollution. The grants will pay for design and upgrades to help the buildings achieve emissions reduction targets under Seattle’s Building Emissions Performance Standard (BEPS). The City also made progress toward decarbonizing City-owned buildings.
The City also invested $1.5 million to bring 12 new electric heavy-duty trucks to Seattle. Through a partnership with Zeem Solutions, the trucks will help independent drivers transition off diesel and reduce climate change impacts on communities along freight corridors.
Strengthening Community Food Security
An exciting University of Washington research study showed that Seattle’s Fresh Bucks program improves food security by 31% and boosts fruit and vegetable intake for enrolled households! Fresh Bucks also launched a waitlist application earlier this year, and there is more exciting news to expand the program in 2026 – check it out at SeattleFreshBucks.org.
Our Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program with Seattle Public Schools (SPS) served more than 489,000 servings of fruits and veggies to 5,400 students. Learn how the program works and see a list of participating schools on our website.
And when tens of thousands of Seattle families faced the loss of their federal SNAP food benefits during the federal government shutdown, we jumped into action with SPS, SPS Culinary Services, Cascadia Produce, and City partners to distribute 8,800+ food boxes to families at 98 SPS sites over three weeks until funding was restored.
Protecting and Growing Seattle Urban Forests
Seattle has a new tree nursery! The Cedar City Tree Nursery, led by Seattle Public Utilities (SPU), is located in Crown Hill and will hold up to 1,000 trees annually for citywide planting programs. The trees will primarily go to the Trees for Neighborhoods program operated by SPU, providing Seattleites free trees to plant in their yards and along the street.
In the Duwamish Valley, our partners completed more than 10 industrial greening projects, including a major depaving transformation on 13th Ave S in Georgetown with Dirt Corps, DRCC, and the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle (ECOSS) to plant trees, install raingardens, and add agreements with industrial property owners for tree and greenspace maintenance.
We introduced the new Foresting Seattle program. The program takes a collaborative approach to growing tree canopy in focus neighborhoods, promoting community leadership, restoring greenspaces, and providing youth employment opportunities.
To all our partners — thank you for a remarkable 2025. We look forward to continuing our work to build a healthier, safer, and more climate resilient Seattle with you in 2026!