How Regional Collaboration Can Help Local Governments Rethink Capacity and Deliver Climate Action

As Washington communities move from developing climate action plans to implementing projects, one challenge continues to emerge: capacity.

Local governments are adopting, or have adopted, climate elements in their comprehensive plans but face challenges in translating policies into action. Limited staff time, technical expertise, and administrative resources can make it difficult to move projects from planning to implementation, particularly for smaller jurisdictions with no dedicated climate staff.

Regional collaboration offers one approach for addressing this capacity challenge. This blog is the first in a three-part series on how to advance climate policy implementation through a regional approach.

Why Regional Collaboration Matters

Regional partnerships allow local governments to share expertise, coordinate programs, and achieve greater results than they could independently.

Through collaboration, jurisdictions can:

• Share staff capacity and technical expertise,
• Coordinate community outreach and engagement,
• Develop shared tools and resources,
• Pursue funding opportunities together,
• Build stronger contractors and workforce networks, and
• Exchange lessons learned through peer learning communities.

Rather than each jurisdiction developing programs independently, regional approaches allow communities to pool resources, reduce duplication, and create stronger implementation systems.

Washington Examples: Different Models of Collaboration

Regional collaboration can take many forms, from shared program delivery to regional planning networks and communities of practice. Below are some examples.

Puget Sound

The Puget Sound Climate Preparedness Collaborative is a network of city, Tribal, and county governments, regional agencies, and organizations in the Puget Sound basin working together to advance climate preparedness.

Similarly, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, in collaboration with multiple local partners across a four-county region, produced the Puget Sound Region Final Comprehensive Climate Action. This plan identifies a comprehensive list of high-impact regional strategies and actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with a focus on maximizing benefits in overburdened communities

The Eastside Climate Partnership is a collaboration of six Washington cities—Bellevue, Issaquah, Kirkland, Mercer Island, Redmond, and Sammamish—working to reduce regional climate pollution and build climate resilience.

Its flagship initiative, Energy Smart Eastside, helps residents and businesses adopt clean energy through education, incentives, and technical support. Programs include:

• Energy Smart Eastside Heat Pumps, which connects households with vetted contractors and rebates for electric heat pumps;
• Solarize Eastside, a group-purchasing campaign that expands residential solar adoption; and
• Clean Buildings Incentive Program, which offers consultations, benchmarking, and compliance support for larger buildings.

Thurston County

Energize Thurston provides another example of regional coordination around residential energy efficiency and electrification by bringing together local governments and community partners to support outreach and technical assistance across jurisdictions.

King County

The King County–Cities Climate Collaboration (K4C) illustrates how counties can serve as regional conveners by supporting shared climate strategies, providing technical assistance, and coordinating implementation. County-led partnerships can help smaller jurisdictions access expertise and provide a structure for shared projects.

Together, these examples demonstrate that collaboration is not a single model. Some partnerships focus on delivering programs while others focus on planning, technical assistance, workforce development, or peer learning. Each helps expand local capacity.

Lessons from Other States: Regional Capacity Hubs

Other states provide examples of how regional collaborations can evolve into more structured capacity-building networks.

California’s Regional Climate Collaboratives Program builds regional capacity by supporting partnerships among local governments, Tribal governments, community organizations, nonprofits, and other stakeholders. The program helps communities coordinate planning, access technical assistance, strengthen community engagement, and prepare projects for future funding opportunities.

Energy-focused networks provide additional examples. The Bay Area Regional Energy Network (BayREN) brings together counties to coordinate energy programs, provide technical assistance, and share resources with local governments. New York's Regional Clean Energy Hubs similarly connect communities with clean energy information, technical assistance, and implementation resources.

How Communities Can Begin Building Regional Capacity

Building a regional collaboration does not necessarily require creating a new organization. Many successful partnerships begin by connecting existing relationships, identifying shared challenges, and gradually building structures to support implementation. Listed below are some steps to consider when building regional capacity.

• Identify shared challenges. Communities can identify where collaboration could provide the greatest benefit, such as building electrification, fleet transition, resilience planning, grant management, workforce development, or community engagement.
• Connect existing partners. Potential partners may include neighboring cities and counties, regional planning organizations, clean air agencies, utilities, Tribal governments, community organizations, workforce development groups, universities, nonprofits, metropolitan planning organizations, and regional transportation planning organizations.
• Learn from existing models. Communities can examine successful collaborations to understand how shared staffing, technical assistance, outreach, and governance structures operate. The goal is not to replicate another model exactly, but to adapt lessons to local needs.
• Identify a coordinating entity. Successful collaborations often have a backbone organization that convenes partners, manages communication, coordinates resources, and maintains momentum. This role may be filled by a county, regional organization, nonprofit, or partnership among multiple organizations.
• Start small and grow over time. Many regional collaborations begin with a shared project, coordinated outreach effort, or shared technical assistance program. Over time, these efforts can grow into broader implementation networks.

Looking Ahead

Washington’s emerging regional collaborations demonstrate that local governments can build capacity by working together. Whether through shared programs, county-led partnerships, regional planning efforts, or peer learning networks, collaboration enables jurisdictions to leverage collective expertise and accomplish more with limited resources.

 The next installment of this series will explore the key elements of successful regional climate partnerships and how local governments can overcome implementation barriers by strengthening organizational capacity.

Readers can also explore MRSC's Climate Change webpage series, which provides a wide range of guidance and practical resources to support Washington State communities.