Regionally Integrated Climate Action Planning Support (RICAPS) Climate Collaborative Technical Assistance

The County of San Mateo seeks a consultant or multidisciplinary consultant team (Consultant) to provide technical assistance, coordination, planning, analysis, and implementation support for the Regionally Integrated Climate Action and Adaptation Planning Support Climate Collaborative (RICAPS) during the 2026–2031 contract term.

RICAPS is currently funded by WestLight Energy (formerly Peninsula Clean Energy), the City/County Association of Governments of San Mateo County (C/CAG), and Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) via the San Mateo County Energy Watch local government partnership. RICAPS provides technical assistance to help San Mateo County’s 21 jurisdictions (20 incorporated cities and the unincorporated areas) meet their climate goals. Launched in 2011, the program has historically provided support for developing and collaboratively implementing climate action plans and tracking progress via community greenhouse gas inventories. During the next contract term, the County aims to integrate support for climate adaptation and resilience, explore multidisciplinary, cross-sector partnerships with community partners (i.e. community-based organizations, academic institutions, private corporations, community leaders, etc.) and expand collaborations with other public agencies to advance RICAPS implementation efforts and empower communities.

The County intends this Scope of Work to be:

• Specific enough to obtain comparable proposals and pricing for core services;

• Flexible enough to allow annual workplan refinement based on RICAPS and County priorities, participant needs, funding opportunities, and emerging issues;

• Broad enough to support jurisdictions, County departments and community partners with varying levels of capacity and readiness; and

• Open to improved methods, tools, service models, and multidisciplinary partnerships proposed by respondents.

The County seeks a Consultant that can help achieve the following outcomes:

• Expand cross-jurisdictional and cross-sector collaboration and advance scalable regional initiatives;

• Design and institute a strategic partnership and governance plan to engage leadership of government, non-profit, and academic partner organizations to advance shared goals;

• Empower equitable collective impact through tiered support offerings for local governments and community and non-profit partners based on varying needs;

• Provide actionable, high-quality technical assistance to help RICAPS participants and community partners identify emission reduction and resilience project opportunities and support collaborative implementation;

• Support RICAPS participants and community partners in identifying and securing short- and long-term funding for climate action and adaptation/resilience community empowerment, and other related initiatives.

Annual workplans will be developed collaboratively by the selected Consultant and County staff each year of the term and may be modified based on County direction at any time.

NOTE: Please refer to the page limits listed on OpenGov to ensure proposals are not disqualified for exceeding the page limit. Proposers should use the limited space to clearly identify any unique approaches, recommended innovations, and/or proposed augmentations (i.e. additions or deletions) that would strengthen delivery of the requested services under this RFP. To conserve page count, please reference the applicable Scope of Work task numbers without fully restating or reproducing the Scope of Work text.