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Counting Up Cities' Energy Savings and Climate Commitments I Brendan Guy's Blog 15... Page 2 of 4 Local efforts like these are impressive, but how much will they actually contribute to the global effort to reduce our carbon footprint? If all cities took aggressive new efforts to reduce energy use, by 2050 they could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of half of annual global coal use, according to a irepoirt issued lby IMlcllhaell l3lloorn1beirg, UN Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change, and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, representing 70 megacities. Issued at the United Nation's Climate Summit in September, the report said those savings far exceeded what national policies and actions are on track to achieve -- amounting to an additional 3.7 gigatons of CO2 reduced annually by 2030. Yet "cities are rarely included in national action plans," Special Envoy Bloomberg said. As a result, cities' actions have rarely figured in the international agreements drawn up at climate summits. In essence, cities could help nations bridge the gap between nationally promised emissions reductions and the actions needed to prevent global temperature rise, according to the report's calculations. To achieve those goals, cities would have to move aggressively, issuing new energy efficiency standards for buildings, appliances and lighting, as well as promoting efficient public transit and increased waste recycling. Another irepoirt issued lby C40 found that 228 city governments, representing 436 million people, have already set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If they meet these targets, they will cumulatively save 13 gigatons of CO2 by 2050 -- equivalent to what China and India together emit in a year. And targets matter. Cities that have announced climate commitments report tllhiree tiiimes as many activities aimed at reducing emissions than cities without targets. That's just one sign that mayors around the world are taking seriously their growing role in the fight against climate change. By 2050, more than 70 percent of the world's population is expected to live in cities. "What happens in our cities drives the globe; climate change is the best expression of that," said Rio de Janeiro IMayor Eduardo IPaes, the new leader of C40, addressing fellow mayors in Johannesburg in February. And he pointed out that most mayors have another motivation for acting: They see green growth as a way to improve their town's quality of life. "Cutting carbon emissions and increasing resilience makes people's lives better; it means improving mobility and environmental quality," as well as fostering innovation, he said. "Caring about the environment means caring about the people." Yet with all this varied activity around the globe, a serious stumbling block has remained: Finding a uniform way to measure and report the ultimate effect on greenhouse gases. The varying methods used by cities have raised serious questions about data quality and made it difficult to estimate the total impact. http: / /switchboard.nrdc.org /blogs /bguy/ counting cities climate commitments.html ?utm s... 1/15/2015