A coalition of the world's biggest cities has launched an international tool that will for the first time allow many local authorities to measure their greenhouse gas emissions, providing them with a baseline...
Today the World Resources Institute (WRI), C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) and ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) launched the first widely endorsed standard for cities to measure and report their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at a COP20 event featuring mayors and officials from cities around the world.
Cities are not just where 3.5 billion of us live—they are where more than half of humanity uses electricity, drives cars, and throws out garbage, among myriad other activities that emit greenhouse gases. Now, a global coalition has released the first standardized method for measuring and reporting a given city’s greenhouse gas emissions.
After a successful nine-month pilot test from May 2013 to January 2014, the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) has been revised and is now available for public comment until August 18th. The authors particularly welcome review by city officials, practitioners, and technical experts in the fields of energy, transportation, waste management, agriculture and forestry. As a global reporting standard, the GPC enables cities and communities to consistently measure and report GHG emissions and develop climate action plans and low-emission urban development strategies.
Low-carbon development has become the core theme of China’s urbanization. In fact, it’s one of the country’s key strategies to achieve its target of reducing carbon intensity by 40-45 percent by 2020.
Rio de Janeiro is a leader among the Brazilian cities aggressively promoting low-carbon development. Now Rio is conducting a GHG inventory for 2012, the first target year under its climate change law.
O programa GHG Protocol do World Resources Institute – WRI pretende contribuir com o esforço coletivo mundial em busca de uma economia resiliente e do equilíbrio climático do planeta. Para isso, desenvolve ferramentas de apoio à contabilização e reporte de emissões de GEE, como o GHG Protocol para empresas, reconhecido e adotado mundialmente.
“You cannot manage what you cannot measure” is a well-known adage for business, and the phrase is increasingly relevant for cities. In the past decade, many cities have started measuring their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data.
During the informal sessions of the U.N.’s Rio+20 conference on sustainable development last week, Rio de Janeiro city officials and the World Bank jointly launched a very timely project: the Rio Low-Carbon City Program.