Kent Portney's "Our Green Cities" Blog

Zerofootprint Toronto

I see that the City of Toronto has initiated a new project called "Zerofootprint Toronto."  This is a collaborative effort between the City government and a Canadian nonprofit organization called "Zerofootprint," located in Toronto. 

The idea behind this project is to create a municipality-focused means for all residents and businesses to compute their own carbon footprints, and, in the process, incrementally build a picture of the carbon footprint of the city as a whole.  This is a unique approach to carbon footprints -- there are numerous footprint calculators available online, but this is the only resource that is specifically designed to aggregate the results of individuals within a city.  So the idea seems to be to make this tool available to everyone in Toronto, where they can register for an account and login to get access to the carbon footprint calculator.  As a result, the calculator does what most carbon calculators are designed to do, that is, to elevate peoples' awareness about how much carbon they are responsbile for.  But here the information helps the city to understand the footprint of the city as a whole. See the City's web description of the project at Zerofootprint Toronto.

ZeroFootprint is a nonprofit organization that offers this type of project to individuals, municipalities, businesses, and a wide array of other organizations, including schools, generally.  It was founded by Ron Dembo, a Canadian businessperson who founded and ran a company called Algorithmics.  Zerofootprint's Executive Director is Deborah Kaplan.  Check its web site for a more complete look at what Zerofootprint does.

Obviously, cities have other ways of estimating their carbon footprints (see my other postings on the subject).  How useful will this project be?  I suspect that it will be useful in raising peoples' awareness. I wonder whether it will provide city officials with any new information or insights about the city's carbon footprint.  What do you think?  Will it help the cause of reducing carbon emissions. Will the information gather from Zerofootprint Toronto aid in the city's carbon inventory process?  Is this the kind of project that might work in your city or town?  Let me know what you think.

ICELI and Cities' Carbon Footprints

Over the last few months, I have had the opportunity to take a look at cities' measures of their carbon footprints.  Just as the carbon footprint calculators for individual people and households are pretty uneven in their methodologies, so too are the carbon footprint estimates for whole cities.  Although the latter have much different methods of estimation, what struck me is how much variation there is in the methods, and the quality and availability of the appropriate information needed to produce accurate estimates. 

I know that when cities' mayors sign up to join the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) Program they agree to spearhead a carbon inventory project. Yet I'm surprised at how few of the signatories have actually accomplished this to date. There are some really good efforts, such as New York City and Toronto, for example.  But most cities do not seem to have made the effort to try to measure their actual carbon emissions.

But now ICLEI is about to issue a complete set of protocols and methodologies for measuring carbon and producing the inventory.  It is in the testing phase right now, and can be downloaded from the ICLEI web site during the "exposure period."  See the ICLEI GHG Emissions Analysis Protocol web site for more information.

This should present a huge improvement in the quality and availability of greenhouse gas emissions information for cities.  It should also make it possible for cities that don't already have the internal expertise to devise a carbon emission inventory methodology to standardize with other cities so that comparisons over time and across cities will be possible.

Have you taken a look at the ICLEI protocol?  How does it look to you?  Is this as much of a breakthrough as I think it is?  Please post your thoughts on this here.

Brookings Institution Study of Cities' Carbon Footprints

You may already have seen this, but a couple of weeks ago, the Brookings Institution researchers Andrea Sarzynski, Marilyn Brown, and Frank Southworth released the latest study of carbon emissions in cities (actually in metropolitan areas).  The measures of carbon don't account for a lot of the sources of carbon emissions -- they focus on two main sources -- transportation and residential energy -- but they do provide a glimpse at how cities vary in their emissions.  The three lowest emitting metro areas are Honolulu, HI, (1.36 metric tons of carbon emitted per person), Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA, (1.14 metric tons), and Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton WA (1.45 metric tons).  The three highest carbon polluters are Cincinnati, OH-Middletown, KY (3.28 metric tons), Indianapolis, IN (3.36 metric tons), and Lexington-Fayette, KY (3.46 metric tons).  To see the full list of cities and their estimated carbon emissions, go to http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/05_carbon_footprint_sarzynski.aspx .

You can also read the Newsweek story, written by Miyoko Ohtake. Miyoko interviewed me briefly for the story, so check it out when you have chance at http://www.newsweek.com/id/139212 .

I will have much more to say about carbon footprints and relate issues over the next couple of weeks.