Supporting Access to Better Citywide-Level Greenhouse Emissions Data
Adopted at the 84th%20Annual%20Meeting in 2016
WHEREAS, U. S. mayors have been early leaders in efforts to reduce greenhouse gasemissions, with more 1,060mayors since 2005 joiningas signatories to the U.S. Conferenceof Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement, pledging to reduce their city's carbon emissionsto below 1990 levels, in line with the Kyoto Protocol; and
WHEREAS, in 2007, the United States Conference of Mayors launched the ClimateProtection Center, which provides mayors with guidance and help leading city efforts toreduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a changing climate; and
WHEREAS, in June 2015, the United States Conference of Mayors approved a resolutionencouraging all cities to develop local climate action plans; and
WHEREAS, cities need accurate local greenhouse gas emissions so that they can moreeffectively develop fact-based and accountable local climate action plans; and
WHEREAS, city efforts to produce fact-based climate action plans is made unnecessarilydifficult because citywide-level greenhouse gas emissions data is largely unavailable orinaccessible; and
WHEREAS, largely because citywide-level greenhouse gas emission data is difficult toobtain, only about 200 out of the many thousands of cities or incorporated places in theU.S. have even completed and published an inventory of citywide greenhouse gasemissions; and
WHEREAS, because of this lack of data, most of these cities that have published a citywide-level greenhouse gas inventory have had to use data derived from a patchwork of local,regional and national sources, which can lead to different data assumptions andinterpretations among cities; and
WHEREAS, the United States Conference of Mayors, World Resources Institute, othernongovernmental organizations, and some federal government agencies have identifiedsources for greenhouse gas emissions data that could be published on a city-by- city basis formost U.S. cities, in a single database, using the consistent assumptions and searchparameters; and
WHEREAS, the Administration and its federal departments and agencies, such as the U.S.Department of Energy, have been supportive of making more greenhouse gas emissionsdata available on a city-by- city basis; and
WHEREAS, making citywide-level greenhouse gas emissions data more accessible needs tobe a higher priority to help more cities write fact-based and accountable local climate actionplans,
NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the United States Conference of Mayors calls onthe federal government and its departments and agencies to provide data to create andmaintain a public portal of citywide-level carbon emissions data; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the federal government should identify untapped authoritywhereby the federal government can collect new, or better, citywide greenhouse gasemissions source and activity data for cities.