Extreme Weather and Global Climate Change
This week’s news brought stark evidence that extreme weather likely caused by global climate change is threatening global food supply and destroying communities.
This Climate Solutions program is no longer active.
In 2016, Climate Solutions completed the seventh and final year of our successful New Energy Cities program. Combining research on urban carbon reduction best practices and partnering with Northwest cities and counties, we helped local communities accelerate carbon emissions reduction through climate and clean energy goal-setting, clean energy transition planning, policy development, program design, and implementation.
Our New Energy Cities program continued to work with the King County-Cities Climate Collaboration (K4C), a voluntary coalition of King County and 13 cities united in their goal to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 supporting efforts to get underway with achieving its 90% renewable electricity by 2030. New Energy Cities formed a partnership with Stockholm Environment Institute to provide energy maps and carbon wedge analyses for Everett, WA (Snohomish County) and Olympia, WA (Thurston County). Our existing partnership with Tukwila, WA showed encouraging progress, with city leadership and staff eager to make deep carbon reductions in their community.
Climate Solutions is proud of New Energy Cities and its seven years of success. Although we phased out the program at the end of 2016, Climate Solutions will continue to help our city and county partners create political momentum to inform policy and drive carbon emissions reduction at the state and regional levels.
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This week’s news brought stark evidence that extreme weather likely caused by global climate change is threatening global food supply and destroying communities.
Demand response provides one more tool for utilities to use to lower the final costs of renewable energy resources.
“Passive House” comes to New York City, and offers promise for more energy efficient buildings across the United States.
At the end of January, over 60 Edmonds community leaders, including the Mayor of Edmonds Mike Cooper and Edmonds City Council President Strom Peterson, Steve Klein, General Manager of Snohomish PUD, and other business leaders and citizens rolled up their sleeves to look at how the city can reduce its greenhouse gas emissions levels to 25% below 1995 levels by 2035.
Austin, Texas sets the bar for local governments engaged in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
There is indisputable proof that the efforts of the countries that agreed to abide by the Kyoto Protocol are succeeding. In 2008, the signatory parties to the Kyoto Protocol reduced their collective greenhouse gas emissions by 6.3% below 1990 levels. In contrast, the United States’ carbon footprint in 2008 was 16% higher than 1990.
Climate Solutions launched the New Energy Cities program in 2009 to galvanize local elected officials to drive adoption of clean energy technologie
Pike Research projects that over 3 million electric cars will be sold in the US by 2015.
Energy efficiency, unlike many renewable energy technologies, is cost-effective today. The challenges are institutional not technological or financial and therefore require rethinking our financing structures, our utility models, and the role cities can play in creating the necessary conditions for massive energy efficiency.
Many cities across the U.S., both large and small, are looking for economic development strategies that include home upgrades and clean energy. Jackson is proving that small towns, where the bottom line matters above all else, can innovate.