Carbon Disclosure Project paves way for cities to report carbon emissions

LONDON — The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) announced the launch of the new CDP Cities program, which will provide a system for cities worldwide to report on their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related strategies. CDP Cities, in partnership with the C40 and the Clinton Climate initiative (CCI), has asked the largest cities in the world committed to tackling climate change — the 40 member cities and 19 affiliate member cities of the C40 — to voluntarily measure and report to CDP so the cities can proactively manage risks, reduce carbon, and further adopt strategies that safeguard the future of cities. London, Toronto and New York have already agreed to report their carbon emissions data to CDP.

“CDP will provide a reporting platform that allows C40 cities to track their progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and share that critical data with each other and around the globe,” said David Miller, mayor of Toronto and chair of C40.

Major organizations such as Autodesk Inc., lead sponsor of CDP Cities, as well as
Microsoft and Sun Life Financial, are supporting this new program. “Autodesk’s design software will help city managers better understand their existing assets, allowing planners to develop strategy for improving the urban environment,” said Jay Bhatt, senior vice president of AEC solutions at Autodesk.

CDP Cities is releasing a new report titled “The Case for City Disclosure,” written by Accenture. It details how standard disclosure from local governments can help cities share best practices, manage risk, increase operational effectiveness and cost savings, attract investment, foster innovation, and ultimately lead to safer, more prosperous cities. The report can be found at www.cdproject.net/en-US/Programmes/Documents/Case-for-City-Disclosure.pdf.

"New York City has tracked greenhouse gas emissions with a detailed inventory — that we make public — since 2006, and we are already seeing real reductions in our carbon emissions," said Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City. "We have to keep the pressure on to continue our progress. The C40’s partnership with CDP will ensure that all member cities have a reliable platform to report emissions. We will never meet the ambitious goals we set as an organization without solid data to measure our progress; as I’ve always said: if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it."

Boris Johnson, mayor of London, said: “We know cities are the largest producers of carbon emissions, but it is vital that these outputs are quantified and in the public domain in order to track our progress in reducing them. London’s city government is already committed to disclosing a range of data, not just with regard to climate change, to help catalyze change to the benefit of residents.”

The CDP Cities initiative continues to expand CDP’s global climate change data system developed with Accenture, Microsoft, and SAP. Disclosing information through CDP’s standard reporting platform is already seen as best practice by thousands of companies around the world. This same CDP disclosure process was used successfully in a 2008 pilot of 18 cities in the United States. This pilot highlighted how action on climate change is, in most cases, at an early stage and so the opportunities ahead to reduce emissions and seize future opportunities are considerable. CDP Cities allows cities to report both quantitative and qualitative climate change data. Cities can therefore report their greenhouse gas inventories along with contextual information about the unique characteristics of individual cities. This will help cities and a wide range of associated stakeholders to better understand the risks and opportunities associated with climate change.
 

*Note: The Clinton Climate Initiative, a program of the William J. Clinton Foundation, is the delivery partner of the C40 and will, through its network of city directors, assist C40 cities on the CDP disclosure process.