{"id":4151,"date":"2015-02-25T18:11:23","date_gmt":"2015-02-25T18:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blogs\/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-leading-city\/"},"modified":"2017-07-25T10:18:50","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T14:18:50","slug":"what-does-it-take-to-be-a-leading-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-leading-city\/","title":{"rendered":"What does it take to be a leading city?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reposted from CDP’s blog.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Congratulations to Cascais, Cleveland, Edmonton, Goiania, Johannesburg, Las Vegas, Paris, Sydney, Venice, and Yokohama! Out of over 200 cities that took part in CDP\u2019s cities program in 2014, these ten score the best for the quality and completeness of their environmental risk reporting.\u00a0 To highlight their achievement, CDP has created in-depth InFocus reports for each city.<\/p>\n

In addition to congratulating these cities, it is also important to examine what made them top-performing cities in 2014.\u00a0 What common climate actions are these cities taking?\u00a0 What type of data do they report?<\/p>\n

Using CDP\u2019s data portal<\/a>, we can take a deeper look into their activities.\u00a0 In general, these cities report complete and accurate data across all themes, including city-wide greenhouse gas emissions, risk and opportunities, and climate strategy.\u00a0 Let\u2019s look in-depth at greenhouse gas emissions and efforts to reduce them.<\/p>\n

Measuring city-wide emissions<\/strong><\/p>\n

All of our top cities measure and report the total city-wide emissions for their municipalities.\u00a0 Most of these inventories are recent \u2014 Johannesburg completed its most recent inventory in 2013, while every other city in the top ten completed their inventories after 2010, with the exception of Venice, Paris, and Sydney.<\/p>\n

Cities also report why their emissions increased or decreased since last year.\u00a0 Here, the challenges of managing emissions at the city-level become apparent.\u00a0 The City of Edmonton, which noted a slight increase from its last inventory, explained that a drop in residential natural gas consumption was likely related to weather changes, while the reason for an increase in its industrial emissions was unclear.\u00a0 Changes in the electricity mix of the grid after the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake drove Yokohama\u2019s slight increase in emissions.\u00a0\u00a0 Even for these leading cities, managing emissions at the city-level is a difficult job.<\/p>\n