Measuring Performance: A Must-have for Achieving SMART Climate Goals
Improving data collection and analysis is the next step for municipalities wanting to advance climate action at a local level.
Recently, I co-authored a report with the local policy team of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). The report ("Taking Stock: Links between Local Policy and Building Energy Use across the United States") found that municipalities can play a positive and relevant role in reducing per capita building energy use, curtailing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and combating climate change. For achieving it, municipalities should mandate or incentivize stringent energy-efficiency standards for housing construction projects, amend zoning codes to allow for the construction of more housing units, and create targeted programs that reduce the upfront cost of residential energy-efficiency improvements and renewable energy investments.
While we found that per capita building electricity use in U.S. cities fell at an annual rate of 1% and that per capita natural gas use declined 4% annually, it is important to acknowledge that our research and analyses faced major data limitations that narrowed the conclusions we could draw. Unfortunately, most municipalities still are not reporting annual data on community-wide building energy use or GHG emissions. Municipal staff, researchers, and community stakeholders would all benefit from the ability to track key GHG emissions drivers more frequently.
Although it is not impossible for municipal governments to ask major investor-owned energy utilities to provide them with aggregate community-wide energy data, municipalities currently do not benefit from the necessary legal support for demanding it. With the goal of streamlining this process, Virginia’s General Assembly of 2019 passed House Bill 2332, which required the State Corporation Commission (SCC) to convene a stakeholder group and obtain recommendations related to energy-data access in the Commonwealth. As the Director of Climate Policy for C3, I served on this stakeholder group, leading the data-aggregation sub-group and providing the SCC with our own report and recommendations. The stakeholder process concluded in early April (2020), and has already reported on its recommendations.
Municipal governments willing to lead on climate should start gathering and publishing community-wide building energy use data annually, with separated values for each of the main energy consumption sectors (residential, commercial, governmental, and industrial). This would allow them to design climate policies in a way that maximizes overall community gains (both environmentally and socially) with the least budgetary impact—something of utmost importance in contexts of great economic, and social, hardship; such as our present year.
This is why one of C3’s 2020 Policy Recommendations requests that municipalities “(...) create an annual publication of data for community-wide and City government electricity consumption, natural gas consumption, and estimated vehicle-fuel consumption.” It also strengthens our pledge for the design and implementation of mechanisms to finance climate action in a way that is both widely accessible and economically attractive, especially to lower-income residents and renters. Residential climate policies can and should aim to advance affordable housing efforts via the reduction of our community’s energy-burden.
If you haven’t already, sign-on our letter with policy recommendations for the Charlottesville municipal government. Also, stay tuned as C3 will be releasing a quick overview of Albemarle’s recently published Climate Action Plan Draft with key highlights and suggested recommendations for community members to consider when providing their official feedback to the County.
To engage more closely with our climate policy efforts, email policy@theclimatecollaborative.org.