Cities and Climate Leadership
This week Mayors, government leaders, and climate change scientists are in Edmonton for the International Cities and Climate Change Science Conference. We clearly heard that cities are willing to commit to a new kind of partnership with the scientific community – a research and innovation agenda that will drive our investment decisions and the policy changes necessary to affect real change to climate risk.
In 2015, Edmonton City Council unanimously approved our Community Energy Transition Strategy – one of the most comprehensive roadmaps of its kind in North America. It’s an ambitious but achievable strategy that recognizes today’s need for fossil fuels, but demonstrates pathways for us to reduce our dependence on non-renewable energy. Today, 95% of Edmonton’s energy comes from fossil fuels, which exposes us to a number of risks, including commodity price spikes, worsening air quality problems, and, ultimately, more severe disasters like floods and fires that disrupt our economy.
With these risks clearly understood, and the costs of inaction evermore clear, our Energy Transition Strategy aims to increase the carbon efficiency of City operations, build partnerships with industry on things like construction and building efficiency innovation, and work with citizens to inspire change in our homes and in our mobility.
In parallel, Alberta’s Climate Leadership Plan is greening our electricity grid by phasing out coal and Canada is requiring pricing for GHG emissions. Here, we have alignment of local, sub-national and national governments on our climate goals.
But all this still may not get us far enough. To make real and meaningful progress in our lifetime, we need to be clear about the emissions we cause that occur outside of our city limits – emissions created by the everyday purchasing decisions of our citizens. By having a baseline understanding of what we buy and where it comes from, we could all make better, less carbon intensive choices. In doing so, we would be able to fully consider the full carbon footprint of our cities – the places where more and more people gather, and where the majority of our goods are purchased and consumed.
This approach – otherwise known as consumption-based accounting – counts emissions across the lifespan of each product or service, consumed or used, by our citizens. For example, we should know where a given product is made… how it is made, how it is shipped, how far it is shipped, and how it will ultimately be disposed, re-used or recycled. This is powerful information. Products that are made here would be counted too, including understanding where global demand sends them. As leaders, this is the data we must start gathering if cities are going to take a comprehensive and meaningful role in global GHG reduction.
So how would this work? What would it look like?
It could mean working with residents to encourage smarter purchasing decisions. It may mean partnering with large-scale food consumers like hospitals to encourage sustainable procurement practices, and buying local. And it will most certainly mean working with other orders of government to affect policy changes that reduce things like packaging waste. Tracking consumption like this will be a challenge, but I believe cities are up to it. After all, we account for only about 2% of the global landmass but cities consume two-thirds of the world’s energy and are responsible for 70% of global CO2 emissions. And as more people move to cities, the need for clarity on upstream and downstream consumption impacts will only grow.
Beyond consumption, and in almost every respect, more comprehensive data is our pathway to affecting real change. Today, our global commitments to combating climate change are still hindered by large information and technology gaps. Over the weekend, and for the very first time, Mayors and local government networks from around the world met with the science community to unpack this critical issue – and together, we are committing to further standardizing the climate data we collect, clarifying the research we need, and assessing the solutions we implement. We will build this resolve into a city-focused document – a declaration – and take it forward to city networks in the coming months. It’s a significant step, one we may look back on as a turning point in our resilience as cities and global citizens.
Through all this, cities can and must forge a new kind of partnership with the scientific community – including many of the experts gathered here – to help us transcend populism with science and solutions, and to overcome ideology with data and evidence. In the face of posturing and denial, data and evidence must be our beacon and drive our decisions. Because when cities and science work closely together, powerful change is possible from the bottom up.
Cities are where invention happens – the hotbeds of research, innovation and ideas to tackle our most pressing challenges. Our innovators, scientists, entrepreneurs and investors will build and scale the very solutions we need. Whole new industries, and jobs we can scarcely imagine, will flourish in cities that lead. That’s my hope for Edmonton, and for all our cities.