In this growing climate crisis, cities will play a critical role in testing, implementing, and sharing solutions that can be replicated around the globe. Evolving regulations will require transparency to achieve funding and compliance with local regulations. At the same time, public perception will play its own governing role in holding cities and municipalities accountable for meeting their sustainability goals.
Sustainable cities will be the foundation for lasting resiliency, ensuring that an increasingly urbanized world will be net-zero, or even net-positive, in which operations exceed net-zero by removing additional carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. By adapting best practices to local conditions, sustainable cities will build the pathway to the future.
Prioritizing and focusing resources on sustainable practices and programs can reduce a city’s operating costs while also fostering a positive public perception. Additionally, transparency regarding your city’s specific climate challenges and the steps you are taking to adapt and remain resilient develops trust between you and your citizens.
A focus on sustainability can increase your community’s desirability, attracting new residents. Municipalities can also increase revenue while decreasing costs through sustainable frameworks such as energy and water conservation, among others.
How are sustainable cities created?
Where is your city in its sustainability journey, or have you taken the first step? What is your city’s vision for creating a sustainable community? Begin answering these questions by identifying a starting point and distinguishing your desired community through a Climate Action Plan (CAP) or Sustainability Master Plan (SMP). These resources will serving as your guiding principle throughout the journey.
CAPs are detailed and strategic frameworks for measuring, planning, and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and related climatic impacts. SMPs allow your city to identify and improve its main elements of sustainability. Both plans outline your goals and build the preliminary framework toward sustainability.
Follow along as we take you through steps toward a sustainable community.
Step 1: Collect data
Your city’s success will be driven by utilizing data to track and analyze progress toward your ESG goals. This data is key to helping form and measure progress against your CAP or SMP.
Gathering data across the multiple departments within your municipality can be challenging, however, all the data you need to improve your city’s sustainability likely already exists within each department. For example, a city’s utility data is derived from utility energy expenditure and water use, while air quality is metered through a multitude of variables in which greenhouse (GHG) emissions play a part.
To ensure consistent and complete collection, identify specific individuals who will be responsible for collecting that data. Assigning a specific individual or team ensures there is an accountable point person to take the lead within each department. These individuals will serve as the bridge between their department and the county’s sustainability team, coordinating data collection that creates a roadmap to achieving goals within the CAP and/or the SMP.
Delegating a team member within an existing department provides an added benefit of the individual being familiar with the department's processes, as opposed to having an outside person collect data with little to no existing knowledge of how the branch operates, or the context for meaningful data.
Data must also be scrubbed to ensure appropriate and consistent units of measure. For instance, several types of data are collected to develop a city’s GHG inventory. This data may be presented in different formats such as waste tonnage, miles traveled by employees, energy consumed in kWh or therms, etc., while the data will ultimately be presented in metric tonnes of CO2e.
Varying sets of emission factors, conversions, and any assumptions made while collecting and cleaning data must be taken into consideration to ensure your data tells an accurate story. This knowledge will empower you to better compare and analyze year-over-year data to identify trends.
Step 2: Analyze data
To meet the targets and goals within your CAP or SMP, you will work closely with the responsible departments to use collected data in developing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Congregating historic data from previous years allows you to create baselines and evaluate any data gaps. Setting baselines is important to help show the comparative progress that your municipality is making. For example, if a county has a target to achieve a 50% reduction in their level of organic waste disposal by 2025, it's important to know which baseline year is being considered for comparison.
Selecting the optimal year for baseline comparison data can be complex because it can be difficult to determine a year that is most representative of the county's operations. It is important to recognize that operational activities may have experienced anomalies in recent years due to COVID-19.
Step 3: Report on progress
Your city's residents and the public appreciate visibility on the steps you are taking to create a sustainable future. Regional initiatives can be shared by publishing dashboards of your city’s data that demonstrate areas of improvement in key metrics. A third-party consultant may prove helpful in determining which type of dashboard best presents your progress and goals in an easily digestible manner.
For example, a bar graph may be useful for depicting your GHG data, while a line graph may be better illustrate water data. It is important to develop a narrative that accompanies your data. People care about what you are doing, and they also care about why you are doing it. Compelling narratives give your sustainability mission purpose and conveys the conviction behind your city’s actions. Developing and disseminating these narratives is critical in demonstrating progress.
Leading the way in sustainable governments, the County of Santa Clara published their SMP along with examples of the dashboards they utilize to visually communicate the Santa Clara sustainability journey to their residents and the general public, allowing for full transparency of their progress.
Step 4: Implement improved processes
After sharing progress toward your sustainability goals, you can identify trends and opportunities to improve existing -- and design and implement new -- strategies based upon what you have learned.
For example, analyzing the average utility energy data over 10 years can help identify your city’s energy expenditure benchmarks. This data can help inform a decision to implement practices that conserve city-wide energy use and decrease energy expenditure-related costs. Perhaps energy-saving light bulbs and updated HVAC systems can be installed throughout the city. Cool roof systems and window tinting can be used on buildings with high energy consumption.
Energy data benchmarks can be utilized to identify low energy-use periods in buildings. Mandatory "lights-off" policies during these timeframes are another simple strategy for utilizing gathered data. Subsequent energy data can then be analyzed against your previous benchmarks to track improvement. This process can be scaled across departments to reach KPIs and monitor progress toward other relevant targets and goals.
Step 5: Automate system updates and streamline processes
Your data is the building block to your sustainability framework. As city departments integrate data collection as part of their standard procedures, it is helpful to create an organized, centralized location for your teams to access and monitor all your data. Using spreadsheets and other manual processes can leave room for error and version control, and can be time-consuming to store and access.
Automating the data collection process can reduce the time your team needs to prepare and submit the data. For example, automatic reminders to check periodic updates on data could be sent on a regular basis and could track when departments are behind in supplying data.
CleanChain, an ADEC Innovation, is a data customization tool that identifies key items required for data tracking and automation, allowing cities to streamline data collection, and update processes accordingly.
Step 6: Build upon what you’ve done.
The end of your sustainability journey is just the beginning. Now that you have created your dashboards and implemented data and organizational processes, it is time to review and refine. New KPIs can be identified and added to your dashboards to ensure that you continue to make progress and optimize the processes and momentum you have developed.
Are you ready to start your city’s sustainability journey? Our environmental professionals and sustainability experts are ready to collaborate with you no matter which step you’re at. Contact us for a free consultation and learn more about how we can bring your ideas to life.
Contributors
This article was a collaborative effort and written with help from our dedicated and knowledgeable FCS and ESG team.
Adrienne Garcia. Adrienne Garcia is an ESG project manager specializing in ESG Disclosures and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting. She provides ESG consulting services and supports clients in reporting on their ESG efforts in alignment with global reporting frameworks and sustainability indices. Since 2018, Adrienne has assisted companies in maximizing performance in CDP, data management, and developing comprehensive CSR reports.
Liza Baskir. Liza Baskir is an ES Project Manager who leads the preparation of CEQA and NEPA documents, including EIRs, IS/MNDs, Environmental Assessments, and more. She is an expert in aesthetics, land use and planning and land use compatibility, transportation and circulation, utilities and services systems, alternatives analysis, evaluating large public infrastructure projects, and public outreach.
