The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Monday 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 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.
“Cities play an essential and leading role in accelerating solutions to climate change and C40 cities are already making a massive impact,” said David Miller, Mayor of Toronto and chair of C40. “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.”
CDP Cities also released a new report entitled ‘The Case for City Disclosure’, written by Accenture (NYSE: ACN). It details how standard disclosure from local governments can help cities share best practice, manage risk, increase operational effectiveness and cost savings, attract investment, foster innovation and ultimately lead to safer, more prosperous cities.
"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."
The CDP Cities initiative continues to expand CDP’s global climate
change data system developed with Accenture, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and SAP (NYSE: 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.
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. We are happy to continue this as part of our work with the C40.”
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.
“CDP has long been a key system through which businesses can evaluate their ability to tackle climate change,” said CDP’s executive chairman Paul Dickinson. “With cities at the forefront of our global response to climate change, it is critical that they have access to the same proven process which can help them to reduce carbon, improve operational efficiency, attract investment and increase clean tech innovations.”
The report, "The Case for City Disclosure", is available at the link below.
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