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Seattle and C40 Cities Carbon Emissions Report

Logo for C40The C40 is comprised of 40 of the world’s largest cities leading together on taking action to combat climate change. For the first time in history, half of the world’s people live in cities and roughly 12 percent of the world’s carbon emissions are produced in our metropolitan areas. This is why cities have such a large role to play in reducing emissions and working to prepare for the impacts of climate change.

 Seattle has been an affiliate partner of the C40 since 2006. As such, we have the opportunity to learn from what other cities are doing and contribute our own best practices. In addition, C40 has asked participating cities to voluntarily disclose their carbon emissions, reduction targets and action planning processes in order to establish a baseline to measure project effectiveness going forward.

 C40 partnered with the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) to gather the data and compile it into a report, released this week. Over 3,000 organizations in some 60 countries around the world  measure and disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, water management and climate change strategies through CDP. Seattle took part in the C40 disclosure project conducted earlier this year.

Seattle conducts a greenhouse gas inventory of its municipal operations (corporate inventory) annually, and an inventory of the entire community’s footprint every three years. These reports can be found on the Office of Sustainability & Environment’s climate protection page. The 2008/09 corporate inventory will be available shortly and OSE will be conducting the 2011 community inventory next year.