Local-level policy engagement on energy matters has historically ebbed and flowed, with most action resulting as a response to some tangible crisis or vulnerability. In many parts of the world, the 1970s were a period of heightened local energy policymaking activity, as cities sought to protect themselves from shortages and price increases brought on by the OPEC oil embargo. Many other cities took action in response to growing public engagement in the nascent environmental movement and its "think globally, act locally" mantra.
Other cities have sought to influence the local energy system because of concerns over fuel poverty; lack of public access to safe or reliable energy supply; the adverse impact local energy prices or energy system reliability are having on the city’s economy; public health concerns related to local energy emissions; and concerns about the long-term energy security of the city (for example, see San Francisco Public Utility Commission, 2002; Greater London Authority, 2004; New York City Energy Policy Task Force, 2004; City of Cape Town, 2006; City of Amsterdam, 2007; City of Toronto, 2007, Mairie de Paris, 2007; Ciudad de Mexico, 2008).
Climate change began to influence local energy policy efforts in the early 1990s, an outgrowth of the Local Agenda 21 (LA21) movement emanating from the Rio de Janeiro "earth" summit. LA21 plans were conceived of as a means of rallying local support for policy and program initiatives designed to improve local "sustainability." Sustainability was broadly interpreted, but concerns about global climate change and the need to shift to alternative energy sources were clearly articulated as an important element of any local plan. The international non-governmental organization ICLEI was created at around this time, specifically with a goal of providing information and technical support to cities interested in developing these plans (ICLEI, 2000, 2009a).
Over the following decade, other similar organizations and initiatives were established, including Energie-Cites and the European Union-sponsored Covenant of Mayors in Europe; C40-Large Cities Climate Group; World Mayors Council on Climate Change; and climate-related programming by United Cities and Local Governments and Metropolis. The exact structure and purpose of these organizations and initiatives varies slightly, but most tend to provide policymaker education and training, information exchange, technical support, and recognition programs. Membership requirements, costs, and performance obligations vary widely across these initiatives.
Other information and technical support initiatives focused on local-level energy and climate change initiatives have also cropped up in recent years, sponsored by various non-governmental organizations, academic groups, international development banks, and private consultants (for example, see European Commission, 2007a; Natural Capitalism Solutions, 2007; ISET, 2009; Prasad et al., 2009; Suzuki et al., 2009; US Conference of Mayors, 2009). The visibility of these initiatives has grown considerably, particularly as local action has become identified as a counterweight to inaction on climate change by national governments (Grunwald, 2007; City of Copenhagen, 2009).
The number of cities enrolling in these initiatives is sizable,5 although the results of this activity or participation are poorly documented.
Policy and program initiatives
The type of initiatives undertaken by cities around the world or endorsed by these technical assistance organizations varies widely, reflecting local climate, economic, and political conditions; available local authority resources; local authority political and policy preferences and span of control; the design of the energy system, including its age and breadth of geographic coverage; and sense of urgency by key stakeholders.
Structurally, these policy and program initiatives fall into three broad categories: energy and climate planning and governance, specific mitigation policies and programs focused on reducing the local energy system’s contribution to climate change, and adaptation efforts dealing with the consequences of climate change. A review of climate action plans and other documentary evidence has found that the majority of cities engage in the first two categories of activities, emphasizing climate change planning and mitigation-focused initiatives. Adaptation planning is still a relatively new concept, more the exception to local authority efforts than the rule (Carmin et al., 2009).
In many ways, the programmatic emphasis seen to date mirrors the type of consultation and advice provided by many of the technical assistance initiatives cited above. Early handbooks and other guidance documents prepared to aid local authorities tended to be very mitigation focused. More recent initiatives appear to be more evenly balanced in their coverage or focus entirely on bolstering local resiliency to the impacts of climate change. Even in these documents, however, the sections on how local energy systems must adapt are still poorly developed, as will be discussed below.
Climate planning and governance efforts
Many cities treat energy and climate planning as a major initiative, involving a range of stakeholders in and outside of local government. The effort is generally managed by local authority staff, although key support roles may be played by outside NGOs such as ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustain-ability, private consultants, academic researchers, or representatives from the general public or local private companies with special knowledge or interests in the outcome of the planning work. The extent of external involvement also varies depending on the desired scope of the planning exercise. Efforts focused on reducing energy use or greenhouse gas emissions solely from local authority operations (i.e., so-called "corporate" emissions) primarily involve officials from agencies responsible for these emissions. Broader efforts seeking to reduce emissions from other sources around the city (e.g., homes or local businesses) often include more external stakeholders. Another key scoping decision shaping local planning efforts is the decision over whether to target energy use or greenhouse gas emissions from new or existing buildings, as each requires a dramatically different policy orientation.
Seoul’s efforts against climate change
In April 2007, the City of Seoul announced the Seoul Environment-friendly Energy Declaration, which promotes energy savings and efficiency, expansion of renewable energy and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The objective of the program is to actively cope with climate change, the energy crisis caused by excessive consumption of fossil fuels and the exhaustion of unstable energy supplies caused by oil price changes. Seoul is implementing a variety of measures to improve the city’s self-reliance on energy, including establishing an objective of 15% energy reduction and 10% renewable energy use by 2020, compared to a year 2000 baseline.
To support this program, Seoul announced new Environment-friendly Building Criteria. Buildings use 57% of energy and produce 65% of greenhouse gas emissions in Seoul.
When the criteria are fully implemented, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions will decrease by at least 20% in new buildings and 10% in existing buildings. The city will require all public buildings to observe the criteria and actively encourage private buildings to follow the guidelines. Specific elements of the criteria include promotion of transit-oriented development (i.e., development near subway and bus transport); promotion of bike lane development; and the promotion of energy efficiency initiatives and the increased use of renewable energy.
In 2010, the Environment-friendly Building Criteria were enhanced to require more direct action. Buildings in Seoul must now achieve second class or higher performance in terms of energy efficiency. In particular, high-rise residential buildings (with 100 or more households) will only receive a construction permit if designed to satisfy 3% of the buildings’ energy demand through the use of on-site renewable energy technology. Insulation for outer walls must also be enhanced, and automatic standby power cut off systems should also be installed on more than 80% of the facilities of the buildings.
Seoul is also undertaking a variety of other initiatives including:
• Developing a climate and energy map to show Seoul’s climatic characteristics and energy usage patterns in each district around the city. The climate and energy map will aid local urban planning initiatives and provide an opportunity for the citizens to join activities to address climate change, such as energy saving.
• 79% of the city’s transport-related greenhouse gas emissions are from automobiles. To address this problem, Seoul collects a ‘congestion charge’ from cars entering downtown Seoul through Namsan Tunnels No. 1 and No. 3. (There are several routes drivers can take to enter downtown Seoul, but Namsan Tunnels No. 1 and No. 3 offer the shortest routes into the city, saving time on the road.) The congestion charge allows smoother traffic flow, diminishes atmospheric pollution and makes efficient use of traffic facilities. The congestion fee is 2,000 Korean won (approximately US$1.60) per vehicle with less than 3 passengers. Ultimately, Seoul may seek to impose congestion charges on all routes entering downtown Seoul, but there is currently a lack of consensus among the citizens about this issue.
• Seoul also introduced a No-Driving Day scheme on weekdays. In this scheme, people voluntarily determine a day when he or she will abstain from driving his/her car. Compliance is monitored using a RFID system. There are currently 2.95 million vehicles registered in Seoul and 968,000 cars are participating in the No-Driving Day program. The program is estimated to reduce local CO2 emissions by 246,541 tons annually. Participants in the program receive a 5% discount on vehicle tax, a 10% discount on the local congestion charge, and 30% discount on public parking fees. There are no penalties imposed on the drivers caught driving on their specified day, but drivers caught cheating more than three times per year will be banned from the benefits provided by the No-Driving Day program.
• In 2009 the Seoul Metropolitan Government launched the Eco-mileage program to encourage citizens to take an active role in reducing greenhouse gases. The program provides incentives to households that reduce their electricity, water, and gas consumption by 10% compared to their consumptions levels over the two prior years. As of the first half of 2010, 186,000 households have joined the program and 70,742 tons of CO2 were reduced over the past 6 months. Participating households receive green consumer goods discounts worth US$50, tree planting vouchers, energy auditing services, etc. Groups (such as schools or apartment complexes) can receive subsidies for different greening projects worth approximately US$10,000.
• Seoul also established the Low CO2 Green Bank Account, a green financial mechanism, to raise funds for use in responding to climate change. Citizens can be offered discount commission benefits when they open an account with Wooribank, a private Korean bank. This account is similar to other private bank accounts, except all profits yielded from the account will be directed to a new Seoul Climate Change Fund. This fund will then be used on a range of low carbon projects, including providing eco-friendly consumer goods to low income households.
Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) Campaign of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability
This case study summarizes information available on the ICLEI website, at www.ICLEI.org.
The Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) Campaign6 assists cities and local governments to adopt policies and implement quantifiable measures to reduce local greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, and enhance urban livability and sustainability.
BACKGROUND
In 1993, at the invitation of ICLEI, municipal leaders met at the United Nations in New York, for the 1st Municipal Leaders Summit on Climate Change, and adopted a declaration that called for the establishment of a worldwide movement of local governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, and enhance urban sustain-ability. The result was the CCP Campaign, today recognized as the longest running climate change mitigation campaign globally.
FIVE MILESTONE PROCESS
The CCP Campaign follows a five-step course of action (milestones) providing a simple, standardized way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to monitor, measure, and report performance. The milestones allow local governments to understand how municipal decisions affect energy use and how these decisions can be used to mitigate global climate change while improving community quality of life. ICLEI has developed several software tools that help cities comply with the methodology.
THE FIVE MILESTONES ARE:
Milestone 1. Conduct a baseline emissions inventory and forecast. Based on energy consumption and waste generation, the city calculates greenhouse gas emissions for a base year and for a forecast year. The inventory and forecast provide a benchmark against which the city can measure progress.
Milestone 2. Adopt an emissions reduction target for the forecast year. The city establishes an emissions reduction target for the city. The target both fosters political will and creates a framework to guide the planning and implementation of measures.
Milestone 3. Develop a Local Action Plan. Through a multi-stakeholder process, the city develops a Local Action Plan that describes the policies and measures that the local government will take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve its emissions reduction target. Most plans include a timeline, a description of financing mechanisms, and an assignment of responsibility to departments and staff. In addition to reduction measures, most plans also incorporate public awareness and education efforts.
Milestone 4. Implement policies and measures. The city implements the policies and measures contained in their Local Action Plan. Typical policies and measures implemented by CCP participants include energy efficiency improvements to municipal buildings and water treatment facilities, streetlight retrofits, public transit improvements, installation of renewable power applications, and methane recovery from waste management.
Milestone 5. Monitor and verify results. Monitoring and verifying progress on the implementation of measures to reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions is an ongoing process. Monitoring begins once measures are implemented and continues for the life of the measures, providing important feedback that can be use to improve the measures over time.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Since its inception, the CCP Campaign has grown to involve more than 1,000 local governments worldwide that are integrating climate change mitigation into their decision-making processes, covering around 10 percent of the world’s urban population and including approximately 20 percent of global urban anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
Following the achievements in North America, Australia, and Europe in the early 2000s, CCP is recognized as the only local government climate mitigation campaign taking place in developing countries in Latin America, South Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
Specific regional/national achievements are: SOUTH ASIA
In 2009 ICLEI South Asia published Energy and Carbon Emissions Profiles of 54 South Asian Cities, a comprehensive account of corporate and community emissions from 54 local authorities from India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, compiled by ICLEI South Asia. The report is recognized as one of the most comprehensive compilations of greenhouse gas emissions of cities in developing countries.
USA
In 2009 ICLEI USA welcomed Oklahoma City as the 600th member of its national CCP Campaign. Around 200 local governments have completed their greenhouse gas baseline inventory and at least 155 have committed to emissions reduction targets. The projected greenhouse gas emissions reduction from these targets is expected to add up to more than 1.36 billion tonnes CO2-eq by 2020 – the equivalent of taking 25,000,000 passenger vehicles off the road for the next 10 years.
NEW ZEALAND
Communities for Climate Protection: New Zealand, Actions Profile 2009 summarizes greenhouse gas emissions reduction data from 34 councils covering 83 percent of the New Zealand population. The total of reported and quantifiable emissions reductions from CCP-NZ council activities, since councils’ inventory base-years (starting from June 2004) to June 2009, has been conservatively calculated to be more than 400,000 tonnes CO2-eq.
AUSTRALIA
CCP Australia was launched in 1997 and as of 30 June 2008 had 233 participating councils, representing about 84 percent of the Australian population. In 2007/2008 over 3,000 greenhouse gas abatement actions were reported by 184 councils across Australia. Collectively these actions prevented 4.7 million tonnes CO2-eq from entering the atmosphere – the equivalent of taking over a million cars off the road for an entire year. Since the start of reporting in 1998/1999, 18 million tonnes CO2-eq have been abated by Australian cities within the CCP Campaign.
IMPACTS
Following the success achieved through the implementation of CCP, ICLEI and local government networks are able to advocate for more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction policies at the national and international level. CCP enhances cities’ access to carbon financing and improves standardization of urban greenhouse gas accounting. Based on the experience of the five-milestone process, ICLEI further developed innovative actions in adaptation to climate change at the local level.
The local climate planning process often begins with a data gathering and analysis exercise to track local greenhouse gas emissions.Emission reduction targets set decades into the future are frequently established, in many cases at levels suggested by different climate policy networks or technical assistance initiatives. For example, the US Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement launched in 2005 sought to convince mayors to commit to a 7 percent reduction in their city’s emission levels by 2010, the same level called for by the USA as a whole under the Kyoto Protocol (US Conference of Mayors, 2010).
The lifespan of these planning initiatives varies. Some cities have designed them as ongoing initiatives, with regular reporting on results and updating of plans to reflect implementation progress, new knowledge, or changing local conditions.
Greenhouse gas mitigation policies and programs
Although many factors affect the exact policy and program prescriptions contained in local climate plans, it is common to see plans emphasizing specific policies and programs targeting the largest emission sources identified by the local greenhouse gas emission inventory. In London, for example, the local climate plan projects how specific proposed strategies will collectively shift the city from its current business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions path (see Figure 4.6).
Existing technology choices directly influence the content of a city’s plan. For example, cities receiving the bulk of their electricity supply from low- or non-greenhouse gas emitting sources such as hydropower or nuclear power (e.g., Paris) tend to focus their policy attention to thermal or transport-related energy use, essentially viewing electricity consumption as a less problematic issue.
Cities reliant on carbon-intensive power sources frequently emphasize fuel switching or technology switching as a means of driving down emission levels. Strategies include increasing the use of renewable power generated within or imported to the city, or the replacement of existing large power plants with more energy efficient turbine designs (San Francisco Public Utility Commission, 2002). Combined heat and power technology deployment or district energy system expansion may also be advocated, because these technologies can both heat homes and power steam chillers that replace electric powered air conditioning units. In New York City, it is estimated that such chilling units and other technologies connected to the district steam system displace nearly 375 MW of electric demand around Manhattan (City of New York, 2007).
Figure 4.6: Projected emission impacts of selected climate mitigation strategies contained in London Climate Change Action Plan.
Other strategies emphasize demand-side initiatives to reduce overall energy use around the city, including efforts promoting the use of more efficient lighting systems on roadways and in homes and businesses. Because peak power demand in many cities is linked to air conditioning use on hot days, efforts to reduce solar gain within buildings on hot days often find a home in local climate plans. Strategies promoted include green roofs, cool roofs, enhanced wall or ceiling cavity insulation, or landscaping programs planting trees on the sunny side of buildings. Electricity-intensive businesses or business units such as computer data centers may also be the target of policymaker interest.
There is a lengthy literature of technical assistance documents that have been developed over time advising cities on "best practice" initiatives (Natural Capitalism Solutions, 2007; US Conference of Mayors, 2009); some of these best practice claims are better documented than others. One of the biggest challenges local authorities face when considering these many ideas is assessing whether ideas deemed effective in one city can be effectively translated to a completely different local context. This problem is most pronounced in cities in less-developed countries, where the challenge of providing even the most basic type of energy infrastructure system has proven vexing (USAID, 2004).
A closely related point local authorities must consider is which type of policy instruments will prove most effective at delivering on their policy goals. In many cases, cities lack relevant local evidence, and must rely on outcomes achieved in other cities where the underlying economic or policy conditions could be completely different. Policymakers may also have strong ideological preferences that shape their policy decisions, preferring mandates to incentives or vice versa.
Energie-Cites (2009) identifies ten different functions or roles for local government, each of which creates specific policy and program opportunities to influence local carbon emission levels.7 John argues that these functions can be collapsed into five unique types of policy levers that generally fall under mayoral control, each of which can contribute towards a comprehensive local mitigation policy:
• Rulemaking - regulatory or policymaking powers, including the ability to impose land use controls that reduce the need for private vehicle use; environmental standards; or clean energy technology requirements
• Regulatory oversight – responsibility for the enforcement of standards established by other governmental entities (such as building codes promoting energy efficiency)
• Direct expenditures/procurement – use of local purchasing powers to procure efficiency upgrades that reduce the local authority’s own energy expenditures
• Financial incentives - tax breaks, permitting rule modifications, or cash subsidies or financial penalties designed to promote energy efficiency or clean energy investments and behavior
• Information/advocacy - use of local government’s highly visible platform to speak out on local energy issues or convene stakeholder meetings to move projects forward.
Regardless of which instrument(s) local authorities choose to employ, officials must assess how long they will stick with a certain policy approach, and when they should shift to an alternative strategy if the original policy is proving less effective than first hoped. The fact that the greenhouse gas emission reduction targets established by most cities are aspirational, rather than obligatory, means there may be some laxness about shifting away from unsuccessful policy approaches. The long time horizon of most emission reduction targets also makes accountability difficult, as these targets generally extend far beyond the average mayor’s term of office.
Their limited policy control powers also highlight the need for local authorities to structure their mitigation efforts in more holistic or cross-cutting ways that leverage support and involvement from other key stakeholders and levels of government. Some cities do this by articulating advocacy strategies designed to win changes giving local officials additional financial resources or more policy control powers (Greater London Authority, 2004). Others emphasize information and education campaigns that inform local energy users about financial or technical assistance resources available from state or central government.
