{"id":11165,"date":"2013-09-19T01:28:51","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T08:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=11165"},"modified":"2013-09-19T01:28:51","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T08:28:51","slug":"which-cities-are-most-energy-efficient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/09\/19\/which-cities-are-most-energy-efficient\/","title":{"rendered":"Which Cities Are Most Energy Efficient?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Limiting greenhouse gas emissions starts at home.  Personally, my carbon footprint is less that 25% of the national average for people who live alone.  Oftentimes, our best efforts fall short of changing national policy, drowned out by the din of corporate money.  That does not mean we should stop trying, but often we can do more to effect policies on a local level, so here\u2019s how America\u2019s largest cities stack up.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"19renewable-cities\"<\/p>\n

Does your city have a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions dramatically? Is it seeking to reduce car use through bike share programs and public transit subsidies? Does it partner with utility companies to help small businesses and homeowners save energy? And does it lobby for statewide energy-efficiency legislation?<\/p>\n

Those are just a few of the policies that have made Boston the top-ranked city for energy efficiency, according to a new report<\/a> from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Portland, Ore., placed second, followed by New York, San Francisco, and Seattle<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

ACEEE ranked 34 major American cities\u2014the 25 most populous incorporated ones, plus the central cities of nine other major metropolitan areas\u2014according to their efforts to promote energy savings. The report looked at building codes, community-wide energy initiatives, transportation policies, energy-saving programs involving public utilities, and efforts to improve the efficiency of government building. You can see where each city ranked on the map above.<\/p>\n

The cities’ scores are based largely on their implementation of efficiency policies\u2014enforceable building standards, for instance\u2014rather than on quantifiable reductions in energy use and emissions. During a conference call following the release of the report, ACEEE official Eric Mackres said the report focused on specific policies because the group wanted it to serve as a "playbook of actions you can take to improve efficiency." He added that "because most cities aren’t as good at promoting energy efficiency as Boston and Portland, we don’t have as good of data on energy savings [and] energy consumption…and as a result, we weren’t able to compare all of the cities in the scorecard using those energy metrics."<\/p>\n

Most cities did substantially worse than the top performers. While Boston received 76.75 of the possible 100 points, 23 cities earned fewer than 50 points\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Mother Jones<\/a>><\/p>\n

As a rule, the blue the area, the better the score, and the redder the area, the worse, but we already knew that would be the case, because spending money on billionaires helps only the billionaires.<\/font><\/p>\n

How did your city do?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Limiting greenhouse gas emissions starts at home.  Personally, my carbon footprint is less that 25% of the national average for people who live alone.  Oftentimes, our best efforts fall short of changing national policy, drowned out by the din of corporate money.  That does not mean we should stop trying, but often we can do […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}