San Francisco Climate Action Plan

The San Francisco Climate Action Plan is a greenhouse gas reduction initiative adopted by the City and County of San Francisco, USA in 2002. It aims to reduce the city's greenhouse gas emissions to 20% below 1990 levels by 2012.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

San Francisco's annual greenhouse gas emissions were 9.7 million tons equivalent carbon dioxide (eCO₂) in 2000. [http://www.sfenvironment.org/downloads/library/climateactionplan.pdf Climate Action Plan for San Francisco, Local Actions to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions] San Francisco Department of the Environment and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, 2004-09] , which was 12.5 tons eCO₂ per person. This level of emissions is lower than both the state and country in which San Francisco is located: California's annual per capita emissions of 14.2 tons eCO₂ in 2000 [http://www.energy.ca.gov/2006publications/CEC-600-2006-013/CEC-600-2006-013-SF.PDF Inventory of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1999 to 2004] California Energy Commission, 2006-12.] , and USA's annual per capita emissions of 20.4 CO₂ in 2000. However, it is much higher than the emissions level for the world as a whole, which was 4.4 tons CO₂ per person in 2003.

History

The Climate Action Plan is one of many intitiatives adopted by state and local governments in the USA to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enacted primiarily in response due to the absence of such action at the federal level. It was approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors as Resolution Number 0158-02, the "Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Resolution", on 2002-03-04. [http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/resolutions02/r0158-02.pdf Resolution 0158-02, Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions. San Francisco Board of Supervisors, 2002-03-04.] ] In doing so, San Francisco also joined over 500 cities to participate in the Cities for Climate Protection Campaign of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives.

Goals

San Francisco's annual greenhouse gas emissions were 9.1 million tons equivalent carbon dioxide (eCO₂) in 1990 and 9.7 million tons eCO₂ in 2000 [http://www.sfenvironment.org/downloads/library/climateactionplan.pdf Climate Action Plan for San Francisco, Local Actions to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions] San Francisco Department of the Environment and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, 2004-09] , and the Climate Action Plan's goal is to reduce emissions to 7.2 million tons eCO₂ by 2012. This goals therefore represent reductions of greenhouse gass emissions of 20% from 1990 levels and 26% from 2000 levels. The sources of greenhouse gases include those generated due to fossil fuel and electricity consumption used for transportation, natural gas and electricity used in buildings, and well as those generated by solid waste.

Reports

The plan's first report, "Climate Action Plan for San Francisco, Local Actions to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions" was published by the San Francisco Department of the Environment and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission with assistance from the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives in September 2004. In four chapters, the report describes the causes and local impacts of climate change, the city's greenhouse gas emissions reduction target, actions to reduce those emissions, and an implementation strategy for the near term.

The 2004 report proposes a wide variety of actions to achieve its stated emissions reductions, which fall into the following categories: transportation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and solid waste. Within each category, each action is described including an estimate for the CO₂ emissions reduction it would result in. The table below summarizes these.

Results

Success of the Climate Action Plan is unknown at this time.

ee also

*Actions on climate change
*List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita

References

[http://www.sfenvironment.org/downloads/library/climateactionplan.pdf Climate Action Plan for San Francisco]

External links

* [http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.html Full text of the Kyoto Protocol (HTML version)] , [http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.pdf (PDF version)]