Earlier today I presented a summary of recent research on U.S. cities’ actions on climate and decarbonization of transport. The presentation is available for download at this link. The webinar recording is available at this link. (If you have any trouble accessing, please let me know. I am now using Google Drive to securely store large files so that the website functions properly and quickly.)
Key Points:
- All cities are acting in two major areas: policies to reduce congestion and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and promoting electric vehicles.
- All cities are taking a range of different actions to promote EVs from incentivizing infrastructure to educating the public.
- Cities do have the potential to impact future fuels and future fuel demand and to challenge federal primacy in vehicle, fuel and even climate policy.
- I dug more deeply into the motivations behind these cities’ climate action and transportation plans and their actual progress in implementing them. In doing this research, I reached out to actual city officials involved in these plans and spoke to several to get a first-hand account of what is happening. I looked at budget documents for the years 2019 and 2020 (if they were available).
- Right now, there is more aspiration and rhetoric than actual implementation. In looking at budget documents for the years 2019 and 2020 (for the cities that approved them already), hardly any funds were allocated to the bold climate action policies I have noted previously. That does not mean we should not take these cities seriously, and I will continue to follow their progress.
- Progress reports are scarce for the cities’ climate action plans.
Links to Previous Reports
