Authors
Mark Lozano, Alissa Kendall, Gwen Arnold, John Harvey, Ali Butt
Publication date
2022/2/1
Description
The range of efforts to address climate change can span from international collaboration to personal action. This study looks at environmental efforts at the local jurisdictional level. Over the last decade, cities and counties have released climate action plans (CAPs) to set emissions reduction targets and outline actions that will help meet those goals. However, the range of information included in CAPs varies dramatically across jurisdictions. This study examines CAPs released by jurisdictions in California, focusing on the quantity and quality of information presented on the expected GHG emissions reduction, cost, and equity impacts of proposed climate actions. This research develops a framework to assess their inclusion, which could also be used to guide future CAP development, and develops a set of guiding questions to promote the inclusion of equity themes in climate action planning and implementation. To gauge the current state of climate action by local jurisdictions, a survey was implemented to better understand the (i) relative consideration of factors in climate action planning and implementation, (ii) factors which affect the inclusion of equity in climate action, (iii) the primary sources of funding for CAP implementation, and (iv) which factors affect the likelihood that an action is implemented. The survey found that, of the considered factors, expected emissions reduction is considered most during planning and implementation, while external impacts are considered the least. When comparing factors between planning and implementation, cost is significantly more important during implementation. For both phases, equity impacts received …