Who's ahead? Climate Cities Benchmark in Japan, U.S. and Germany

Autor*innen: Hans Hertle, Katharina Schächtele

In many countries, major cities set trends by strengthening efforts for climate protection. Nevertheless CO2 emissions have hardly changed since 1990 in spite of the wide variety of local activities. To interpret the effects of these activities, authorities lack a comprehensive benchmark that represents and evaluates more than just the emissions of CO2. Within the scope of the project Local Governments Climate Partnership (LGCP) such a benchmark was developed and tested, including communities from Germany, Japan and the United States (U.S.). To design a transparent and widely accepted benchmark, previous approaches for evaluating local climate protection activities were discussed. Based on experiences of communities and existing benchmarking tools, a broad and transparent multi-level benchmark was developed. Calibration to different national backgrounds took place by involving various test communities. The benchmark consists of the following elements: CO2 emission inventory, activity profile and set of indicators. Each element is evaluated individually and can be merged into a single performance output. At the request of participating cities, focus of the project was not to set a ranking list but to enhance transparency of climate change action of cities and foster the exchange of ideas. The benchmark is expected to become widely accepted, once the data inquiries will have been completed and evaluated.