Our Activities

In 2010, ICLEI USA created the protocols by which U.S. local governments account for emissions at both the community and municipal scale and in 2013, developed ClearPath, an emissions inventory and management software application, which is the manifestation of these protocols. In combination, these activities have reduced the financial and administrative burden to measure and manage GHG emissions. 900 U.S. local governments have established ClearPath accounts. ICLEI USA technical advisors support users who developed 336 community inventories and 196 municipal inventories in 2019. Occasionally, local governments outsource the inventory development to ICLEI USA. In 2019, ICLEI USA developed inventories for: Manhattan Beach, San Jose and Carson California; Boulder, Lakewood and Northglenn Colorado; Boca Raton, Oakland Park, and Pinecrest Florida; Beacon, New York; Beaverton Oregon; Denton and Plano Texas; and King County, Washington.

ICLEI's roll is to review the 25 city GHG inventories for completeness and to provide support, in some cases actually completing the inventory as needed.

ICLEI USA GHG experts provided Google with a technical review of the city-level greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory data provided by the Google Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE). Staff provided a comparison to other data sources commonly used in local community-scale GHG inventories. This analysis will increase awareness and understanding for cities that wish to use EIE data in the development of GHG inventories.

New guidance enables U.S. cities and counties to include forests and trees within their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting, a key activity to ensure representation of local forestry and land use consideration in climate action planning. Developed in partnership with the Woods Hole Research Center and World Resources Institute (WRI), and funded by Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA) and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Forest and Land Use Appendix to ICLEI’s U.S. Community Protocol for Accounting and Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions will help fill a critical gap in enabling communities to develop climate action related to land management at a local level.

The project includes intertwined technical analysis components. The specific tasks were: (1) develop an updated King County community-wide geographic-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory, including a “Contribution Analysis” quantifying key causes/drivers to recent historical trends in countywide GHGs, and (2) an analysis that builds on the inventory to quantify pathways to achieve County adopted GHG reduction targets through 2030. This methodology can be applied in any community across the globe.

ICLEI created a facilitated multi-month training and capacity building program; the “Cohort” to build local government capacity in climate, resilience, forestry, and equity. Each cohort is theme-based and includes up to 20 participant local governments, some of whom are supported by university student externs. Cohort participants are supported by ICLEI USA technical advisors, the ICLEI USA online learning platform, recorded training content, and one-on-one support as needed. Topics have included the GHG net-zero building strategies, GHG inventories as a first step toward identifying a reduction target and priority strategies to reduce emissions; integrated climate action and resilience plans, and equitable community engagement. Cohort partners have included the Global Covenant of Mayors, Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute, Mountain Towns 2030, California Statewide Energy Efficiency Collaborative, the University of Northern Iowa, and the State of Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

The ICLEI team provided examples of how communities similar to Lake Oswego approach climate mitigation – and reviewed existing documents related to the existing CAP and original GHG Inventory.
Findings were summarized in a memo and presented to staff.
ICLEI Evaluated planned vs achieved emissions reductions using The ClearPath planning module and its default reduction measure types. In addition, ICLEI developed highly flexible “user-defined” calculators to represent reduction measures of interest to the City.
To conclude the analysis, ICLEI applied the Temperate software application to provide Lake Oswego with downscaled climate data to indicate the expected local climate change impacts on the community. From here, ICLEI worked with the community to conduct a vulnerability assessment.
Finally, ICLEI developed a set of Implementation Strategies with outputs from ClearPath's forecasting module and the vulnerability assessment.
The intent of the strategies is to convey information about the intent of each action, how to measure progress towards targets, highlight successes and identify implementation barriers that can be addressed through ICLEI membership support.

ICLEI was chosen as a Technical Advisor in 2019 to support the communities’ efforts to achieve SolSmart designation with the aims of improving the business climate for solar energy and providing official recognition that a municipality is “open for solar business.” The process began in January 2019 with training on SolSmart requirements through a series of web group sessions and one-on-one technical calls. Most ICLEI-assisted SolSmart communities achieved the Bronze-level recognition by the end of November that year. The adjustments needed in documentation and business practices often required coordination between community departments (e.g., Sustainability Office, Planning, Zoning, Information Systems, Fire and Rescue, and Tax) which added some time burden but also built beneficial cohesion. Training was required for building departments, permitting staff and others. Approvals of the changes sometimes required formal action by the City Council, Zoning Board and Planning Board; and the approval protocol process added time.

ACCELERATE aims to strengthen sustainable consumption and production of energy-use patterns in Pasig and Parañaque by enhancing the implementation of the PGBC and improving Energy Efficiency & Conservation (EE&C) across the board by inspiring action from the private sector and local communities.
The project will address the gaps in knowledge, capacity, and awareness of the different stakeholders on building standards, benchmarking tools, energy audits, and implementing EE&C practices as part of their compliance to the PGBC, specifically.

ICLEI is conducting research to help identify drivers and challenges for cities to participate at market mechanisms in the international realm, and more specifically with the cooperative approaches being negotiated at COP 24 & 25. ICLEI together with Perspectives, a German consultancy, is therefore analyzing different CDM, TAP and NAMA projects as well as proposing different approaches for cities to participate with future mechanisms running under Article 6.2 and 6.4 of the PA.