Enabling Low Car­bon Com­mu­ni­ties:The Roles of Smart Planning Tools and Place-Based Solutions

The scale of the cli­mate cri­sis is immense and solu­tions are urgently needed. This dis­ser­ta­tion answers a num­ber of impor­tant ques­tions rel­e­vant to scal­ing up low car­bon solu­tions to U.S. house­holds and com­mu­ni­ties. What is the size and com­po­si­tion of aver­age house­hold car­bon foot­prints in U.S. zip codes, cities, coun­ties and states? What are the finan­cial costs and GHG reduc­tion poten­tials for dif­fer­ent house­hold types and loca­tions? What is the effect of pop­u­la­tion den­sity and sub­ur­ban­iza­tion on emis­sions and how might low car­bon plan­ning pri­or­i­ties be dif­fer­ent for urban cores, sub­urbs and regional author­i­ties? Dif­fer­ences in the size, com­po­si­tion and loca­tion of house­hold car­bon foot­prints sug­gest the need for tai­lor­ing of GHG mit­i­ga­tion efforts to dif­fer­ent populations.

Results from quan­ti­ta­tive research have informed the devel­op­ment of "smart" online car­bon man­age­ment tools that allows users to quickly cal­cu­late, com­pare and man­age house­hold, busi­ness and community-scale car­bon foot­prints, and to visu­al­ize aver­age house­hold car­bon foot­prints using high spa­tial res­o­lu­tion inter­ac­tive maps. Yet the poten­tial ben­e­fits of such tools are lim­ited to those who find them, and the infor­ma­tion may often do lit­tle to increase intrin­sic moti­va­tion to adopt new low car­bon tech­nolo­gies and prac­tices. Fol­low­ing lessons from behav­ioral sci­ences, a pilot project engaged ~2,700 res­i­dents in eight par­tic­i­pat­ing cities to track and reduce house­hold car­bon foot­prints and com­pete for the title of "Coolest Cal­i­for­nia City." The pro­gram achieved an esti­mated 14% reduc­tion in elec­tric­ity con­sump­tion, lend­ing evi­dence that community-scale cli­mate ini­tia­tives, enabled by sophis­ti­cated infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies and moti­vated local pro­gram imple­menters, can help scale up tai­lored, place-based cli­mate solutions.

Speaker: Chris Jones, UC Berkeley