By Tyler Bailey, Local Policy
American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy
The 2015 City Scorecard ranks 51 large US cities across five policy areas on their policies and efforts to save energy. Its focus on policies and other initiatives is meant to identify and highlight important actions cities can take to become more efficient. In the process, it offers the beginnings of an efficiency roadmap for any city that wants to save more energy.
The City Scorecard’s metrics can also be used to evaluate other communities beyond the large ones included in the report. All communities, large and small, have the potential to lead on energy efficiency. With the updated 2015 Local Energy Efficiency Self-Scoring Tool released today, communities can evaluate their progress on energy efficiency efforts to get a better understanding of where they stand in relation to peers.
Comparing against peers
Because the largest cities have already been scored in the City Scorecard, we imagine small and medium-sized communities will be the primary users of the tool. To enable these communities to compare their efforts against localities of similar size, we scored eight “peer communities” and embedded their scores in the tool. The peer communities are Arlington County, Virginia; Boulder, Colorado; Burlington, Vermont; Charlottesville, Virginia; Knoxville, Tennessee; Madison, Wisconsin; Park City, Utah; and Lawrence, Kansas. Each community’s score and policy information is available in the ACEEE State and Local Policy Database...
To read the report, visit: http://aceee.org/research-report/u1511
To continue reading this blog post, visit: http://aceee.org/blog/2015/12/score-your-community-s-efficiency
About ACEEE: The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy acts as a catalyst to advance energy efficiency policies, programs, technologies, investments, and behaviors. For information about ACEEE and its programs, publications, and conferences, visit aceee.org