"Cleveland Accelerates Its Ambitions for Hitting Net Zero Energy"

"Individual plans for the city and its neighbors include cutting building emissions, adding EV charging and solar capacity and cutting miles traveled by fossil-fueled vehicles, among other priorities."

"Sustainability leaders for Cleveland and three neighboring cities are making progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, despite a decade of retrenchment on climate policy at the state level.

Cleveland’s five-year update of its climate action plan will now commit to be net zero by 2050, said Anand Natarajan, assistant director for the Cleveland Mayor’s Office of Sustainability & Climate Justice. He spoke with other city leaders during a September 21 program for the Cleveland 2030 District, a network of urban areas working in public-private partnerships to address climate change, particularly in buildings.

The city’s last plan update, in 2018, called for an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which would include a switch to 100 percent renewable electricity by then. The net-zero goal in the 2023-2024 update will thus be more ambitious, and also more science-based, Natarajan said.

Cleveland also has signed onto the Department of Energy’s Better Building Challenge, Natarajan said. The challenge calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings by at least 50 percent within 10 years."

Kathiann M. Kowalski reports for Inside Climate News October 8, 2023.

Source: Inside Climate News, 10/10/2023