Accelerating Cities’ Net Zero Action
The impact of partnerships and emerging opportunities in financing for city climate action
By Jacqueline Ashmore and Taylor Dudley
May 2021
City-university partnerships can be a powerful accelerant to the decarbonization transition, supporting the crucial effort to achieve dramatic emissions mitigation in the coming decade to maintain a sustainable future. The Institute for Sustainable Energy (now the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability) developed a summary report from two virtual roundtables convened by the ISE and the UK Government in February 2021 with stakeholders from city government, academia, and net-zero experts from North America and the UK.
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Key Takeaways
Partnership Visioning Lab:
- Large-scale change requires a collaborative approach with a common agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and a backbone support organization.
- Increasingly, universities are willing to pilot specific climate actions on their campus with the idea that, if successful, that approach can be scaled up in their local city.
- In some places, corporations are establishing strong roles to support city climate action.
- Partnership mini case studies include the success of “Colorado Communities for Climate Action,” Aspen, CO; community engagement for shaping the climate action plan, Providence, RI; and universities as “Living Labs” for sustainability, Plymouth, UK.
Innovative Financing Visioning Lab:
- In addition to supporting the deployment of clean energy technologies, green banks can be a resilient source of financing amidst economic uncertainty and can have an outsize impact in supporting projects in low-income communities.
- The attraction of certifying a municipal bond as green has grown in part because the sustainable investors involved in the green bond market are diverse and include mainstream, specialized, and corporate investors.
- Some U.S. municipalities have established programs that price carbon.
- Innovative financing mini case studies include the National Investment Bank with a local net-zero mandate, UK100; income-tiered electric vehicle car share, City of Boston; and putting a price on carbon at the city level, Austin, TX
