Kansas City just received an “A-” on a survey of 1,000 global cities’ environmental and climate change policies conducted by CDP, an international climate group, up from “B” a year ago. Environmentalists and climate change combatants around the world increasingly view Harry Truman’s old haunt as an emerging global leader charting new policies to tackle global warming on multiple fronts. Kansas City listed nine major of its initiatives in its 2022 filing with CDP that resulted in the “A-” grade. They are:
- Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment
- Climate Action Plan
- Heat Island Mapping Campaign
- KC Streetcar Riverfront and Main St. Expansion and ZeroFareKC
- Renewables Direct Program
- MEC Building Energy Solutions Hub, Benchmarking and Codes training
- Community Empowerment Through Energy Efficiency
- Streetlight Charging in the City Right-of-Way Pilot
- ReBuild KC
Kansas City has its sights set on achieving “A” next year. The report recommends that Kansas City should do more to electrify mass transit and address the problem of food waste, a source of climate warming methane. The city’s most glaring deficit, CDP said, was the area’s failure to develop policies to boost the adoption of renewable energy, the only one of seven policy targets the city failed to address in CDP’s assessment. That may be why the city is aggressively pursuing the development of 500 megawatts of solar generation at the newly refurbished Kansas City International Airport. It would be the largest municipally owned solar installation in America.
By Martin Rosenberg. FlatlandKC. December 7, 2022.
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