CDP and C40 extend partnership to target GHG reductions and climate change reporting

CDP announced this week that it is greatly expanding its support for the world’s cities to report on their local greenhouse gas emissions and identify actionable solutions to combat climate change.

CDP offers cities, companies and investors the only global environmental disclosure system, and a three-year, $4.1 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies will dramatically expand and enhance the existing CDP reporting platform and associated technical support for city governments. The resulting expansion will help more cities disclose and use the data they need to push toward more sustainable economies.

The grant also marks the broadening of its relationship with CDP’s long-standing partner, the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), to catalyse greenhouse gas reductions and standardise climate change reporting.

As C40 Chair, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has deepened C40’s commitment to use data and measurement to help drive city actions against climate change and track progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Bloomberg Philanthropies’ three-year grant will enhance this commitment and help achieve CDP-C40’s joint program goals to:

• Increase the number of cities worldwide that report on climate change annually;
• Standardise emissions accounting by employing an effective city-vetted methodology
• Enable cities to report transparent, year-on-year emissions reductions

The funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies will also enhance the capacity of the CDP Cities’ data platform across three key areas to:

• Build tools to help cities analyse and use data reported to CDP to drive consistent annual emissions reductions
• Ease the reporting burden on cities by improving the platform’s functionality, increasing the compatibility with other reporting platforms, and allowing multilingual options
• Provide annual benchmarking analysis to all cities, enabling better data comparability and standardisation while providing real value to reporting cities.

“Data measurement plays a critical role in sound management, but for too long it has been largely missing from the fight against climate change,” said New York City Mayor and outgoing C40 Chair Michael R. Bloomberg. “Together with C40, CDP is changing that and helping cities around the world to reduce their carbon footprints. Given Bloomberg Philanthropies' own commitment to using data to measure and manage problems, and to the issue of climate change, this partnership is a perfect fit.'

This grant, which runs until 2016, builds upon Bloomberg Philanthropies’ ongoing support of C40, a strategic partner of CDP since 2010, to ensure improved collection and analysis of data from the world’s major cities by the two organisations.

Paul Simpson, Chief Executive Officer of CDP said: “The CDP system of annual reporting allows cities to track their environmental progress and be held accountable. The grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies is an historic step, not only for CDP and our Cities program, but for the environment. Across all areas of government, both national and local, business and investment, action on sustainability is gaining momentum.

“This funding is recognition that forward-thinking cities can lead the way and reap the benefits. Other constituencies have much to learn. We are extremely grateful to Bloomberg Philanthropies for their generous support and shared vision for our work, particularly with C40.”

Over 100 city governments worldwide—including London (pictured), New York, Tokyo, Moscow and Lagos— use CDP’s platform each year to report on their greenhouse gas emissions, climate risk and actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In 2013, cities reported over 1 billion tonnes of GHG emissions through CDP. CDP's cities report earlier this year highlighted the benefits of climate change action, identifying annual energy savings of up to US$13 million per city as a result of environmental measures.