Our members
MAIN GOALS - GENERAL ACTIVITIES - FIELD OF EXPERTISES
The Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA) is a collaboration of leading global cities working to achieve carbon neutrality in the next 10-20 years – the most aggressive GHG reduction targets undertaken anywhere by any city. CNCA’s mission is to mobilize transformative climate action in cities in order to achieve prosperity, social equity, resilience and better quality of life for all on a thriving planet. CNCA mobilizes transformative, game-changing climate action through the following seven strategic focus areas:
- Funding transformative climate action to mobilize game-changing policies in cities;
- Exerting collective influence on and advocate for policies from other decision-makers not directly controlled by cities;
- Advancing methodologies, standards and governance tools for carbon neutrality planning, implementation, impact measurement and continuous improvement;
- Fostering peer learning among climate vanguard cities, so they can learn from each other and go further and faster together;
- Cultivating transformational leadership so city sustainability directors can excel in their roles as change-makers;
- Helping cities communicate more effectively to advance their carbon neutrality work;
- Prioritizing a just carbon neutral future by integrating climate justice into ambitious climate action.
ACTIVITY RELATED TO LOW GHG AND ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND RESILIENT BUILDINGS
Many of the urban innovations CNCA has supported over the past six years have led to significant breakthroughs – for example, in 2016 CNCA helped the City of Vancouver pass a policy to require that all new buildings meet zero emission standards by 2030, and now other cities around the world are working to replicate this approach.
In May 2020, CNCA published the Embodied Carbon Policy Framework, as a critical first step in providing a detailed understanding of what policies cities can develop to create the long-term change needed for emissions reductions. The policy framework documents a set of 52 policies that cities can enact to reduce embodied carbon.
In January 2021, CNCA launched the “Dramatically Reducing Embodied Carbon in Europe” project, funded by the Laudes Foundation. This is a 3-year project that aims to foster widespread adoption of ambitious local, national and regional policies that will reduce embodied carbon and increase the uptake of bio-based materials in the built environment in Europe.
When CNCA began the embodied carbon work in early 2019, only two cities in the world had adopted embodied carbon policies. As a direct result of their involvement in the development of the City Policy Framework for Dramatically Reducing Embodied Carbon, there are now ten global cities poised to adopt policies requiring reduced embodied carbon in buildings.
CNCA’s policy support in Vancouver: https://www.fastcompany.com/90421205/how-vancouver-is-pushing-for-all-its-new-buildings-to-be-zero-emissions
CNCA’s Embodied Carbon Policy Framework: https://carbonneutralcities.org/embodied-carbon-policy-framework/
CNCA’s Embodied Carbon Project in Europe:
https://carbonneutralcities.org/european-cities-launch-ambitious-effort-to-reduce-embodied-carbon-with-grant-from-laudes-foundation/
