In support of cities meeting their Compact of Mayors‘ commitments to local climate action and thanks to a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, starting today the community-scale Inventory Module of ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability‘s ClearPath is open to any US city, county, or regional government for free through the end of 2018. ICLEI USA is also preparing to open access to communities worldwide in late Fall 2015.
In addition to its expanded availability, new features have been added to allow ClearPath users to easily calculate community carbon footprints based on the new Global Protocol for Community-Scale Emissions (GPC), as well as the 2012 US Community Protocol. Soon ClearPath will also offer one-click reporting of inventories to the carbonnClimate Registry, the designated central data repository for the Compact of Mayors.
Previously only available to ICLEI members or paid subscribers, ClearPath has already built over 640 inventories for US communities since its 2013 release; 6.1 billion metric tons CO2e has been accounted for stretching back to 1990.
“In 2014, Philadelphia transitioned to the ClearPath tool for measuring greenhouse gas emissions. ClearPath provides the city with a robust platform for standardizing emissions factors and other metrics across multiple reporting years, minimizing year-to-year variation in inventory methodologies,” said Katherine Gajewski, Director of the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office for Sustainability and Co-Chair of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network.
ClearPath’s national and worldwide availability is an important step in the advancement of the Compact of Mayors, the world’s largest coalition of city leaders addressing climate change by pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, track their progress, and prepare for the impacts of climate change. ClearPath’s free registration and ease of use better enables these cities to standardize how emissions are being measured worldwide.
“ICLEI is thrilled to announce the offering of ClearPath free of charge to local governments across the nation and around the world to measure and track their emissions of GHG pollutants,” said ICLEI USA Executive Director Michael Schmitz. “ClearPath offers cities and local governments of all sizes – whether they just engaged or have been working for decades – a state of the art, easy to use and powerful software suite allowing them to track and understand their emissions as never before. ClearPath’s national release is an historic breakthrough that will help unleash the power of local action to tackle the world’s most pressing challenge.”
Accessing ClearPath
ClearPath is now available to all US cities. To register or learn more about ClearPath’s free inventory tool, go toicleiusa.org/register-clearpath-basic.
To sign-up for updates on ClearPath’s international release, visit clearpath.global.
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Originally posted on ICLEI USA CityTalk.
