Climate Policy Tracker Tracks Progress in 33 States

May 14, 2009

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The New America Foundation’s Climate Policy Program has launched an online tool that allows state-by-state tracking of hundreds of carbon and energy saving measures.

The State Climate Policy Tracker details each state’s climate action plan. It provides data on climate actions across six economic sectors, and reports on the progress of each measure, its cost or cost-saving potential per ton greenhouse gas (GHG) removed, and the estimated annual reduction in carbon emissions.

According to New America, the state climate policies being followed by the Policy Tracker are essentially a de facto federal policy. The tracking tool includes information on states that have completed plans and those that are in process of completing plans. The tracker will be updated periodically.

The Policy Tracker was compiled from publicly available information. New America says since 2006, 33 U.S. states have created climate action blueprints to guide greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions efforts. These blueprints, often with a reduction target, contain on average 50 policy recommendations, says the foundation.

According to New America much of the state climate action planning was facilitated by the Center for Climate Strategies, a non-profit expert group that works with state governments across party lines to develop a blueprint for climate action. These state measures are segmented by energy efficiency and conservation, clean and renewable energy, transportation and land use, water, education, cross-cutting issues (inventories, cap-and-trade, etc.) as well as agriculture, forestry and waste management.

The availability of online tools for tracking GHG emissions, carbon footprint and energy use have been on the rise over the past several months. To name a few — Total Emissions Analytics (TEAL) software from Noblis, the Green Grid’s “free cooling” tool, and Rackspace’s carbon calculator.

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