Cities are demonstrating their ambition to address climate change by reducing emissions, adapting to climate impacts and establishing low-carbon economies. In the run-up to the COP21 conference in Paris, cities were instrumental in paving the way for ratification of the historic agreement. Measurement and disclosure of climate data – which is our focus here at CDP – is a crucial step in charting progress towards meeting global climate goals.

Since Paris, cities have continued to lead on climate action, with more than 7,000 cities making commitments through the , which brought together the Compact of Mayors and the EU Covenant of Mayors. These cities represent the largest and first-of-its-kind global coalition of cities committed to climate leadership.

Every year and 91Ó°ÊÓ highlight cities which are excelling on climate disclosure, and showcase each city’s efforts with an InFocus Report. These reports are given to the city in each region that produced the highest quality response for its submission to CDP.

For the last six years, CDP has partnered with the , with more than 90% of C40 Cities disclosing their climate actions through CDP. Today we are awarding five C40 cities with InFocus Reports for demonstrating leadership in climate change disclosure. These cities have received the highest scores in their regions for the quality and detail of their reported climate-related-data. We congratulate:

This year we also recognize cities that are disclosing for the first time in 2016 and received the highest score in each of their regions. Thanks to CDP’s cities program funder, Bloomberg Philanthropies, CDP has seen 533 cities disclose their climate change related data, with over 200 cities doing so for the first time. We congratulate this second group of cities which have excelled at climate disclosure in their first year of CDP reporting.

Cities are setting ambitious targets, making their data publicly available and being transparent about their progress toward their climate goals. You can view CDP’s cities data on our .

Looking ahead, 2018 will be a critical year for the implementation of the Paris agreement, as governments will reconvene to take stock of progress, and CDP will play a key role in tracking progress from cities, states, regions and companies.

Think your city can be a leader? CDP’s 2017 disclosure platform is now open, and we encourage cities from across the globe to join the movement in climate disclosure.

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Congratulations to Cascais, Cleveland, Edmonton, Goiania, Johannesburg, Las Vegas, Paris, Sydney, Venice, and Yokohama! Out of over 200 cities that took part in CDP’s cities program in 2014, these ten score the best for the quality and completeness of their environmental risk reporting.  To highlight their achievement, CDP has created in-depth InFocus reports for each city.

In addition to congratulating these cities, it is also important to examine what made them top-performing cities in 2014.  What common climate actions are these cities taking?  What type of data do they report?

Using CDP’s , we can take a deeper look into their activities.  In general, these cities report complete and accurate data across all themes, including city-wide greenhouse gas emissions, risk and opportunities, and climate strategy.  Let’s look in-depth at greenhouse gas emissions and efforts to reduce them.

Measuring city-wide emissions

All of our top cities measure and report the total city-wide emissions for their municipalities.  Most of these inventories are recent — Johannesburg completed its most recent inventory in 2013, while every other city in the top ten completed their inventories after 2010, with the exception of Venice, Paris, and Sydney.

Cities also report why their emissions increased or decreased since last year.  Here, the challenges of managing emissions at the city-level become apparent.  The City of Edmonton, which noted a slight increase from its last inventory, explained that a drop in residential natural gas consumption was likely related to weather changes, while the reason for an increase in its industrial emissions was unclear.  Changes in the electricity mix of the grid after the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake drove Yokohama’s slight increase in emissions.   Even for these leading cities, managing emissions at the city-level is a difficult job.

Emissions reduction actions

This data set shows the incredible scope of activity that these ten cities are taking to cut emissions.  Las Vegas reports 22 individual emissions reduction actions, including a project to deploy smart energy meters to residential buildings.  Paris, which reports 27 emissions reductions activities, has also calculated the total project emissions reduction over lifetime associated with each project – as do the likes of Cascais and Cleveland.   Cleveland reports the largest single emissions reduction, from a suite of energy efficiency retrofit measures for residential and commercial buildings, which will save the city over 2 million metric tons of CO2e over the lifetime of these projects.

Find out more about how each top-performing city is tackling climate change in their InFocus reports:

You can explore more data from these top-performing cities on climate risks and opportunities, target setting, and more on our open .

Kyra Appleby is the head of CDP’s cities program.

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