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Siemens recently released their US and Canada Green City Index in partnership with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), surveying 27 cities--including 5 Canadian-- in 9 categories of environmental performance. “It's certainly apparent to us that cities are really stepping up and doing most of the work with respect to sustainability” said Alison Taylor, Head of Sustainability at Siemens. “They're making a lot of progress with environmental issues, in many cases because state or federal government initiatives really aren't there”
I spoke with Taylor, as well as Sven Hackmann (Siemens One, Vice President U.S. Cities Program), and Tony Nash (Global Director, Custom Research at Economist Intelligence Unit). They were in Aspen, Colorado for the Aspen Ideas Festival, where Siemens released the index.
One of the things I found most interesting about this study is cities like Cleveland that don't come up very often when talking about sustainability. In this study they get to be a part of the conversation. But then there's some like Portland, cities with a strong eco culture, that weren't included.
Tony Nash: We wanted to look at 3 different areas. First is population, second is commercial centers, and third we wanted to look at geographic diversity. The main element of that was population, but we wanted to ensure a few other additions if necessary. We had an expert panel that advised the researchers, and they advised us to add 2 additional cities. Miami and Phoenix were not a part of the original project but we added those to get a little more geographic diversity.
Phoenix strikes me as a city with a lot of sprawl. Were there any interesting findings there?
Tony Nash: One of the things I was struck by with Phoenix was the water leakage rate, which is very low. You would expect that being a desert city, but they've obviously put the work in to ensure they're retaining as much as they can.
What about a city like Miami that's more known as a commercial center and less known for things like public transportation?
Tony Nash: The one striking finding was really CO2 in Miami. It benefits from the fact that it's largely a service based industries location, there isn't much heavy manufacturing around Miami, and as a result it's pretty clean. CO2 emissions are pretty low.
It's a little hard to imagine putting a big city like New York up against some of the smaller cities on the list.
Tony Nash: When we did this we looked at various elements in terms of, say, electricity consumption per capita, but we also looked at electricity consumption per million dollars of GDP. So we didn't only want to look at it on a population basis, we also wanted to look at it on an economic basis. We've been very, very careful not to lean one way or the other, toward highly populated or away toward sparsely populated. You see that from the cities at the top, they're not all West Coast, they're not all highly populated. You have Denver and Boston close to the top.
This is the first US/Canada index (Siemens and EIU have also teamed up to do Europe, Latin America, and Asia). Why Canada?
Alison Taylor: We had already covered Mexico in the Latin America index and we want to cover all the regions in the world. Canada and the US actually have a lot in common in measurements and data points so it made sense to do these two together as compared to Latin America and the US, where the available data for Latin America is quite different from what you find in the US.
Tony Nash: It also has to do with the stage of economic development. It's really not fair, if we're going to this level of specificity, to compare say someplace in Uruguay to Minneapolis. I think if we did a comprehensive global index that would make much more sense. In this first round of regional index work we wanted to make it as geographically sensible based on the available data. As we move forward, if we look at doing a global index, we'll look at what sensible data there are to cover globally.
Alison Taylor: There's an interesting dynamic with many of the cities with regard to their relationship to the state. California cities might benefit from the relatively progressive policies in that state with respect to climate change and renewable energy. That means that the citizens within the city know the law of the land with which the city, those citizens, and their businesses have to comply.
To wrap up, what would you highlight as some of the top innovative ideas or best practices you encountered?
Alison Taylor: There are some great ideas with respect to creative financing. What we see in a lot of these cities is they're really strapped for cash, these are tough fiscal times, and so cities are having to get pretty creative about how they're going to finance some of the changes that they need to make to move forward, especially with respect to energy efficiency. They get a return on that investment, they'll be saving ultimately on energy cost, but sometimes they have to figure out how to put together the capital to make some changes.
Performance contracting is something we've engaged in with cities, and some of our cities have been pretty active in that area. It's a way to get capital flowing in order to make changes and guarantee energy savings. It's the financial mechanism that we're seeing gaining some strength.
Tony Nash: My pick would be the recycling in San Francisco, which is pretty straightforward composting and recycling, and as a result San Francisco recycles over 70% of its waste in the city. They also have a private sector who are working with them on that recycling. They have recycling facilities located in the city and they create jobs as a result of that program. So it's kind of a beginning to end program within the city and residents benefit economically from it.
Sven Hackmann: If you look at Los Angeles, a city that did not fare well when it came to transportation, Mayor Villaraigosa recognized the challenges, made it his mission, and really took it nationwide, to the point where his America Fast Forward initiative is now embraced by other large cities. The context that arose out of the transportation discussion, his really taking command of infrastructure financing that will arise out of cities, is really a best practice that we recognized in the process.
The EIU and Siemens are making themselves available to city planners with questions about the survey. Read the full US and Canada Green City Index.
