CDP today announced that it is greatly expanding its support for the world's cities to report on their local greenhouse gas emissions and identify actionable solutions to combat climate change.

CDP is an international, not-for-profit organization that helps companies and cities measure, disclose, manage and share vital environmental information. Its cities program provides a voluntary climate change reporting platform and is open to any city government, regardless of size or geographic location.

A three-year, US$4.1 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies will dramatically expand and enhance the existing CDP reporting platform and associated technical support for city governments. The resulting expansion will help more cities disclose and use the data they need to push toward more sustainable economies.

The announcement builds on yesterday's disclosure that Mike Bloomberg is setting up a new body, Bloomberg Associates, that will offer support to cities throughout the world.

The grant also marks the broadening of its relationship with CDP's long-standing partner, the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), to catalyze greenhouse gas reductions and standardize climate change reporting.

As C40 Chair, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has deepened C40's commitment to use data and measurement to help drive city actions against climate change and track progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Bloomberg Philanthropies' three-year grant will enhance this commitment and help achieve CDP-C40's joint program goals to:

• Increase the number of cities worldwide that report on climate change annually;
• Standardize emissions accounting by employing an effective city-vetted methodology;
• Enable cities to report transparent, year-on-year emissions reductions.

The funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies will also enhance the capacity of the CDP Cities' data platform across three key areas to:

• Build tools to help cities analyze and use data reported to CDP to drive consistent annual emissions reductions;
• Ease the reporting burden on cities by improving the platform's functionality, increasing the compatibility with other reporting platforms, and allowing multilingual options;
• Provide annual benchmarking analysis to all cities, enabling better data comparability and standardization while providing real value to reporting cities.

"Data measurement plays a critical role in sound management, but for too long it has been largely missing from the fight against climate change," said New York City Mayor and outgoing C40 Chair Michael R. Bloomberg.

"Together with C40, CDP is changing that and helping cities around the world to reduce their carbon footprints. Given Bloomberg Philanthropies' own commitment to using data to measure and manage problems, and to the issue of climate change, this partnership is a perfect fit."

This grant, which runs until 2016, builds upon Bloomberg Philanthropies' ongoing support of C40, a strategic partner of CDP since 2010, to ensure improved collection and analysis of data from the world's major cities by the two organizations.

Paul Simpson, Chief Executive Officer of CDPsays: "The CDP system of annual reporting allows cities to track their environmental progress and be held accountable. The grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies is an historic step, not only for CDP and our Cities program, but for the environment. Across all areas of government, both national and local, business and investment, action on sustainability is gaining momentum.

"This funding is recognition that forward-thinking cities can lead the way and reap the benefits. Other constituencies have much to learn. We are extremely grateful to Bloomberg Philanthropies for their generous support and shared vision for our work, particularly with C40."

Over 100 city governments worldwide—including London, New York, Tokyo, Moscow and Lagos— use CDP's platform each year to report on their greenhouse gas emissions, climate risk and actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change.  In 2013, cities reported over 1 billion tonnes of GHG emissions through CDP.

CDP's cities report earlier this year highlighted the benefits of climate change action, identifying annual energy savings of up to US$13 million per city as a result of environmental measures.

CDP works with 722 institutional investors with assets of US $87 trillion, to motivate companies to disclose their impacts on the environment and natural resources and take action to reduce them.

It has also produced a series of reports on the environmental impact of various cities.

The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) is a network of large and engaged cities from around the world committed to implementing meaningful and sustainable climate-related actions locally that will help address climate change globally. C40 was established in 2005 and expanded via a partnership in 2006 with President William J. Clinton's Climate Initiative (CCI).  The current chair of the C40 is New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Bloomberg Philanthropies' mission is to ensure better, longer lives for the greatest number of people. The organization focuses on five key areas for creating lasting change: Public Health, Environment, Education, Government Innovation and the Arts. In 2012, $370 million was distributed.