CURB: Climate Action for Urban Sustainability

By AECOM, C40 Cities, The Compact of Mayors, and The World Bank Group

This Climate Week, we’re introducing CURB: Climate Action for Urban Sustainability, a new Compact of Mayors tool, launching today, which aims to help cities effectively identify and prioritize climate action areas to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and spur sustainable growth as they move towards stages 3 (target) and 4 (plan) of Compact of Mayors compliance.

Setting targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions and then developing a climate action plan to meet, or exceed, those targets can prove challenging for any city. But now, with the launch of CURB — a tool specifically designed to provide strategic analysis on the impacts of energy-use intervention and help cities identify and prioritize low-carbon actions — Compact-committed cities will no longer have to tackle these steps alone.

With CURB, cities can explore the effects of various climate action interventions based on analytically robust activity, emissions and financial calculations that reflect a city’s specific context and conditions.

CURB allows users the ability to conduct specific analyses across sectors — from private sector buildings, to electricity generation, transportation, municipal buildings, solid waste, and waste and wastewater management — so local leaders in every urban area will be able to improve air quality, advance economic development, and enhance the quality of life in their cities.

As a unique tool for urban sustainability, CURB not only aligns with the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) but also offers a flexible platform that takes into account the various demographics, conditions, and realities that exist in a city. Every calculation made by CURB is grounded in locally relevant data, and in the event of data gaps, in which data is unavailable or unreliable, CURB offers proxy data at every level, from city to national and even to regional.

Specifically, CURB contains five modules with the following features:

• Setup is where you enter basic data about your city. This data is used in calculations throughout CURB.
• Inventory estimates your city’s current state energy demand and GHG emissions, projects their growth, and allows you to set future performance targets.
• Context allows you to understand the drivers of emissions and energy demand and benchmark your city’s performance to others.
• Actions is the heart of the tool. This module first helps you to identify priority interventions through a rapid assessment of city authority, impact potential, and maximum feasibility. You can then customize and bundle interventions in comprehensive scenarios, refining your plan through detailed financial analyses.
• Results shows you the combined impact of your interventions on urban GHG emissions, local energy demand, and cost. You can also track your progress toward your city’s targets.

By giving mayors a roadmap to the most effective strategies for reaching compliance with the Compact of Mayors, CURB will propel more cities into action. As more and more local leaders commit to climate action, and as our coalition expands through the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, the tool will become a key guide for all cities to achieve their unique goals on climate change and enhance their impact.

CURB was developed through a collaboration between the World Bank, C40 Cities, and AECOM, and it is through this kind of collaboration that cities will achieve compliance with the Compact of Mayors.

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