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Local governments hold power to make big things happen–with the right keys

Local communities hold distinctive tools for climate action that no other level of government can replicate, and together they are engines of large-scale change.

But having power and using it are different things.

Most local governments are not operating anywhere near the ceiling of their climate potential. The barriers are real — political constraints, limited staff capacity, fragmented action, insufficient coordination — but none of them are insurmountable. What is needed is a clearer strategy for turning latent potential into deliberate, well-organized action.

What follows are some keys to unlocking that power.

1. Awareness of their abilities

Local governments that want to move faster on climate need to start with an honest inventory of what they can actually do. The distinctive tools described in this series — authority over land use, buildings, energy systems, transportation, public investment, and procurement — are real, but they are not evenly distributed across jurisdictions, and they are not automatically understood by the people who hold them.

Clarity means knowing where local authority is strongest, where state preemption limits it, and how to sequence action to get the most from what is available. It means making choices based on what will create lasting structural change rather than visible but reversible gestures. And it means coordinating across departments — planning, public works, utilities, finance — so they are pulling in the same direction rather than operating as separate programs with separate goals.

Communities that have achieved outsized climate results tend have decision-makers who have done that thinking and built organizational alignment around it. This work does not have to start from zero in every community. Shared frameworks, peer learning, and targeted assistance can help local leaders translate broad goals into practical, legally grounded action.

2. Norms of professional practice

The most durable lever for system-wide change is not any single policy. It is the professional norms that govern how thousands of local government practitioners do their jobs. What a planner considers standard practice, what a public works director treats as a default design, what a city manager expects in a staff report — these are the habits that determine, at scale, whether climate considerations are built into everyday decisions or remain a special project on the side.

Raising those norms requires working at multiple levels simultaneously. Department-level practitioners need better tools, clearer standards, and peer examples that show what good looks like in their specific domain. City executives — managers, administrators, and department directors — need leadership frameworks that help them build cross-departmental coherence and hold teams accountable for outcomes, not just process. Elected officials need to understand their role in setting clear direction and creating the conditions for staff to move decisively.

Professional associations, training programs, and peer networks are the channels through which these norms travel. Investing in those channels — contributing model approaches, building case libraries, and elevating practitioners who are moving the needle — creates change that is much broader than any one jurisdiction can achieve on its own.

3. New bandwidth

Bandwith is just as likely a barrier to local governments working more quickly as is mission or intent. Staff are managing daily operations, responding to constituents, and navigating political pressures while also trying to advance long-term goals with limited time and resources. Under those conditions, ambitious initiatives get crowded out not by opposition but by the weight of the everyday.

A remedy is to reduce the friction. Templates for common decisions — model ordinances, procurement frameworks, engagement processes, grant application structures — mean that staff do not have to build from scratch each time. Clear decision frameworks help leaders move through complex choices faster without sacrificing quality. Pre-analyzed options and ready-to-adapt materials let communities skip the early stages of a process that peers have already worked through.

This is not about cutting corners. It is about making the distance between climate ambition and operational execution shorter, and making it easier for communities with fewer resources to benefit from the experience of those with more. When friction is lower, more communities act, and the aggregate effect grows substantially.

4. Collective advocacy

Local governments can have great influence over the state and federal policy environment they operate within, but their powers alone can be limited. Collective voices are a different matter. When organized local coalitions advocate for enabling state legislation — preemption reform, dedicated funding streams, regulatory flexibility — they carry a kind of authority that no single city holds alone.

The same logic applies to utilities and other regional entities. Local governments that are aligned and vocal about what they need from their energy utility — electrification support, grid flexibility, community programs, equitable rate design — create a fundamentally different negotiating dynamic than a single municipality asking on its own. Numbers matter, and so does the ability to articulate a shared position clearly and persistently over time.

Building collective advocacy capacity is partly a matter of coordination infrastructure — coalitions, shared policy platforms, communication systems — and partly a matter of political will to use it. Communities that treat collective advocacy as a regular part of their climate strategy, not just an occasional response to a specific threat, are better positioned to shape the rules of the game rather than simply play within them.

5. Bloc purchasing power

Collective action is not just for politics. Local governments that align their procurement can reshape the economics of climate solutions.

When a bloc of communities commits to purchasing electric buses, efficient heat pumps, low-embodied-carbon construction materials, or high-quality bicycle parking infrastructure on a coordinated timeline, they create the kind of demand signal that manufacturers and suppliers respond to. Volume commitments lower per-unit costs, attract more competitors, and accelerate product development. The economics that make a single community hesitate become workable when the order is ten times larger.

Coordinated regional approaches work similarly for infrastructure. Transit corridors, EV charging networks, active transportation systems, and district energy networks are more efficient and cost-effective when planned across jurisdictional lines rather than duplicated independently by each community. Regional alignment on design standards, permitting processes, and investment timing can dramatically accelerate deployment. The purchasing and planning power of organized local governments is a largely underused asset, and using it deliberately is one of the highest-leverage moves available.

6. Building paths for others

Every major shift in how local governments operate has started somewhere. Communities that go first — that demonstrate new approaches, document what works, and share it openly — do something more valuable than make local progress. They create a template that others can follow, and they normalize what might otherwise seem too unfamiliar or risky to try.

Leading communities show peers that an approach is legal, practical, and politically viable. They generate the evidence that professional networks need to update their standards. They become the reference point that a planning director in another city cites when making the case to their own council — proof that it has been done, and that it works.

This kind of leadership is not about being first for its own sake. It is about recognizing that the cost of innovating is worth it when the result is something many communities will adopt. When a local government invests in figuring something out and shares what it learns, the return on that investment multiplies across every community that follows. That is one of the strongest arguments for ambitious local action, and a reason that communities best positioned to lead have every incentive to try.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Local communities are quiet but effective engines for climate action at a large scale

Local communities are among the biggest underutilized agents of large-scale change — and they’re still flying under the radar.

Individually, local communities hold distinctive tools and powers for climate action that no other level of government can replicate. They can also put their capabilities to work to be engines of large-scale change.

What follows is how local action can compound into something much larger than is generally estimated.

A coordinated professional class

The United States has more than 90,000 local governments, which can sound like a daunting number to work with.

But there’s another way to access them.

Local governments are run by professionals operating in a relatively small number of functional domains: planning, public works, utilities, finance, legal, and executive leadership. Those practitioners are connected. They share certification programs, attend the same conferences, read the same journals, and participate in the same national associations. Department-level experts, city executives, and elected officials who work together toward common purposes are leverage points for affecting how cities and counties operate overall.

Changing the norms of local government practice is not a matter of persuading thousands of separate institutions from scratch. It is a matter of working through the professional networks, training pipelines, and model frameworks that practitioners already rely on. A planning director in Boulder and a planning director in Austin may never meet, but they share reference points and professional standards. Shift those standards — what good looks like, what peers are doing, what tools are in common use — and you shift practice across jurisdictions at once.

Within practitioner communities, demonstrated success in one community travels fast: not just as news, but as professional guidance, model ordinance, or conference presentation that shows colleagues exactly how to do the same thing.

Coalition power

Local communities are natural centers of national leverage. Roughly four in five Americans live in urbanized areas, and a majority live in large metropolitan regions. That share has risen for a century and is projected to grow toward 85 to 90 percent by mid-century. Greater population density correlates strongly with voters and leaders who support strong climate policy, from clean electricity standards and building performance requirements to zero-emission transportation initiatives. Towns and cities are reliable political constituencies that together can form formidable coalitions.

On the economic front, mayors and local governments have demonstrated real collective reach. Networks like Climate Mayors, C40, ICLEI, and the Global Covenant of Mayors negotiate with states, utilities, and major suppliers, align standards across regions, and create coordinated demand that individual communities could not generate alone. Because many state economies hinge on their metropolitan areas, organized local coalitions carry leverage over statehouses that is disproportionate to their formal authority.

Local communities also have the numbers to build legal and political force. Local governments vastly outnumber the relatively small set of large corporate polluters and their enablers. When that numerical advantage is organized, through collective advocacy, aligned purchasing, and coordinated public communication, it creates a kind of distributed pressure that no single city could apply on its own.

High transferability

Local innovation travels. That’s because while local government practitioners can be shy about going first, they’re hungry to put things to work that are demonstrated.

So when a community successfully implements a new approach — a reach building code, a bus-priority network, a neighborhood electrification program — other communities notice. The cycle is predictable: one jurisdiction tries something, the results become visible, a professional network picks it up, and it spreads through model policies, peer learning, and staff who move between cities carrying what they have learned.

This transferability is one of the most underappreciated features of local climate action. A single well-designed program in a mid-sized city can seed dozens of replications within a few years. State legislatures often codify what pioneering local governments prove out. Federal programs regularly follow the trail blazed by city experiments. The local level does not just implement national policy; it frequently originates it.

That dynamic is a reason to invest heavily in community-level innovation, documentation, and peer exchange. When communities treat their own experience as something worth sharing, and when the networks exist to move that learning efficiently, local action becomes something larger than the sum of its parts.

Staying power

National climate policy lurches between ambition and retreat. State legislatures have swung with electoral cycles. Local governments are not immune to politics, but they tend to change more slowly, more incrementally, and in ways that reflect the preferences of residents who live with the consequences of those decisions every day.

A building code adopted by a city stays in force until someone actively repeals it. A bikeway network, once built, is used and defended by the people who rely on it. Resilience investments made after a flood or heat emergency become part of how a community understands its own interests. Local climate commitments, when tied to real infrastructure, real programs, and real constituents, accrue staying power that national policies rarely achieve.

That durability means local action is not just fast — it is an investment in a foundation that holds across political cycles. When national progress stalls, what communities have already built remains. When national support returns, communities that have moved are positioned to accelerate. The compounding effect of durable local action, spread across thousands of communities, is one of the strongest cases for treating the local level as a primary climate platform rather than a secondary one.

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To scale up climate solutions, local governments need to accelerate system changes

Note: This article is by Ryan Schuchard and was first published by Federation of American Scientists.

When I ran for city council in Boulder, Colorado in 2023, everyone talked about climate change. Forum after forum, all ten candidates spoke up for the climate. 

And cities saying climate change matters is typical. The number of US cities with adopted climate action plans is in the hundreds. 

That’s what we need, since cities drive the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions and are on the front lines of climate havoc. 

More specifically, for large-scale climate solutions to work, cities have to really stretch. That’s according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which says cities need to rapidly become compact, efficient, electrified, and nature‑rich urban ecosystems where we take better care of each other and avoid locking in more sprawl and fossil‑fuel dependence. 

Yet, big-picture progress in the United States is critically insufficient. Those are the words of Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific analysis evaluating climate commitments. The US has pledged to reduce 2030 GHG emissions levels by 50–52% below 2005, yet the latest projections show we are on track to achieve at best only 29–39%—assuming no further backsliding.

And earlier this month, the Trump administration withdrew our federal government from the international climate agreement process.

So when local governments say “we’re on it,” what is a concerned citizen to think?

What Local Government Climate Solutions Look Like 

Climate advocates are used to talking about climate action. But for local governments, the measuring stick for climate progress isn’t simply action. What counts is measurable progress towards specific, substantive transitions.

Transitions to walkable, compact neighborhoods where abundant, space-efficient middle housing near jobs and services let most residents meet daily needs within a short walk or bike ride, reducing trip lengths and housing and transport costs.

To transit-rich, highly bikeable towns where frequent, accessible service and a connected, protected network allow seniors and youth travel independently and where per-capita car dependence falls.

To fully-electrified communities in which homes and transportation run on clean, distributed power, working efficiently, that delivers lower bills, healthier indoor air, and outage resilience, with benefits accruing equitably to residents.

To enhanced landscapes of bioswales, permeable streets, restored wetlands, and drought- and fire-resilient shade trees that cool neighborhoods, absorb stormwater, and buffer heat, flood, and smoke risks.

To resilient local food systems that blend urban agriculture with regional producers, food hubs, cold storage, and compost-to-soil loops to deliver reliable, affordable, nutritious food even during heat, drought, or supply disruptions.

There is good news: The transitions we need, and the solutions and capacity we need to implement them, are showing new signs of life. That’s evident in two trends. 

One trend is local governments playing a bigger role in climate solutions. The number of U.S. cities reporting to the CDP, a global system for disclosing climate progress, has grown to over 150. Now more than 200 US cities have committed to 100 percent clean electricity. And cities’ climate action plans are showing a visible shift from a focus on municipal operations to community‑wide impacts of buildings, transportation, and waste, and more sophisticated thinking about resilience.

As the federal government has retreated, advocates are increasingly realizing cities and counties have tools to lead. Local governments manage streets, land use, buildings, public fleets, transit, and major service contracts. They can strongly influence state-level actors, like energy utilities and air quality programs, and be providers of those services directly.

There is proof of this awakening in the large numbers of people suddenly running for local office on climate. Political organizing coalitions such as Run on Climate and Climate Cabinet helped elect more than 50 local leaders running on climate in 2025. One of the year’s most high-profile candidates, Zohran Mamdani, won with “fast and free” buses–one of the measures IPCC has highlighted as a meaningful mitigation measure that saves more money than it costs–as a centerpiece of his campaign.

The other trend is a greater focus on wellbeing. Research included in the latest IPCC report shows demand-side measures can cut end-use emissions by roughly 40 to 70 percent by 2050 while improving daily life and making communities stronger. And wellbeing is the currency of local governments and local politics. Concrete quality of life issues dominate local elections and policymaking, which is where climate action takes root—or doesn’t.

Climate action prompted by a desire for healthier, happier, and less expensive lives is happening. People are adopting electric cars, e-bikes, heat pumps, and induction stoves because they workbetter, are cheaper to operate, and healthier. The intersection of climate solutions and wellbeing is central to a 2025 bestseller Abundance  and to the national conversation it kicked off about defining and achieving “abundance.” The topic of wellbeing was a bright spot at the COP30 climate talks via the World Health Organization’s report, “Delivering the Belém Health Action Plan.”

These two trends reinforce each other. Local governments oversee the services where wellbeing, decarbonization, and resilience meet. When those services are designed as a system, investments can compound to create more value for more people, who then have a stake in continuing the transition. And the importance of rallying around local governments to carry climate solutions forward is becoming clearer as U.S. national policy looks structurally less reliable than most experts used to think.

Difficult Conditions For Change 

But local governments face headwinds. Existing policies and markets, like those that have created widespread car dependence and extensive natural gas systems, create momentum that favors the status quo and encourages continued investments that lock us in further. Simply put, it’s easiest to keep doing it the way we’ve done it before, and then we dig ourselves in deeper.

Local governments purposefully design systems to keep things stable. Most likely, whatever your town or county is doing is based on the direction of long-term plans, from departmental plans to bigger comprehensive plans. Those plans often come up for renewal only every few years or longer, and if you miss that window or fail to follow procedures, making big change is nearly impossible. Related, local governments tend to have policies and practices for conducting community engagement that deliberately create a high bar for making major turns.

On top of all that, local governments in the U.S. are suffering a long-term decline in investment that leaves them with significant and growing cash flow constraints, heavy workloads, limited time to deliberate, and pressure to deliver. The pandemic and recent national political forces reduce their maneuverability even more.

Political Will Necessary But Not Sufficient—Concrete Transitions Are Needed

In order to drive climate transitions under such tough conditions, political will is necessary but it is not sufficient. For local governments to scale up climate solutions, they need to take tangible, visible steps to change systems, consistent with evidence-based recommendations, outlined by institutions like the IPCC. 

Here is what that can look like – and what advocates can look to encourage:

1. Transition plans  

Climate issues touch everything, so all local governments can point to doing climate things. But the difference between lists of activities and high-reward strategic commitments that make good use of time is everything. The latter requires a clear plan to make transitions happen, with defined outcomes and milestones, and dogged pursuit.

Ambitious climate action at the local government level means being clear about the transition(s) the community is focused on, which could include the previously mentioned examples, along with what successful completions looks like and by when. This involves working on at least two tracks concurrently—both integrating ambitious transformations into long-term planning exercises, for which adopting changes may or may not be available right away, and taking whatever more tactical action is possible now to support such planning and concrete action to the fullest extent possible.

  • Transition plans might consider: What needs to be different? Who are the elected officials and partners needed to make the transition work? What barriers could inhibit progress, and what is the strategy for overcoming them? What are the key inflection points in behavior adoption, and what is the change model to reach them? 

2. User experience  

Cities often add a bike lane in one place or restore a bus line in another. What truly changes behavior is a complete experience that makes the pro-climate option the intuitive choice. Kids can bike around town without parents fearing they could be hit by a driver. You can count on bringing a large electric bike anywhere and park it safely. Buses are within a 10-minute walk of home and arrive every 10 minutes. Utility investments in electrification actually lower monthly bills. To make climate transitions attractive and sticky, we have to confront gaps that get in the way of people’s experience from their vantage point.

A practical opportunity for local governments is to use the tools of user experience (“UX”) and be responsible for how the ecosystem works and feels from the immersive standpoint of users. UX is an interdisciplinary field that uses research, psychology, and design to remove friction and ensure a seamless journey for users.

  • Some questions for managing the user experience: Who is/are the transition(s) for—who are the “users” involved that will experience change? What do they need to do and stick with to make the transition work? What performance measures are needed to constitute progress, and how do we get elected officials and executives to care about them? Where are there persistent, hard-to-reach gaps that can be spotlighted as “known issues” for partners and other jurisdictions to see and possibly be helpful with? What are the gaps between our intent and reality, and how can we overcome them?

3. Public service delivery  

One of the core jobs of local government is to provide public services like zoning, safe transportation, building standards, air quality protections, and emergency management. Providing services is also generally the justification for spending public money. And services are where the planning activities that local governments tend to be so careful about materialize in the real world. So if local governments are going to be engines of climate action, then day-to-day service delivery—their core product—is where most of that action will show up. Climate action will appear in what gets approved, funded, built, maintained, enforced, measured, and improved.

Local governments already deliver public services. So the opportunity is to evaluate how core local government services can or should be tuned and/or reorganized to drive climate and resilience outcomes. This includes formal adoption in comprehensive plans, capital improvement programs, and strategic plans, and clear alignment with budget priorities. When leaders routinely report on progress and adjust course publicly, it signals that climate transitions are a core organizational responsibility rather than a side project.

  • An evaluation of services might consider: How is climate action aligned with where money is actually spent?  What changes in standards, contracts, and operations are needed to lock in better outcomes? How can the thinking and tools of service development improve user experiences?

4. High-level ownership 

Plans only come to life when people who have the right level of power and accountability own delivery. Inside local government, that means both the elected body (mayor, city council, and/or their equivalents) and executives (city manager, their deputies, and in the case of a “strong mayor” form of government, the mayor) adopt the initiative as their own. Roles and accountability are defined and gaps are addressed. Resources are allocated through direct investments and through partnerships that expand capacity.

High-level ownership of climate solutions in local government happens when transitions are included in the agency’s highest-level plans and strategies.This includes formal adoption in comprehensive plans, capital improvement programs, and strategic plans, and clear alignment with budget priorities. It also looks like leaders routinely communicating to the public about the transitions under way, the progress against them, and how community members can help support the journey.

  • Some ways to gauge high level ownership: Do staffing, partnerships, procurement, budgets, and intergovernmental advocacy support transition intent?  Is change management happening as needed, with a clear vision and ongoing communication expressed to the public? Is the work of transitions integrated into core functions and the day-to-day responsibilities of staff necessary for success? How are electeds supporting and leading?

5. Playbook of procedures

Local government commitments are heavily shaped and constrained by procedure, like protocols for what gets a hearing and when, annual or biennial work plans, and comprehensive plans that may come around only every few years or longer. Communications between elected officials and staff may be limited by city ordinance, and communications among elected officials may be very limited by state law. There are also often arcane, highly-localized meeting customs. Getting things done requires working through these procedures and often landing decisions in small windows that are easy to miss. 

A playbook for how climate transitions are going to make their way into staff proposals, planning processes,and budgeting is fundamental to turning a good idea into something real. Such a playbook is needed to spell out who does what, when, and through which formal channels, so that key decisions do not depend on heroic one-off efforts. It also helps new staff and elected officials quickly understand how to use existing procedures to advance climate goals, rather than be derailed by them.

  • Some questions to ask: What are the relevant scheduled planning processes and upcoming meetings, and who is required to fully elevate the work there and how? What learning systems or listening structures exist, and how are they being used to surface discrepancies and continuously drive improvement?

Conclusion

To scale up climate solutions through local government, we need at least two things. First, political will, which is familiar to most advocates. Looking into 2026 and beyond, climate advocates have great opportunities to continue increasing the proportions of elected local bodies who are led by politicians serious about climate solutions. Everyone has a role to play: run for local office, support local climate candidates, use whatever powers of creativity and persuasion you have–from writing to speaking to organizing and beyond–to help make climate action a core election issue in your community. 

The second—and where we need greater shared focus—is to make local governments responsible for specific, strategic commitments to systems change. To do that, help build transition plans that commit to providing great user experiences, an approach to public service delivery that is aligned with those objectives, ownership by city council and the city manager or mayor, and a clear playbook for how strategic climate commitments are going to be adopted and rolled out.

Not everything is going right for the climate movement. But there are some fantastic bright spots, and one of those is big new local government innovations that are starting to unfold.  

Looking into 2026, I’m excited to be a part of the movement to help local governments drive the next generation of climate progress. And a big hat tip to FAS with its regulatory rethink and government capacity work as well as ICLEI USA, both partnering with local officials like me to map out how cities can translate ambitious climate goals into durable systems change. 

There are great things ahead, and so much room to work together.

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Policy priorities for good living, thriving communities, and next-level climate action

Policy priorities to advance wellbeing and climate solutions together through urbanism broadly

Working draft

1. Legalize abundant homes in walkable places

Decades of exclusionary zoning push homes far from jobs and services, lengthening car trips and worsening housing scarcity, costs, and emissions.

Solution: Allow more homes near transit and job centers—small apartments, duplexes, ADUs, mixed-use buildings—by-right and with fast approvals. Pair with inclusionary tools and tenant protections so added supply also supports affordability and equity.

2. End parking minimums and start or strengthen Transportation Demand Mangement (TDM) initiatives

Parking mandates inflate housing costs, consume valuable land, and induce more driving, congestion, and pollution.

Solution: Eliminate minimums citywide; price on-street parking by demand; convert excess lots to housing, trees, and storefronts. Manage for TDM and access. Use parking revenue for better sidewalks, transit passes, and neighborhood safety.

3. Prioritize Complete Streets + Safe Speeds (Vision Zero)

Traffic crashes are a leading cause of death, and unsafe, high-speed streets deter walking, rolling, and biking—locking in car dependence and emissions.

Solution: Design for human life: 20–30 mph limits on urban streets, narrower lanes, daylighting, raised crossings, protected intersections, and quick-build materials. Make safety the performance metric, not vehicle flow.

4. Build safe, connected bicycle networks

Most people won’t bicyle outside of a convenient, low-stress network; fragmented lanes leave big gaps in access, health benefits, and mode shift potential.

Solution: Build citywide, protected, all-ages-and-abilities bikeways every quarter mile; add secure bike parking and e-bike charging. Integrate bikeways with transit so longer trips become bike+bus or bike+rail.

5. Invest in frequent and rapid transit, electrified

Slow, unreliable buses and diesel fleets drive riders away and pollute the air, especially in low-income neighborhoods.

Solution: Frequent all-day service, dedicated lanes, signal priority, off-board fare payment, and legible networks—then electrify buses and trains. Invest early in high-ridership corridors and zero-emission depots to cut both CO2 and soot.

6. Move towards 15-minute neighborhoods (complete, mixed-use districts)

Zoning that separates homes, shops, schools, and parks forces long, car-only trips and erodes community health and time.

Solution: Allow and incentivize daily needs within a short walk or roll: mixed-use zoning, corner stores, schools and clinics embedded in neighborhoods, and safe routes that stitch these places together.

7. Enact congestion pricing and fair road use charges

Underpriced driving creates gridlock, unsafe streets, and high emissions while starving transit of funds.

Solution: Charge for scarce road space in peak periods and set delivery/ride-hail fees at the curb; rebate or discount for low-income travelers. Reinvest revenue in faster buses, safer streets, and cleaner air in impacted communities.

8. Build trees, shade, bioswales, and other natural infrastructure into streets

Heat waves and flooding hit cities hardest, raising mortality and damaging infrastructure, with disproportionate impacts on heat- and flood-vulnerable blocks.

Solution: Plant and maintain street trees, cool pavements, bioswales, and rain gardens—prioritizing low-canopy areas and bus stops. Pair with maintenance funding to lock in long-term cooling, cleaner air, and flood resilience.

9. Enable equitable transit-oriented development

Transit-rich land is underused or becomes unaffordable without safeguards, missing climate benefits and displacing the very riders who rely on transit.

Solution: Upzone around stations with minimal parking, mixed incomes, and strong tenant protections. Use value capture, land banking, and community land trusts to deliver permanently affordable homes and local businesses near transit.

10. Reuse and retrofit buildings with clean heat in compact areas

Buildings emit large shares of urban CO2 and air pollution; demolition wastes embodied carbon and money.

Solution: Make adaptive reuse easy; require energy upgrades at point of sale or major renovation; electrify space/water heating with heat pumps; and deploy district energy where density supports it—starting in walkable, transit-rich neighborhoods to maximize uptake and benefits

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Key climate solutions for communities

To unlock new climate progress, apply the power of local communities. Communities are key to most of the climate action needed as well as types of action that can make daily life safer, healthier, and more affordable for everyone.

What follows is a list of community‑oriented solutions that:

  • Are key areas of climate action overall;
  • Offer some of the most effective climate opportunities for communities;
  • Fall within local authority and influence, representing unique power by communities; and
  • Advance equity and public wellbeing, which can lead the way to support for doing more.

Estimates reflect typical North American urban conditions and results vary by context.

#1. Make it legal and attractive to put housing near destinations, and amenities near homes: Reform zoning for more homes in job‑ and transit‑rich areas, permit “missing middle” housing and accessory units, reduce minimum parking, enable small mixed‑use corner stores, clinics, and childcare, and streamline approvals for affordability and inclusion. 

Infill homes lower household VMT 20–40% versus sprawl; shifting 10–20% of growth to infill can cut regional on‑road emissions ~2–6% over a decade, while multifamily/attached homes use 10–30% less energy per unit. If 40%+ of new housing is transit‑oriented, metro transport emissions can fall 10–20% by 2040, with shorter trips, lower costs, and inclusionary policies reducing displacement pressures.

#2. Neutralize the threat of being killed or seriously injured by a driver: Design streets to self‑enforce safe speeds, build connected, protected bike networks, daylight intersections, prioritize pedestrians at crossings, and target high‑injury corridors with data‑driven design, paired with fair enforcement and universal access to safe mobility. 

Such programs typically cut VMT 3–10% citywide within 5–10 years (about 2–8% on‑road CO2e, or 1–4% of total community emissions), with sustained mode shift reducing per‑capita transport emissions 20–50% over 10–20 years. Fewer severe crashes, reliable low‑cost mobility during fuel price spikes or outages, and better access to jobs and services especially benefit low‑income residents, youth, seniors, and people with disabilities.

#3. Deliver high‑quality walking, bicycling, and public transit for everyone: Build safe, direct bike routes and frequent, reliable transit with all‑door boarding, bus lanes, and integrated fares, and complete trips with wayfinding, lighting, benches, shade, and safe crossings. Network upgrades and service improvements reduce corridor VMT 5–15% and citywide 3–10%, and over time enable car‑light lifestyles that can halve household transport emissions. Redundant, multimodal networks also keep people moving during storms and outages while cutting mobility costs and improving access to essentials.

#4. Create abundant places to meet, interact, and belong outside of commerce: Invest in parks, plazas, libraries, greenways, and car‑free streets with free programming, designed for comfort—trees, water, seating, restrooms—and cultural expression. 

Nearby amenities reduce short car trips (often 0.5–2% VMT citywide) and shaded, tree‑rich public spaces lower cooling demand for adjacent buildings. Social infrastructure strengthens mutual aid, and shade and cooling reduce heat risk while free programming expands wellbeing without raising household costs.

#5. Restore and steward nature in the city with climate‑resilient landscaping and urban forestry:  Install bioswales, rain gardens, permeable pavements, and green roofs; landscape with native, drought‑tolerant species; expand and equitably distribute tree canopy; and restore wetlands, riparian corridors, dunes, and living shorelines. 

Shade and evapotranspiration cut cooling loads 5–30% for shaded buildings (roughly 0.05–0.3 tCO2e per home per year), while each new street tree sequesters 10–25 kg CO2 annually; 100,000 trees store 1–2.5 ktCO2e per year and avoid more via energy savings. Citywide canopy gains of 10 percentage points can reduce peak electricity demand 2–5%, while bioswales and rain gardens reduce flooding and heat in historically underserved neighborhoods.

#6. Grow local, plant‑rich food for health, climate, and resilience: Support community gardens, urban farms, edible landscaping, school gardens, greenhouses and rooftop farms; expand farmers markets and CSAs with SNAP matching; prioritize culturally appropriate crops and cut food waste. 

Plant‑rich diets reduce 0.5–1.6 tCO2e per person per year, while shorter cold chains for local produce trim 10–50 kg per person annually and compost‑amended soils store additional carbon. These measures increase food security, lower food bills, build community cohesion, and create local jobs and skills.

#7. Turn waste into soil with municipal composting: Provide universal organics collection (including multifamily) and business service, convenient drop‑offs, clear bin standards, and edible food recovery, and apply finished compost in parks, street trees, and urban agriculture. 

Diverting 1 t of food scraps from landfill avoids 0.2–0.6 tCO2e; with 75% diversion, communities avoid 20–80 kg CO2e per person annually, and compost use adds soil carbon and displaces synthetic fertilizer, totaling 40–120 kg per person per year. Programs create local jobs, improve soils that retain water, support urban food, and reduce odors and pests near facilities often sited in low‑income areas.

#8. Create systems for water conservation and efficiency: Offer instant‑rebate upgrades for high‑efficiency fixtures and appliances, smart irrigation, and turf replacement with climate‑appropriate landscaping; deploy smart meters with leak alerts; promote rainwater harvesting and safe graywater reuse; and set fair, affordability‑protected rates. 

Hot‑water efficiency (fixtures plus heat‑pump water heaters) lowers 0.6–1.8 tCO2e per home per year, while outdoor water efficiency and smart irrigation save 50–200 kg per home via the water‑energy nexus; utility‑scale leak detection and efficiency can cut water‑system electricity use 10–30%. The result is lower bills, improved drought resilience, reduced shutoff risk, and cooler neighborhoods where turf gives way to drought‑tolerant landscapes.

#9. Make buildings efficient and electric: Require and finance tight envelopes, passive cooling (shade, ventilation), and all‑electric systems; add rooftop solar and vehicle‑to‑home readiness; and harden for heat, smoke, fires, and floods. 

Typical retrofits and heat pumps save 1–3 tCO2e per home per year, heat‑pump water heaters 0.5–1.5 t, and induction 0.1–0.3 t; retrofitting 2–3% of stock annually cuts building emissions 3–7% in five years, and with grid decarbonization achieves 60–90% cuts by 2040–2050. Efficient envelopes keep homes habitable during outages, indoor air is healthier without combustion, and targeted no‑cost programs reduce energy poverty.

#10. Make electrification available for virtually everything—and beneficial to users: Provide simple, up‑front rebates for heat pumps, induction, electric water heaters, cars, e‑bikes, and chargers; implement equitable rates, managed charging, and community solar; and invest in workforce training and local contractors. 

Accelerated adoption increases cumulative 2030 reductions 10–30% versus slow rollout; each e‑bike that replaces car trips avoids ~0.3–1 tCO2e per year, and each home fuel‑switch avoids 1–3 tCO2e annually. Lower operating costs and cleaner air accrue broadly when access programs ensure renters and low‑income households benefit first.

#11. Build shared, neighborhood‑scale clean energy and resilience: Create resilience centers with solar, batteries, clean‑air rooms, and cooling/warming, link buildings via microgrids, deploy district geothermal/geoexchange networks, organize block commitments to decommission gas laterals and upgrade electrical capacity, and add curbside and hub EV charging. 

District geothermal cuts heating/cooling energy 30–60% and GHGs 40–80% today; microgrids with solar+storage reduce feeder peaks and displace diesel backup (1–3% local electricity emissions), and coordinated gas retirement plus electrification can eliminate 10–20% of total city emissions from building combustion and leakage over two decades. Shared systems keep critical services powered, lower costs for renters and small businesses, and should be prioritized in frontline neighborhoods.

#12. Keep people collectively safe from disasters, shocks, and stressors: Combine nature‑based defenses (trees, wetlands, dunes) with modern standards (cool roofs, updated codes, elevation, floodable parks), add resilient hubs, cooling centers, and clear risk communication, and plan jointly for heat, smoke, floods, and outages. 

These measures safeguard crucial clean energy and other assets that reduce emissions, contribute to a faster adoption of such systems and reduce the likelihood of maladaptations such as increased use of diesel generators, and prevent high‑emission disaster recovery and support reliable operation of clean energy systems. Clean air and cooling access, language‑inclusive alerts, and social infrastructure protect those most exposed.

#13. Tamp down air pollution across its many sources. Tackle tailpipes and smokestacks together with land use, travel‑demand fixes, and clean technology: legalize compact, mixed‑use infill near jobs and transit and pair it with transportation demand management (congestion and curb pricing, employer commute benefits, school travel plans, demand‑based parking, delivery consolidation) to shorten trips, cut VMT and idling, and curb non‑exhaust PM. Accelerate zero‑emission cars, buses, and trucks; electrify buildings; restrict the dirtiest vehicles in dense areas; and expand urban forests and cool corridors. Focus on ports, freight corridors, and overburdened neighborhoods with shore power, yard‑equipment electrification, clean‑truck rules, and fenceline monitoring. Drive down PM2.5 (including diesel black carbon and brake/tire/road dust), PM10, NOx, SO2, VOCs and air toxics (e.g., benzene, formaldehyde, 1,3‑butadiene), carbon monoxide, and methane leaks that fuel ozone—verified with continuous monitoring and transparent public reporting.

Greenhouse‑gas benefits start with light‑duty vehicles: citywide VMT reduction of 3–10% from compact development and TDM typically yields ~2–8% on‑road CO2e cuts in 5–10 years; sustained mode shift to walking, biking, and transit can lower per‑capita transport emissions 20–50% over 10–20 years; and rapid LDV electrification adds 60–90% per‑mile CO2e reductions as grids decarbonize, with each e‑bike that replaces car trips avoiding ~0.3–1 tCO2e per year. Building electrification removes on‑site combustion; each e‑bus avoids ~50–80 tCO2e annually; and medium/heavy‑duty truck electrification cuts 60–95% per‑mile CO2e, while area‑focused clean‑air zones deliver additional, localized multi‑percent transport‑sector cuts. Health gains are largest for residents near ports, warehouses, and arterials, and fewer combustion appliances indoors reduce asthma triggers.

#14. Invest in public infrastructure efficiently and price disproportionate impacts fairly: Use lifecycle cost and carbon accounting, standardized designs, open data, and fair user fees such as weight‑ and distance‑based road charges, curb and congestion pricing, demand‑based parking, and stormwater fees tied to impervious areas, all with protections for low‑income users. 

Congestion and curb pricing reduce VMT 10–20% in priced zones and 2–5% citywide, demand‑based parking trims 2–4%, and stable revenue enables sustained transit and active‑mode expansion that underpins 10–20% transport‑sector cuts over time. Pairing pricing with income‑based discounts and reinvestment delivers fairer outcomes and lowers long‑run costs.

#15. Save money and materials with sharing and lending: Launch tool, toy, sports‑gear, and baby‑gear libraries; repair cafes and fix‑it clinics; clothing swaps and reuse marketplaces; and shared equipment for schools and small businesses, in partnership with public libraries for memberships and reservations. 

Avoided production dominates the climate benefit—sharing a handful of seldom‑used items can avert 50–200 kg CO2e per person per year, with mature programs achieving 0.1–1% community‑wide cuts and broader normalization of reuse delivering 2–5% consumption‑based reductions by 2035. These programs provide low‑cost access to essentials and skills and build social networks that matter in emergencies.

#16. Offer local services and experiences as affordable alternatives to high consumption:  Invest in arts and culture passes, maker spaces, community kitchens, skill‑shares, recreation, local tourism, and nature access, and support small businesses that provide repair, care, wellness, and learning, using vouchers and memberships to ensure inclusion. 

Shifting 5% of household spend from goods to low‑carbon services and experiences reduces ~0.2–0.8 tCO2e per household per year, with scaled programs cutting community consumption‑based emissions 1–3% over time. The result is more wellbeing per dollar, local jobs and skills, and inclusive access to community life.

#17. Organize public decision‑making around measurable collective wellbeing: 

Use participatory budgeting, citizens’ assemblies, language access, evidence‑based pilots and A/B tests, transparent dashboards, and delivery‑focused timelines that give frontline communities real power, not just voice. 

Faster, smarter adoption increases cumulative reductions—programs that double deployment rates can boost 2030 impact 10–30% versus business‑as‑usual rollout—while policies reflecting lived experience deliver fairer, more durable outcomes.

#18. Make large‑scale change possible and practical: Build project pipelines and pattern books, pre‑approve typical designs, procure at scale, train a climate‑ready workforce, and start with quick‑build projects that become permanent as data show benefits.

Standardization and bulk buys lower costs and speed deployment across sectors, compounding reductions, while predictable pipelines create local careers and let small and minority‑owned firms compete and thrive.

Putting it all together

Communities that pursue these strategies in parallel can plausibly cut total emissions 35–60% by 2035 (from a 2020s baseline) while reducing heat and flood risk, improving air quality, lowering household bills, and creating good local jobs. The fastest paths pair demand reduction (land use, mobility, efficiency), rapid electrification, neighborhood‑scale clean energy, water and materials stewardship, and joyful, lower‑consumption ways of living—implemented through equitable programs that prioritize those with the greatest energy and health burdens.

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Local communities have unique tools to drive climate progress

Towns and cities have specialized powers to design climate policy and make change that federal and state governments can’t replicate.

When people think about scaling climate solutions, we tend to look up — to federal agencies, national legislation, and state capitals. That instinct has some logic. Those are the institutions we associate with big, consequential decisions. But it skips over a level of government that holds some of the most powerful and distinctive climate tools available.

Local communities are active agents with their own authorities, their own proximity to the problem, and their own capacity to move. It’s true that the can be places where national policy lands. But some of what they can do no other level of government can replicate. And some of what they can build no federal program can substitute.

What follows are the features that make local communities uniquely equipped to effect climate solutions.

1. Proximity

The most meaningfulte climate solutions are concrete, substantive transitions. They are buildings being retrofitted, street getting redesigned, neighborhoods getting more frequent transit. Those changes involve decisions made by people who are close to the place where the change happens — close enough to understand the conditions, accountable to the people affected, and organized specifically to serve that community’s interests.

That is where local governments are. They are there charged with setting goals for public wellbeing and delivering the services that support it. They raise funds for the broad public interest. They communicate with residents on matters of planning and wellbeing. They host public elections that are as much an education process as a governance mechanism. And they offer a kind of literal accessibility — in person, in the same building, with the same people — that makes them the first and often only place where people interact with government directly.

That proximity is a mechanism for climate action. The leaps in climate progress we need will be found in specific transitions — in how buildings are heated, how streets are designed, how land is used — and those transitions live in local communities. The decisions and accountability around them happen there too.

2. Authority

Local governments hold legal and decision-making authority over the building blocks of decarbonization and resilience. Through planning, zoning, building codes, public works, public health, and emergency management, they set the rules and deliver the projects that shape emissions and vulnerability. They also set the terms for key service providers — transit agencies, energy utilities — whose decisions have an outsized impact on climate outcomes.

Land use is one of the most powerful tools in that set. Zoning, street design, parking policy, and transit networks determine how far people travel, whether walking and cycling are safe and practical, and how much energy everyday life consumes. Transit-oriented development, complete streets, and low-traffic or zero-emission zones are not just transportation policies. They are climate policies, with long-lived consequences for emissions and community form.

Buildings and energy systems fall within local reach as well. Many communities adopt performance standards, benchmarking requirements, and reach codes that go beyond state minimums. Building departments manage permitting and inspections and, where authorized, can require all-electric readiness in new construction. Municipal and community-choice utilities, franchise agreements, and public procurement can accelerate clean electricity and distributed energy in ways that state programs often cannot reach.

Materials, waste, and food systems round out the picture. Zero-waste strategies, organics collection, low-embodied-carbon procurement, and construction material standards address consumption-based emissions while creating local jobs. These are levers that federal and state governments regularly leave to communities to exercise.

3. Sized for transformation

Communities are ideally sized to assemble large projects and make change stick. They are large enough to marshal real resources and small enough to move quickly and build trust. A neighborhood shares streets, substations, schools, and social networks. That shared fabric makes investments like frequent bus service, contiguous bikeway systems, microgrids, resilience centers, and geoexchange loops both technically efficient and socially legible. Residents can see the benefits block by block — quieter streets, lower bills, safer cycling, cleaner air. Because the boundaries are tangible, the outcomes are too, which makes it easier to organize, prioritize, and deliver.

At the household level, the energy transition fragments. Each home negotiating its own heat pump, panel upgrade, EV charger, or rooftop solar faces high transaction costs, variable quality, and equity gaps. Aggregating demand at the community scale unlocks bulk procurement, standardized designs, and trusted workforce pipelines. A shared geoexchange loop or neighborhood microgrid becomes viable when dozens or hundreds of neighbors join, lowering per-home costs and improving reliability. Coordinated wiring upgrades by block minimize street disruptions and optimize grid capacity in ways that doorbell-by-doorbell approaches never will.

State and national programs are often too distant to match local conditions and too slow to iterate. The community scale compresses that loop. Residents and small businesses are close to decision-makers. They can co-design projects, catch problems early, and build the social license that accelerates delivery rather than delaying it. Special assessment districts, community choice energy, cooperative ownership models, and neighborhood retrofit programs are practical financing and delivery tools that operate at exactly this scale. Package climate upgrades as community upgrades, and you create a replicable module that is big enough to matter, small enough to manage, and ready to scale.

4. Speed

Local communities create opportunities for change faster than any other level of government. While states often pass major legislation only every year or two, and Congress moves in intermittent bursts when national coalitions and timing align, the United States has more than 90,000 local governments constantly updating codes, adopting plans, and approving budgets. The steady cadence of council meetings, school board votes, and special district actions creates a continuous pipeline of decisions where climate-forward choices can be made now, not at the next big legislative window.

Local government cycles move quickly. Staff draft an ordinance, the planning board reviews it this month, the council adopts it next month, and implementation begins with the next permit or paving season. Councils can authorize staff to make decisions with streamlined community engagement so that execution does not stall between meetings. Budgets are annual and often adjusted midyear. Procurement windows are frequent. Departments can pilot, measure, and iterate in months rather than years. Fewer veto points and closer alignment between policymakers and implementers compress the design, enactment, and delivery loop in ways statehouses and Washington rarely can.

This speed shows up on the ground. Transit agencies can add bus-priority lanes with quick-build materials and adjust service in the next schedule change. Public works can stripe a protected bikeway network segment by segment as streets come up for resurfacing. Building departments can adopt reach codes, require EV-ready wiring, or roll out performance standards that apply with the next round of permits. Utilities under local or regional governance can approve demand-flex programs, neighborhood microgrids, or accelerated electrification pilots and refine them after a single season of data.

Local authority varies, state preemption is real, and cities can be notably intransigent. But when local communities do decide to move, they move fastest, and they learn fast. Then, a successful ordinance in one place can be copied by the next. Professional networks share model policies. Results travel as quickly as a council agenda. If the goal is to turn climate ambition into action at scale, harness the places that are always in session.

5. Fertile ground

Local communities are where things happen. Urbanized areas account for roughly two-thirds of global energy-related CO2 emissions, and decisions made at the community level about land use, transport, buildings, energy, and waste determine regional emissions pathways and lock in long-lived infrastructure for decades. Those decisions happen constantly, and they happen locally.

Communities are also on the front lines of climate impacts. They concentrate people, infrastructure, and services, which increases exposure to extreme heat, flooding, wildfire smoke, and power outages. Historic underinvestment and discrimination leave low-income communities, communities of color, renters, older adults, and people with disabilities disproportionately vulnerable. Equitable investments — tree canopy and cool roofs, flood protection, resilient microgrids, tenant-focused retrofits, heat-health programs — reduce risk while improving health, safety, and economic opportunity. Mitigation and resilience are the same investment when made at the community scale.

Beyond this, proximity creates the conditions for innovation. Pilots move to practice when staff, universities, startups, utilities, and community organizations work together in the same place. When demand is large and predictable, local governments can reshape markets through bulk procurement: heat pumps, electric buses, green construction materials, renewable electricity. Open data, challenge programs, and public-private partnerships help successful ideas spread across neighborhoods and into regional standards. The richness of people and institutions coming together is where new approaches get invented, not just applied. That is a distinctive feature of the local level, and one more reason it deserves to be treated as a primary platform for climate progress rather than a downstream recipient of it.

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A “community” lens

Communities are cities, towns, neighborhoods, and counties.

A community is a place where people live near one another, interact, and go about life together.

People in a community share infrastructure and amenities, like streets, transit, water, parks, libraries. They share common problems and opportunities.

Communities are served by one or more local governments.

Communities are shaped by the people who set out to lead and improve them. Those with roles in local government of course, but also providers of housing and healthcare, representatives of groups and causes, teachers, journalists, faith leaders, small business owners, volunteers, and others.

Communities influence higher levels of government. They are also the places where much of the work of higher levels of government is carried out.