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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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Transportation, urbanism, and energy: Three elements that can change it all

Transforming how we move, how we build and use land, and how we power our societies is central to creating a livable, equitable, climate‑safe future. Transportation, urbanism, and energy together shape the bulk of global emissions and also determine access to jobs, housing, food, and opportunity. When these systems are redesigned with people and ecosystems in mind, they become powerful levers for cutting pollution, improving health, reducing costs, and strengthening communities against the disruptions that are already here.

Foundations: Demand-Side Solutions, “ASI,” Resilience, and Wellbeing

Several cross‑cutting ideas underpin this transformation. One is demand‑side solutions. These are practical ways to reduce resource use and travel demand that are closely aligned with saving money and boosting efficiency. Better insulation and efficient appliances lower energy bills. Compact urban form shortens trips and reduces fuel costs. Logistics improvements cut freight mileage and operating expenses. Demand‑side solutions matter because they can deliver large emissions cuts while saving households, businesses, and governments money. Yet they often do not scale on their own. Users are largely subject to the products and services they are offered and the rules that shape those offers. Utilities make money by selling energy, not saving it, unless policies change. Automakers profit from larger, more expensive vehicles. Building owners often pass energy costs through to tenants, which weakens incentives to invest in efficiency. Without regulation, incentives, and public investment that reward using less, demand‑side solutions remain underused.

Building on that, a second foundational concept is the “Avoid–Shift–Improve” (ASI) framework. First, avoid unnecessary resource use and travel demand. Then, shift what remains to cleaner and more efficient options. Finally, improve technologies and operations. ASI matters because it multiplies what is possible. By avoiding and shifting first, technology improvements do not have to work as hard or as fast to deliver big gains. Yet ASI does not play out on its own because current systems, habits, and investments tend to lock in inefficient patterns, like long commutes and sprawling land use. Many planning and investment decisions still assume more driving, more infrastructure, and more consumption, rather than rethinking the need for them.

A third unifying idea is a broad notion of climate action as resilience that combines mitigation, adaptation, and a just transition. Mitigation reduces emissions. Adaptation prepares communities for the impacts that are already locked in. A just transition ensures that workers and communities are supported and empowered through the changes ahead. Resilience in this wider sense matters because climate risk is social and economic, not just physical. It affects jobs, housing, food systems, and political stability. Yet this kind of resilience does not emerge automatically. Market forces alone do not protect the most vulnerable, and investments in resilience are often delayed because their benefits are long term and diffuse. Intentional policies, strong institutions, and community leadership are needed to make resilience real and fair.

Wellbeing is a fourth pillar and asks how climate actions can make life better. It generally includes the foundations already mentioned—demand-side solutions, with ASI as part of that, and resilience—but it is broader. Cleaning up air pollution improves health and reduces medical costs. Making streets safer for bicyclists and pedestrians encourages physical activity and gives people more choices in how they get around. Deploying electrification in ways that give people more control over their finances, such as stable electricity costs, home solar, and community energy programs, can reduce stress and increase financial security. In sum, it’s a lens for focusing on climate solutions that provide the greatest benefit. Wellbeing matters because it aligns climate policy with people’s immediate interests and daily lives, which builds lasting support. Yet wellbeing is not guaranteed. Many decisions are driven by short‑term profit or narrow cost calculations that ignore health, safety, and community impacts. Without intentional design, climate measures can even worsen inequities, for example if clean technologies are only affordable for wealthier households.

Transportation: Rethinking How People and Goods Move

Reimagining transportation starts with how and why people and goods move in the first place. Applying ASI, we can avoid some travel through digital services, better local access to jobs and amenities, and shorter, more regional supply chains. We can then shift many remaining trips to low‑carbon modes such as walking, cycling, micromobility, high quality public transit, and rail for both passengers and freight.

We still need motorized vehicles for many trips. Here, the focus is on improving technology, mainly through electrification and efficiency. That means scaling up electric buses, delivery vehicles, and passenger cars, investing in safe and dense networks for walking and cycling, and prioritizing rail and zero‑emission trucks for freight. Aviation and shipping are harder to decarbonize, so they rely more on efficiency measures, demand moderation, and truly sustainable fuels where needed. Done well, this transformation reduces congestion and air pollution, lowers household transport costs, improves safety, and makes access to opportunity less dependent on car ownership.

Urbanism: Middle Housing, Urban Form, and Land Stewardship

Urbanism, meaning how we plan cities, towns, and regions, both enables and amplifies these mobility changes. Compact, mixed‑use, transit‑oriented development brings homes, jobs, schools, and services closer together so that many trips can be shorter or not needed at all.

A crucial piece of this is infill “middle housing.” This includes a diverse range of housing types such as duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, courtyard apartments, small multiplexes, and accessory dwelling units added within existing neighborhoods. Middle housing is more space and energy efficient than detached single‑family homes. Because it is often located in existing urban fabric, it is also locationally efficient. It allows more people to live closer to where they need to go, which makes walking, cycling, and transit more viable and supports lower household transportation costs.

At the same time, building standards and retrofits can dramatically increase energy performance and comfort through insulation, passive solar design, natural ventilation, high‑performance windows, efficient appliances, and heat pumps. Thoughtful urbanism also stewards land and ecosystems. It preserves high quality farmland and natural habitat at the urban edge, integrates urban agriculture where appropriate, restores wetlands and river corridors, and weaves green and blue infrastructure through the built environment to cool cities, manage floods, and support biodiversity. The result is development that lowers emissions, enhances resilience, and broadens access to decent, affordable housing.

Energy: Widespread Electrification and Cleaner, More Effective System of Power

Modernizing energy systems through widespread electrification provides the backbone that makes low‑carbon transport and urbanism truly scalable. The central move is to shift from fossil‑based fuels toward a clean, largely renewable, highly integrated electric system. This involves rapidly expanding wind, solar, and other low‑carbon generation, reinforcing and interconnecting grids, and adding flexibility through storage, demand response, and smart controls.

As buildings and vehicles electrify, the grid becomes the central organizing system for energy and its design must prioritize reliability, affordability, and security. At the same time, distributed energy resources such as rooftop solar, community solar farms, neighborhood batteries, and resilient microgrids can give communities more direct control over their energy, keep critical services running during disruptions, and share economic benefits more widely.

Where direct electrification is difficult, such as certain industrial processes, long‑distance shipping, or some high‑temperature applications, low‑carbon fuels like green hydrogen or sustainable bioenergy can play targeted roles rather than trying to replicate fossil use one for one. A cleaner, smarter, more participatory energy system reduces health burdens from air pollution, protects economies from fossil fuel price swings, and can be designed to correct long‑standing inequities in access and cost.

Synergies: Transportation, Urbanism, and Energy Working Together

These three transformations are more powerful together than in isolation. Compact, mixed‑use, transit‑oriented urbanism with abundant middle housing makes it far easier for people to choose walking, cycling, and transit. That in turn supports more frequent and viable transit service and reduces the number and size of vehicles that must be electrified.

A cleaner, more resilient electric grid allows buildings and vehicles to run on low‑carbon power, turning every new electric bus, train, or heat pump into a deeper climate win. Distributed energy resources and microgrids can be located in dense neighborhoods and near critical transport hubs, which enhances resilience during extreme events and keeps mobility and essential services functioning. When transportation plans, zoning and housing policy, and grid and charging infrastructure are coordinated, they become a workhorse package. They form a set of mutually reinforcing interventions that deliver large reductions in emissions and clear co‑benefits for health, equity, and economic opportunity.

Beyond the Core: Other Crucial Transitions

There are important additional transitions that require focused attention beyond this core. Heavy industry, especially cement, steel, and chemicals, demands new process technologies, material efficiency and circularity, and in some cases carbon capture to address process emissions. Food systems must transform across the entire chain, from regenerative and climate‑smart farming practices to reductions in food loss and waste and a shift toward healthier, lower‑impact diets where feasible.

Ecosystem protection and restoration, including forests, peatlands, mangroves, and grasslands, are vital both for carbon storage and for biodiversity, water regulation, and cultural values. Some level of carbon dioxide removal, especially through nature‑based solutions, is likely needed to balance residual emissions from the hardest‑to‑abate sectors. None of these changes can reach the required scale without deep shifts in finance, governance, and international cooperation, along with robust social protections, worker retraining, and community‑led decision‑making to ensure a truly just transition.

Bringing the Elements to Life

Taken together, the pillars of transportation, urbanism, and energy, framed by ASI, demand‑side solutions, wellbeing, and a broad understanding of resilience, offer a practical and highly synergistic foundation for climate action. Transforming how we move, build, and power our lives can slash emissions, strengthen economies, and improve everyday experience in ways people can see and feel, while creating the conditions for success in harder sectors like heavy industry and agriculture. By pairing this core workhorse package with targeted efforts in food systems, industry, ecosystem restoration, and fair economic transition, societies can chart development pathways that not only avoid the worst climate risks but also actively enhance human flourishing and planetary health.

References

Creutzig, F. et al. (2018). Demand-side solutions to climate change mitigation consistent with high levels of well-being. Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0121-0

IPCC (2022). Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Working Group III Contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/

Newman, P., Beatley, T., & Boyer, H. (2017). Resilient Cities: Overcoming Fossil Fuel Dependence. Island Press. https://islandpress.org/books/resilient-cities-second-edition

Gehl, J. (2010). Cities for People. Island Press. https://islandpress.org/books/cities-people
Mehaffy, M. (2019). A New Pattern Language for Growing Regions: Places, Networks, Processes. Sustasis Press. https://sustasis.net/NPL.html

Sovacool, B. (2016). How long will it take Conceptualizing the temporal dynamics of energy transitions. Energy Research & Social Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2015.12.020
CTOD (2022). Building Mixed‑Income,

Transit‑Oriented Communities: A Practitioner’s Guide. Center for Transit‑Oriented Development. https://ctod.org/reports
Steffen, W. et al. (2018). Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. PNAS. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1810141115

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Transportation is at the center of everything

Make transportation wonderful and you solve so much more.

When people hear “transportation,” they often picture cars and traffic. In reality, transportation is about something more fundamental: how we arrange our lives in space and how we and the things we need are situated and move through that space. It is about where homes, jobs, schools, parks, and shops are located, and how safely, affordably, and easily people can reach them.

Make transportation wonderful and you solve so much more. If places are walkable, bikeable, transit-oriented, and free of traffic danger, we will not only deeply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but do so much more. We also address housing, health, inequality, isolation, public budgets, and our relationship with nature. We improve everyday life for everyone.

That is why transportation, understood together with land use, really is at the center—often invisibly—of everything.

Some background

Distribution, distance, and energy

Many of society’s biggest challenges share a simple underlying question: where are things, and how do people reach and connect with them?

Questions about affordability, access, and opportunity often come down to this physical distribution problem. Can people afford to live near where they work? Can children reach school safely? Can older adults and people with disabilities reach healthcare and groceries without depending on someone to drive them? Can goods and services move efficiently through a city?

All of this depends on locations and connections, the basic geometry of our towns and cities.

At the heart of that geometry is energy. Moving people and goods takes energy. As distances grow and speeds increase, energy use climbs rapidly. Physics is not gentle here. Air resistance grows much faster than speed and therefore demands rise very quickly as you approach highway speeds. So spreading things out and then linking them with fast driving is inherently energy hungry and expensive.

This high energy use shows up in many ways. Families pay more for fuel, vehicles, and maintenance. Governments pay more to build and maintain roads. Everyone loses time in traffic. The environment absorbs the impact in the form of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Limits of the private car

In much of the United States, the default assumption is that any adult who wants to get anywhere will drive. Over time this has turned the private car into a kind of monopoly transportation system. This was not destiny or culture alone. It was the result of many policies and investments that made almost every other option harder or less attractive.

Even before we talk about fuels, there is a basic inefficiency in using a heavy vehicle to move a single person. Most of the energy goes into moving the metal, not the human. Most trips involve only one occupant. On top of that, manufacturing and maintaining large fleets of vehicles and the pavement they require consumes enormous amounts of materials and energy.

Electric vehicles improve efficiency and reduce tailpipe emissions, but they do not fix the underlying geometry. Cities cannot function well if every adult is in a car for every trip. There is not enough space on streets or at destinations to store that many vehicles. Even if those vehicles were silent and clean, the sheer volume of traffic would still clog roads and devour land.

Road widening does not solve this. For decades, researchers and planners have documented induced demand. When a road is widened, traffic may ease for a short time. Then people adjust, making more trips, traveling at different times, moving farther from work, or choosing to drive instead of taking another mode. Development follows the expanded road. In the end the new lanes fill up and congestion returns, often worse than before. The financial and energy costs rise while the benefits fade.

Inseparability of transportation and land use

Transportation is not just about vehicles and roads. It is inseparable from land use, which shapes how far apart our daily destinations are. Zoning rules, housing policies, and development patterns determine whether homes are near jobs, schools, and services, or separated from them by long distances.

Low-density sprawl that separates housing, offices, and shopping forces long car trips. A compact neighborhood that mixes homes with workplaces, schools, shops, and parks allows short trips and real choices about how to travel. When we talk about fixing transportation, we are really talking about reshaping both the network of movement and the pattern of places.

Car-centrism not a natural evolution but rather a product of political choices

Many people assume that Americans just love cars more than people elsewhere, and that this explains our landscape. The story is more complicated. Over many decades, governments and institutions made choices that favored driving. Zoning separated land uses. Minimum parking requirements surrounded buildings with large parking lots. Highways were built through city neighborhoods. Financial incentives favored new development on the edge over reinvestment in older areas. Transit and sidewalks often received far less funding and attention.

Each step seemed practical at the time, but together they built a system where driving is the only workable option in many places. Once that pattern was in place, it created a powerful path dependency. The easiest political decisions were often the ones that reinforced the existing car-based system.

The hopeful side of this history is clear. If policy and design decisions created our current pattern, new decisions can create a better one.

A list of benefits that happen when transportation serves everyone

If we focus on creating more compact towns and cities, with good transit, safe walking and biking, and less dependence on private cars, we set off a chain reaction of benefits. These places are structurally more energy efficient and make electrification more affordable and effective.

1. Real new freedom and savings

In a well-connected, multimodal place, people gain more choices. Buses, trains, safe bike routes, and good sidewalks offer real alternatives to driving for many trips. Shorter distances make these options practical.

Households can own fewer cars or sometimes none at all. They spend less on gas, insurance, repairs, and parking. They waste less time in traffic and on long commutes. Many daily trips can become short, pleasant walks or rides, instead of stressful drives.

This can also bring more joy and autonomy. Teenagers can reach school, jobs, and activities without relying on parents. Adults can choose how to move based on what feels best for a given trip, not just on what is mandatory. People can live more spontaneously, not organized around congestion peaks and parking searches.

2. Housing where people need it

When transportation planning supports transit-oriented development and compact growth, more homes can be built near the places people need to go. Infill and “middle housing” types, such as duplexes, fourplexes, and small apartment buildings, can fit into existing neighborhoods and add new neighbors without overwhelming the area.

This combination of compactness and variety helps in two ways. It increases the overall supply of homes in high-opportunity areas and it lowers the transportation burden of living there. When people can live closer to work and services, total household costs, including transportation, can fall even if rent or mortgages are not the lowest in the region.

3. Greater independence and healthy lifestyles

A car-only system quietly excludes many people. A large share of the population cannot reliably drive, including youth, many older adults, people with some disabilities, and people who cannot afford a vehicle or insurance. When driving is the only option, they are cut off from opportunity and even from basic daily needs.

Walkable, bikeable neighborhoods with good transit change that pattern. They give independence to people who might otherwise be stranded. A teenager can bike or ride a bus to an after-school job. An older adult can take a frequent, accessible bus to a clinic. A person with a disability can reach work by a predictable, barrier-free transit system.

These places often support more active lifestyles as well. Walking to a corner store or cycling to a friend’s house builds movement into ordinary days. Over time, this helps counteract the health impacts of sedentary living.

Access to transportation is also a major ingredient in economic mobility. If people can reach training programs, jobs, and childcare without needing to buy and maintain a car, they have a far better chance to move ahead.

4. Less precarity and less financial stress

Housing and transportation costs draw from the same household budget. In car-dependent areas, many families face a hard choice. They can live farther out and spend heavily on fuel and multiple vehicles, or they can pay more for housing closer in. Either way, budgets are stretched.

Compact, well-served neighborhoods reduce this bind. They make it possible to live closer to jobs, schools, and services while needing fewer vehicles, if any. Even when rent or mortgages are somewhat higher, overall costs can be lower, because transportation expenses fall.

This is especially important for people living close to the financial edge. If essential services, food, healthcare, and social supports are reachable without a car, the risk of missing appointments, losing jobs, or falling further behind is reduced. People experiencing homelessness also benefit when shelters, clinics, and outreach programs are accessible by foot or transit, instead of scattered in remote, car-only locations.

5. More livable, joyful neighborhoods

When streets are designed around people rather than just vehicles, they become more than traffic corridors. They become places to live, meet, and linger.

Slower vehicle speeds, clear crossings, continuous sidewalks, and protected bike lanes make it safer and more pleasant for people of all ages to move around. Parents feel more comfortable with children walking or biking. Older adults can navigate their neighborhoods with confidence. Everyday errands can become moments of fresh air and social contact.

With more people on the street and fewer cars rushing through, neighbors see one another more often. Small interactions accumulate into real social bonds. Quieter streets with cleaner air and more trees are more restful for people who live and work along them, even when they are not traveling.

6. Resolution of unsheltered homelessness and disorder in public space

Unsheltered homelessness often appears most visibly in public areas, such as sidewalks, parks, transit stops, and bike paths. This problem is rooted in housing and social services, but transportation and land use play an important supporting role.

When regions create clear, humane strategies to bring people indoors and connect them with services, transportation planning must be part of the solution. Shelters and supportive housing need to be placed where people can reach them by transit, walking, or services that use the existing street network efficiently. Public spaces, including transit stations and trails, need to be designed, maintained, and managed in ways that are welcoming and safe for everyone. That includes people who are housed and currently unhoused.

Taking responsibility for these connections can reduce the pressure on transit systems and bike networks to function as informal shelters. It can also help ensure that public spaces remain accessible and comfortable for both daily users and vulnerable residents.

7. Tackling bike theft

As more people choose to bike, cities must confront bike theft in a serious way. Reliable cycling networks need reliable parking and protection. That means secure bike storage at stations, workplaces, and major destinations, along with good lighting, natural surveillance, and clear management practices.

Stronger systems for bike registration and recovery, combined with consistent enforcement, can also help. When cities treat bikes as important vehicles, not disposable accessories, people are more willing to depend on them for daily mobility.

8. Fuller disaster preparedness

Climate change is driving more frequent and severe disasters, including floods, fires, storms, and heat waves. In these moments, the structure of a transportation system can save lives or put them at risk.

Car-dependent evacuation plans are fragile. Not everyone has a car. Roads can clog quickly. People with mobility challenges may be unable to leave in time. Compact, transit-rich communities make it easier to plan redundant, inclusive evacuation routes. Distances to shelters and safe zones are shorter. Organized transit and shuttles can supplement or replace private vehicles in emergencies. Emergency services can cover more people in less time.

Planning for disasters in this way requires thinking about people who do not drive or cannot drive reliably, and ensuring that they are not left behind.

9. A healthier relationship with nature

Efficient, compact transportation and land use opens room for more nature in cities and towns. When we do not need as many wide roads and vast parking lots, we can plant trees, create green medians, and line streets with vegetation.

Green infrastructure, such as bioswales, permeable pavements, and rain gardens, helps soak up stormwater and reduce flooding. Trees and plants cool neighborhoods, reduce the heat island effect, and improve air quality. Wildlife and pollinators can find habitat even in dense districts when green space is intentionally woven through the urban fabric.

Using land more efficiently in already developed areas also reduces pressure to convert farmland, forests, and wetlands at the edge of metro regions. That protects biodiversity and carbon storage outside the city while improving life inside it.

10. Lower electricity costs and a more resilient grid

Compact, transit-oriented communities do not just use less energy; they also make it cheaper and more reliable to deliver. When people live and work closer together, utilities can serve more customers with shorter runs of wires, fewer substations, and less equipment spread across difficult terrain. It takes fewer materials and less labor to build, maintain, and eventually replace the infrastructure needed to keep the lights on. Those savings show up over time in lower system costs and, ultimately, lower pressure on rates.

Sprawl pushes the grid outward into low-density areas and the wildland–urban interface. Long radial lines through forests and over hills are more exposed to wind, ice, and fire risk. They are also expensive to patrol and hard to upgrade. As climate-driven wildfires intensify, utilities are forced to spend billions hardening these far-flung networks or shutting them off during high-risk periods, costs that ratepayers absorb.

By contrast, compact development allows more of the grid to sit in shorter, looped configurations within already urbanized areas, where access is easier and vegetation risk is lower. When an outage does occur, crews can reach the fault more quickly, isolate it, and re-route power around it. Fewer people are left without power, and those who are can be restored faster. In this way, the same patterns of land use and transportation that reduce vehicle emissions also enable an electricity system that is cheaper to build, easier to defend against wildfire, and more resilient when things go wrong.

11. Better stewardship of public money

Transportation is one of the biggest items in public budgets. Building, repairing, and policing a very large road network is expensive. Low-density development requires long stretches of pipes, wires, and streets for relatively few people.

Compact, multimodal communities allow governments to serve more residents with fewer lane miles and shorter infrastructure runs. Transit routes can be shorter and more productive. Roads can be maintained to a higher standard when they are not constantly being widened.

By investing in systems that give people real choices and reduce dependence on cars, local governments can get more value from each dollar. They can improve the daily experience for residents while reducing long-term maintenance and operations costs. Addressing root causes, such as long distances and lack of options, is far cheaper than constantly responding to traffic, safety problems, and social crises after the fact.

12. Deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions

Transportation is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions in many regions. In some rural and semi-rural areas of the United States, it is the single largest source. Cleaner vehicles are important, but they cannot carry the whole burden on their own.

Better transportation and land use policies reduce emissions directly. When people can take shorter trips, drive less, and use walking, biking, and transit more often, vehicle miles traveled go down. That means fewer emissions even before considering cleaner technologies.

Compact, mixed-use development also reduces building-related emissions. Multi-unit buildings tend to be more energy efficient per household than detached homes. Shorter distances also lower the energy required for deliveries and services.

A widely used framework for climate action in transportation is called “Avoid, Shift, Improve.” Avoid means avoiding unnecessary trips or long distances through better land use and digital access. Shift means shifting trips to more efficient modes such as walking, biking, and transit. Improve means improving vehicles and fuels, for example by electrifying fleets and cleaning up the grid.

Land use is central to the “avoid” part of this strategy. Without compact, connected development, we lock in long trips and high energy use, and then we try to fix the consequences at the tailpipe.

A more compact and predictable transportation system also makes electrification easier and cheaper. Transit fleets can be electrified with well-placed depots and chargers. Shorter driving distances reduce range requirements and charging needs for electric vehicles. Grids can be planned around dense clusters of demand rather than stretched thin. Building and transportation electrification can be coordinated as part of one integrated energy strategy.

In this way, transforming transportation and land use does more than cut emissions from cars. It makes the entire project of getting off fossil fuels more feasible.

Transportation as lever for a better future of everything

Transportation is at the center of everything because the way we organize movement and space shapes almost every part of our lives. It influences what we can afford, how we feel, how healthy we are, how strong our communities are, and how well we can respond to climate change.

Make transportation wonderful and you solve so much more. Build places where walking, biking, and transit are safe, dignified, and convenient. Bring daily destinations closer together. Reduce the need to drive for every trip. Support the electrification of everything in a way that is practical and affordable.

Do that, and you do not just lower emissions. You ease financial stress. You expand opportunity. You help people feel less isolated and more connected. You protect nature and public budgets at the same time. You make it easier for everyone, including those on the margins, to meet their basic needs and pursue their goals.

Transportation is not just how we move. It is a powerful tool for building the kind of world we want to live in.

References

IPCC (2023). Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr

C40 Cities & UN-Habitat (2023). C40 and UN-Habitat Urban Planning Accelerator. C40 Cities. https://www.c40.org/accelerators/urban-planning

Creutzig, F., Javaid, A., Soomauroo, Z., Lohrey, S., Milojevic-Dupont, N., Ramakrishnan, A., Sethi, M., Fouquet, R., & Ürge-Vorsatz, D. (2022). Fair urban mitigation. Nature Climate Change. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01349-1

Acheampong, R. A., Silva, E. A. (2021). Land-use transport models for climate change mitigation and adaptation planning. Journal of Transport and Land Use. https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/1209

Cao, J. (2021). Land Use and Transportation Policies Addressing Climate Change. SSRN. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3940681

ITDP (2021). The Compact City Scenario – Electrified: How Electrification, Public Transport, and Urban Form Reduce Urban Passenger Transport Emissions. Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. https://www.itdp.org/publication/the-compact-city-scenario-electrified

Cervero, R., Guerra, E., & Al, S. (2017). Beyond Mobility: Planning Cities for People and Places. Island Press. https://islandpress.org/books/beyond-mobility

Suzuki, H., Cervero, R., & Iuchi, K. (2013). Transforming Cities with Transit: Transit and Land-Use Integration for Sustainable Urban Development. World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/3ac8baac-cd06-5e05-a1fa-1a14cd12c74b

Ewing, R., & Cervero, R. (2010). Travel and the Built Environment. Journal of the American Planning Association. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944361003766766

North Olympic Peninsula Resource Conservation & Development Council (n.d.). Transportation and Land Use – Climate Action Toolkit. North Olympic Peninsula RC&D. https://www.noprcd.org/climate-action-toolkit/transportation-and-land-use

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Wrap-up of COP30 in Belém: Developments and what’s next

The COP30 climate talks in Belém, Brazil closed with a familiar mixed message: the headline cover decision reaffirmed the 1.5°C limit and called for “transitions” in energy and economies, but stopped short of a clear, time‑bound fossil‑fuel phaseout and left finance and carbon‑market rules largely unresolved.

That gap between ambition and delivery is where the action now moves—to 2035 nationally-determined commitments (NDCs), to sector transitions guided by the IPCC, to health and wellbeing co‑benefits, and to cities, states, and service innovators who can make climate progress tangible.

Alignment with the IPCC’s “major transitions”

IPCC AR6 lays out the big shifts needed this decade. Power must decarbonize and end use must electrify. Industry needs efficiency and fuel switching. Transport and buildings require strong demand side changes. Land food and nature based solutions must expand. Finance and governance reforms must enable these changes in ways that are feasible and just.

On energy and fossil fuels, the cover decision invoked transitions and allowed for abatement and CCS, but it did not codify a universal fossil fuel phaseout. It reiterated scaling clean energy and efficiency consistent with IPCC least cost pathways, yet without stronger time bound collective targets. The net effect is a political signal to keep shifting capital while continued ambiguity risks a slower drawdown of coal oil and gas.

On 2035 NDCs, parties were urged to submit new economy wide targets aligned with 1.5°C. This matters because it sets a near term deadline for whole economy planning and, if done well, can drive integrated transitions across power transport buildings and industry rather than a set of siloed pledges.

On adaptation and resilience, negotiators advanced work on operationalizing the Global Goal on Adaptation with more clarity on indicators and reporting and less on quantified global targets. This helps countries design risk informed and locally appropriate transitions that remain robust under uncertainty.

On finance and feasibility, delivery pathways for climate finance still lag needs. Without clearer concessional flows and debt relief the feasibility dimension that combines institutions finance and capacity remains a bottleneck for many economies.

On process innovation, the Brazil Presidency draft Mutirão text was described in mid-COP briefings as a menu-based push on implementation. This signals a pivot from one-size-fits-all to practical options that countries can pick up. If carried into the 2035 NDC cycle, it could accelerate uptake of proven transition packages.

The bottom line on transitions is that COP30 nudged system wide planning with 2035 NDCs and adaptation metrics, but it left the core mitigation signal weaker than the IPCC call for rapid deep and sustained reductions. Delivery now hinges on national policy packages and real economy coalitions that move power transport buildings industry and land together.

Role of affordability, health, and other wellbeing

A notable advance at COP30 was the prominence of health and quality of life framing. The WHO Special Report Delivering the Belém Health Action Plan lays out a practical agenda to integrate health into climate action through climate resilient and low carbon health systems, cleaner air, heat health protection, and finance models that value health benefits.

In practice, more parties and partners signaled plans to embed health metrics in climate policy. They plan to track avoided deaths from cleaner air, reduced heat risk, and the resilience of clinics. This reframes climate policy as a public health dividend and not only an emissions ledger.

Demand-side measures for affordability and comfort gained attention. Efficient all-electric homes, passive and district cooling, and clean cooking can reduce bills, improve indoor air, and deliver thermal comfort, especially for low-income households.

Time saved and access also featured. Mobility investments that emphasize high frequency transit, safe walking and cycling, and integrated ticketing reduce commute times and improve access to jobs and services. These multiple benefits are often undervalued in cost benefit analysis.

This matters because policies that foreground lower energy poverty, better air, safer heat seasons, and shorter commutes tend to be more durable politically and faster to scale.

The Belém Health Action Plan offers a template that ministries can adopt now, with indicators that resonate beyond climate circles.

Subnational developments

The Presidency spotlighted cities, regions, tribal, and Indigenous governments as delivery agents. An official evening summary on November 11 emphasized how local and subnational leadership is driving real world climate progress in peoples homes.

Cities and states showcased local implementation plans that braid climate health and affordability goals. Examples include building performance standards, all electric codes for new buildings, rental retrofit programs, and cooling action plans.

They advanced fleet and infrastructure pivots such as zero emission buses, municipal fleets, freight corridors, and EV ready streetscapes, paired with reliability upgrades to distribution grids.

Nature and resilience programs featured urban tree canopies, blue green stormwater systems, fire smart land use, and nature based coastal buffers as no regrets moves that also improve daily life.

Finance innovation is helping smaller jurisdictions attract private capital while protecting low income households by packaging projects into standardized programs such as pay as you save retrofits, green mortgages, and resilience bonds.

This matters because subnational governments control many levers that shape user experience including permits codes service standards transit frequency and cooling centers. Their plans can translate COP speak into renovations routes and shade on the ground.

Focus on services to unite policy with user experience and value

One evolution at COP30 is the treatment of climate solutions as services and not only technologies. The focus is on meeting needs such as mobility, thermal comfort, cooling, clean cooking, and reliable power through integrated offers that align incentives from the start.

A services lens accelerates climate action in several ways. Clear value propositions help because people buy outcomes rather than kilowatt hours, for example mobility as a service that delivers fast reliable and safe trips, comfort as a service that delivers quiet healthy and stable indoor temperatures, and cooling as a service that guarantees performance without upfront cost.

Policy fit improves when service performance standards such as comfort hours trip times and air quality targets sit alongside emissions standards.

Public procurement can buy services for example contracted comfort for schools and hospitals instead of equipment, which enables aggregators to finance upgrades at scale.

Ownership of the user experience reduces friction when one accountable entity handles design delivery maintenance and billing, with bundles that include financing warranties and simple apps that make clean choices the easy default.

Equity by design becomes practical because services can embed affordability through lifeline tiers on bill tariffs and targeted subsidies that guarantee comfort and access for renters and low income households who are often locked out of capital intensive technology.

Data and verification also improve because service contracts create measurable outcomes such as comfort hours avoided outages and on time trips which can anchor results based finance and where appropriate high integrity carbon and health crediting.

Near‑term service plays to watch:

  • Thermal comfort services for social housing and schools, combining envelope, heat pumps, and ventilation with pay‑as‑you‑save tariffs.
  • Cooling‑as‑a‑service in hot cities, linked to heat‑health plans and time‑of‑use pricing.
  • Clean‑cooking service subscriptions that bundle stoves, fuel access, and maintenance.
  • Mobility subscriptions that integrate transit, bike/scooter share, and first/last‑mile shuttles.
  • Reliability‑as‑a‑service for critical facilities, pairing rooftop solar, storage, and microgrids under performance contracts.

Wrap-up

So, did COP30 move the needle? The signal is moderate because the cover text uses transitions language that keeps 1.5°C on the agenda but it avoided a clear fossil phaseout.

The structure is useful since 2035 NDC guidance, adaptation metrics work, and the Brazil Presidency’s menu style implementation push give countries and cities a clearer runway to act.

The substance is still to be delivered, and the most credible progress now lies in national policy packages, subnational implementation, and service based business models that foreground health, affordability, comfort, and time.

Looking ahead, watch for the first wave of 2035 NDCs and whether they are economy-wide, IPCC-aligned, and grounded in just locally led transitions.

Track how quickly countries operationalize the Belém Health Action Plan in budgets, clinics, heat health systems, and clean air rules.

See whether cities and states move building retrofits, cooling programs, and transit upgrades from pilots to standardized and financeable portfolios.

Monitor whether ministries, school districts, and utilities begin procuring outcomes such as comfort, reliability, and trips at scale.

References

UNFCCC (22 Nov 2025). Outcomes Report of the Global Climate Action Agenda at COP 30. UNFCCC. https://unfccc.int/documents/655037

COP30 Presidency (15 Nov 2025). COP30 Evening Summary – November 15. COP30 Presidency. https://cop30.br/en/news-about-cop30/cop30-evening-summary-november-15

European Parliament (17 Nov 2025). COP30 outcome: slow progress, but insufficient to meet the climate crisis urgency. European Parliament. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/fr/press-room/20251117IPR31438/cop30-outcome-slow-progress-but-insufficient-to-meet-climate-crisis-urgency

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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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To electrify transportation faster, look beyond vehicles to urbanism—and electrify that

To electrify transportation, we have to swap gas cars for battery-powered ones.

Just as important is the system they run on: The location of origins and destinations. How the roads and parking work. The relative status among the different modes–including the emerging classes of hyper-efficient micromobility vehicles. What is a normal way to get something a quarter mile a way. To move across town.

Compact development multiplies electrification’s possibilities

In a more compact community, each charger, bus depot, and e-bike corral serves more trips. Such locational efficiency translates to higher utilization which lowers cost per electrified trip and accelerates payback on infrastructure. That increases returns on investment.

Shorter, more frequent trips better enable micromobility and transit. Public and workplace charging reach more users, and fleet duty cycles become more predictable. That means more people and trips served.

Dense, connected neighborhoods support an ecosystem of e-bikes, e-cargo bikes, scooters, neighborhood EVs, electric transit, shared fleets, and zero-emission delivery. That spreads benefits and reduces battery and grid needs.

Clustering buildings, parked vehicles, and loads in closer to one another enables managed charging, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) with school and transit buses, building-vehicle coordination, and neighborhood microgrids—boosting flexibility and resilience. That means more opportunities to create fuller ecosystems of electrification in which different uses support one another.

High-ridership, short-route corridors can more cost-effectively match battery duty cycles, simplify depot design, and enable reliable layover or on-route charging. When land use supports frequent service, electric buses reach lower total cost of ownership faster and deliver bigger air-quality gains. That means better transit electrification economics.

Compact form cuts miles driven, trims parking and road costs, and lowers household transportation expenses. Savings from fewer cars and less asphalt can be reinvested in charging, transit, safe streets, and building upgrades. That means savings for household and municaplities.

Denser electrification makes way for tipping points

Full electrification at scale requires existing neighborhoods and districts to to step away existing from natural gas distribution systems in big leaps. Large chunks of existing shared infrastructure needs to be retired in coordinated investments to avoid leaving a minority of ratepayers with stranded assets and impossibly high costs. The process needs a critical mass of subscribers.

Urbanism methods–compact development combined with community-scale planning–can help make transportation electrification investments play a key supportive role. By pairing infill housing and mixed-use development with transit, depot charging, e-mobility hubs, and building heat pumps, districts concentrate flexible electric load.

The payoff: Fully-electrified towns that make use of electric transportation even more.

“Avoiding” travel and “shifting” modes first increases returns

Research shows the most cost-effective way to deliver maximum electrification services for the fewest energy requirements and environmental harm is in the “avoid–shift–improve” framework (ASI).

ASI prescribes avoiding unnecessary demand for a service in the first place; then shifting remaining demand to inherently lower-impact modes, energy carriers, places, or times; and finally, improving the efficiency and cleanliness of technologies and infrastructure that still serve that demand.

Urbanism is fundamental to the first two aspects. The most direct way to “avoid” is compact, complete neighborhoods that reduce trip lengths and vehicle-miles traveled (VMT). And fundamental to”shifting” is safe, reliable transit and protected bike networks that move trips to efficient modes suited to small batteries.

“Avoiding” and “shifting” before “improving” to electrification saves resources by requiring fewer batteries, chargers, and grid upgrades to meet the same mobility needs. It lowers net cost and raises accessibility, since short trips fit low-cost e-bikes and walking and high-utilization charging cuts per-trip costs. And it frees up cash—city capital once aimed at road widening and parking, plus household savings from ditching a second car, can fund more charging, transit, and building electrification.

Urbanism creates new EV opportunities for equity (and durability)

Urbanism provides a way to focus on electrifying the modes that are key to making sure everyone is served—buses, shared fleets, e-bikes, and neighborhood carshare—and where air pollution burdens and cost pressures are highest.

Such a lense can help to elevate electric buses and bus rapid transit in high-ridership corridors with bus-priority lanes; protected bike networks with e-bike purchase, charging, and maintenance support; on-street and multi-family charging in renter-heavy and lower-income neighborhoods; and community ownership models and fare policies that reduce total mobility costs.

This spreads benefits beyond car owners and builds a wider coalition for outcomes that are more likely to be lasting.

Some implications

As the synergies beween urbanism and electrification come to more light, so to does the opportunities for agencies and experts working on them to address the issues together.

Public utility commissions have a stake in VMT. Per-capita VMT reduction and electrified trip share are relevant planning metrics. Encouragement is sensible for utility programs that support location-efficient electrification with make-readies for multi-family housing, depot charging for transit and delivery fleets, managed charging, and V2G. Coordinate electric upgrades with targeted gas decommissioning as districts densify and electrify.

Electric vehicle advocates have a stake in advocating compact development to cities. They can promote zoning reform near jobs and transit, parking reform, complete streets and protected bike lanes, bus lanes, and curb management that prioritizes transit and zero-emission delivery.

Cities and municipal planning organizatons have a stake in targets for electrified trip share and per-capita VMT, not just EV registrations. They can aopt EV-ready and e-bike-ready building codes that require conduit and panel capacity in multi-family and commercial projects; site charging facilities to maxomise utilization at depots, mobility hubs, main streets, and curbside at multi-family buildings; and support e-cargo logistics and consolidation centers to cut van miles.

Transit agencies which seek to electrify high-frequency routes first have a similar stake in supporting greater density as well as protected lanes and other infrastructure to support a better service experience and more riders. More on the technology side, they can align schedules for layover charging, design depots for future V2G revenue and resilience, and pair bus electrification with bus-priority street design to amplify benefits.

Utilities have a stake in buiding an ecosystem that rewards them for expeditiously electrifying everything while providing maximum public benefits. In the near term they can offer fleet and multi-family tariffs with managed charging and capacity subscription options, fund make-readies in disadvantaged communities and at mobility hubs, and deploy more school-bus and transit-bus V2G where feeders are constrained, and coordinate with building electrification to enable gas main retirement.

States and departments of transportation can tie transportation funding to per-capita VMT reduction and electrified trip growth, streamline permitting for curbside and depot charging and for utility upgrades tied to district electrification, and synchronize clean power timelines with transport electrification to maximize emissions cuts.

Employers and developers can site near frequent transit and bikeways, replace parking minimums with mobility benefits, provide e-bike and transit stipends, install shared and open-access charging and secure e-bike parking, and convert last-mile delivery to e-cargo bikes where feasible.

Bottom line

Use urbanism to right-size the transportation challenge—shorter trips, more choices, closer destinations—and electrify mobility and buildings as you build compact, complete neighborhoods. Do that, and the rest of the system—chargers, fleets, and the grid—becomes cheaper to deploy, simpler to operate, and more equitable in its benefits.

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Urbanism and electrification are key to climate solutions that make life better, and they are friends

Building climate resilience and improving daily life hinge on two powerful, complementary levers: access‑oriented urbanism and clean electrification.

Each delivers lower costs, cleaner air, and greater resilience; together they do more—reducing energy demand, smoothing grid peaks, and keeping essential services running through heat, storms, and outages.

What follows introduces these two pillars, shows how they reinforce one another, and highlights practical, near‑term moves communities, agencies, and firms can take to advance climate action and well‑being at the same time.

Two pillars for climate and well‑being

Urbanism

Urban form sets the floor for energy use and travel. Compact, mixed‑use, transit‑oriented neighborhoods organized around access typically cut per‑capita transport emissions 20–50% and building energy 10–30% versus car‑centric sprawl—while lowering infrastructure and household costs.

Access‑first design puts homes, jobs, schools, groceries, parks, and clinics closer together. Shorter trips unlock walking, biking, and high‑ridership electric transit as the default. They also reduce the electricity needed for mobility even as vehicles electrify.
Safer, cooler streets are health and climate infrastructure: shaded, traffic‑calmed corridors protect walkers and cyclists; protected lanes and safe crossings cut injuries; elevated and flood‑safe segments safeguard transit and emergency access. Trees, cool/permeable surfaces, and greenways can reduce neighborhood heat by about 2–5°F and manage stormwater.

Freight microhubs, e‑cargo bike delivery, and smart curb management reduce double‑parking, congestion, noise, and local air pollution. These strategies improve access while easing energy and space demands.
Gentle density near transit supports affordability, social cohesion, and age‑ and disability‑friendly design. Predictable loads in compact areas make electrification—including district energy and neighborhood‑scale batteries—cheaper and faster.

Electrification

Electrification replaces direct fossil fuel use with power from a grid that is getting cleaner each year. Electricity generation is 25% of US greenhouse gas emissions. Electrification leverages the cleaner grid to cut transportation (28%) and buildings (13% direct; buildings also use 75% of US electricity).

Demand‑side management—efficiency, load flexibility, and smart pricing—shrinks and shifts load so electrification fits the grid. The IPCC estimates demand‑side strategies could cut end‑use emissions 40–70% by 2050. DSM is central to realizing that potential in the US.
In buildings, weatherization and high‑efficiency heat pumps, heat‑pump water heaters, induction cooking, and cool roofs lower bills, reduce heat stress, and cut local pollution. District thermal systems that use heat pumps and waste heat deliver scale benefits in compact areas.

In mobility, EVs, e‑buses, and e‑trucks paired with managed charging soak up midday solar and overnight wind. Vehicle‑to‑building/grid can power shelters, signals, and clinics during outages. Right‑sized, interoperable charging at depots, curbs, and homes makes low‑carbon travel reliable and affordable while reducing refinery and upstream emissions.

Rooftop solar, batteries, and community microgrids keep critical services running during storms, heat waves, and wildfires. Grid hardening and flexible loads improve reliability as extremes intensify.

Cutting waste before adding supply is among the most cost‑effective decarbonization steps because it avoids fuel and grid upgrades. Electrification and efficiency lower utility bills and improve indoor air, with outsized benefits for overburdened communities.

How urbanism and electrification multiply one another

Urbanism enabling electrification

Proximity, smaller homes, and shared walls reduce kWh per capita. Shorter trips cut the electricity required for mobility, lowering costs and grid upgrades.

Concentrated, predictable loads justify district thermal, thermal storage, and neighborhood batteries. Urban greening lowers peak cooling demand citywide.

Parking reform and right‑sized streets free land and budgets for housing, solar canopies, and microgrids. Shift/avoid strategies embedded in urban form reduce the need for new road capacity and lower vehicle manufacturing emissions even as fleets electrify.

Electrification enabling urbanism

All‑electric buildings and vehicles cut street‑level pollution and noise, improving public space and health.

Managed EV and e‑bus charging helps integrate renewables. V2G/V2B fleets and community microgrids keep mobility and essential services running through outages.

Curbside power and interoperable charging support e‑cargo bikes, micromobility, and car share. When paired with smart tariffs, these systems expand access without spiking peaks.

Rich opportunities at the urbanism–electrification seam

Transit‑oriented development plus district energy: Build mid‑rise, mixed‑use neighborhoods around frequent transit and connect buildings to low‑temperature district thermal loops served by heat pumps and waste heat. Result: fewer car trips, lower building loads, and steadier demand that improves grid economics and reliability.

Diversified, electrified mobility beyond car‑only: Create a choice‑rich network—frequent transit, protected bike/scooter lanes, safe crossings, EV car share, integrated fares—with right‑sized depot and curb charging. People can drive less without losing access, cutting energy and emissions and easing grid peaks via managed charging.

Micromobility and low‑speed electric networks: Build continuous, protected lanes and calm streets for e‑bikes, e‑scooters, and neighborhood electric vehicles, with secure, fire‑safe charging or battery‑swap. Hyper‑efficient short trips replace car journeys, trimming demand, emissions, and noise while expanding equitable access.

Comprehensive, high‑quality bike parking where it matters: Provide abundant, secure, 24/7 bike parking and charging at transit stations, schools, workplaces, commercial districts, and housing, with on‑street corrals near destinations. Reliable end‑of‑trip facilities multiply cycling uptake, unlock first/last‑mile access to transit, and relieve curb pressure.

Electrified bus depots with solar, storage, and managed charging: Equip depots with onsite generation, batteries, and smart charging or V2G to power zero‑emission buses and support local feeders. Cleaner, quieter service boosts ridership; flexible capacity integrates renewables and stabilizes the grid.

EV‑ready affordable housing near jobs and transit: Pair deep efficiency, all‑electric heat pumps, rooftop solar, pre‑wired Level 1/2 charging, and secure e‑mobility rooms. Residents get low utility and travel costs and clean air; predictable loads ease grid planning and strengthen resilience.

Complete streets with cool pavements and shade trees: Reallocate space to protected bike lanes, wider sidewalks, and transit priority, and retrofit surfaces with high‑albedo materials and canopy. Safer active travel and cooler microclimates reduce VMT, peak electricity demand, and heat risk.

Mobility hubs powered by microgrids: Co‑locate transit, bike share, e‑scooters, car share, parcel lockers, and charging under solar canopies tied to community microgrids. Riders get seamless low‑carbon trips through outages; cities cut last‑mile emissions and harden critical access.

Smart curb management and freight microhubs: Convert select parking to time‑managed loading zones, e‑cargo bike depots, and lockers with curbside power and digital permits. Faster, cleaner deliveries cut double‑parking, fuel use, and noise while improving safety and air quality.

Heat‑pump retrofits with weatherization and community cooling: Target multifamily buildings for envelope upgrades, efficient heat pumps, cool roofs, and shared resilience rooms with backup power. Lower bills and emissions pair with lifesaving protection during heat waves and outages.

Neighborhood resilience centers with solar and storage: Retrofit libraries, schools, and community centers to provide cooling, clean air, water, device charging, communications, and medical support during outages and heat or smoke events. Tie these hubs to microgrids and V2B/V2G fleets so they serve daily needs and deliver lifesaving services in emergencies.

In short, lead with urbanism and access‑oriented electrification. Together they deliver the bulk of the climate solution set while directly improving reliability, affordability, health, and resilience.

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Why the “electrify everything” movement needs urbanism

Urbanism, which is the practice of shaping how towns and cities function and evolve, is crucial to the movement to electrify everything.

Here are some reasons:

  1. Urbanism powerfully shapes the critical systems best suited for electrification. Opportunities to electrify transportation and builds largely depend on local ordinances and economic incentives.
  2. Urbanism creates the possibility of scale by unlocking electrification that delivers tangible benefits. Aligning investor motivations with affordability, reliability, and other needs of residents and ratepayers requires those interests to be fully represented in energy legislation and utility regulation. Emphasizing the lens of communities creates a clearer agenda, improves negotiating power, and creates opportunities to consider new alternatives.
  3. Urbanism enables more affordable electrification and new service models. Denser, better-connected places improve the economics of public infrastructure and shared systems, making services easier to deploy and sustain.
  4. Urbanism uniquely enables integrated energy ecosystems. It provides tools and methods to manage the built environment and mobility more fluidly, which is essential for uniting building and transportation energy systems.
  5. Urbanism sets the stage for transformational electrification. The advent of battery‑electric motors has sparked anexplosion of experiments showing how powerful small motors can revolutionize how we move people and goods. Unlocking many of these possibilities depends on urbanism—through rules governing land use, public rights‑of‑way, and building design and use.
  6. Urbanism provides the scale needed to switch from gas to electric systems. A cost‑effective transition to all‑electric homes and buildings is easiest when done at scale—across neighborhoods, districts, or entire towns.
  7. Urbanism shapes how large‑scale electrification systems adapt to environmental shocks and stressors. The viability of major new investments depends on positioning them within broader community resilience strategies.

Electrifying everything is a technology upgrade, but it’s also a project of town-building. The fastest, most durable path runs through urbanism—how we plan land use, streets, buildings, and services. Treating neighborhoods as the unit of change lets us deliver tangible benefits, including lower bills, better air, and reliable service. It also integrates buildings and mobility, and designs for resilience from the start.

The work ahead is practical and local:, it is to align utility and city planning, update codes and incentives, finance district‑scale conversions, invest in the underlying systems for transit and the most efficient forms of e‑mobility, and to center community voices in every decision. Do that, and “electrify everything” becomes more than a slogan—it becomes a lived improvement in how people move, live, and thrive.

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To use energy resources wisely, first “avoid,” then “shift,” and next, “improve” (ASI)

The avoid–shift–improve (ASI) framework is a conceptual tool to help policymakers and managers deliver maximum services for the fewest energy requirements and environmental harm.

ASI prescribes managing demand first and multiplies the possibilities for electrification.

ASI directs the following:

  • Avoid unnecessary demand for a service in the first place.
  • Shift remaining demand to inherently lower-impact modes, energy carriers, places, or times.
  • Improve the efficiency and cleanliness of technologies and infrastructure that still serve that demand.

ASI was coined for transportation, but it generalizes for energy-using activities more widely.

Transportation: avoid trips and vehicle-kilometers; shift to walking, cycling, transit, rail, coastal shipping; improve vehicles, fuels, operations.

Buildings and cities: avoid loads via passive design/right-sizing; shift to district energy and electrified end-uses and to cleaner times with demand response; improve envelopes, controls, appliances.

Industry and materials: avoid through material efficiency, reuse, and product longevity; shift to recycled feedstocks and electrified or hydrogen-based processes; improve motors, drives, heat integration, high-temp heat pumps.

Power systems: avoid peaks and losses; shift the generation mix to low-carbon sources and demand to low-carbon hours; improve plant and grid efficiency (advanced inverters, reconductoring, storage).

Digital/ICT: avoid unnecessary compute/data movement; shift workloads to low-carbon regions/times; improve chips, cooling, and utilization.

Issues it addresses include climate mitigation, air quality and health, congestion and reliability, resource and land use, energy security, affordability, and resilience.

Who should care

National and local policymakers, planners, and regulators (NDCs, CAPs, land-use/transport codes, building energy codes).
Utilities, ISOs/RTOs, and energy planners (resource adequacy, demand response, electrification).

Corporate leaders across fleet, real estate, operations, procurement, and product design.
Investors and lenders (capex timing, stranded-asset risk, transition plans).

NGOs, researchers, and community groups shaping equitable, demand-side solutions.
Anyone setting climate, cost, or reliability targets who must deliver results this decade.

Where it comes from

Origins: Early 2000s within the sustainable transport community, especially German development cooperation. The approach was codified and popularized through GTZ’s (now GIZ) Sustainable Urban Transport Project (SUTP) and partners.

A widely cited early synthesis is Dalkmann and Brannigan’s GTZ SUTP Module “Transport and Climate Change” (2007). Regional development banks (notably ADB) and networks like SLOCAT then embedded ASI in guidance and programs.

Beyond transport: ASI migrated into buildings, industry, and power as demand-side mitigation rose in prominence (e.g., IPCC AR6).

From modes to moments: “Shift” now includes shifting in time (load flexibility, demand response) as much as shifting modes or carriers.
From three pillars to four: Many practitioners add “Enable” to emphasize institutions, finance, pricing, design standards, and data that make ASI stick.

Integration with circular economy and sufficiency: “Avoid” increasingly overlaps with product longevity, reuse/repair, and service sufficiency.

Equity and co-benefits: Modern ASI practice foregrounds distributional impacts, access, and health, not just carbon metrics.

More rigorous metrics: Better methods to quantify rebound effects, lifecycle emissions, and system interactions help prioritize high-impact measures.

Why it matters—and what goes wrong if you ignore it

Faster, cheaper decarbonization: Avoid and shift measures often deliver near-term, low-cost cuts and reduce the scale of supply-side buildout needed.

Lock-in avoidance: Managing demand and mode/carrier choices now prevents expensive, high-carbon infrastructure lock-in and stranded assets later.

System reliability and resilience: Avoiding peaks and shifting to flexible demand can stabilize grids and networks under stress.

Multiple co-benefits: Clean air, safety, space efficiency, and affordability strengthen public support and create immediate value.

If you ignore ASI, you risk over-relying on “improve” (efficiency/clean tech) alone, which is slower to saturate and vulnerable to rebound effects.

You are likely to overbuild supply and networks, raising costs and exposure to delays, siting constraints, and public opposition.

You miss no-regrets options and equity gains that can make transitions durable.

You may still miss climate targets even with rapid tech deployment, because unmanaged demand and mode choices swamp improvements.

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Primer on access

In transportation and land use planning, access is the ability of people to reach the goods, services, activities, and opportunities that matter to them, like groceries, employment, education, healthcare, and more. Access is the purpose that transportation exists to serve. Mobility, by contrast, is the ability to move through physical space. It is a means to access, not a useful end in itself.

This distinction matters because transportation planning in the U.S. has historically optimized for mobility metrics: vehicle speeds, intersection level of service, lane capacity. These measures can improve access in some circumstances, but they can also undermine it — by prioritizing vehicle throughput over safe crossings, or by enabling sprawl that puts destinations further apart. Access provides a corrective lens, keeping the system oriented to outcomes rather than throughput.

Three elements of access

Three elements work together to determine how well a transportation system serves people:

Mobility options — the ecosystem of infrastructure and services that give people functional ways to travel (or avoid travel altogether). The word “options” signals a deliberate departure from auto-centric planning, which effectively creates a monopoly for cars at the expense of all other modes. A robust mobility ecosystem includes walking and bicycling infrastructure, high-quality transit, shared and micromobility options, and the ability to substitute digital connectivity for some physical trips.

Proximity — the distance between origins and destinations. Proximity is perhaps the most powerful force in transportation: it determines how many miles and hours people must invest in travel, and whether efficient modes like walking, bicycling, and transit are even viable.Concepts like 15-minute neighborhoods and transit-oriented development are fundamentally about enabling access through compact land use. Proximity’s effect is not linear — shortening distances doesn’t just reduce miles one-for-one. It makes walking possible, improves the economics of shared services, and unlocks cascading benefits across the whole system.

Quality of experience — the real and perceived ease, convenience, safety, affordability, and enjoyability of the end-to-end trip. A technically available option that feels unsafe, uncomfortable, or unreliable is not a genuine option. Quality of experience is what makes access functional for people of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities.

Why access over mobility

Access is recognized by researchers and practitioners as a foundational lens because it provides the best-known framework for maximizing beneficial outcomes across large, diverse populations — and specifically for reducing costs for households and communities as a whole.

It also rests on an important empirical insight: people’s travel behavior is shaped less by fixed personal preferences and more by the relative value of the choices available to them. Demand for different travel modes is largely induced — or suppressed — by those who design and manage the system. This means that investments in walking, bicycling, and transit don’t merely serve existing demand; they generate it. And investments that entrench car dependence foreclose options that people would otherwise use.

Access and equity

Access intersects with equity in two important ways. First, the access framework enables higher-resolution equity analysis — it can measure how well the system serves specific population groups, identify gaps, and target investments accordingly. Second, the concept connects to a broader meaning of accessibility in the context of disability: ensuring that people with mobility limitations have genuine, functional options, not merely nominal ones. Both dimensions belong in any serious access analysis.

Access and climate

Access-oriented transportation systems are substantially more climate-compatible than vehicle-first ones. Compact land use reduces vehicle miles traveled. High-quality transit and active transportation options reduce per-capita emissions. And a system designed for access requires far less energy and infrastructure to serve well — meaning electrification applied on top of an efficient system delivers maximum environmental and cost benefit.
Using access in practice

The access framework gives local governments a unified way to measure, manage, and optimize across modes and investments toward human-centered outcomes. It brings together policy questions that are often siloed — commute times, bikeway quality, transit coverage, wheelchair access, parking policy — into a single evaluative rubric. It creates a focal point for integrating planning activities that are currently diffuse, and it provides a stronger basis for equity-oriented decision-making.

Access is not yet widely used by local governments, a fact explained partly by decades of auto-centric decisions that have created institutional inertia. But the concept is available, the measurement tools exist, and cities that adopt it gain both a sharper analytical framework and a compelling basis for public communication about what transportation is actually for.

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Efficiency improvements through electric vehicles: You don’t know the half of it

Electrifying transportation seems like magic because the core machine is so much better at turning energy into motion.

A typical electric drivetrain is about three times as efficient as a gasoline one, and it runs on a fuel that can steadily move toward being 100% renewable and carbon-free.

EVs bring other benefits too, like quiet streets and low maintenance, but the headline is simple. Its superpower is efficiency. We are talking about roughly 0.27 kWh per mile for a mid-size EV, equivalent to about 125 MPG.

That gap alone is enough to deeply cut emissions as the grid cleans up. Yet there is another side to efficiency that most people miss.

The way most of us travel day to day is overbuilt for the job. One person, often alone, moving at low average speeds through city streets in a 3,000 to 5,000+ lb vehicle.

Most of the energy goes to pushing a heavy machine and a lot of air, not to moving a human body. On a typical urban trip, about 95% of the energy moves the vehicle, and only about 5% moves the person.

That is not a moral judgment. It is physics.

When you repeatedly accelerate two tons in stop-and-go traffic, you spend energy on mass. When you cruise with a large frontal area, you spend energy on drag. Either way, the human is the smallest part of the payload.

The battery-electric revolution opens the door to right-sized electric mobility that flips this ratio. Electric motors scale beautifully. They are compact, efficient, and happy at many sizes.

That is why we now have an entire family of vehicles that can deliver a full trip at a fraction of the energy. Think e-scooters, e-bikes and cargo bikes, mopeds, compact city EVs, and neighborhood electric vehicles. The savings are not subtle.

A typical e-bike uses about 10 to 20 Wh per mile. At the U.S. average residential electricity price, that is well under one cent per mile. A small neighborhood EV might use 80 to 150 Wh per mile, still many times less than a full-size car.

Compare that with a gasoline sedan at around 1,100 Wh per mile worth of fuel energy, or even a mid-size EV at about 250 to 300 Wh per mile, and the order-of-magnitude difference becomes clear.

Right-sizing brings other gains. Smaller electric vehicles need smaller batteries, which lowers cost and materials demand. They can charge from an ordinary outlet overnight. Parking gets easier. Streets get calmer. Air gets cleaner where people live.

These are resilience benefits as well. A household with a mix of light electric options can keep moving even during fuel disruptions, and a car with a modest battery can backstop outages at home with vehicle-to-load gear. Cities that shift short trips to light electric modes need less space and less money to move more people.

None of this argues against the mainstream EV. For many trips, a conventional car is the right tool, and replacing a gasoline car with an electric one cuts energy use by a factor of three or four before you account for the grid’s ongoing shift to renewables. It is simply that our efficiency story is incomplete if it stops at the car-for-car swap. The lowest-cost, lowest-carbon, and most space-efficient miles will often be ridden, not driven.

The good news is we are already living in this future. Most urban trips are short enough for light electric mobility. In the United States, roughly half of all trips are under three miles. That is e-bike territory for many people and many days, with weather gear and cargo options making it practical for more. Cities that add safe networks for small vehicles see rapid uptake, because the product is compelling. It is fun, fast enough, cheap to run, and simple to maintain.

If you want a simple mental model, use this. Electrification gives you a big step up in efficiency at any vehicle size. Downsizing gives you another. Stack them and you get both deep decarbonization and better daily life. We can triple drivetrain efficiency by moving from internal combustion to electric. We can multiply total-system efficiency again by choosing the smallest electric that does the job. The result is cleaner air, lower costs, quieter streets, and far less energy burned to move the same person from A to B.

So by all means celebrate the conventional electric car. It is a workhorse and a crucial climate tool. Then look at the rest of the electric toolbox and pick the right size for the job. The fastest way to win on energy and money is to electrify, and then right-size.