Portland, Oregon is not the only city claiming significant greenhouse gas reductions. Seattle says its 2005 overall emissions are 8% below 1990 levels, down to 11.5 MT per capita. (That compares to Portland's claim of 14.4 MT/capita, and an overall United States average of 24.1 MT/capita.)
According to an email from John Fleck, Albuquerque is claiming a 6% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2005.
I don't know. It is not intuitively obvious that Seattle should have a 20% lower carbon footprint than Portland, especially when it is farther north and has noticeably cooler weather, especially in the winter. And when I hear traffic is significantly worse up there.
I bet the difference is electricity. Seattle City Light mostly gets power from hydro dams that it owns, and gets only a bit of thermal power from spot purchases. (And it "offsets" those purchases though other measures that, at least according to Seattle City Light, reduce carbon elsewhere in the economy.)
ReplyDeletePortland General Electric gets quite a bit of its electric from thermal, if you believe the Wikipedia entry.