Shifting the World’s Cities Toward Carbon Neutrality by 2050 Hero Image

Shifting the World’s Cities Toward Carbon Neutrality by 2050

Winter 2019 • International


The Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA) is a coalition of 20 leading cities around the world committed to reducing their carbon emissions as much as 80-100 percent by 2050 or sooner. CNCA is an initiative of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) in North America.

The alliance is working in partnership with the Academy for Systems Change to apply systems change principles and approaches that will result in transformative changes to core urban systems that allow them to achieve their goals. The Academy is helping city teams develop a range of scenarios for the year 2050 that are achievable and are based on realistic timelines.

CNCA cities focus on innovative initiatives in urban transport, energy use and waste system management that are most likely to result in deep cuts to GHG emissions.

Member cities include Adelaide, Berlin, London, Yokohama, Helsinki, Copenhagen, New York, Oslo, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Vancouver, Sydney, Toronto, Washington DC, and others.

CNCA is holding scenario-planning sessions at their annual meeting in Helsinki in the spring of 2019 and at the USDN annual meeting in Detroit in the autumn of 2019.

Blackstone Ranch Institute provided a grant to support ongoing collaboration between CNCA member cities and the Academy for Systems Change in the year following the two annual meetings. The objective is to begin implementing transformative scenarios in member cities.

Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance

The Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA) is a collaboration of leading cities around the world that are working to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 80-100 percent by 2050 or...

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