Climate Change

The Pacific Northwest city will launch a small zero-emission delivery zone later this year, to gather data and collaborate with service operators on effectively removing delivery-related vehicles with emissions from a section of downtown.

The 2024 City Clean Energy Scorecard by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy rates 75 of the nation’s largest cities against a number of sustainability and greenhouse gas reduction metrics.

For Earth Day, the educational VR company is offering schools one week of free access to online lessons about deforestation, pollution, the harm that plastics have on marine life, and the importance of recycling.

Eighty transportation projects will receive nearly $830 million from a discretionary program that aims to improve resistance to extreme weather. Some state and local initiatives will use tools and data-driven analysis to harden infrastructure.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently opened another 5.6 miles of bus priority lanes, giving the region a total of 51 lane miles designed specifically for public transit. Another 46 miles are coming next year.

Artificial intelligence could identify farm pollutant sources, University of Minnesota research found. Agriculture contributes 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases; in Minnesota, the emissions are its second-biggest source of carbon release.

More than 160 e-bike purchase incentive programs currently exist in the United States and Canada. An author of a report on their effectiveness says cities and organizations may have better results if they put goals ahead of design.

Ava Community Energy in the San Francisco Bay Area has drafted its Zero-Emission Medium and Heavy-Duty Goods Movement Blueprint to aid in the transition of trucking toward zero-emission vehicles.

A new Center for Urban and Coastal Climate Science Research will connect artificial intelligence and machine learning, health disparities, environmental health and climate science in a transdisciplinary approach.

The new machine learning method only needs 21 hours of input data to produce accurate air quality forecasts, while traditional models can require months’ worth of data.

Falling prices, increased availability and incentives are giving the secondhand electric vehicle market the thrust it needs to grow, introducing the vehicles to a wider cross-section of consumers.

Getting congestion pricing plans past the public opinion stage may require refocusing the conversation around how traffic flows will improve, rather than any potential benefits to the planet.

Numerous startups and other urban efforts are reorienting the smart city technology space toward one which more directly impacts the lives of residents and addresses the deepening climate crisis.

Addressing air quality in cities is a complex issue that requires balancing good policy and equitable outcomes. Finding the right technology and visualizing the data are essential components of success.

A new pilot project in British Columbia will serve as Canada’s first bidirectional charging initiative involving the heavy-duty public transportation vehicles.

As cities develop microgrids for energy resiliency and increase the adoption of electric vehicles, they are increasingly turning to smart city technologies to enable these transitions.

As the world gets hotter, technology offers governments a fresh way to track emissions and the progress of officials in meeting climate goals. What benefits do these dashboards offer, and how are cities using them?

Hoping to expedite undersea data collection from coral reefs to study climate change, a 14-year-old freshman at Hanford High School in Washington built a water rover with AI to collect and analyze numerical sensor data.