Roadmap to Decarbonization: A Step-by-Step Guide for Municipalities

Throughout the United States, towns and cities of all sizes are responding to the challenges posed by climate change by implementing solutions to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint and address climate risks. Focusing on building decarbonization in their communities not only supports environmental efforts, it also helps cities build a strong economy, jobs and a healthy community for residents. 

If you are a municipality just getting started on your decarbonization journey, you probably have a lot of questions. Veolia North America partnered with Climate Mayors to develop a clear roadmap that outlines a practical approach to building decarbonization that balances cutting carbon emissions with reducing costs for both public and private stakeholders.

In this blog, we’ll outline each step on the roadmap to building a cleaner future through government action on building decarbonization. To learn more about these steps and see case studies from cities across the United States, download the full guide here.

Step One: Setting Goals and Establishing Baselines

Before municipalities can begin taking action to reduce their carbon footprint, they should establish a baseline understanding of their current building emissions. It’s important for municipalities to know what building decarbonization targets are realistic while still setting an ambitious and achievable goal.

First, municipalities should conduct a thorough inventory of buildings to better grasp typologies throughout the city, including use, age, energy uses and equipment systems. Creating a baseline of data from existing buildings is critical as it provides municipalities with the information they need to effectively set policies and programs to address building decarbonization. Municipalities should also create detailed plans outlining costs and associated impacts, which will help them build partnerships with local businesses, community organizations and state agencies to increase the likelihood of securing funding.

With this baseline, municipalities can then determine what goals they can achieve in both the short and long term. These goals should align with targets outlined in the Paris Agreement, as well as state climate targets and other established benchmarks.

Step Two: Focusing on City-Owned Assets

Municipalities are often significant land owners within their own cities, and thus are well-positioned to lead by example to advance community-wide building decarbonization goals. After gathering the necessary data, the next step for municipalities is to focus on reducing emissions from city-owned buildings. Actions towards this goal could include:

• Developing a reliable building energy management system for using data to measure progress, especially at points of consumption.
• Conducting an energy audit to identify inefficiencies that are contributing to emissions, and practical steps to address them.
• Implementing lighting retrofits of energy-efficient bulbs.
• Installing energy-efficient heat and cooling systems such as ground-source and air-source heat pumps.
• Streamlining management of city assets across agencies to minimize inefficiencies.
• Dedicating resources to address more challenging sources of emissions, such as older buildings with antiquated systems that are difficult to convert to electricity.
• Pursuing electrification and renewable energy sourcing to replace traditional fossil fuels for building energy needs. 

Step Three: Securing Funding and Partnerships

Ask any municipal leader about the greatest obstacle they face in achieving their sustainability goals, and the first answer is most likely to be “paying for it.” While upfront costs are important to consider, the long-term reduction of energy bills to municipalities and consumers will save taxpayer dollars and provide important community co-benefits over the life of the upgrades.

For building decarbonization, municipalities can tap into funding strategies like:

• Self-funded projects with economic return
• Tax-based funding
• Grants and incentives
• Public-private partnerships
• Green bonds

Successful projects often mitigate financial risk through a blend of public, private and philanthropic financing in the form of both grants and loans.

Step Four: Creating Policy Incentives

Adopting clear policies is one of the most important tools local governments have to implement building decarbonization across their community. Policies outline the city’s sustainability expectations, priorities and action plans. Municipalities should also consider public reporting requirements as part of their policy actions, which allows all stakeholders to be fully aligned while also holding all relevant parties accountable.

Policy options for municipalities could include:

• City ordinances
• Incentives and fees
• Green building recognition
• Reporting

Step Five: Developing Your City’s Workforce

Transitioning to a clean economy means more clean energy jobs and a need for more workforce development programs. According to LinkedIn’s 2024 Global Green Skills Report, the demand for trained personnel in green-focused jobs is far outpacing supply, with demand in the U.S. increasing by 9.8 percent from 2023 to 2024, and supply increasing by only 3.1 percent.

Efforts to address the “green skills gap” can begin in a number of ways — whether it’s job-specific training, apprenticeship programs or STEM programs and coursework in public schools and local universities.

Many municipalities have made it a high priority to ensure that low-to-medium income communities benefit from decarbonization strategies. Community nonprofit partners, community colleges and the trades play a central role in training and development for certain clean energy jobs. Municipalities can accelerate community buy-in for building decarbonization initiatives by implementing a stakeholder review board with local housing authorities and nonprofit organizations, in which everyone participating can be part of the process and monitor progress.

Starting Your Decarbonization Journey Today

As the impacts of climate change become increasingly severe and frequent, the need to reduce our carbon emissions is becoming more critical by the day. Municipalities across the U.S. are playing a leading role in implementing building decarbonization solutions to address this need. Through these policies and programs, cities can also drive resident engagement, reduce energy burdens for low- and medium-income communities and lower overall long-term costs.

By following this roadmap, municipalities can build a more sustainable future, with clear and actionable steps for making tangible change in their communities when it comes to building decarbonization efforts.