Team Members

Rosina Bierbaum, Gregory Keoleian, Jill Carlson, Jenny Cooper, Marie Donahue, Robb De Kleine, Max Neale, Anis Ragland, and Melissa Stults

Summary

The City of Detroit, home to 700,000 residents, a growing number of corporate headquarters and small businesses, and an increasingly vibrant community of citizens working hard to improve the long-term sustainability of the city, is in the midst of confronting myriad social, economic, and environmental challenges. Climate change exacerbates many of these challenges, and comprehensive, collaborative climate mitigation and adaptation actions can have co- benefits that improve social, economic, and other environmental issues. In the face of the challenges posed by city planning and climate change, Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice (DWEJ), a non-profit environmental justice organization, is collaborating with the City of Detroit, various departments at the University of Michigan, and other local stakeholders, to develop a Climate Action Plan for the City. The process that DWEJ created, called the Detroit Climate Action Collaborative, aims to find cost-effective ways to reduce the city’s GHG emissions and increase Detroit’s resilience to climate change. In March 2013, a group of Master’s students from SNRE began to collaborate with DWEJ to develop the first comprehensive inventory of greenhouse gas emissions from the city of Detroit, a cornerstone of efforts to create an effective urban Climate Action Plan. The initial GHG inventory develops a 2005 baseline year and trend years 2010-2012, and it serves two critical purposes: 1) provides the baseline from which efficiency and emissions reduction targets can be created; 2) a baseline on which progress can be measured.