A growing body of research has provided clear evidence of the large scale, energy and carbon reductions that could be achieved by shifting household practices and technology choices. Estimates of achievable savings have ranged from 20 to 30 percent in the short- to medium-term in the residential and personal transportation sectors alone. Nationally, the savings from such interventions would reduce total U.S. energy consumption by roughly 9% and cut carbon emissions by 7.4% (Dietz et al 2009, Laitner et al 2009). While such findings are useful, they are unable to identify city-specific opportunities that take unique local factors into account, such as local climatic conditions, the age and other characteristics of the local building stock, technology saturation, technology use patterns, and the lifestyles, attitudes and preferences of local populations. Karen’s presentation discusses collaborative work by the Garrison Institute and USDN to provide cities with a low-cost approach to assess the scale of city-specific savings opportunities and to document the sets of behaviors that are likely to result in the most savings.
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