Politics, institutions and entrepreneurship: city decisions leading to inventoried GHG emissions

Abstract

Local governments in the USA and around the globe are increasingly active in promoting energy efficiency and sustainability both in their governmental operations and in the wider community. Although in many countries, it is cities rather than the national government that have taken the lead role in reducing GHG emissions, we know little about what factors account for local adoption of climate protection at city level. In response, this article investigates how political and institutional factors, as well as various public entrepreneurs affect the adoption of GHG inventories in cities and differences in policies directed at emissions from the larger community versus governmental operations. The results confirm that elected mayors and civic entrepreneurs promote carbon reduction in the larger community, but managers and bureaucratic entrepreneurs focus their efforts on carbon emissions of governmental organizations.

In many countries, it is cities rather than the national government that have taken the lead role in reducing GHG emissions. Urban areas are significant contributors to climate change and are also particularly vulnerable to its effects. By some estimates, more than three-quarters of global carbon emissions come from cities. Although the territory covered by municipal governments accounts for only a tiny portion of the USA’s total land area, almost two-thirds of the American people (over 175 million) reside in cities. In addition, municipal governments have tools to directly address energy efficiency, conservation and carbon emissions through their well-established role in regulating land use and development. Collectively, local governments can contribute meaningfully to US climate change mitigation by reducing emissions within their well-accepted domains of authority and responsibility.

A decentralized system of local governments can stimulate experimentation, collaboration and innovation [1,2]. Although strong national or state-level policy may be necessary to fully achieve place-based planning and implementation [3], civic and governmental leaders in communities can make a substantial difference in framing climate protection efforts [4]. No innovative policy can be adopted without public entrepreneurship to motivate others to support the transition [5]. Local governments as policy entrepreneurs have localized resources to mobilize an array of powers and functions that make them well-suited to play a role in climate protection and energy management that can complement state and national efforts.

Local governments in the USA and around the globe are increasingly active in promoting energy efficiency and sustainability both in their governmental operations and in the wider community. The US Conference of Mayors recently announced that over 1000 cities have signed their climate protection agreement promising to substantially increase energy efficiency and reduce GHG emissions. The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives has an initiative, with over 1200 municipalities worldwide agreeing to measure and report carbon reduction. Considering the obvious importance and dramatically increased reliance on local governments to handle energy and climate issues, we know little about what factors account for local adoption of sustainability programs. We begin to fill this lacuna by addressing three questions:

	▪ What factors explain variation in decicions of cities to allow their GHG emissions to be inventoried?
	▪ How are governmental policies to allow GHG emissions inevtories from local government operations different, from policies focused on emissions produced by residents and businesses in the community at large?
	▪ How does the mobilization of various public entrepreneurs affect the adoptions GHG inventories?

Local climate protection policy

Much of the previous work on energy and climate policy innovation has studied states and nations rather than local governments. State-level studies in the USA have tested explanations based on regional diffusion versus the internal determinants, and report strong support for the proposition that internal factors shape their policy [6]. Lyon and Yin model policy adoption based on air quality, renewable energy interests and unemployment rates, and they find that renewable energy, restructured electricity markets and economic development matter for the adoption of state renewable portfolio standards [101]

Most prior work at the local level focuses on organizational memberships rather than specific actions and commitments. Decisions to join the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, US Conference of Mayors or other organizations as well as factors affecting motivations and benefits of doing so have received attention [7,8]. Recent work has begun to investigate commitments to climate protection [9,10]. Wang found that California cities’ climate actions were influenced by political preference, environmentalism and fiscal capacity [102]. Krause measured the commitment levels of the climate commitment of the Indiana cities by developing a climate protection index [9]. Feiock et al. estimated the effects of climate actions of neighboring jurisdictions, and the career incentives of local officials on the adoption of climate policies in Florida cities [8]. While these studies advanced the literature, their generalizability is limited because their sample frame is limited to a single state and the results are unconfirmed in a national setting.

Only recently has systematic study of city government’s role been undertaken on a national basis. The path breaking work of Portney and his colleagues investigates how the involvement of various groups shapes the types of sustainability initiatives that cities engage in [11–13]. Krause makes an important contribution to this discussion by identifying how state level factors influence city level climate policy [9]. In one of the most cited studies, Zahran et al. account for local sustainability efforts based on climate change risk, climate change stress and civic capacity [7]. Unfortunately, these studies do not take into account differences in local government as defined by the local political institutions that constitute forms of governments. In the USA, the primary distinction in local government structure, is whether the executive is appointed by the governing body (council–manager government) or independently elected (mayor–council government. Local governing structures function as institutions, the ‘rules of game’ that can constrain or encourage climate policy adoption. The omission of local political institutions is an important limitation because institutions have been demonstrated to play a key role in policy choice at every level [14].

The political market approach reviewed in the next section addresses this limitation by focusing on how needs and group demands for environmental public goods are shaped by political institutions [15,16,103]. Recent work has begun to apply this approach to local energy sustainability and climate protection efforts [8,10,17,18].

The literature has also begun to grapple with the question of what energy sustainability means at the local government level [19–21]. Energy sustainability has become a buzz word and, thus, means something different to various stakeholders. Francis and Feiock identify four dimensions to sustainable energy management [22]:

	▪ Efficiency and cost savings from reduced consumption;
	▪ Conservation and environmental sustainability;
	▪ Production from internal or renewable sources;
	▪ Mitigation of global warming.

Governmental versus community carbon emissions

One important factor that has not been given attention in defining local sustainability policy is the sector to which GHG reduction policy is directed – to government operations or to the larger community. Climate policies may be directed to in-house government operations to increase energy efficiency and reduce the emissions from local government, or directed outward to monitor and reduce carbon emissions from non-governmental actors in the larger community. While there is some variation in the approaches that communities take, they are interrelated. Some cities initially focus on behaviors and practices within the government itself [22]. Since, the economic and political benefits, and thus the interested stakeholders may be vastly different across these sectors, previous research that treats them monolithically may not adequately capture the policy dynamics. We address this limitation by differentiating governmental policies to produce GHG emissions inventories from local government operations and policies focused on emissions produced by residents and businesses in the community at large.

This article investigates how these policy commitments for local environmental and energy sustainability are shaped by interest group politics and institutional incentives and the actions of public entrepreneurs. We use the lens of the political market to conceptualize policy change as the outcome of exchanges between governmental policy suppliers and various policy demanders. Political institutions structure these exchange relationships and the distribution of policy benefits across different types of interest groups and polices. In this article we examine GHG inventory policy directed to both government operations and business and residential energy users in the wider community to identify what factors influence responsiveness to policy demand and supply. Climate change mitigation requires emission reduction efforts. While GHG inventories are certainly not the only indicator of such efforts, they are an important starting point for strategic mitigation planning and provide an accounting mechanism for a recurring monitoring process. We expect that these relationships will differ depending on whether sustainability efforts are directed to government operations or the larger community. We hypothesize that council–manager government will increase the likelihood of GHG inventory in government but not in the community. Entrepreneurship on the part of civic, elected officials and bureaucratic are expected to be positively related to sustainability, but the effect of civic entrepreneurs is hypothesized to be limited to the community at large, while the impact of bureaucratic entrepreneurs is hypothesized to be limited to government.

The political market for sustainable energy policy

The political market framework conceptualizes policy as the outcome of exchange between government policy supplies and interest group policy demanders. On the supply side, political systems determine the transaction costs of searching for mutually beneficial agreements, bargaining over outcomes, and monitoring and enforcing them. They also affect the resulting distribution of policy benefits across different types of interest groups because the influence of specific community interests and organized groups is conditional on the structure of political institutions [103].

In its simplest form, the ‘political market’ focuses on the exchange between elected officials and constituents or interest groups. Local government officials supply units of effective support for polices in exchange for instrumental political resources from groups that benefit from those policies. Policy outcomes reflect the relative political powers of the demanders and the willingness of government authorities to supply favorable policies to various interests [21]. Thus, the political market supplements existing work by simultaneously considering policy demand, governmental policy supply, and equilibrium policy outcomes. We apply the political market framework to sustainability by examining together supply and demand forces that influence decisions to produce GHG inventories by government operations and by businesses and residents in the community at at-large. Since, until now, the political market framework been applied almost exclusively in the USA, we focus specifically on climate policy in US cities.

Governmental supply

Political transactions are characterized by public officials’ effort to deliver durable benefits to supporters. Frant argues that this type of exchange is characterized by high power incentives – the public sector equivalent of profit in market transactions [23,24]. In this case, electoral support and other political resources are exchanged for the private benefits that result from a policy. Nevertheless, the opportunities for government officials to gain electoral support through political exchanges are limited by several types of transaction costs.

In the USA, there are two dominant forms of city government. Executive functions in a council–manager government are the responsibility of a manager appointed by, and responsible to, the local government legislative body. The city manager is responsible for administrative functions in the city. Conversely, executive functions in mayor–council government systems are carried out by an elected mayor. These forms of government diverge in terms of motivations, incentives and constraints on local executives. Extant research demonstrates that mayor–council systems promote greater responsiveness to environmental demands. Council–manager systems promote efficiency and innovation in government operations and are more development oriented [15,25,26]. A substantial amount of literature investigates differences in policy preferences and motivations among mayors and city managers. Managers’ career interests and professional norms are aligned with the promotion of efficiency and enhancing the local tax base. Elected executives are sensitive to how policy supply influences electoral support. Mayors are cast as more supportive of neighborhood and environmental consistencies and less attentive to governmental efficiency [15,26]. Building from this foundation, we investigate factors influencing the adoption of GHG inventories targeted to the government or to the community in US cities.

The regional context in which supply occurs is also important to understanding the motivations of local policy makers. Free rider problems are diminished to the extent that there are county-wide or regional collaboration efforts to deal with energy and climate issues. Since each elected official supplies units of policy support, the individual officials supply functions combine to yield an aggregate supply function at the level of the local government. A competitive equilibrium is given by the intersection between the aggregate policy-support supply function and the aggregation of relevant demands. Levels of policy support by individual local government officials are, thus, equivalent to the amounts they are willing to provide at the competitive equilibrium ‘price’, which is defined by the intersection of their supply and demand functions. Aggregate support is simply the sum of their individual levels of effective support. The policy outcome thus depends upon the relative degrees of support generated for various policy alternatives. Different types of political institutions favor different types of interests, thus, local officials vary greatly in the effectiveness of the support they can supply for a given policy.

Policy demands

Demand for property rights is generated by the potential efficiency gains of internalizing externalities [27,28]. This line of argument is frequently used for common-pool resources because the lack of property rights leads to exploitation and conflict. Eggertsson calls these approaches ‘naïve’ because they only consider the gains from economic efficiency and do not address political aspects of property rights such as distributional conflict among groups and interests in society or the collective action problems involved [29].“Interest group theories of property rights” describe more sophisticated accounts that explicitly take into account the efforts of private interests to secure favorable outcomes in the political arena [29]. Interest group demands are driven by the local economic changes described by the property rights perspective, such as land scarcity. In return for political resources, elected officials will alter institutional rules that affect the utility of different social interests. Some interests are better at organizing collective action than others, and are therefore better able to articulate policy preferences and participate in political decision making [29–31].

At the local level, demands for policy change come from diverse groups, including individuals and businesses, development and environmental interests, and neighborhood and homeowner associations, each with its own demand function. Since support beyond that necessary to achieve supply of the desired policy is of less value, there is decreasing willingness to pay for additional policy support. The medium of exchange is instrumental political resources that can support re-election such as monetary and other contributions and political endorsements among others. The literature has specifically focused on the role of business and neighborhood interests in this market.

Interest groups compete in the local arena to capture the benefits and avoid the costs of governmental decisions. These private actors organize their efforts to mold local decisions [29]. In some accounts, a growth coalition of real estate and business interests use their political power to influence regulations and environmental policy decisions [32,33]. Development decisions generate winners and losers, and so environmental policy becomes the object of political exchange, particularly when it has strong distributive implications [34–36].

Public entrepreneurship: civic & policy entrepreneurs

Public entrepreneurs play critical roles within American communities. Public entrepreneurs, like business entrepreneurs, bring innovation and creativity to their work but it is applied to government and political markets rather than private markets. The literature on public entrepreneurs is somewhat fragmented and often does not clearly distinguish among civic entrepreneurs promoting innovation from outside of government and policy entrepreneurs working within government. Moreover, policy entrepreneurs include both elected politicians and administrators. This lack of differentiation is an unfortunate omission because the actions of each type of entrepreneur are based on different motivations even when they pursue the same policy goals.

The number of potential public entrepreneurs is posited to be a function of local demography since certain conditions make entrepreneurs more likely to emerge and be successful [37]. Moreover, as public entrepreneurs encompass citizens, elected officials and administrators, the differences in motivations and incentives of the various public entrepreneurs needs to be accounted for. There is a critical need to better understand the nature and role of public entrepreneurship within communities especially in policy arenas like energy and climate policy characterized by rapid change and great opportunity for innovation. Public entrepreneurs promote dynamic policy change by attempting to win support for their ideas for policy innovation. They use several activities to promote their agenda, such as identifying problems, networking in policy circles, shaping the terms of policy debates, and building coalitions [38].

▪ Civic entrepreneurs

There has been tremendous interest in recent years in civic or social entrepreneurship by non-governmental actors in communities. Urban communities are often home to individuals driven by civic passions. These individuals are committed to improving the governance of their community. They work, individually, through informal networks or are associated with public organizations. Civic entrepreneurs actively engage in and pursue improvement of some aspect of community life. Instead of creating profitable bottom lines, they pursue a broad range of public benefits.

Civic or social entrepreneurs are private individuals who take the initiative to address policy problems in their community although often they have some career interest tied to the specific issues they champion [39]. Although they work outside of government, civic entrepreneurs often introduce new ideas and innovation, and then work to implement the ideas in local government [40]; for example, private sector CEOs are more free to pursue their passions and values, than government officials [41]. Although civic or social entrepreneurship is defined in various ways, the concept recognizes private initiative to address public problems, using traditional entrepreneurial principles [42].

▪ Policy entrepreneurs

Policy entrepreneurs are specific individuals within a government who actively promote specific policy innovations either because of personal commitment or career benefit. Governments at every level are typically seen as the antithetical to entrepreneurship, but several commentators report that government is loaded with public entrepreneurs [43]. Elected and appointed government officials seek to improve government and support governmental actions for the betterment of the community.

Public entrepreneurs can play a significant role in promoting and framing climate initiatives to emphasize the local benefits of carbon reduction policy [11,44]. Several case studies of city climate protection planning efforts report that the presence of a committed policy leader of entrepreneur within the local government is a key to framing the issue and pushing the adoption and implementation of climate protection initiatives [19,20,44]. Bureaucratic and elected entrepreneurs have been shown to play an important role in development of local climate policy [44].

Policy entrepreneurs include administrators who actively encourage the city to become involved in policies such as GHG reduction. Elected political entrepreneurs play a similar role but are elected officials. Elected policy entrepreneurs are politicians who advance policy innovations in pursuit of individual political advancement. The presence of elected and administrative policy entrepreneurs shapes a local government organization’s abilities and priorities. Bureaucratic entrepreneurs are government employees, often in management positions who actively promote policy innovations because of a personal or professional commitment [45]. Local entrepreneurs can make a substantial difference in how environmental policy is framed [4]. Public entrepreneurship motivates others to support innovations [5].

Table 1 summarizes our expectations of new climate change policy is influenced by the form of government and different types of local policy entrepreneurs. Since managers and other government administrators have a strong interest in the costs, efficiency and performance of governmental operations, we expect manager–council governments and bureaucratic entrepreneurs to have strong positive relationships with climate policy directed to government [44]. Administrators pursue large scale investments in energy efficiency in part because they can be financed through the energy savings that they produce. Conversely, civic and electoral entrepreneurs seek positive change and support for the larger community. Thus, we expect strong positive relationships with climate change policy directed to business and residents in the larger community.

Data & methods

The majority of the data for this analysis are derived from a national survey of cities in the USA. The sample frame of 1180 municipalities included all cities with populations over 50,000 and a random sample of cities with populations between 20,000 and 50,000 residents. The survey was conducted in Fall of 2010 with an initial web-based survey and a follow up mail survey. City managers and chief administrative officer ’s were the initial contacts for the survey. A 53% response rate was obtained with 624 surveys, with 610 of the surveys having usable information. Additional data concerning governmental structure were supplied by the National League of Cities and the ICMA. Demographic information was extracted from the 2000 US Census of Population.

Conducting an inventory of GHGs is the critical first step for carbon reduction efforts. We examine whether cities have enacted a policy to allow GHGs to be inventoried and whether it applies to governmental operations, the larger community or both. The survey asked city government officials whether their jurisdiction conducts an inventory of GHG emissions from:

	▪ Governmental operations;
	▪ Business and residences in the city as a whole.

These responses are reported below in Table 2. While almost half of the cities record an inventory of GHGs, 26% do so only for governmental operations.

We also include an array of explanatory variables to capture the supply and demand forces influencing city GHG policy. On the supply side, we include indicators of local government structure and organization. The form of government structure is coded 1 for mayor–council city government and 0 for manager–council city government. Because city managers are more efficiency oriented, we expect council–manager government to be more strongly related to sustainability in governmental operations than the community. Summary statistics for the explanatory variables are presented in Table 3.

Next, we add demand side measures to capture preferences related to sustainability. We include measures of population, racial heterogeneity (proportion of population non-Hispanic white), ages and per-capita personal income. These community characteristics have been linked to preferences for environmental protection in previous research [15]. We include a survey measure of the perceived importance of energy and climate change issues to citizens in the community. We also collect information on support for climate protection efforts by several key stakeholders. The extent of opposition/support from these groups is measured on a five point scale ranging from strongly opposed to strongly supportive. Measures are constructed for large businesses in the community and neighborhood organizations. We expect support from neighborhood interests to increase the likelihood of GHG inventory in both government and the community. Business interests are often obstacles to new standards and regulatory requirements for energy sustainability initiatives. Thus, support from the business community may be especially important for successful carbon reduction activities in the community. We also identify civic, electoral and bureaucratic entrepreneurship. The survey included three questions that asked respondent to identify if specific elected officials, members of city staff, and key members of the public ‘actively encouraged the city to become involved in efforts to reduce GHG emissions’.

Results

We first examine whether any GHG inventory policy is in place, and then more specifically whether a GHG inventory is applied to government operations or to the larger community. The results of these probit estimations of local climate change policy initiatives are presented in Table 4. The first column of Table 4 below reports estimates of whether a city has enacted a policy to create an inventory of GHG emissions.

The findings in the first column of Table 4 indicate that supply and demand characteristics affect whether or not a city enacts any inventory of GHG emissions (either governmental or community). Form of government and civic entrepreneurs do not make a difference, but both elected and administrative entrepreneurs working in government significantly increase the likelihood of inventory adoption. The evidence in Table 4 suggests that public entrepreneurs with different policy motivations are each important factors in determining the adoption of GHGs policy.

We next separate out efforts directed to government operations and the community at large. The results of the profit estimation of GHG policy in governmental operations and in the larger community are presented in columns 2 and 3 of Table 4. The results are quite informative and provide support for our political market explanation and for a number of our specific hypotheses. Form of government and civic entrepreneurs were originally found not to have an effect, but that result reflects the fact that the direction of their influence is different when we separate GHG programs for government operations versus the community. Column 3 reveals that council–manager government reduces the likelihood of carbon inventories for the entire community. Similarly, civic entrepreneurs increase the likelihood of carbon inventories for the entire community, but have no effect on GHG inventories across the entire community.

Table 4 reveals that different factors explain adoption of GHG inventories in government and the community, and that different types of public entrepreneurs have different effects. On the supply side, the council–manager form of government has a significant negative effect for the indicating reluctance to directing sustainability efforts to that community under this governance structure. On the demand side, demographic and interest group factors influence, but none of the specific interest group demands tested influenced the likelihood of adopting a GHG inventory for governmental operations. However, population has a positive relationship consistent with previous findings. The hypotheses about entrepreneurship and form of government are supported. Bureaucratic entrepreneurs support governmental, rather than community, efforts to reduce GHG emissions. Conversely, civic and elected entrepreneurs increase the likelihood of GHG inventory for the community. In addition, manager–council government has a significant and negative direct influence on community based carbon efforts.

Future perspective: climate protection & public management

Local governments are investing resources to promote energy efficiency and to address climate change at a growing rate. From a city’s perspective, this makes sense both economically and environmentally. As discussed above GHG reduction efforts can be targeted to the community at large or to local government operations. A basic and traditional local government approach to energy programs encompasses efforts to reduce energy costs by carrying out governmental programs in a more energy efficient manner and using energy efficient building equipment and vehicles. This approach is non-controversial and is likely to face little political resistance. Unlike other types of environmental policies, GHG reduction efforts can produce direct cost savings in government operations and for citizens. Many of the changes that local governments can make to reduce emissions through their internal operations produce cost savings using existing technology. Taken together, they can yield significant reductions, for example, governmental operations for the city of Los Angeles, USA, account for approximately 17 million metric tons of CO₂, which is almost a third of the carbon output from the community. The next 5–10 years will see transformation cities that are led by local government. The political and economic motivations of city government officials is already producing calls to lead by example. In a decade, many cities will be carbon neutral and actively guiding residents and business on the path to sustainability with leadership by example. This innovation will also provide a great laboratory for policy research as local policy experimentation will increasingly inform theoretical understandings and practice at the state, national and international levels.

Conclusion

Our central findings – that different factors explain local climate change policy in government and the community, and that different types of public entrepreneurs have different effects – have potentially important implications for advancing the political market approach to local policy and for our understanding of local energy sustainability. The existing literature has combined together climate change programs directed to government and the community rather than differentiate them. Our findings suggest that these are two fundamentally different approaches. The factors that explain sustainability in government operations are substantially different than those that explain community-wide efforts.

On the supply side, the results reveal that while the council–manager form of government has a significant negative effect on the adoption of carbon inventory in the community at large, it has no influence on its adoption in government. This reveals that council–manager governments tend to resist directing sustainability resources to that community at large.

Demographic and interest group demand side factors influence local policy choices but the effect is diverged with exceptions in a few instances. None of the specific interest group demands influenced carbon policy in governmental operations. However, population has a positive relationship with the policy choice of carbon inventory consistent with previous findings. Larger populations under age 16, reduce carbon policy adoption: however, more targeted measures of age distributions in the population may be needed to draw conclusions about this effect.

We also report strong evidence confirming our expectations about entrepreneurship and form of government. Bureaucratic entrepreneurs are likely to support governmental facilities for reducing GHG emission but not community efforts. This relationship is reversed for civic and elected entrepreneurs who advocate for community carbon inventory systems. Both civic and electoral entrepreneurship have significant positive effects on GHG inventory policies for the community.

The results for the form of government are also quite interesting. It has long been believed that council–manager governments with professionally trained public managers are more efficiency oriented and insulated from political pressure. Managers are more likely to promote policies to reduce operational costs in the public sector and are less likely to accommodate community interests and group demands than mayors. Mayors seeking to cultivate community wide electoral coalitions may be more receptive to climate protection demands. Despite the general acceptance of this conventional wisdom, empirical evidence to support the predicted differences in policy has been extremely hard to come by. Our results begin to fill this lacuna. We report evidence that form of government is an important direct influence on the approach that communities take to sustainability. Council–manager government has a significant and negative direct influence on community based carbon efforts. Thus it is mayor–council forms with a city-wide elected mayor that promote climate change programs in the larger community.

Climate protection programs also produce ‘co-benefits’ by enhancing and facilitating the operation and performance of other local policies and programs. Moreover, investments in energy efficiency improvements often have relatively short payback periods. Thus the financial benefits from achieving energy efficiency can counteract the collective action problems associated with climate protection and undercut the argument that environmental and economic development concerns are in conflict.

Of course, potential cost savings can vary and financial constraints may make investments in energy efficiency difficult, no matter how prudent. The pursuit of a climate change agenda can be a costly endeavour with high up-front costs and savings that may not be apparent for several years. Thus, some municipal policy makers may be reluctant to pursue programs that may divert resources from other policy priorities.

A second and complimentary strategy targets businesses and residents in the community seeking to shape constituents’ energy use and behaviors. Several domains of primarily local authority such as planning and zoning, waste management, building codes and building inspection and enforcement provide key mechanisms to reduce community energy consumption by encouraging or incentivizing residents to use more energy efficient buildings and technologies and to reduce vehicle miles traveled. For example, local governments have powers to regulate building construction and renovation through their authority to define land uses, approve new development and enforce building codes. A number of locals have adopted green building programs that create incentives or mandates (or both) to improve the environmental performance in governmental, residential, and commercial construction and retrofitting projects. In addition, since reductions in energy use are built into the physical environment, new construction or rehabilitation of existing building stocks creates permanent savings.

The enormous attention now being given to energy and climate change policy at all levels of government leads to legitimate concern that local government initiatives in the community may be little more than symbolic actions designed to appeal to environmental constituencies and conform to popular policy trends and expectations. Undoubtedly, this is true in some cases. For example, a recent evaluation of the implementation of climate protection programs in Florida cities that had signed on to the US Conference of Mayors’ climate protection agreement found that over 10% of the cities listed as participants had yet to pass a non-binding resolution affirming the agreement.

The old adage that charity begins at home has a parallel in local climate change policy efforts. Climate protection policy is sometimes revolutionary, producing bold and dramatic shifts in local policy. More often, sustainability follows an evolutionary path beginning with the implementation of energy efficiency measures in government operations [22,46]. There are virtues to this incremental process. Grounding sustainable energy management in efficiency, cost savings helps builds support for sustainable energy policy in the larger community. Energy savings in government operations represent low hanging fruit in that significant GHG reductions are possible often with only modest cost. Reductions in energy consumption translate directly into costs savings for taxpayers. These costs savings then provide mechanisms to overcome political or ideological opposition to sustainability initiatives in government and the community.

Once the credibility and effectiveness of in-house efforts are established, the next step is to build on this momentum to extend efforts to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions in the community at large. The result is that commitments are more permanent, rather than a passing fad and energy programs are less subject to shifts or reversals when new leaders or new parties prevail in local elections.

Table 1.  Anticipated relationships with governmental versus community carbon inventory.

	Policy adoption for GHG inventory in government	Policy adoption for GHG inventory in the community
City manager	Positive	Negative
Civic entrepreneur	None	Positive
Elected entrepreneur	Positive	Positive
Bureaucratic entrepreneur	Positive	None

Table 2.  City government adoptions of GHG inventory policy.

	Frequency (%)
No GHG inventory policy	275 (50.93)
GHG inventory for governmental operations	141 (26.11)
GHG inventory for community businesses and residences	41 (7.59)
GHG inventory for both government and community	83 (15.37)
Total	540 (100)

Data from: The 2010 survey conducted by Richard C Feiock [104].

Table 3.  Descriptive statistics for variables used to explain GHG inventory policies.

	Mean (parameter estimate)	Standard deviation (parameter estimate)	Minimum value	Maximum value
Council–manager government	0.62	0.48	0	1
Civic entrepreneur	0.46	0.51	0	1
Elected entrepreneur	0.50	0.50	0	1
Bureaucratic entrepreneur	0.64	0.48	0	1
Population	104,325.2	391,788.1	3856	8,008,278
Proportion age 16 and under	0.22	0.04	0.05	0.33
Proportion non-hispanic white	0.70	0.21	0.04	0.98
Per capita personal income	22,479.55	8,367.82	9,462	77,092
Problem severity	2.50	0.82	1	4
Homeowner association support	3.63	0.81	1	5
Business association support	4.10	0.79	0	5

Data from: The International City Management Association, 2009 Municipal Yearbook, The US Census of 2000 Census of Population and Housing.

Table 4.  Probit regression results: GHG inventory in government and community.

	Any GHG inventory (parameter estimate)	Government GHG inventory (parameter estimate)	Community GHG inventory (parameter estimate)
Council–manager	-.11 (.18)	.06 (.17)	-.32 (.18)^‡
Civic entrepreneur	.20 (.19)	.28 (.18)	.38 (.20)^‡
Elected entrepreneur	.51 (.19)^‡	.22 (.19)	.58 (.23)^§
Bureaucratic entrepreneur	.70 (.19)^§	.99 (.20)^§	-.04 (.23)
Problem severity^†	.19 (.12)	.20 (.12)^‡	.11 (.12)
Population (log)	.44 (.12)^§	.31 (.10)^§	.30 (.11)^§
Age	-4.14 (2.12)^‡	-2.52 (2.01)	-6.11 (2.19)^‡
Non-hispanic white	-.42 (.46)	-.58 (.45)	.00 (.52)
Per capital personal income	.00 (.00)^‡	.00 (.00)^‡	.11 (.00)
Homeownership association	.17 (.11)	.06 (.10)	.15 (.11)
Business association	.12 (.11)	.14 (.11)	-.01 (.12)
Observations	450	450	450
Log likelihood	-166.90	-173.97	-151.74

Note: standard errors in parentheses.

^†Survey measure of perceptions of energy/climate change problem severity.

^‡p< .05

^§P < .01

Policy entrepreneur

Specific individuals who actively promote specific policy innovations either owing to personal commitment or career benefit. Public entrepreneurs can play a significant role in promoting and framing climate.

Sustainability

Includes conservation of the environment, place-based economic development and promotion of social equity.

GHG inventory

Internationally accepted methods by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to calculate the emissions and sinks in a given year.

Form of government

In the USA, there are two dominant forms of city government. Executive functions in a council-manager government is the responsibility of a manager appointed by, and responsible to, the local government legislative body. Executive functions in mayor–council government systems are carried out by an elected mayor.

Executive summary

Local climate protection policy

	▪ Urban areas are major contributors of GHGs.
	▪ Local governments as policy entrepreneurs have localized resources to mobilize an array of powers and functions that make them well-suited to play a role in climate protection and energy management.

Governmental versus community carbon emissions

	▪ Local governments in the USA and around the globe are increasingly active in promoting energy efficiency and sustainability both in their governmental operations and in the wider community.
	▪ There are differences between governmental policies to allow GHG emissions from local government operations to be inventoried and policies focused on emissions produced by residents and businesses in the community at large.

The political market for sustainable energy policy

	▪ Political institutions structure incentives and benefits across different types of interest groups and policies.
	▪ On the supply side, political systems determine the transaction costs of searching for mutually beneficial agreements, bargaining over outcomes, and monitoring and enforcing decisions to create an inventory of GHGs.
	▪ On the demand side, political aspects of property rights, such as distributional conflict among interest groups influence decisions to create an inventory of GHGs.
	▪ Elected mayors and civic entrepreneurs promote carbon reduction in the larger community, but managers and bureaucratic entrepreneurs focus their efforts on the carbon emissions of governmental organizations.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Nathan Francis and Anthony Kassekert for their work on this project. This paper was prepared for the Pathways to Low Carbon Cities Workshop, Hong Kong, China, December 13–14, 2010.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This project was supported by the IBM Center for the Business of Government and the US National Science Foundation under grant SES 0943427. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.