SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A new report found that the City of Syracuse’s municipal operations reduced their greenhouse-gas emissions by 67 percent and the overall community posted an emission reduction of 29 percent, both when compared to 2010 emissions.
Those figures are “exceeding the targets by a wide margin,” the office of Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh announced on Thursday.
The findings from the 2010 Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventory (GHGI) provided information the city needed to set emission-reduction targets of 40 percent for municipal operations and 7 percent for the community by 2020.
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Walsh released the 2024 GHGI, described as “an important step toward the sequential development of a consolidated municipal and community Climate Action Plan.”
These efforts are a part of the city’s recently launched Sustainable Syracuse Initiative and its “commitment to develop a comprehensive and strategic list of actions for city government and the Syracuse community to implement around sustainability.”
“The Syracuse community should be proud of these results and the collective work that went into achieving these unprecedented measures,” Walsh said in the announcement. “These reductions stem from years of private and public investments in climate resiliency. With this updated GHGI report, we can build on these findings with new and existing partners to make Syracuse a more sustainable and prosperous community for all.”
The 2024 GHGI report was funded in part by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Climate Smart Communities Program and completed by C&S Companies.
Reduction factors
Walsh’s office cited the report as indicating the city’s reduced carbon footprint was the result of “major shifts in operations” coupled with many other “small but significant” actions to reduce energy and fuel consumption. Syracuse’s conversion to LED (light-emitting diode) streetlights and traffic signals, implementation of a refrigerant management system, procurement of fuel-efficient vehicles, optimization of waste-collection routes, and the expansion of the urban-forestry program all “played a role” in municipal-emission reductions.
The findings also revealed the community-emission reductions can be attributed to National Grid sourcing its electricity from renewable-energy sources; the purchase of more fuel-efficient vehicles; the utilization of micro-mobility opportunities emerging within city-limits; and commercial and household investment in green technologies such as LED lightbulbs, heat pumps, and the installation of solar panels.
In addition to reducing GHG emissions, these efforts all contribute to lowering energy costs, the City of Syracuse said.
