Three California cities have received $1 million “Cool Cities” grants to attain carbon neutrality by 2030. The cities of Los Angeles, Irvine, and Petaluma won money after each city’s several months-long efforts. These three cities beat out more than 40 entries across the state in a competitive grant program.
Cool City Challenge aims to encourage an ambitious, exploratory, and ground-breaking approach to reach community-wide, inclusive sustainability.
All applicants were supposed to put forward a cross-sector leadership team, 200 block leaders, and 25 community partner organizations. They were also asked to entice their city councils to pass resolutions that would help achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.
During this Cool City Challenge, the cities were required to submit plans that did not include CO2 offsets. The $1 million awards are provided by the Empowerment Institute. This will help fund informational meetings to ensure residents identify the ways to help the city reach its goal.
In the meetings, the teams will also discuss, and implement sustainability concepts like energy efficiency, and water conservation.
According to California Governor Gavin Newsom, the Cool City Challenge is “an exemplary how-to guide for local communities to make a significant impact on climate change. It demonstrates the untapped potential of citizens to engage in an effective and achievable way.”
David Gershon, the CEO of Empowerment Institute, said, “These cities deeply inspired me with their dedication to such a rigorous application process, their out-of-the-box moonshot thinking, and the high-caliber leaders spanning the public, private and civic sectors they attracted to their moonshot teams,”
