Reducing Our Community's Contributions to Climate Change, Shaping Our Future

 

Background

The Memphis Area Climate Action Plan is a framework for achieving significant reductions in our community’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fostering a more equitable, healthy, and prosperous community. The plan provides information on existing emissions; sets short-, mid-, and long-term targets for reducing emissions; and outlines specific actions in three sectors – energy, transportation, and waste – to achieve these goals. The Plan sets the following targets for reducing GHG emissions below 2016 levels: 15% reduction by 2020, 51% reduction by 2035, and 71% reduction by 2050. The Annual Report tracks progress toward the goals and targets in the Plan and includes the most recent community-wide GHG Emissions Inventory.

Reducing our community’s contributions to climate change will help mitigate and improve our resilience to flooding, extreme heat and drought, and damaging wind – all of which are projected to become more frequent and more severe over the next 50 years. Additionally, reducing GHG emissions has the potential to positively impact our residents’ quality of life through improved air quality, cleaner neighborhoods, and better health outcomes.

 

Community-wide Greenhouse Gas Inventory

To reduce our community’s carbon footprint, we first have to know where we stand in terms of GHG emissions. The images below shows Shelby County’s community-wide GHG inventories in metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MT CO2e) for the year 2016 and 2019. Additionally, the images show the progress we have made to meet the reduction targets set forth in the Climate Action Plan. The data available and methodologies used to estimate community-wide inventories continues to evolve as cities and researchers around the world find ways to improve the estimates. Staff revised the 2016 baseline inventory to match the same methodology used for the 2019 emissions estimate.

 

Graph depicting the sources of greenhouse gas emissions

 

 

 

Table depicting community-wide GHG emissions estimates