This story is republished from NM Political Report, a nonprofit news outlet, as a part of our commitment to bringing you the best in independent news coverage that matters to Albuquerque.
By Hannah Grover / NM Political Report
A new report ranks Albuquerque second among mid-sized cities for actions taken to address climate change.
The 2024 City Clean Energy Scorecard released Tuesday by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy ranks 75 cities based on various criteria including transportation and building policies. The cities evaluated all have populations of at least 100,000 people.
“We are taking stock of the policies, programs, plans, projects, that…75 large cities, to be specific across the US, are taking on to address reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing energy use,” Stefen Samarripas, one of the report’s authors, said in a press conference.
The report tracks progress made from July 2021 until Sept. 30, 2023. The policies that were evaluated were in place by Sept. 30, 2023.
The top-ranked city was San Francisco, California, while the city with the lowest rank was Akron, Ohio.
Of the 75 cities, 18 of them were mid-sized metro areas like Albuquerque. When compared to all 75 cities, Albuquerque ranks 43rd.
The report also uses Albuquerque as an example of a model city for encouraging and incentivizing energy efficiency building retrofits in mid-sized metros.
This year’s report increases the focus on energy policies that include racial and social equity.
There were 250 possible points and Albuquerque scored 65. Its highest score was in the community energy infrastructure, where it scored 20 out of 40 points. This is in part due to programs offered by the Public Service Company of New Mexico to help low-income customers and multifamily properties. The report highlights how the city and PNM have worked together on the Solar Direct project, which focuses on providing cleaner sources of power to businesses that consume larger amounts of electricity.
Additionally, the report states that Albuquerque has participated in a taskforce to enact more efficient building codes and has installed 6.6 megawatts of solar on city facilities. It also has 25 megawatts of off site solar.
ACEEE states that Albuquerque has the most room to improve in the transportation sector.