Energy Office helps correct error in ICLEI tool
When the Southeast Michigan Regional Energy Office started assisting three member communities to write climate action plans, our first step was to seek out organizations with existing climate planning resources.
We joined ICLEI: Local Governments for Sustainability because we knew that they are the worldwide leaders in doing Climate and Sustainablity Planning work with local governments throughout the US and world. The Regional Energy Office became a regional affiliate with ICLEI, in order to use and market their tools to our member governments.
As we embarked on completing the greenhouse gas assessments for the Cities of Ypsilanti, Southgate, and Hazel Park, we found many of the forms and tools that ICLEI has developed over the years to be invaluable. The Greenhouse Gas calculator and database CACP, for example, was essential in completing the GHG assessments.
ICLEI also created a series of spreadsheets called the Master Data Workbook which serve as data repositories for every category of emissions that a city may encounter. We found this to be very helpful and modified it to create the charts and graphs that we wanted to produce for the final reports.
ICLEI is an invaluable resource for local governments
However, as we were extensively using the Employee Commute tab to understand impacts from employee commute, we found a fatal error that multiplied where it should have divided, thereby inflating the GHG impacts of the employee commute by 50 times or more!
We notified ICLEI and they have corrected their tool. Thus, the work that the Regional Energy Office does has impacted many governments around the world.
We are proud to have the experience and technical expertise on staff to be able to troubleshoot and modify technical tools where needed. It shows our commitment to creating a quality product that has gone through a rigorous verification process.
Keep up the good work, staff!
Subscribe to our RSS feed
Follow us on Twitter
