DOI: 10.25338/b8ss6t
title: Assessing the three Es— environment, economy, and equity – in CAPs Survey, Responses, and Results

description: The range of efforts to address climate change can span from international
 collaboration to personal action. This study looks at environmental
 efforts at the local jurisdictional level. Over the last decade, cities
 and counties have released climate action plans (CAPs) to set emissions
 reduction targets and outline actions that will help meet those goals.
 However, the range of information included in CAPs varies dramatically
 across jurisdictions. This study examines CAPs released by jurisdictions
 in California, focusing on the quantity and quality of information
 presented on the expected GHG emissions reduction, cost, and equity
 impacts of proposed climate actions. This research develops a framework to
 assess their inclusion, which could also be used to guide future CAP
 development, and develops a set of guiding questions to promote the
 inclusion of equity themes in climate action planning and implementation.
 To gauge the current state of climate action by local jurisdictions, a
 survey was implemented to better understand the (i) relative consideration
 of factors in climate action planning and implementation, (ii) factors
 which affect the inclusion of equity in climate action, (iii) the primary
 sources of funding for CAP implementation, and (iv) which factors affect
 the likelihood that an action is implemented. The survey found that, of
 the considered factors, expected emissions reduction is considered most
 during planning and implementation, while external impacts are considered
 the least. When comparing factors between planning and implementation,
 cost is significantly more important during implementation. For both
 phases, equity impacts received average levels of consideration. Free
 responses revealed that recent pushes by community members has encouraged
 local jurisdictions to include more equity themes in their climate
 planning. However, lifecycle equity, which considers local impacts across
 the lifecycle of an action, and thus beyond jurisdictional borders, is
 considered infeasible due to resource limitations and beyond the scope of
 local planning. Better equity planning would require systemic change at
 the jurisdiction, industry, state, and federal levels.
description: Files include:<br><br>Word format of the survey sent
 out to representatives from local jurisdictions. Excel
 sheets containing data collected from local jurisdictions in California
 through an online survey. Prior to uploading, identifying information was
 removed to preserve the anonymity of respondents. This process included:
 removing the IP address, latitude, and longitude data for each response;
 and redacting the name of each jurisdiction, any mentions of the
 jurisdiction’s name in responses (including websites), mentions of City or
 County to further protect anonymity, and any other potentially identifying
 information (e.g., reference to the region they belong to, partners,
 specific organizations, etc.).  An Excel
 sheet containing much of the processed data to identify trends and graph
 results from t-tests performed in R. Excel with the
 scores for emissions, equity, and cost data inclusion in CAPs that were
 determined using a framework developed by the authors. These scores were
 compared to demographic data collected and published by the US Census
 Bureau. Linear regressions were performed in R.