More than 100 global cities are now powered by 70% renewable energy.
Data published on Tuesday by the not-for-profit environmental impact researcher CDP found that 101 of the more than 570 cities on its books sourced at least 70% of their electricity from renewable sources in 2017, compared to 42 in 2015.
According to theguardian.com, CDP attributed the increase to both more cities reporting to CDP as well as a global shift towards renewable energy.
The data was a “comprehensive picture of what cities are doing with regards to renewable energy,” Nicolette Bartlett, CDP’s director of climate change told the Guardian.
That large urban centers as disparate as Auckland, Nairobi, Oslo and Brasília were successfully moving away from fossil fuels was held up as evidence of a changing tide.
Just this past summer, the RE100 global initiative, which was created by The Climate Group in partnership with CDP in 2014, reached a major milestone. A total of 100 companies joined the initiative, committing publicly to source all of their electricity from renewables by a set year.
In July, Dutch paint and coatings company AkzoNobel, French insurance company AXA, luxury fashion brand Burberry, and the brewer Carlsberg Group all signed on. Since then, even more companies have joined the RE100, bringing the total to 118. Given that the cost of wind and solar power went down last year, the uptick in businesses jumping for renewables makes sense.
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