Naperville is Lagging Behind

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning held a webinar this morning talking about release of their analysis of climate related data for the region. The group reports that the region is not on track to reduce CO2 emissions. With respect to Naperville, electrical power generation lead emissions, chiefly due to coal fired electrical power. Natural gas usage is trending the wrong way, showing increases over time. On transportation, further improvement can be obtained by getting people out of their cars i.e. walkable neighborhoods focused on people.

The charts below show emission for the counties included in the region. Both DuPage and Will Counties show above average per capita emissions in the graph on the left. The right image shows categories of emissions for Naperville as compared with Will County.

Jodi Trendler has called for a transition away from electricity generated through coal fired power. Additionally, Naperville needs to adopt mixed use development that creates destination neighborhoods that focus on people instead of cars. Let's take the aspects of downtown Naperville that we all admire and apply those city planning lessons to development in other areas. Further, we need changes made to our building codes that improve energy efficiency of new construction.

If you believe we need change, vote for Jodi!