Local efforts in the transportation and residential-housing sectors could help the United States meet the greenhouse gas reduction commitment it made as a Paris Climate Accord signatory, according to research from John Landis and Erick Guerra of the University of Pennsylvania and David Hsu of MIT.

For housing, the researchers determined a baseline for each metropolitan area using U.S. Census data and statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Agency’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey and then estimated the effect of adopting energy-conservation and retrofitting standards with and without the Clean Power Plan. Minus CPP, the effort could reduce housing-sector emissions by 31 percent, on average, by the year 2030; with it, that number jumps to a 46-percent reduction.

“Nationally,” Landis said, “that would help put us on track to exceed the Paris Accord.”

Source: To drop CO2 emissions, look to local transportation and housing