The City of Bellevue, Washington, and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, with funding from the Energy Department’s Cities Leading through Energy Analysis and Planning (Cities-LEAP) program, developed a toolkit to give cities more insight into what is driving changes in local greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from year to year.

The toolkit allows cities to attribute changes between two inventories to the impacts of policies and programs along with other external drivers, such as economic activity and weather (see Figure 1). This analysis will support policymakers to better communicate about their progress and refine their policy approaches.