Green City Index: By The Numbers
Last month, Siemens released the “Green City Index” which assesses and compares 27 major U.S. and Canadian cities on environmental performance and policies across nine categories – CO2 emissions, energy, land use, buildings, transport, water, waste, air quality and environmental governance. Below are just a few numbers that detail some of the major highlights of the study.
*Note: The max score attainable for any category was 100, the lowest 0.
23 of the cities were from the United States.
83.8: San Francisco’s overall rating placing it as the highest ranked city overall.
55.4: The difference between San Francisco’s overall rating and Detroit’s overall rating which ranked last among all the cities surveyed.
3: The number of cities (New York, Denver, and Washington D.C) that tied for first in the “Environmental Governance” category with perfect scores of 100.
5.6: The lowest score assigned to any city for any category (St. Louis for “Environmental Governance”).
8.1 Metric Tons: The average amount of Co2 that residents of all Canadien cities emit per year. That number is almost half of the 16 metric ton average that residents of all American cities emit per year.
78: The average overall score for Canadian cities which is 8 points higher then the American overall average of 70.
12%: The average percentage of green space among all cities surveyed.
90%: The percentage of people commuting by car to work in the American cities surveyed compared to Canadian cities at 74% and Europe at 43%.
155 Gallons: The average amount of water used by citizens of the surveyed cities per day. That number is almost twice as much as in other parts of the world with Europe averaging 76 gallons, Asia with 73 gallons and Latin America at 70 gallons.
