Falls of the James Group Blog

Urban Dwellers Are Good, Richmonders Not So Much

While cities are hot spots for global warming, people living in them turn out to be greener than their country cousins.

Each resident of the largest 100 largest metropolitan areas is responsible on average for 2.47 tons of carbon dioxide in energy consumption each year, 14 percent below the 2.87 ton U.S. average, researchers at the Brookings Institution say in a report being released Thursday.

Those 100 cities still account for 56 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide pollution.

But their greater use of mass transit and population density reduce the per person average. “It was a surprise the extent to which emissions per capita are lower,” Marilyn Brown, a professor of energy policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of the report, said in an interview.

Metropolitan area emissions of carbon dioxide are highest in the eastern U.S., where people rely heavily on coal for electricity, the researchers found. They are lower in the West, where weather is more favorable and where electricity and motor fuel prices have been higher.

But, look at Richmond in particular…

A study out Thursday shows that Richmond, Virginia and the northern Virginia-Washington D.C. region are among the metropolitan areas with the highest levels of carbon emissions per capita.

The study by the Brookings Institution says the Washington metro area is 12th and Richmond is 15th in terms of carbon emissions per person.

The numbers suggest that Virginians are extremely dependent on driving and use dirty sources of electricity that expands the area’s so-called carbon footprint. The per capita numbers are smaller in major cities like New York and Los Angeles in part because of mass transit and population.

So, Richmonders, are you getting the message?

It’s never too late to change.