Bay Area planners: Download this free Handbook for guidance on how to ensure new development projects meet current and future GHG reduction targets.

The Early Action Handbook, designed specifically for Bay Area planners, provides local planning officials with guidance and tools to implement a small set of critical measures that can be applied to new development quickly, ahead of longer-term planning processes for a general plan or climate action plan. These measures can help ensure that projects approved in the near term will have the potential to further reduce energy use and GHG in the long term.

Why We Developed This Handbook

As California establishes aggressive targets for reducing GHGs, the policies and tools being developed under AB 32 and other state initiatives to guide local government land use planning are at least a few years away. However, new development projects don’t wait for comprehensive policies to be developed.

Every subdivision and building that is built in the interim is likely to be here for the next 50 to 100 years. Simple measures taken today will give communities the opportunity to meet and exceed GHG reduction targets in the future. If the potential for future energy and GHG reduction in new buildings remains limited by current policies, it will be harder and more expensive for communities to achieve long-term GHG reduction targets and more dollars will leave local economies as energy prices rise.

What’s Inside the Handbook

The Handbook provides the information needed to implement each early action measure including the concepts and technologies involved; why the measure is important; the potential benefits & costs; the existing or required legal authority and steps for taking action. Example ordinances, implementing documents from other communities and other useful information are discussed in the Handbook and provided in a digital Resource Library.  The measures covered are limited to critical early actions within the authority and control of the local planning process.

Additional resources included with the Handbook:

• Measure Impact Calculator
  An Excel-based workbook designed to provide regional data and calculations to support analysis of the measures recommended in the Handbook. The workbook models the potential energy, dollar and GHG savings to the community from early actions, and the loss of GHG reduction and economic benefits to the community if no action is taken.
• Reference Library
  Nearly 100 useful reference documents are included in digital form to save you the time of searching for them. Hyperlinks in the Handbook allow you to quickly open and review relevant documents without leaving the Handbook.
• Annotated Bibliography
  A comprehensive annotated bibliography of all references in the Handbook is provided in a separate document and all references are linked to documents included in the digital Reference Library.

Download & Technical Information

The Handbook is packaged in a zip file (70MB) containing a folder with the Handbook, Bibliography and Excel workbook, and subfolders containing the Resource Library documents. The uncompressed files require about 84MB of disk space. All files (except the Workbook) are in a pdf format and have been tested using Adobe Reader Versions 8 and 9. All files can be copied and printed.

Technical Assistance

For additional information or questions, please contact ICLEI Regional Officer Amruta Sudhalkar at amruta.sudhalkar@iclei.org.