Model-based Climate Action Plans for ambitious local emissions reduction: A project-focused approach

Cities are increasingly developing Climate Action Plans to coordinate local emissions reduction; however, planners lack methodological guidance for consolidating many individual climate projects into a single plan. To close this gap, we frame the task of developing Climate Action Plans as a scheduling problem that determines optimal start times for emissions abatement projects given a specific budget. We characterize projects from empirical European data and find that considering uncertainty in cost and emissions abatement potential supports plans that are both ambitious and less prone to budget overruns than when neglecting uncertainty. We also identify difference between popular mitigation actions and those suggested under an optimal scheduling framework, which indicates potential for higher emission abatement ambition than observed in current Climate Action Plans. Our framework builds on cities' growing interest in computational models as decision-support tools while retaining the project-specific focus prominent in current stakeholder consultation practices.