Clinton Climate Initiative

The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) creates and advances solutions to the core issues driving climate change, by working with governments and businesses around the world to develop programs that are both economically and environmentally sustainable - while also helping to reduce our reliance on oil, save money for individuals and governments, create jobs, and grow economies.

The chiller room is part of energy efficiency retrofits made to the city of Houston’s City Hall building. Since 2007, Houston has been working with the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) to implement an energy efficiency retrofit project for the city's portfolio of 271 buildings. CCI, in partnership with energy service contractors Schneider TAC and Siemens, has helped Houston lead the way in clean energy projects.

Part of Houston's efforts to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions include implementing plug-in hybrid fleet vehicles. The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) Cities Program and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) expanded their alliance to more effectively engage cities in reducing their carbon emissions.

With project support from the Clinton Foundation, the city of Houston is working with contractors Siemens and Schneider TAC to retrofit its entire portfolio of buildings by 2014. This project will reduce the city’s overall energy use by more than 30 percent and save millions of dollars per year in utility and maintenance costs.

President Clinton speaks about the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions during the 2011 C40 Large Cities Climate Summit in Sao Paulo. The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group is a network of cities working to reduce urban carbon emissions and to adapt to climate change. Most of the world’s population now lives in cities, which occupy 2 percent of the world’s landmass but contribute to more than two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Tree farming projects in Kenya help to make forest conservation and restoration profitable for local communities. The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) is currently working on 10 sustainable forest management projects encompassing 644,000 hectares of land that will benefit more than 353,000 people in forest-dependent communities around the world.

The city of Chicago’s iconic Daley Center is undergoing a retrofit that will reduce the building’s carbon footprint by more than 2,500 metric tons per year and save the Chicago Public Building Commission $9 million over a 15-year period.

The city of Chicago’s iconic Daley Center is undergoing a retrofit that will reduce the building’s carbon footprint by more than 2,500 metric tons per year and save the Chicago Public Building Commission $9 million over a 15-year period. C40-CCI Cities works with municipal governments to retrofit public buildings with up to date products, technologies, and systems that reduce emissions and deliver significant energy and cost savings. Other major building retrofit projects have taken places in Houston and New York.

By implementing new streetlight technologies, C40-CCI Cities works to raise the efficiency standard for outdoor lighting while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving on energy costs. By replacing conventional incandescent traffic signals with LEDs, cities can reduce traffic signal energy use by as much as 90 percent and reduce maintenance costs by approximately 75 percent.

The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) is supporting the city of Houston in its effort to provide new clean-energy lighting technology. CCI has helped Houston reduce its overall energy use by more than 30 percent, saving millions of dollars per year in utility and maintenance costs.

By implementing new streetlight technologies, C40-CCI Cities works to raise the efficiency standard for outdoor lighting while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving on energy costs. By replacing conventional incandescent traffic signals with LEDs, cities can reduce traffic signal energy use by as much as 90 percent and reduce maintenance costs by approximately 75 percent.

Testing for carbon monoxide is part of the Clinton Climate Initiative’s (CCI) Arkansas Home Energy Affordability Loan (HEAL) program. The HEAL program encourages businesses to take steps to reduce their energy consumption, then use the savings to provide loans to their employees to perform the same energy-saving procedures on their homes.

In Latin America, the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) is partnering with local governments to green transportation systems through the deployment of hybrid buses. By 2016, the program aims to deploy at least 9,300 hybrid buses in cities across Latin America. Currently, the program is active in Bogota, Curitiba, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paolo, and will soon be tested in Mexico City in a World Bank program.

As part of the The Clinton Climate Initiative's (CCI) Arkansas Home Energy Affordability Loan Program (HEAL), a contractor insulates a building to prevent heating and cooling loss. The HEAL program is reducing green house gas emissions and improving energy performance in commercial and residential buildings.

Dozens of community members in areas around the Enoosupukia Forest Trust in Kenya engage in reforestation efforts. Through Clinton Climate Initiative’s (CCI) Forestry Program, community members are taught the values of keeping and maintaining local forests.

Two Buddist monks walk through the Oddar Meanchay Forest Preserve in Cambodia. The monks are leaders of the Oddar Meanchay Forest Community, part of the Clinton Climate Initiative's (CCI) Forestry Program.

Since cars, trucks, buses and trains represent nearly 12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, C40-CCI is working in Latin America to launch low-carbon transportation solutions to help cities reduce their carbon emissions. C40-CCI Cities launched a Hybrid and Electric Bus Test Program in June 2011 in four Latin American cities – Bogota, Curitiba, Rio de Janerio, and Sao Paulo – to reduce carbon footprint of public transportation by developing cost-effective public and non-motorized transit systems which reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase the quality of urban lives. Photo credit: AnnalisaFoto AB

A partnership between the city of Los Angeles and the Clinton Climate Initiative, a pioneering LED streetlight retrofit project was the largest streetlight retrofit undertaken by a city to date, replacing traditional streetlights with environmentally friendly LED lights. It will reduce CO2 emissions by 40,500 tons and save $10 million annually, through reduced maintenance costs and 40% energy savings.

Through the Clinton Climate Initiative, the Empire State Building worked with partners to refurbish each of its 6,514 double-hung, dual-pane windows, 26,056 panes of glass in total, in an effort to make the building certifiably green. The retrofit project of this iconic landmark is reducing the building’s energy use by 38 percent and energy bills by $4.4 million a year, while also preventing 105,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the next 15 years.

The C40-CCI Cities Waste Management Program aims to reduce and prevent greenhouse gas emissions from municipal solid waste, through infrastructure, policies, and alternative technologies such as recycling, compositing, and capturing and using methane to generate power. Waste in landfills around the world is the third largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions – 23 times more potent as a greenhouse gas agent than CO2 – so the impact of this program is profound.

President Clinton and Mayor Bloomberg at the inauguration of the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) and C40 Leadership Group partnership. CCI’s first program was a partnership with the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group to demonstrate through concrete projects that reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the world’s largest cities is good economics. Today, in addition to cities, CCI also focuses on clean energy development and forestry, key areas in the fight against climate change.

The Clinton Climate Initiative is improving energy efficiency in iconic buildings such as The Merchandise Mart in Chicago through retrofits. Today, more than one-third of worldwide energy is consumed in buildings, accounting for more than 15 percent of global carbon emissions. CCI is working with cities and governments to implement building retrofits to make buildings more energy efficient – providing both environmental and economic impacts.

The Oddar Meanchey Forest Community president and Buddhist monk, Bun Saluot stands in front of a protected tree. At the invitation of the governments of Cambodia, Guyana, Indonesia, Kenya, and Tanzania, the Clinton Climate Initiative's Forestry Program is developing forestry projects and carbon- measurement systems that help governments and local communities receive compensation for preserving and regrowing forests.

The Clinton Climate Initiative's Home Energy Affordability Loan program is bringing clean energy solutions to communities in Arkansas through building retrofits and home energy audits. CCI is working to expand and replicate this program across the country to help communities save energy at a local level. Photo Credit: Rob Moody / OrganicThink