Grading Climate Action Plans in the Midwest

Authors

Megan Baker, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

First Advisor

Martha Durr

Date of this Version

Spring 5-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Citation

Environmental Studies Undergraduate Student Thesis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2024

Abstract

As agreed upon by international climate scientists, decarbonization in the American Midwest is critical to keeping the planet below the 1.5C increase in global temperature from pre-industrial levels. However, most previous research that evaluates climate action plans (CAPs) to find their weaknesses and provide policy recommendations neglects this crucial region of the United States. To fill this gap, this paper replicates Deetjen et al.’s (2018) review of CAPs in 29 US cities by applying their CAP rubric to 11 Midwestern cities. The results of both quantitative analysis were used to analyze the differences in plans in the Midwest versus the Non-Midwest. Since the original data set was expanded, CAPs from cities with state plans and without state plans were also compared. Analyzing the compiled data reveals that the Midwest is lacking in policies relevant to density, but excelled in policies relevant to appliance efficiency and architectural form. However, there was no significant difference in average scores between Midwestern cities and other, more studied cities’ CAPs, and cities from states with state CAPs did slightly better on average.