Living Green

Carbon footprints in Ohio cities ranked among highest

WASHINGTON — Residents of Dayton, Ohio, have a "carbon footprint" that is among the top 26 of the 100 biggest metro areas in the country, a Brookings Institution study found.

The study, released Thursday by the Washington research and policy group, measured fuel use for highway travel and residential buildings in 2005 and found that cities with the highest population density and most mass transit emitted the least carbon per capita.

Daytonians averaged 2.77 metric tons of carbon emissions. High emissions from residential energy and for trucks were cited as the chief reasons cited for the relatively large size of the per capita carbon footprint.

However, other Ohio cities had even higher per capita emissions. The Cincinnati-Middleton metro area, which stretches into Kentucky and Indiana, ranked third in the nation with an average carbon footprint of 3.36 metric tons. Toledo ranked fourth, with 3.24 metric tons of carbon per person.

Nationwide, the city with the smallest average emission was Honolulu, where the carbon footprint was 1.36 metric tons per person. The largest was in Lexington, Ky., where the per capita carbon emission was 3.46 metric tons.

The release of carbon into the atmosphere is linked to the use of fossil fuels and blamed for climate change and U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

The report, titled "Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America," pointed to areas East of the Mississippi as the most problematic because of their greater suburban sprawl.

"Footprints tend to be smallest in areas with high density and good rail transit," said Marilyn A. Brown, professor of energy policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a principal author of the study.

Brown, who was on a team that shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore for work on climate change, called the Brookings report "the most comprehensive analysis of the carbon footprint of metropolitan America to date."

She said the authors, who will soon be expanding the study to include industrial and commercial carbon emissions, hoped that ranking the metros would "promote a virtuous competition that will spur innovative solutions to the climate and energy challenges we face."

The rankings produced some surprises. Los Angeles, long thought of as a smog capital, had a per capita footprint of 1.41 metric tons, the second smallest of the 100 metro areas.

"There's probably a residue of misinformation" about Los Angeles, Brown held. In fact, its urban core is "quite dense and commute links are quite small within much of the L.A. area," she said.

The report urged stronger federal action to encourage energy efficiency and research, including some form of carbon tax, a national standard for energy efficiency, and efforts to encourage rail transit and more population density. It also suggested that the federal government could require owners to disclose their energy costs when they sell their home.