• Journal of Korea Planning Association
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.87-99
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of municipal sustainability policy efforts on citywide $CO_2$ emissions. 25 cities in the U.S.A., which offer data on $CO_2$ emissions and are included in the top 50 largest cities in the U.S.A. according to its estimated population, were selected as study cities. This study utilizes the Sustainable Cities Seriously Index of Portney and selects data for the index at the city level. For analysis, this study employs correlation analysis, and OLS regression analysis. The results show that each city has around 30 sustainability policies and emits $12.76tCO_2$ per year on average. In addition, when the number of sustainability policies increases by one, the amount of $CO_2$ per capita decreases by $0.7tCO_2$. This means that the more cities employ sustainability policies, the less $CO_2$ those cities emit. The results of this study support the idea that active efforts on behalf of municipal governments toward the development of sustainability policies are needed to handle citywide $CO_2$ emissions.