An official website of the Cuyahoga County government. Here’s how you know
We created a toolkit organized into six steps, each step represents a key component of effective climate action planning to help you take meaningful action at your own pace. Brand new to climate action? Start with Step 1. Already have plans or climate goals? Start with Step 4. Ready to act now? Go straight to Step 6.
Understand where your community's greenhouse gas emissions come from. Identify the largest contributing sectors so you can prioritize efforts where they will have the greatest impact.
Your greenhouse gas inventory provides the foundation for climate planning by identifying major emission sources, supporting informed decisions, and helping measure future progress.
EPA – Local Climate Action Framework: A Step-by-Step Implementation Guide
The U.S. EPA's archived 2017 guide helps local governments plan, implement, track, and fund community-wide climate mitigation and adaptation projects. The link goes directly to the “Develop GHG Inventory” step.
Review existing plans, policies, and initiatives to understand what climate-related work is already underway and where opportunities exist to build on current efforts.
Many communities already have climate-related work in progress. Reviewing existing plans helps avoid duplication, recognize accomplishments, and identify gaps.
Catalog existing plans, identify alignments with county or state priorities and spot gaps in coverage.
Summarize insights from your document review.
Clean Air Partnership - Climate Accountability Toolkit
The Clean Air Partnership Climate Accountability Toolkit (2024) is a practical guide helping municipalities embed transparency, monitoring, and decision making tools into climate plans to deliver on net-zero commitments (page 24-25).
Assess how climate hazards such as flooding, extreme heat, and severe storms could affect people, infrastructure, and natural systems within you community.
Understanding climate risks helps communities prioritize resilence investments where they are needed most.
Rate hazards by likelihood and severity for key assets.
Provides regional hazard data and maps for use in local risk analysis.
Pinpoint priority areas and inform targeted resilience strategies.
U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit
Offers the Steps to Resilience Framework plus tools and case studies for community use.
Select practical strategies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions while improving resilience, public health, and quality of life.
Focusing on high-impact strategies helps communities make the best use of available resources while supporting long-term sustainability goals.
Reference sheets for Transportation, Residential, Commercial, and Industrial sectors.
Compare up to 5 strategies based on emissions reduction potential, feasibility, alignment with values, cost, equity impacts, and timeframe. This worksheet is used in steps 4-6.
EPA – Local Climate Action Framework: Mitigation Strategies
A comprehensive guide to local mitigation measures, including sector-specific actions and funding pathways (page 65).
ACEEE Local Policy Database
Provides detailed examples of energy efficieny and building electrification policies used by cities nationwide.
Document your climate goals, data, and strategies in a clear roadmap that supports implementation, accountability, and future funding opportunities.
A written plan keeps your climate priorities organized, provides continuity, and helps communicate the progress.
Template for building either an action memo with headings, suggested language and recommended flow.
Use this tab to capture working strategies, related actions, timeframes, lead agencies, partners, cost estimates , equity considerations and Key Performance Indicators. This worksheet will is used in steps 4-6.
Oberlin, OH Climate Action Plan:
A leading small-city example that integrates migration, resilience, and equity through strong community partnerships and clear sector-based actions tailored to local capacity.
Cleveland Heights, OH Climate Action Plan:
A strong inner ring suburb example that translates climate goals into practical, community-scale actions with a focus on housing, transportation, and neighborhood-level implementation.
Turn planning into action by prioritizing projects, assigning responsibilities, identifying funding opportunities, and tracking progress.
Successful implementation depends on clear priorities, defined ownership, realistic timelines, and measurable outcomes.
Define your vision and goals:
Design and conduct community engagement:
Determine the impact and ease of each strategy and action.
Over time, continue to populate and update the columns in this tab.
Form your planning team using this project mapping.
Use this fillable template while forming your planning team.
Implementation Priorities Summary May 2025 Riverside, IL:
The Village of Riverside's Road to 2050: Climate Action & Resilience Plan includes an implementation priorities summary. It's a good example for how a smaller municipality creates a sector-based strategy, prioritized action list and implementation roadmap.