The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) contracted with Kapwa Consulting in partnership with Good Company to develop a greenhouse gas (GHG) forecasting and visualization tool called Portland’s Decarbonization Pathways (Pathways):
To better understand and use the Visualizer Tool, we recommend reading the Pathways Analysis Technical Memo.
The purpose of this tool is to help policymakers and the public visualize the scale and combinations of specific climate strategies needed to meet Portland’s reduction targets of 50 percent below 1990 baseline by 2030 and net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Pathways can model different reduction scenarios. It is a dynamic tool that builds upon and aligns the results from four distinct, recent, high-quality sources of communitywide data:
- Multnomah County's Community Carbon Emissions Inventory historic trends;
- Portland Bureau of Transportation VisionEval modeling;
- City of Portland's Building Analysis and Projections (Zero Cities Project); and
- iTree tool from US Forest Service.
BPS used the Pathways tool to perform analysis that informed development of the decarbonization priorities in the City’s new Climate Emergency Workplan.
In addition to reduction strategies that the City of Portland can take, the Pathway tool also includes “business as usual” reductions that are forecasted based on adopted local, state, and federal policies for the electricity supply, buildings, and transportation.
One of the City of Portland’s core values is Transparency. By making the Decarbonization Pathways data and model available to the public, BPS intends to create more transparency into and accountability for our climate work and to inform ongoing collaborations between government and frontline communities to co-create just and equitable solutions to the climate crisis.
View the data
Pathways tool (Excel file):
Technical memo (PDF file):
Learn more
We encourage Portlanders to read the Climate Emergency Workplan, including the full list of priority actions to decarbonize the city and make residents more resilient.