Institute collaborates with Jersey City on greenhouse gas study

“Climate change poses a serious threat for people around the world.”

If you live, work, study, or own a business or property in Jersey City, the city wants to know what you think about that statement.

The statement comes from a survey developed by the Jersey City Office of Sustainability. Last August, in a collaboration with Montclair State University’s PSEG Institute for Sustainability Studies, the city agency completed a study estimating the mass of Jersey City’s greenhouse gas emissions. Now, as the city prepares to draft a climate action plan — a blueprint for decreasing the city’s greenhouse gas emissions — it is looking to its residents for feedback.

According to the Office of Sustainability’s study, Jersey City emitted nearly 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent gases in 2016. That’s a catch-all metric for determining the harmfulness of various greenhouse gas emissions.

That figure is slightly higher than other cities of the same size, said Amy Tuininga, the director of the PSEG Institute for Sustainability Studies, who worked on the study to map the city’s greenhouse emissions. Because many people pass through the city on their way to other places, this means it must contend with increased emissions.

A lot of cities are either where people live or where people work. (Jersey City’s) not the beginning or the ending of peoples’ commutes.

Read the full article at NJ.com.