In Stockholm, city planners are reimagining how buildings can absorb carbon instead of releasing it into the air. In Melbourne, community advocates are working alongside city officials to ensure clean energy reaches neighborhoods that have historically been left behind. In Amsterdam, discarded solar panels are finding new life, preventing waste while expanding renewable energy access to those who need it most.

These aren’t isolated success stories — they’re part of a growing movement of cities around the world refusing to accept incremental change at a time when our communities need transformational action to thrive.

More than half the world’s population now lives in cities, and these urban centers account for approximately 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, cities hold tremendous power to slow climate change by shifting from fossil fuels to clean energy and eliminating those greenhouse gas emissions. While many cities have adopted climate action plans, most haven’t set goals big enough to fully remove all carbon pollution from city systems like transportation and buildings.

But a trailblazing group of cities is charting a different course. The Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA) brings together leading cities worldwide committed to achieving carbon neutrality within 10 to 20 years, among the most ambitious targets undertaken by any city globally.

Created in 2015 with support from Kresge, CNCA enables these pioneering cities to advance their transformational efforts, collaborate to overcome barriers, foster innovative approaches and share lessons with others pursuing similar goals.

“The Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance connects U.S. cities with international knowledge and resource hubs, and creates opportunities to learn from and workshop with peers and partners across regions,” said Kresge Environment Senior Program Officer Jessica Boehland.

Moving beyond technology to systems change

What sets this work apart is CNCA’s fundamental approach. Rather than focusing solely on technology and emissions reduction, CNCA champions a systems-based framework that addresses the root causes of climate change while putting people and nature at the center of climate solutions.

The alliance’s shared purpose is clear: mobilize transformative climate action to achieve prosperity, equity, resilience and better quality of life for all on a thriving planet.

“We believe that by supporting cities in developing and implementing game-changing climate policies, we will accelerate transformative climate action and generate replicable models for cities worldwide,” says Simone Mangili, executive director of CNCA. “This isn’t just about reducing carbon — it’s about reimagining how cities function, who benefits from climate action and stewarding natural systems for generations to come.”

Putting bold ideas into action

Through its Game Changer Fund, CNCA has already invested more than $5 million in 76 city-led projects since 2015, leveraging an additional $46 million in continued support. These aren’t conventional projects that fit neatly into traditional public funding streams. They’re bold experiments tackling high-impact challenges at the intersection of climate change and equity.

Recent investments show this approach in action. Amsterdam’s project creates a system to reuse old solar panels instead of throwing them away. Melbourne is developing a community-driven plan to fight energy poverty grounded in data.

In the U.S., New York City and Washington DC joined with Copenhagen to explore equitable models for congestion pricing, which reduces traffic in certain areas of the city, improving air quality while providing revenue to support public transit and bicycling and walking paths. These projects don’t just reduce pollution — they make communities stronger and help local people create sustainable solutions.

Justice at the center

CNCA is also helping cities move toward genuine power-sharing in climate policy development. Through its Climate Justice Grant Program, community organizations now lead proposals in partnership with cities, shifting who shapes climate solutions.

The alliance facilitates learning cohorts where cities in the U.S. and around the world share strategies for building relationships with communities and designing context-specific policies. The goal is to create climate policies and programs that maximize benefits and mitigate burdens for communities that have historically borne the greatest impacts of environmental injustice.

“This represents a fundamental reimagining of how climate action happens — not to communities, but with them,” said CNCA’s Director of Climate Justice Tracy Morgenstern.

Tackling the toughest challenges

CNCA cities are also pioneering work in policy areas that have traditionally received less attention, but offer huge opportunities. In most cities, buildings represent the largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet cities have struggled to address the pollution generated throughout buildings’ entire lifecycles.

CNCA now supports 15 European cities in identifying and implementing local policies to reduce carbon pollution embedded in buildings while ensuring these policies address housing, jobs and social inclusion.

The alliance also recently hosted a climate justice workshop where teams from five North American cities – Boston, Portland, Seattle, Toronto and Boulder, Colorado – and partners from community-based organizations joined their European counterparts to explore strategies and tools for improving buildings and infrastructure to benefit people’s lives and the economy. A new resource titled Embodying Justice in the Built Environment: Just and Equitable Land Use Transitions reflects some of the challenges and opportunities cities are facing on their journeys.

In addition, CNCA also plans to host a climate justice workshop for five teams of city staff and community partners from cities in the Midwest to support participatory and whole-of-government approaches to climate action planning.

Similarly, the alliance is helping cities tackle consumption-based emissions, transition towards more circular economies that reduce resource extraction and develop initiatives that pull carbon from the air and improve quality of life while regenerating natural systems. These approaches recognize that the same green infrastructure that captures carbon can also cool cities, reduce flooding and improve air quality — delivering multiple benefits to communities.

A network built on peer learning

At its heart, CNCA succeeds because it creates space for staff from cities at the cutting edge of climate action to build relationships and learn from each other. Annual meetings, regional convenings and virtual learning cohorts allow practitioners to share what’s working, troubleshoot challenges and inspire each other to stay the course even when facing political headwinds.

“CNCA’s annual meetings and virtual convenings have become an essential moment for members to commune with one another and inspire each other, deepen collaboration among city agencies and departments and work across city administrations to mainstream climate action,” said long-time CNCA member of CNCA Doug Smith, deputy general manager of Planning, Urban Design and Sustainability at the City of Vancouver.

This peer learning accelerates innovation in ways that top-down approaches cannot. When cities with similarly ambitious goals share experiences, they move faster together than any could alone.

Looking ahead

As national and regional climate commitments waver, cities are proving that transformative action remains possible – and is often pioneered at the local level.

The window for climate action is narrowing rapidly. But in cities from Rio de Janeiro to Yokohama, and from Seattle to Copenhagen, practitioners are demonstrating that we can build a future that is not only carbon neutral but also more beautiful, more just and more livable for all.