Delivering climate goals through city-business collaboration
Cities need businesses to deliver climate goals
Cities directly control only 4% of emissions produced within their boundaries. The remaining emissions come from private sector operations, residential activities, and areas under national government control. Achieving ambitious climate targets requires cities to collaborate with businesses to address the significant emissions from their operations, supply chains, and investments.
The City-Business Climate Alliance Programme (CBCA) provides the framework and support cities need
Since 2019, C40 has led the City-Business Climate Alliance (CBCA) Programme, which advances climate action by facilitating collaboration between cities and businesses. The programme helps cities understand how to use their formal powers (like regulations and standards) and informal powers (like convening and influence) to work effectively with the private sector.
Through peer learning, practical guidance, and proven partnership models, CBCA enables cities to achieve more emission reductions and growth in the green economy than either sector could accomplish alone.
Get started with practical resources including partnership models, maturity assessments, and examples from leading cities.
How the City-Business Climate Alliance Programme (CBCA) works
Two levels of support for city-business collaboration
The CBCA Programme operates at both global and local levels, providing cities with peer learning networks and direct support for building effective business partnerships.
Join the CBCA Forum for global peer learning
The CBCA Forum brings together climate and economic development leaders from over 30 cities around the world to exchange strategies on influencing, regulating, supporting, and collaborating with businesses to achieve ambitious climate action and grow the green economy locally.
C40 supports CBCA Forum members through:
- quarterly member meetings where cities share experiences and learn from each other
- webinars and workshops on best practices
- training for city climate and economic development teams on how to work effectively with businesses
- research, guides, interviews, and case studies of successful city-business collaborations
- collective advocacy promoting city-business collaboration as critical for addressing climate change
Build local city-business partnerships in your city
At the local level, the City-Business Climate Alliance Programme supports cities to develop formal partnerships or networks that build collective responsibility and advance climate action among public and private actors. These city-level climate partnerships bring together businesses, set joint commitments, co-create projects, and implement initiatives that help cities deliver their climate action plans.
Given the different contexts in which cities and businesses operate, there is no single approach that works for everyone. Some cities create broad partnerships that welcome businesses from all sectors, like Melbourne’s Climate Network and Lisbon’s Plataforma Sustentavel Empresas. Others focus on specific industries, like Sydney’s Sustainable Destination Partnership (focused on tourism) or NYC’s Plant Powered Carbon Challenge (focused on food).
The CBCA Programme provides step-by-step guidance, a maturity model (a framework for assessing readiness), and technical support to help cities design partnerships suited to their local context. Contact the City-Business Climate Alliance Programme team at info@city-businessclimatealliance.org to learn more about the work CBCA does.
City-business collaboration on climate action
Cities are partnering with businesses in different ways to accelerate climate action. These examples illustrate the diverse models of collaboration that are emerging.
Oslo’s Business for Climate
Shaping city policy through collaboration
Launched in 2010, this network uses Climate Contracts and working groups across sectors to shape Oslo’s policies, targeting a 95% emission reduction by 2030.
Montréal’s Climate Partnership
Mobilising collective climate action
This partnership brings together more than 100 organisations from business, non-profit, philanthropic, and institutional sectors to reduce Montréal’s greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030. The partnership enables high-impact collective projects and convenes the Montréal Climate Summit to drive progress across sectors.
Barcelona’s MoreSustainable network
Supporting residents and businesses to be more sustainable
This city-led network offers more than 1,000 of its residents and businesses personalised guidance, tax reductions, training, and collaborative events to promote waste prevention, energy efficiency, and urban greening.
Tshwane Green Foundation
The Tshwane Green Foundation is an initiative spearheaded by the Capital City Business Chamber to encourage hundreds of businesses and the government to transform the metro into a fully green city.
Stay connected with CBCA
Subscribe to the CBCA newsletter to receive quarterly updates on city-business climate collaboration initiatives, case studies from leading cities, and invitations to public webinars.
Access resources on city-business collaboration
Explore comprehensive guides, toolkits, and research developed by the CBCA Programme to support cities in building effective city-business climate collaborations:
- City-Business Climate Alliances: A step-by-step guide for developing successful collaborations between cities and businesses
- City-Business Climate Alliance Maturity Model: Framework for assessing your city’s readiness for effective business partnerships
- Barcelona Workshop Summary Report: Insights and learnings from C40 City-Business Climate Alliance workshop
- Public-Private Collaboration to Accelerate Sustainable Urban Development: A guide for Global South cities on effective partnerships
Resources
How C40 helps cities collaborate with businesses to accelerate climate action and create local opportunities.
How C40 helps cities access climate finance to shape greener, healthier and more resilient cities.
Turning climate ambition into transformative infrastructure projects across the Global South.
