For this week’s Awards spotlight, we’re focusing on this year’s six #Cities4Energy finalists that are expanding clean and renewable energy in cities & making it easier and more affordable for residents to live more sustainably.

Full coverage of the first edition of a new event series, C40 Talks, held at The New York Times during Climate Week NYC 2017.

See the best photos from the first edition of C40 Talks held at The New York Times building during Climate Week NYC.

Through C40’s Private Building Efficiency Network, cities work together to improve the energy efficiency of existing commercial and residential buildings. In 2014 several cities, led by Tokyo, developed the report Urban Efficiency: a global survey of building energy efficiency policies in cities. The report incorporated best practices from around the world, including financial incentives, sectoral benchmarking, and building optimisation programmes into city energy plans and roadmaps. Other cities used it as an evidence base to push for the introduction of new, ambitious building energy policies or expand already successful schemes. We hope the next instalment of this report will prove just as valuable.

As mayors of major cities worldwide consider how to drive economic opportunity, create new public spaces and find more environmentally sustainable uses for aging infrastructure, they are increasingly turning to the development of urban waterfronts. To harness the power of that movement, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo today announced that the City of Chicago and the City of Paris will co-host a worldwide mayoral forum in Chicago on March 13, 2017 to foster an international conversation about the future of urban waterfronts.

Today, C40 Chair and Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes announced his city’s full compliance with the Compact of Mayors, making it the first city in the world to reach the Compact compliance milestone.

The White House released a fact sheet today announcing a number of initiatives to increase energy efficiency measures in cities across the United States, and specifically called out the Compact of Mayors as a key effort to achieve President Obama’s goals.

C40 mayors around the United States were eager to support President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which was finalized Monday and is seen as a key component of the country’s climate commitment for the COP21 climate negotiations at the end of the year.

Today, C40 announced new leadership of its Sustainable Infrastructure Finance Network.  Building on the City of Chicago’s leadership since the Network’s launch in 2012, the City of Boston will take up the lead city role with the City of Basel remaining as co-chair.

Transportation has always been essential to Chicago’s economic success. The city was established at the junction of Lake Michigan and the Chicago River and is currently the transfer point of half of all trans-continental goods. With the second-largest public transportation system in the country, the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) and the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) are bringing Bus Rapid Transit to the downtown “Loop” area, the second-busiest downtown in the U.S. and the heart of the regional economy.

In advancing the city’s sustainability agenda, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently announced developments in two energy initiatives that target both energy supply and demand.

As Mayor Rahm Emanuel reaches his second anniversary leading the City of Chicago, our “city in a garden” reflects on dramatic progress and continuing efforts to make Chicago one of the most competitive, livable, and environmentally sustainable places on the planet.

This week, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced the winners of the Mayors Challenge, a contest launched last June to award $9 million to five US cities that come up with innovative ideas for solving major problems and improving quality of life. Out of a pool of more than 300 competitors, three C40 cities — Chicago, Houston, and Philadelphia — took home $1 million each to put their ideas into action.

Nine months since its inception, Retrofit Chicago’s Commercial Buildings Initiative is set to double in size. Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Wednesday that 18 new buildings will participate in the program, bringing the total area to over 28 million square feet.

C40 Cities' partner organization ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability has released a fact sheet compiling U.S. local government actions for 2012, specifically relating to climate change and extreme weather adaptation.

On Friday, September 21, citizens around the world will celebrate Park(ing) Day. What is Park(ing) Day, you might ask? Park(ing) Day calls for participants to create temporary public parks by transforming metered parking spaces for cars and other vehicles.

Today, our partner, National Geographic City Solutions blog featured an “Expert Voices” piece by Karen Weigert, the City of Chicago’s Chief Sustainability Officer. Weigert provides an update on exciting news from Retrofit Chicago’s Commercial Buildings Initiative, a voluntary program to accelerate energy efficiency in large commercial spaces across the city.

Climate change is the most pressing environmental, social and economic problem facing the planet, a problem that is intensifying while global climate treaties and national legislation have hit roadblocks. Driven by the burning of fossil fuels, CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere is rapidly reaching critical levels. This combined with rising temperatures, erratic weather patterns and the depletion of water resources, makes taking action even that much more critical.

Chicago and Houston, participating C40 Cities, are dramatically reducing the energy consumption of their buildings – saving both energy and money.

Last Thursday, Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the initial Partners of the Better Buildings Challenge at the Clinton Global Initiative America conference in Chicago, a C40 City. This challenge is part of the White House-led Better Buildings Initiative to increase private sector investment in building energy efficiency and reduce energy use in buildings by 20 percent by 2020 to save money, create jobs, and improve our environment. The focus and potential of the Better Buildings Challenge is to spur job creation in the construction and building industries.

The climate change actions of C40 Cities are “not only environmentally sound...[but] also save taxpayers money” says an article featured this week in The Economist magazine, which focused on the US contingent of the global network.