In a list of green cities.
The Bayou City placed 16th in the newly released U.S. and Canada Green City Index, a study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of Siemens.
The study, released at the 2011 Aspen Ideas Festival, graded 27 major U.S. and Canadian cities on environmental performance and policies in nine categories — carbon dioxide emissions, energy, land use, buildings, transport, water, waste, air quality and environmental governance.
You can see more info here, and the full list here; the writeup for Houston is on pages 68 and 69 of the brochure. It must be admitted that 16 out of 27 is not the top half, but what’s important here is that we did better than Dallas, which was #17 and the only other Texas city on the list. I’d have been curious to see how San Antonio and Austin might have stacked up, but they were not included. Maybe next time.
Interesting… My seat-of-the-pants feelings say I gotta be a little suspicious of a study that puts Montreal behind Houston on a “Green City” index.
I generally distrust the quality of articles on fuelfix. Lot of pro-industry reporting by pro-oil-and-gas people.
Here is a better analysis of what these rankings mean .
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