Inventory and Mitigate

What visitors can do:
Perhaps the greatest potential for your national park to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to increase visitors' awareness of climate change and its impacts and provide them with tools to address their individual contribution. The Do Your Part! program was created to provide easy actions people can take every month to reduce their carbon footprint in their everyday lives. The program facilitates behavioral change by providing one action that can be focused on every month. Visit the Do Your Part! program section of this site for more information.

What parks can do:
The Climate Leadership In Parks (CLIP) Tool, is a Microsoft Excel-based, user-friendly application that walks national parks through the process of becoming a Climate Friendly Park. The tool is broken into two parts or modules. Each of these modules performs a distinct function. The first module in the CLIP Tool, the Emission Inventory Module, helps a park perform a baseline inventory of their emissions.

The second module in the CLIP Tool, the Action Planning Module, is designed to help park staff identify actions to reduce emissions and target specific emission reductions associated with those reductions. This module culminates in the development of an action plan that your park can use to establish the emission mitigation actions you've identified as goals for the park.

The list below describes some measures parks can take to become more efficient and reduce emissions. For more information on these mitigation options explore the Climate Leadership In Parks (CLIP) Tool or if your park is interested in developing an inventory and action plan, contact us at CLIPTool@icfi.com.

Energy

Purchase electricity from providers that use renewable energy sources
Replace conventional energy sources with wind
Install energy-efficient lighting
Replace heating and cooling technologies with more energy-efficient options

Transportation

Reduce visitor vehicle miles traveled
Reduce staff and concessionaire vehicle miles traveled
Replace conventional vehicles with alternative fueled vehicles

Solid Waste

Divert park waste through composting
Increase or implement recycling programs for park operations

100+ Best Management Practices Guide: Produced by NPS's Pacific West Region, this document details general best management practices.

Green Janitorial Products and Practices Guide: Produced by NPS's Pacific West Region, this document details best management practices specific to janitorial products.

Green Office Practices Guide: Produced by NPS's Pacific West Region, this document details best management practices specific to office products.

EPA's Promoting Green Purchasing: Tools and Resources to Quantify the Benefits of Environmentally Preferable Purchasing

WASO's Environmental Purchasing in the NPS Handbook

Guiding Principles for Sustainable Design: This guide is intended to direct park management philosophy. Its goal is to provide a basis for achieving sustainability in facility planning and design, emphasize the importance of biodiversity, and encourage responsible decisions.

EPA's Whole Building Design Guide: Incorporate green building design into new and existing projects.

21 Reports on best practices for purchasing and disposal of products

Mitgation of Climate Change: Just released by the International Panel on Climate Change, a group of over 2000 scientists from around the world, is the premiere document on global climate change mitigation.

The What You Can Do section of EPA's Climate Change Web site is a great source of information on mitigation from the individual to the international level.

ENERGY STAR is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy the provides information on energy-efficient products and practices.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is the nation's primary laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency R&D.

The United Nations Environment Network Web site is a clearinghouse for information regarding climate change. Resources include maps and graphics representing current data for emissions and impacts and a Beginner's Guide to the U.N. Framework Convention and its Kyoto Protocol (PDF)