Disclaimer

Effective date: August 31, 2026

Climateshed Action is an indicative planning tool, not a compliance instrument. Its outputs are modeled estimates, not measurements or predictions. Every value must be independently verified before it is relied upon for regulatory, funding, legal, or investment purposes.

1. Nature of the tool

Climateshed Action estimates how much selected local climate actions could change a California jurisdiction’s greenhouse-gas emissions. It combines a measured inventory baseline with published response coefficients to produce scenario estimates. Alongside it, the free city VMT tool reports allocated vehicle miles travelled by jurisdiction (Section 4). Both are provided for general planning, education, and research purposes only.

2. Estimates and ranges, not predictions

Results are scenario estimates expressed as low-to-high ranges. Those ranges reflect uncertainty in the underlying coefficients and in how a policy is implemented locally; they are not confidence intervals, forecasts, or guarantees of any outcome. Actual emissions changes depend on program design, adoption rates, behavior, market conditions, and many factors the tool does not model.

3. Sources and their limitations

Baselines derive from the CA GHG Inventory (USCP v1.2, 2019–2024, IPCC AR4 GWPs) and are subject to that inventory’s own methods, assumptions, and revisions. Those revisions can be substantial: a baseline you exported previously may not match the current one.
Electricity is reported on two bases. Location-based (eGRID subregion average) is the default; market-based (the retail supplier’s filed Power Content Label) is selectable. The choice changes the community total and every electricity-driven result, in some jurisdictions by tens of percent. Neither basis is “the” answer — check which one your reporting framework requires.
Industrial point sources reported under CARB’s Mandatory Reporting Regulation are shown as a memo item and excluded from the community total, following the USCP scope. For jurisdictions hosting refineries or similar facilities, emissions occurring inside the boundary substantially exceed the reported total.
VMT effects come from the CARB/Salon VMT Impact Tool, applied at the jurisdiction level with the elasticities documented in the methods.
Lever coefficients are compiled from published literature and cited in the methods document. They are simplifications and may not reflect the most current data or your specific local conditions.

Every number in the tool traces to a citation in the methods document. Consult those primary sources before acting on any result.

4. The city VMT tool

EMFAC, CARB’s on-road emissions model, publishes vehicle miles travelled by county. The city VMT tool divides that county total among the jurisdictions within it, using an allocation weight you choose separately for light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles. Read the results with these limits in mind:

Every weight is an estimate, not a measurement. Each is a documented self-developed method under ICLEI USCP v1.2 Appendix D, condition T4. There is no hierarchy among them and no single correct choice; each carries its own caveat in the tool, and different weights give materially different answers for the same city.
Reconciliation is not accuracy. Allocated figures sum to the EMFAC county total by construction. That makes the method reproducible; it does not make any individual city’s figure correct. A city number is only as good as both the EMFAC county estimate and the weight applied to it.
It is not a travel-demand model, not project-level analysis, and not the per-capita VMT metric used for SB 743 / CEQA determinations. Do not substitute it for any of those.

5. Not professional advice

Nothing produced by the tool constitutes professional, legal, regulatory, engineering, scientific, financial, or investment advice, or official guidance from any government agency. It is not a substitute for a site-specific analysis or for consultation with a qualified professional.

6. Do not use for compliance or claims

Do not represent tool outputs as an official GHG inventory, a CEQA or regulatory determination, a Climate Action Plan of record, or the basis of a grant, credit, offset, or funding claim without independent verification and appropriate professional review.

7. Your responsibility

You are solely responsible for how you use, interpret, and share the tool’s outputs, including any scenario files (CSV or notebook) you export. Verify results against primary sources before relying on them.

8. Contact

Questions about the methods or this disclaimer: feedback@climateshed.app.