Please use the following Dial-In Information: 1-888-346-3659 Passcode: 4215# Dear IMLA members: We are writing on behalf of a new project of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law<https://climate.law.columbia.edu/> at Columbia Law School, the Cities Climate Law Initiative<https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/cities-climate-law-initiative>. Please see a note from the Sabin Center, below. The Cities Climate Law Initiative is seeking to help advance laws, policies and legal tools that cities and municipalities can use to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions and achieve carbon reduction goals (such as 80x50, carbon neutrality and/or 100% renewable/clean energy). We are performing academic legal research on these laws, policies and legal tools and partnering directly with municipal legal departments and urban sustainability directors to explore some of the legal hurdles that arise or are contemplated in implementing them. We welcome the participation of all forms of local government, whether cities, towns, counties, special districts or other forms of local government. We hope that you'll consider partnering with us in one or both of these two ways: 1. We are seeking U.S. cities, towns, counties and other municipal actors to partner with on challenging legal questions associated with climate mitigation policies. Together, the Sabin Center and each partner city will identify a legal question, issue or obstacle, or a drafting need. The Sabin Center will conduct academic research on the question to help inform each city's approach to developing or implementing an identified climate mitigation policy and will provide tailored insights and learning to the city. The cities, in turn, will lend their perspectives to help facilitate additional learning by other U.S. cities and metro areas that are considering similar policies. In this way, the Cities Climate Law Initiative and its partner cities will help scale up use of some of the most promising legal tools available to assist in achieving quantified goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and bring new sources of renewable energy online. 2. We are researching and writing a report that will look at several of the most promising laws and legal tools cities are using to achieve their carbon mitigation commitments to distill and offer solutions to legal issues that may accompany those laws and legal tools. Your perspective on the challenges and opportunities you've faced in this space would be immensely helpful, and we'd love to hear directly from you. Please consider filling out this survey<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd08Jg4vcPW53taDLZJ7DAagLsQ5eDFC7U6zJ9vTs3YDMzMgg/viewform?usp=sf_link> to help inform our research -- both so that our report can address the issues that matter to you and so that your learning can help other municipalities scale up their climate action. (If you'd rather skip the survey and set a time to speak by phone, please email Amy Turner at aturner@law.columbia.edu<mailto:aturner@law.columbia.edu>.) Finally, if others in your municipality or attorney's office is responsible for or interested in legal pathways to city decarbonization goals, please feel free to forward this email widely. Thank you in advance -- we greatly appreciate your help in advancing the Cities Climate Law Initiative research.