Conducting annual or biennial emissions inventory is the best way to track your emissions reduction progress. Once you've been through the data collection process for your first emissions inventory, you may think to yourself "there's no way we're doing that every year." But after your first inventory, you'll have a much clearer idea of the data you need for an inclusive and complete inventory. Start tracking these things on a monthly basis; it will help make future inventories much easier to complete.

While you're tracking your use usage data (kWh of electricity, MCF of natural gas, gallons of gasoline, etc.) for your next inventory, keep a record of the costs per unit as well to help you track your cost savings as well.

When you're developing your action plan you should set goals or targets for each program or activity that you include. It's important to track your progress for these as well. For example, if you set a goal to plant 1,000 trees in the next year, you should know how many were planted, where they were planted, who planted them, and how much the program cost. Monetizing all of the benefits of such a project (e.g. heat island reduction, stormwater runoff mitigation, carbon sequestration, etc.) may be difficult, but the success of such a program should be acknowledged and celebrated.

Regularly assessing your progress towards your goals and calculating your return on your investment (whether its a monetary return or an emissions reduction return) will enable you to determine the success or failure of various programs - what should be added, changed or eliminated. It is important to evaluate and refine your plan on a regular basis. Not only is likely that you didn't get it  perfect the first time, but climate knowledge is growing and changing at such a rapid pace that there are likely to be new programs and best practices for you explore and include in your action plan.

Tracking your progress and demonstrating success had a number of non-monetary benefits that will also help further your efforts. According to the Climate Protection Manual measuring and reporting your progress will help you to:

• Garner support for innovative efforts
• Gain favorable public recognition
• Retain or increase funding
• Recruit and retain talented staff
• Enlist and motivate able volunteers
• Attract new participants
• Engage collaborators
• Win designation as a model or best practice
• Strengthen existing programs
• Target effective services for expansion
• Identify staff and volunteer training needs
• Develop and justify budgets
• Prepare long-range plans
• Focus city staff attention on programmatic issues