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For years, city officials have taken an informal but aggressive approach to energy conservation and environmental protection.

They made innovative moves to curb pollution in ways that included harnessing landfill gas for industrial use and retrofitting the Greensboro Coliseum with energy-saving devices that also cut 1,700 tons of air pollution per year — all without making a big deal about it.

But after voting two weeks ago to join the fight against global warming, the City Council is charting a more formal course and moving the issue into the glare of public accountability.

"I see it as something that we are basically doing a whole lot of already," Councilwoman Sandy Carmany said. "So why not put it under one umbrella and make it official?"

The council made the decision Aug. 21, when it voted 8-0 to sign the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement. By signing, communities agree they will work toward cutting releases of "greenhouse gases" to 7 percent below what they were in 1990.

The goal is to hit the mark by 2012. Such airborne pollution comes largely from burning fossil fuels, which most scientists believe accelerate climate change.

It's unclear how much additional effort would be required to meet the 1990 goal or what extra burden, if any, it would put on the average resident.

The first step is taking a citywide inventory, trying to figure out how much pollution the city emits now and how much it emitted in 1990.

Neither number will be precise, said Jeryl Covington, the city's environmental services director. "There's no way you can get 100 percent accuracy in something like that," she said, adding that a well-informed "guesstimate" will be the result.

The council set a May 2008 target date for completing the inventory.

Although the vote was unanimous, not all council members support the initiative.

It is basically a "feel-good" measure that won't change anything, Councilman Tom Phillips said, partly because it's nonbinding and partly because the city already has done so much to cut pollution.

"And we would continue to do that wherever it makes sense and can be done economically," said Phillips, who was absent the day of the vote.

Local supporters of the measure say the goal should be within reach for Greensboro. They praise the council for taking the plunge and joining 21 other cities statewide in the pact.

"The message that the city is willing to lead on carbon-emission reduction came across loud and clear," said Kim Yarbray, one of a group of residents who asked city officials earlier this year to consider joining the list that includes Asheville, Durham, Raleigh, Wilmington and Winston-Salem.

"The adoption of this agreement has given Greensboro an umbrella to show off the smart environmental decisions that have already been made by city staff and City Council," she said.

The nationwide initiative among cities to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases was triggered by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Mayors of several major cities, led by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels , were concerned by the federal government's lack of action on global warming after it opted out of an international pact called the Kyoto Protocol, a controversial agreement to curb air pollution from fossil fuels. So far, about 600 cities and towns have signed the mayoral agreement.

In North Carolina, the Sierra Club is coordinating efforts to persuade cities that the agreement is worth signing.

In most cases, a city's efforts to curb greenhouse gases require no more than what is in its all-around best interests, including its economical interest, said Tom Jensen, director of the state Sierra Club's "Cool Cities" effort.

Charlotte's municipal government is the only one in the state "to take a vote and not join," Jensen said.

N.C. A&T's Center for Energy Research and Technology has offered to help Greensboro plot its current and past emission levels.

The inventory would be built on records such as annual citywide consumption of electricity and natural gas, said Robert Powell of the center's faculty. The resulting study would include emission estimates both for city-owned buildings and vehicles and for the larger community, he said.

Carmany said cutting back to pre-1990 levels might not be such a strain . The city has lost several manufacturing plants since then, and major sources such as Duke Power's Belews Creek generating plant have improved their pollution controls dramatically, she said.

"It just might be easier than you think," Carmany said.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or twireback@news-record.com