For lack of a broad federal energy policy, some cities and states have taken to devising their own. Bad for the United States, good for places like Pittsburgh.

That's because local leaders have had the foresight to generate the Pittsburgh Climate Action Plan, a 102-page road map for reducing municipal carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent before 2023. The blueprint will be the focus of a special City Council meeting and a public hearing before any of its elements are considered for adoption by city government. Businesses, universities and neighborhoods will find recommendations in it, too -- so the plan has value far beyond Grant Street.

The ideas range from narrow to sweeping, short-term to long-range, and some are already in the works. On city operations, for instance, the plan calls for purchasing renewable energy and performing a Downtown traffic circulation study, replacing inefficient streetlights, installing "energy misers" on vending machines and creating a commuter incentive program for city employees -- among a long list of recommendations.

Community action could include planting more trees, pairing recycling cans with trash receptacles, offering city incentives for renovation over demolition of existing structures and seeking a supermarket "fuel perks" program for public transit. Pittsburgh businesses that want to go green can mull over these and other suggestions: using sustainable purchasing policies, negotiating "green leases" to limit energy consumption and encouraging employee transit use.

It's a plan worth public attention and a plan of many progressive steps. Developed by the Green Government Task Force, the recommendations also have the clout of its co-chairs: Councilman Bill Peduto, state Sen. Jim Ferlo and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. Rebecca Flora, who heads the Green Building Alliance, led the task force that wrote the report.

Combined with the mayor's announcement last week to hire a "sustainability coordinator" (another of the plan's recommendations), this blueprint will help city government and those who live, work and do business here look critically at how they use energy and treat the environment. Even if Washington is still trying to find its way.