The City of Trees and PhDs can add another moniker to its list—Cool California City. Chris Veirs, the city’s principal planner, revealed the prestigious title as well as a $22,797 prize awarded by California Air Resources Board after Claremont took second place in the CoolCalifornia Challenge.

“The city’s performance in this competition is the result of a unique and very successful partnership between the city of Claremont and Sustainable Claremont,” Mr. Veirs told the council. “The city delegated the promotion of the challenge to Sustainable Claremont and they did not disappoint us. That’s a lot of money and they are going to use it to implement sustainability programs throughout the city.”

Ten cities, including Claremont, participated in the six-month challenge in which thousands of households across California competed for the biggest citywide carbon footprint reduction. Participating households were encouraged to track their energy and household vehicle emissions and join EcoTeams, groups of households working together to reduce their carbon footprints, and earn points in the program.

Claremont earned 3.1 million points, coming in just behind the city of Riverside, which took first place with 3.29 million points. Claremont and Riverside were the clear front-runners for most of the competition, duking it out right up until the very last hour.

“The people that were closely involved had a lot of fun staying up late and watching the numbers,” said Mr. Veirs. “It was kind of like politicians watching the election results. We all felt like we had a chance to win it up until the last hour of the competition.”