Environmental and Social Benefits of Extensive Green Roofs Applied on Bus Shelters in Edinburgh

Abstract

The presence of green roofs in urban areas provides various ecosystem services that help mitigate climate change. They play an essential role in sustainable drainage systems, contribute to air quality and carbon sequestration, mitigate urban heat island, support biodiversity, and create green spaces supporting public well-being. Bus stops provide good opportunities for installing green roofs. Various cities worldwide have started installing green roofs on bus shelters, but often without thoroughly comparing expenses and the resulting benefits. This study quantifies the social and environmental benefits of installing green roofs on bus shelters in the City of Edinburgh. An assessment of the benefits and their monetary values was conducted using the B£ST analysis tool combined with manual calculations, which is easily transferable to other cities worldwide. It was compared to the current situation with no green roofs installed at bus stops. Installation of green roofs on all bus shelters in the City of Edinburgh may result in £12.9 million–£87.2 million in total benefit present value. The total cost was projected to be £15,994,000. By green roof installation, the City of Edinburgh can be closer to being carbon-neutral by 2030, a sustainable city as part of the City Plan 2030 and City Vision 2050.

Green Consumption, Environmental Regulation and Carbon Emissions—An Empirical Study Based on a PVAR Model

“…As a new consumption concept, it faces a series of new challenges and problems in practical exploration and theoretical research. Past studies have been conducted from five perspectives: green consumption theory [4][5][6][7], a green consumption model [8][9][10], green consumption marketing strategy [11][12][13], the green consumption attitude-behavior gap [14][15][16], and factors affecting green consumption [17][18][19][20][21].…”

“…We have selected shared bicycles and new energy cars as our indicators since they are novel, and popular, and haven't been covered in any previous research. For the construction of provincial Chinese green consumption index (GCI) systems, the existing literature has mainly focused on three approaches, namely, mixing urban and rural economic indicators [20,21,25,26], constructing urban GCIs using urban economic indicators [27], and using economic indicators to construct rural GCIs [28].…”

“…Regarding the construction of provincial Chinese GCI systems, the existing literature mostly mixes urban and rural economic indicators [20,21,25,26], but China's unique urbanrural dual economic system and the large differences in production and lifestyles between urban and rural areas may lead to weight mismatch and affect the reasonableness of the indicators when the urban and rural areas are mixed to construct GCIs. This may lead to weight mismatch and affect the rationality of the indicators.…”