Twelve metropolitan carbon footprints: A preliminary comparative global assessment

Sovacool, Benjamin K.; Brown, Marilyn A.

doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2009.10.001

Cited by 299 publications

(147 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…The pilot version of Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GPC, 2012 The second source of information was a selection of scientific papers reporting on accounting methodologies for cities (Baynes et al, 2011;Junnila, 2011a, 2011b;Ramaswami et al, 2011;Schulz, 2010;Sovacool and Brown, 2010;Dhakal and Shrestha, 2010;Glaeser and Kahn, 2010;Hillman and Ramaswami, 2010;Kennedy et al, 2010Kennedy et al, , 2009Ramaswami et al, 2008;Weber and Matthews, 2008;Lenzen et al, 2004). These articles were identified through searches in the scientific publication database SCOPUS and complemented with additional literature derived from reference lists and previous readings.…”

Section: Research Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…a commuter shed, which is the area from which a workforce commutes or the boundaries of the mass transit system (Kennedy et al, 2010;Sovacool and Brown, 2010). For a major city or metropolitan area this approach might be feasible, but when the object of study is a smaller city or a city district, this way of defining the activity becomes less useful.…”

Section: Defining and Delimiting The Spatial Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This can be based on a service approach, in which the focus is on the functions of activities for the user Jonsson et al, 2011;Glaeser and Kahn, 2010;Lebel et al, 2007;Lenzen et al, 2004;Ellegård, 1999;Baccini and Brunner, 1991), from a sectored perspective (Baynes et al, 2011;IPCC, 2006), based on an organisational delimitation, i.e. the scope of influence (Kennedy et al, 2010;Sovacool and Brown, 2010;ICLEI, 2009;WRI-WBCSD, 2004), or on a combination of these.…”

Section: Defining and Delimiting Activitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The focus on cities in relation to climate change is not difficult to understand, as cities are of fundamental importance for mitigating climate change. Estimates indicate that cities contribute 80% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Sovacool and Brown, 2010) and in the light of on-going global urbanisation their contribution can only be expected to grow. Fortunately, cities are also reported as having the potential to support more resource-efficient ways of meeting needs and wants than suburbia or the countryside (Mindali et al, 2004;Williams, 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards a comprehensive system of methodological considerations for cities' climate targets

et al. 2013

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Energy Policy, VOL 62, pp. 1276-1287 [URL: http://dx.doi.org/10. 1016/j.enpol.2013.06.093 ] Access to the published version may require subscription. Publish with permission from: Elsevier This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. H I G H L I G H T SCities' climate targets are almost impossible to compare and benchmark. There is a need for consistent protocols and frameworks supporting target setting. A framework with key methodological considerations for cities' climate targets is identified. The framework is used to explore the climate targets for eight European cities. The difference between production-and consumption based accounting is illustrated in a new way. a r t i c l e i n f o b s t r a c tClimate targets for cities abound. However, what these targets really imply is dependent on a number of decisions regarding system boundaries and methods of calculation. In order to understand and compare cities' climate targets, there is a need for a generic and comprehensive framework of key methodological considerations. This paper identifies eight key methodological considerations for the different choices that can be made when setting targets for GHG emissions in a city and arranges them in four categories: temporal scope of target, object for target setting, unit of target, and range of target. To explore how target setting is carried out in practice, the climate targets of eight European cities were analysed. The results showed that these targets cover only a limited part of what could be included. Moreover, the cities showed quite limited awareness of what is, or could be, include in the targets. This makes comparison and benchmarking between cities difficult.

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Section: Research Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Defining and Delimiting The Spatial Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Defining and Delimiting Activitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards a comprehensive system of methodological considerations for cities' climate targets

et al. 2013

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“…As Klaus Toepfer, the United Nations Environment Programme world's primary sink of resources and source of wastes, is thus a key point to tackle the gigaton problems. A review of the carbon emissions of twelve large metropolitan areas around the world found that their carbon footprints usually were smaller than their national averages, which suggests that urban areas offer a relatively carbon-efficient lifestyle (19).This finding is particularly applicable to the U.S., where two-thirds of the population lives and three-quarters of economic activity takes place within the 100 largest metropolitan areas, but these areas account for a much smaller percentage of the U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (2). However, many of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas are also the least compact and most carbon-intensive.…”

Section: <Insertmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gigaton Problems Need Gigaton Solutions

Crittenden

Chen

et al. 2010

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Numerous challenges have been identified as critical for sustainability, including population growth, access to energy and resources, climate change, biodiversity decreases, and widespread poverty.Governments, industry, researchers, and advocates have proposed and begun to implement a range of actions and policies designed to tackle these challenges. Many of these practices are helpful for approaching sustainability, but their contributions typically do not match the scale of the challenges they aim to tackle. For example, recently the City of Pittsburgh announced plans to spend $24 million to replace 40,000 of its existing street lights with LED lights. This project is estimated to eliminate 17,853 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per year (1), which of course is very helpful. However, this is only an approximately 0.7% reduction in the total CO2 emitted by the City (2). Although replacing street lights is likely to save the City money, such a small reduction in CO2 emissions contributes little to solving the challenge of climate change. That investment is probably better spent on educating people about how to save energy in their daily lives, such as by turning computers off when leaving their offices, which will have a larger impact at the City's scale. To meaningfully address climate change and other challenges, society needs a clear understanding of the magnitude of those challenges, and to match its actions to the scale of the problem.

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Urbanization and the carbon cycle: Current capabilities and research outlook from the natural sciences perspective

et al. 2014

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This paper explores the urban carbon cycle from the natural sciences perspective, identifying key knowledge gaps and priority areas for future research. The combination of large, concentrated carbon fluxes and rapid change makes cities key elements of the carbon cycle and offers the potential for them to serve as "first responders" for climate action. Estimates of urban-scale carbon fluxes are significantly more uncertain than at larger spatial scales, in part because past studies have mostly avoided local/urban scales where the mix of anthropogenic and natural fluxes is complex and difficult to observationally isolate. To develop effective emission reduction policies, we need to understand emission sources and how they may be changing. Such improved quantification and understanding of underlying processes at the urban scale will not only provide policy-relevant information and improve the understanding of urban dynamics and future scenarios, but will also translate into better global-scale anthropogenic flux estimates, and advance our understanding of carbon cycle and climate feedbacks across multiple scales. Understanding the relationship between urbanization and urban carbon flows requires intellectual integration with research communities beyond the natural sciences. Cities can serve as interdisciplinary process laboratories that are sufficiently constrained in both spatial and governance scale to support truly integrated research by the natural sciences, social sciences, and engineering. A thoughtfully crafted science research agenda that is grounded in sustained, dense observations relevant to estimating urban carbon fluxes and their controlling processes and is focused on a statistically significant sample of cities will advance our understanding of the carbon cycle.

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Twelve metropolitan carbon footprints: A preliminary comparative global assessment

Cited by 299 publications

References 21 publications

Towards a comprehensive system of methodological considerations for cities' climate targets

Towards a comprehensive system of methodological considerations for cities' climate targets

Gigaton Problems Need Gigaton Solutions

Urbanization and the carbon cycle: Current capabilities and research outlook from the natural sciences perspective

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