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Will climate mitigation ambitions lead to carbon neutrality? An analysis of the local-level plans of 327 cities in the EU
Abstract
Cities across the globe recognise their role in climate mitigation and are acting to reduce carbon emissions. Knowing whether cities set ambitious climate and energy targets is critical for determining their contribution towards the global 1.5 °C target, partly because it helps to identify areas where further action is necessary. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the mitigation targets of 327 European cities, as declared in their local climate plans. The sample encompasses over 25% of the EU population and includes cities of all sizes across all Member States, plus the UK. The study analyses whether the type of plan, city size, membership of climate networks, and its regional location are associated with different levels of mitigation ambition. Results reveal that 78% of the cities have a GHG emissions reduction target. However, with an average target of 47%, European cities are not on track to reach the Paris Agreement: they need to roughly double their ambitions and efforts. Some cities are ambitious, e.g. 25% of our sample (81) aim to reach carbon neutrality, with the earliest target date being 2020.90% of these cities are members of the Climate Alliance and 75% of the Covenant of Mayors. City size is the strongest predictor for carbon neutrality, whilst climate network(s) membership, combining adaptation and mitigation into a single strategy, and local motivation also play a role. The methods, data, results and analysis of this study can serve as a reference and baseline for tracking climate mitigation ambitions across European and global cities.
... In the last years, local energy plans have been developed (Reckien et al., 2014;Salvia et al., 2021), a part of them being fostered by city networks initiatives. City networks gather municipalities around climate-related objectives and engage local authorities in meeting them through the development of roadmaps and deployment of mitigation (and in some cases adaptation) measures. ...
... opposing views can be found. On the one hand, some studies concluded that the implementation of climate-related actions by local and other subnational actors would slightly complement the reductions managed by national entities but would not be enough to reach the Paris Agreement goals (Erickson and Tempest, 2014;Roelfsema et al., 2018;Salvia et al., 2021). On the other hand, some authors suggested that efforts made by subnational entities would be in line with upper goals Reckien et al., 2014), and may even overachieve national-set targets in some cases (Hsu et al., 2020b;Kuramochi et al., 2020). ...
... previous studies based their approach on the scale-up of low-level actions to estimate the impact of their net aggregation at national level.Hsu et al. (2020b),Kona et al. (2018),Reckien et al. (2014), andSalvia et al. (2021) focused on the aggregation of targets in local energy plans to evaluate if cities were on track to fulfil the goals set by their respective countries.(Kuramochi et al., 2020) aggregated the impact of commitments by Non State Actors (e.g. ...
This Thesis aims to develop a comprehensive framework for integrated long-term urban energy planning based on the modelling and prospective assessment of urban energy systems. This work brings the opportunity to solve the various challenges faced by urban energy modellers, as well as to supply policy-makers and urban planners with tools for the achievement of energy and climate objectives. Indeed, this Thesis seeks to shed light regarding specific issues and gaps faced when assessing urban energy systems, see the lack of clear approaches to develop comprehensive urban energy models and to incorporate their results into urban energy plans, the complexity and uncertainty when modelling future urban energy use, energy data scarcity at urban level, and the need of harmonised local and national energy and climate plans.
... These were referred to as requirements for climate change mitigation or components of mitigation plans. For instance, Salvia et al. (2021) identified several key components of mitigation plans in their analysis of local-level plans in 327 cities in the European Union (EU). The components list included existence of previous Micro (individuals' level) • Neofytou et al., 2020 • No evidence was found • Salvia et al., 2021• Hoppe et al., 2014• O'Brien et al., 2018• Kashima et al., 2021 Climate change mitigation readiness mitigation plans, baseline emissions inventory, emissions reduction targets and sectors for implementing mitigation measures, along with explicit targets for energy efficiency and renewable energy (Salvia et al., 2021). ...
... For instance, Salvia et al. (2021) identified several key components of mitigation plans in their analysis of local-level plans in 327 cities in the European Union (EU). The components list included existence of previous Micro (individuals' level) • Neofytou et al., 2020 • No evidence was found • Salvia et al., 2021• Hoppe et al., 2014• O'Brien et al., 2018• Kashima et al., 2021 Climate change mitigation readiness mitigation plans, baseline emissions inventory, emissions reduction targets and sectors for implementing mitigation measures, along with explicit targets for energy efficiency and renewable energy (Salvia et al., 2021). Components of mitigation policies were also analyzed in Hoppe et al. (2014). ...
... For instance, Salvia et al. (2021) identified several key components of mitigation plans in their analysis of local-level plans in 327 cities in the European Union (EU). The components list included existence of previous Micro (individuals' level) • Neofytou et al., 2020 • No evidence was found • Salvia et al., 2021• Hoppe et al., 2014• O'Brien et al., 2018• Kashima et al., 2021 Climate change mitigation readiness mitigation plans, baseline emissions inventory, emissions reduction targets and sectors for implementing mitigation measures, along with explicit targets for energy efficiency and renewable energy (Salvia et al., 2021). Components of mitigation policies were also analyzed in Hoppe et al. (2014). ...
Purpose
This study aims to assess readiness for climate change mitigation in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Design/methodology/approach
Two stages were followed aiming at understanding the situation related to climate change mitigation in Bahrain and assessing the mitigation readiness. Baseline and mitigation scenarios for the period 2019–2040 were developed using the Low Emissions Analysis Platform software based on historical emissions and energy data for the period 1990–2018. Using the analytic hierarchy process, the mitigation readiness was assessed by 13 experts, and priority areas for mitigation action were identified.
Findings
CO 2 e emissions are projected to grow continuously. However, no explicit climate change strategy is in place yet. Mitigation is tackled implicitly through energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives. These initiatives can make 23% reduction in CO 2 e emissions by 2040. Adopting additional measures is needed to achieve the recently set emission reduction target of 30% by 2035. The findings revealed potential areas for improving mitigation efforts in Bahrain. Priority areas for mitigation actions, as identified by experts, were mainly related to policy and governance. Focus needs to be paid to the social aspect of climate change mitigation.
Originality/value
Literature on mitigation readiness in developing countries is sparse. Knowledge of the requirements for climate change mitigation and assessment of the country’s performance can prioritize areas for improving mitigation action. Several lessons can be learnt from the case of Bahrain. In addition, the adopted methodology can be applied to other developing or Arab countries at local or institutional levels. However, its application to specific sectors may require adjustments.
... It is estimated that around two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions in the world are caused by the energy sector (Newell et al. 2021). Studies have reported that human activities are the main cause of ecological disturbances, global warming, climate change, and pollution of the environment (Nielsen et al. 2017) A key focus of the Paris Conference was to educate world leaders on the need for clean energy to save our planet (Salvia et al. 2021). Energy production and agriculture, in particular intensive livestock rearing, were identified as factors posing major environmental challenges in the Europe areas. ...
... The European Union (EU) has set binding targets to comply with COP-21 in Paris and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% in 2030 The vital element here is to understand how energy efficiency impacts CO 2 E in achieving the United Nations goals set out in the Responsible Editor: Ilhan Ozturk Paris COP26. Although interrelated studies have received considerable attention, numerous factors have been identified as causative elements to climate change in the recent economics literature (Salvia et al. 2021). The results of these studies show that some toxic pollutants, such as phosphorus, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen, and others, have been found to be declining, yet the effects of CO 2 E on the environment remain complex and controversial. ...
... Enhancing the efficiency of production and supply is essential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (Salvia et al. 2021). Ireland is an energy-importing economy, hence it is important to note that efficient production and supply have direct and indirect environmental benefits. ...
This study aims to examine the long-run asymmetric impact of energy productivity on environmental quality in Ireland. The data set covers the period from 1990Q1 to 2019Q4. Although the border issue has been the source of contention and terrorism for decades in Ireland, the country is conscious of modern innovations and has a coherent body of environmental law. Ireland’s goal is to achieve 80% of its electricity as renewable energy and reduce carbon emissions by 51% in 2030. Unlike earlier studies, the novelty of this study lies in the thorough analysis of how energy productivity affects the quality of the environment in Ireland while controlling for financial development, primary energy consumption, and economic growth utilizing the nonlinear ARDL approach and other robust econometric techniques. Precisely, the results indicate that (i) energy productivity benefits the environment by lowering CO2 emissions (CO2E) in the long term; (ii) financial sector development enhances the quality of the environment in Ireland; (iii) increase in primary energy consumption and economic growth without eco-friendly protocols propel an increase in CO2E. These findings support the economic theory that energy productivity can stimulate steady green living and green technological growth. We recommend that policymakers in Ireland invest in energy productivity and prioritize R&D that embraces cleaner technologies and cross-cutting eco-friendly policies to combat environmental challenges in Ireland and the world at large.
... The EU, with the European Green Deal (EGD) and the aim to become the first climateneutral region by 2050, has set "the ambitious climate and energy targets for 2030 to reduce GHG emissions by at least 40% compared to 1990, improve energy efficiency by approximately 32.5%, and provide that at least 32% of the consumed energy is generated from RES" [3,10,14]. In 2019, the target for GHG reduction increased from 40% to 55%. ...
... In order to participate, it is necessary to follow the fundamental aspects of climate neutrality, which are to reduce GHG emissions by 80-100% by 2050 or earlier, compared to the baseline year of 1990, or to achieve zero GHG emissions during a certain period in the future [2,5,14]. Future EU targets with GHG emissions for the period from 1990 to 2050 are shown in Figure 3. ...
... In order to establish a successful energy transition, a comprehensive strategy to achieve it is necessary, consisting of measures for the enhancement of energy efficiency and RESs, along with the use of low-carbon energy systems and technologies and respecting the energy principles, potentials, and possibilities of a certain country [14,18]. ...
This paper is effectively a scenario analysis of the energy system of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) from the perspective of the possible future reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the power generation sector, with the aim to become climate neutral by 2050, in compliance with the Green Agenda for the Western Balkan. According to the data from 2016, the share of power generation in the total GHG emissions in BiH was approximately 50%. By using the LEAP (Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning) energy model, two scenarios—the “gradual transition scenario” and the “climate neutral” scenario—have been analyzed for the period 2018–2050, and each scenario included decarbonization measures such as the extensive use of Renewable Energy Sources (RES). Unlike the climate neutral scenario, the gradual transition scenario includes the replacement of certain parts of the old, currently-in-operation Coal-fired Power Plants (CFPPs) with the new CFPP, which is more efficient. In the climate-neutral scenario, that part of the existing CFPPs is replaced by a mix of RESs. The results from the first scenario suggest that the share of CFPPs in electricity generation has gradually decreased from 69.3% to 16.3% in 2050, and CO2 emissions from the power generation sector in 2050 will be 2.2 million tons—roughly 83.5% less than in 2014. According to the second scenario, the emphasis is strongly on the growth and promotion of RESs, which have significantly taken over the roles of major producers of electricity, encouraging the low-carbon development of BiH. Analysis results show that, in 2050, there will be no CO2 emissions from power generation. It can be concluded that specifically designed energy models for the optimization of capacities and CO2 emissions through convergence towards RESs could be an optimistic and promising option for BiH to become climate neutral while meeting increasing energy demands. The results show the required RES capacities needed for achieving climate-neutral power generation by 2050, with the current rate level of power generation. Based on the results, RES investment needs can be estimated. Overall, the results of the scenarios can be used for the strategic planning of the power generation sector in BiH until 2050.
... Many organizations and countries have stated their intentions to become carbon neutral by 2050 in response to the urgent need to address global warming and climate change [5]. ...
... Figure (5) illustrates the effect of temperature which ranged from 105 to 800 °C on the compressive strength of thermally treated specimens with different (IGBFS) doses. The compressive strength increases as the treated temperature rise to 250 °C before declining up to 800 °C. ...
The effect of firing temperature on the properties of pozzolanic cement was assessed. A set of specimens were prepared by mixing different mass ratios (40%, 50%, 60% and 70%) of imported granulated blast furnace slag, (IGBFS) with Ordinary Portland cement, (OPC). Different dosages of GBFS were investigated for weight loss, bulk density, total porosity, and mechanical compressive strength. The results show that the weight loss as well as the porosity for all mix proportions increases in the same trend with firing temperature. Quite in contrast, the bulk density and compressive strength gradually decrease with firing temperature. Finally, recrystallization, phase change, distortion, and other hydration products were investigated using XRD. The research also suggested using the specimen with more slag as a fire-resistant bonding material, which has significant environmental and financial benefits
... Such documents set out the measures they intend to adopt to tackle climate challenges within the local context. Analyses of mitigation strategies have examined and compared their contents, focusing for example on the extent to which they might achieve CO 2 emission reductions or carbon neutrality (Salvia et al 2021). Given that the true scale and exact timing of climate change impacts are extremely difficult to predict, comparisons of adaptation strategies have tended to identify the risks that they seek to combat (e.g., heatwaves or flooding) and/or the sectors in which they propose taking action (Otto et al 2021). ...
... Germany represents a highly relevant country to study local climate policy diffusion and upscaling, given that many cities developed climate mitigation strategies from the 1990s onwards and have supplemented them with climate adaptation strategies during the last 10 years. Previous studies of climate plans and strategies in Germany and elsewhere have highlighted the importance of these documents for setting priorities, mobilising local resources and effecting policy change (Salvia et al 2021;King 2022). As climate change is still a voluntary activity for municipalities, any strategy that they adopt would not be the result of coercion by the federal or state-level. ...
Unlabelled:
Drawing on data for the 104 largest German cities, and deeper analysis of six mid-sized cities (including forerunners, followers and latecomers in climate mitigation and adaptation), we find that the spread of local mitigation and adaptation strategies across Germany can be explained by a combination of horizontal diffusion and vertical upscaling. Specifically, while the spread of climate mitigation initiatives in the 1990s was triggered primarily by transnational municipal networks (horizontal diffusion), the development and revision of climate mitigation strategies and the emergence of climate adaptation strategies during the last decade have been driven mainly by national and subnational funding programmes (vertical upscaling). Notably, forerunner cities are less dependent on external funding than followers and latecomers, because they have more internal capacity to act. By arguing that upscaling of local climate policies from forerunners to followers and latecomers depends on interventions by national and subnational authorities, we stress that the majority of German municipalities require external support in order to develop and implement effective climate strategies.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10113-022-02020-z.
... As a result, reducing carbon emissions is of paramount importance (Cheng et al. 2022). However, carbon sink capacity has increased slowly, and countries all over the world face severe carbon-neutral pressures due to urbanization (Salvia et al. 2021). It is estimated that China is responsible for 30.7% of the world's total carbon emissions (BP 2020), making it an important player in achieving the global carbon neutrality target. ...
... By reducing carbon emissions, the greenhouse effect can be effectively mitigated (Salvia et al. 2021). China, as the country with the largest carbon emissions in the world, can contribute to global carbon neutrality through its carbon emissions reduction efforts. ...
A major environmental concern today is the carbon emissions caused by rapid urbanization. As the largest developing country and carbon emitter, China has controlled the urban growth boundary (UGB) as a quasi-experimental policy to achieve carbon neutrality. Therefore, this paper employs the difference in differences (DID) method, for panel data from 2000 to 2019 in China to shed light on the effects on carbon emissions. Results show that the UGB can reduce carbon emissions considerably. After the implementation of the policy, the carbon emissions of the pilot cities decreased by 23.91%. Additionally, a series of robustness tests such as PSM-DID and Placebo tests support the conclusions. Moreover, the greater influence is reflected in the scope of the whole city and the intensity of the permanent plan. The UGB is more susceptible to cities in the central and western areas and cities with weak environmental regulations. Through the mechanism tests, the emission reduction effect of the UGB will be greater in cities with larger vegetation coverage and advanced industry structure. Furthermore, our analysis suggests the UGB needs to be adequately promoted as a policy to achieve carbon neutrality in cities. To make the policy more effective, vegetation cover and industrial structure ought to be taken into consideration.
... In particular, the results show that the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy is a very important network and resource also for cities that engage with climate action, confirming the results of previous studies on local climate planning, both for European (e.g. Salvia et al. [84]) and Italian cities (e.g. Hurtado et al. [85]). ...
This study investigates the climate emergency declaration (CED) movement in cities and its effects and synergies with local climate planning. Urban areas are experiencing a wide range of climate-induced extreme events, particularly those located in the Mediterranean hotspot. The focus is on Italian cities, which have only recently become key players in climate planning. The method is based on the collection, analysis, and comparison of data on CEDs and local climate plans (LCPs), integrated with information on city membership in climate networks, to extrapolate key performance indicators of the CED movement. The results show that the CED movement can motivate municipalities to become more ambitious in climate action. As of February 2021, the "climate emergency" movement was supported by 105 Italian cities geographically concentrated in the northern regions (66.7%). The motivation behind a CED is often attributable to local populations calling for concrete climate action (91.1% referred to the Fridays for Future movement) but also to a greater perception of the impacts of climate change (85.6% referred to the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C). Networking plays an important role (85 cities in the Covenant of Mayors). Interestingly, 36 cities (34.3%) were not engaged in local climate planning previously, but the CED shows now they see the urgency to act. 24.4% cities aim at carbon neutrality in their CEDs (most with local adaptation aspirations), with a much smaller fraction of cities doing so in LCPs and generally lower ambition in terms of greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.
... Germany's carbon neutral strategy mainly includes three aspects (Salvia et al., 2021;Wang et al., 2021) (Fig. 2a). (1) A powerful legal system and a complete regulatory mechanism have been constructed. ...
Carbon neutrality (or climate neutrality) has been a global consensus, and international experience exchange is essential. Given the differences in the degree of social development, resource endowment and technological level, each country should build a carbon-neutral plan based on its national conditions. Compared with other major developed countries (e.g., Germany, the United States and Japan), China's carbon neutrality has much bigger challenges, including a heavy and time-pressured carbon reduction task and the current energy structure that is over-dependent on fossil fuels. Here we provide a comprehensive review of the status and prospects of the key technologies for low-carbon, near-zero carbon, and negative carbon emissions. Technological innovations associated with coal, oil-gas and hydrogen industries and their future potential in reducing carbon emissions are particularly explained and assessed. Based on integrated analysis of international experience from the world's major developed countries, in-depth knowledge of the current and future technologies, and China's energy and ecological resources potential, five lessons for the implementation of China's carbon neutrality are proposed: (1) transformation of energy production pattern from a coal-dominated pattern to a diversified renewable energy pattern; (2) renewable power-to-X and large-scale underground energy storage; (3) integration of green hydrogen production, storage, transport and utilization; (4) construction of clean energy systems based on smart sector coupling (ENSYSCO); (5) improvement of ecosystem carbon sinks both in nationwide forest land and potential desert in Northwest China. This paper provides an international perspective for a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities of carbon neutrality in China, and can serve as a theoretical foundation for medium-long term carbon neutral policy formulation.
... With the rapid development of the economy and society worldwide, people are increasingly concerned about the problem of global warming. Countries have passed legislation setting ambitious climate and energy targets in pursuing carbon neutrality by 2050 or sooner [1]. One of the important drivers of climate change is the increase in the level of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere, which is mainly generated by the use of fossil energy; therefore, it is crucial to achieve the energy transition (ET) from fossil to renewable energy systems [2]. ...
With the development of the economy and society, energy problems have become a great concern. The heat pump-coupled thermal energy storage (TES) system is a potential form of building heating, which can improve the stability of the grid and promote the consumption of renewable energy. Phase change materials (PCMs) are widely used in the field of building heating, but there are still some problems such as unsatisfactory melting points, low thermal conductivity, phase separation, and supercooling, which limit the application of PCMs in heat pump heating systems. Therefore, it is very important to improve PCMs by a performance improvement method. This work first summarizes the classification, advantages and disadvantages of PCMs, and introduces the connection between PCMs and heat pumps. Then, a detailed summary of PCMs applied in heat pump heating systems is presented, and a comprehensive review of the performance improvement methods for PCMs, which include additives, encapsulation, and eutectic compounds, is discussed. Finally, the existing problems, solutions, and future research directions are proposed. The emphasis of the research is to clarify the influence of PCMs on heat pump performance and the effect of different performance improvement methods on PCMs, and to illustrate the future development direction for PCMs in heat pump heating technologies, including the matching of heat pumps and PCMs, multi-standard decision methods and advanced control strategies.
... Since 2014, C40 cities have reported GPC-based GHG emission inventories to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). The consistency and transparency of GPC inventories enable cross-city emissions comparisons, emission mitigation policy assessments, and consumption-based carbon footprint estimations (Lopes Toledo and Lèbre La Rovere 2018, Nangini et al 2019, Salvia et al 2021, Wiedmann et al 2021, Kongboon et al 2022. ...
Under the leadership of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), approximately 1,100 global cities have signed to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Accurate greenhouse gas emission calculations at the city-scale have become critical. This study forms a bridge between the two emission calculation methods: 1) the city-scale accounting used by C40 cities —the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) and 2) the global-scale gridded datasets used by the research community —the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) and Open‐Source Data Inventory for Anthropogenic CO2 (ODIAC). For the emission magnitudes of 78 C40 cities, we find good correlations between the GPC and EDGAR (R2 = 0.80) and the GPC and ODIAC (R2 = 0.72). Regionally, African cities show the largest variability in the three emission estimates. For the emission trends, the standard deviation of the differences is ±4.7 %/year for EDGAR vs. GPC and is ±3.9 %/year for ODIAC vs. GPC: a factor of ~2 larger than the trends that many C40 cities pledged (net-zero by 2050 from 2010, or −2.5%/year). To examine the source of discrepancies in the emission datasets, we assess the impact of spatial resolutions of EDGAR (0.1°) and ODIAC (1km) on estimating varying-sized cities’ emissions. Our analysis shows that the coarser resolution of EDGAR can artificially decrease emissions by 13% for cities smaller than 1,000 km2. We find that data quality of emission factors used in GPC inventories vary regionally: the highest quality for European and North American and the lowest for African and Latin American cities. Our study indicates that the following items should be prioritized to reduce the discrepancies between the two emission calculation methods: 1) implementing local-specific/up-to-date emission factors in GPC inventories, 2) keeping the global power plant database current, and 3) incorporating satellite-derived CO2 datasets (i.e., NASA OCO-3).
... At present, there have been studies and analyses of international long-term emission reduction actions and strategies [5]. For example, Monica Salvia et al. [6] conducted a comparative analysis of the emission reduction targets announced by 327 European cities in their local climate plans. The study analyzed whether the plan type, city size, climate network members, and their regional location are related to varying degrees of participation. ...
Climate change is one of the most urgent challenges facing the world. All countries should take joint actions to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality, which include controlling global warming to within a 1.5 °C temperature rise, to mitigate the extreme harm caused by climate change. However, ways in which to achieve economically and environmentally sustainable carbon neutrality are yet to be established. Carbon neutrality appears frequently in international policy and the scientific literature, but there is little detailed literature. It is necessary to conduct an in-depth analysis of the development context of its research. This paper analyzed the literature on carbon neutrality using bibliometric methods. A total of 1383 research papers were collected from the “Web of Science core database” from 1995 to 2021. Descriptive statistical analysis and keyword co-occurrence and literature co-citation network analyses were utilized to sort the research hotspots, and the detected bursts, the top 30 keywords in terms of word frequency, and 12 clusters were selected. It was found that the existing carbon neutrality research literature mainly focuses on carbon neutrality energy transformation, carbon neutrality technology development, carbon neutrality effect evaluation, and carbon neutrality industry examples. The analysis process involved comprehensively reading the key articles and considering the co-citation, burstiness, centrality, and other indicators under clustering; the carbon neutrality research was then divided into three stages, and evolving themes were observed. Based on the burst detection, this paper holds that with the energy structure transformation, energy consumption assessment and carbon neutrality schemes of various industries, carbon dioxide capture technology, and biogas resource utilization, urban carbon neutrality policy will become a research hotspot in the future. This paper helps to provide a reference for scholars’ theoretical research and has important reference value for policymakers to formulate relevant policy measures. It is helpful for enterprises to make strategic decisions and determine the direction of technology, for R&D and investment, and it is of considerable significance to promote the research of carbon neutrality technology.
... GHGs in general and CO 2 in particular are the main causes of climate change [1][2][3][4]. Studies on carbon neutrality and the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources are ongoing [5]. Nevertheless, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicted that global energy-usage-related CO 2 emissions will steadily increase through to 2050 (EIA, 2021). ...
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the livestock industry are expected to increase. A response strategy for CO2 emission regulations is required for pig production as this industry comprises a large proportion of the livestock industry and it is projected that per capita pork consumption will rise. A CO2 emission response strategy can be established by accurately measuring the CO2 concentrations in pig facilities. Here, we compared and evaluated the performance of three different machine learning (ML) models (ElasticNet, random forest regression (RFR), and support vector regression (SVR)) designed to predict CO2 concentration and internal air temperature (Ti) values in the pig house used to regulate a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) control system. For each ML model, the hyperparameter was optimised and the predictive accuracy was evaluated. The order of predictive accuracy for the ML models was ElasticNet < SVR < RFR. Hence, random forest regression provided superior prediction performance. Based on the test dataset, for Ti prediction by RFR, R2 ≥ 0.848 and the root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE) were 0.235 °C and 0.160 °C, respectively, whilst for CO2 concentration prediction by RFR, R2 ≥ 0.885 and the RMSE and MAE were 64.39 ppm and ≤ 46.17 ppm, respectively.
... However, with the current trend of CO2 emissions, the temperature control targets of the Paris Agreement will be difficult to achieve. Deep CO2 reductions in the coming years are key to achieving that goal [4,5]. Currently, 133 countries have made carbon neutral commitments. ...
To achieve the global temperature control target under the background of climate warming, it is necessary to establish a systematic carbon dioxide (CO2) emission accounting method system in the field of water resources as soon as possible. In this study, the carbon dioxide emission equivalent analysis (CEEA) method for different water resource behaviors (WRBs) is proposed from four dimensions of development, allocation, utilization, and protection, and a function table of CEEA (FT-CEEA) for WRBs is constructed. The FT-CEEA includes CEEA formulae for 16 aspects in four categories of water resource development, allocation, utilization, and protection. The CEEA method is applied to 31 provinces in China. The results reveal that: (1) There are significant spatial differences in the carbon dioxide emission equivalent (CEE) of WRBs in different provinces of China under the influence of various factors such as water supply structure and natural conditions. (2) Reservoir storage, tap water allocation, and wastewater treatment are the main contributors to CEE in the categories of water resource development, allocation, and protection behaviors, respectively. (3) The water resource utilization behavior category has the most significant CO2 emission and absorption effects, and industrial and domestic water utilization behaviors are the main sources of emission effects. (4) The overall CO2 emission effect of WRBs is greater than the absorption effect. Measures such as increasing the proportion of hydroelectric power generation, improving ecological water security capacity, and strengthening the level of wastewater treatment and reclaimed water reuse are effective ways to promote the goal of carbon neutrality in the field of water resources.
... Various countries (both developed and developing) have formulated policies and developed new technologies to prevent carbon emissions. Rapid industrialization has prompted the European states of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Denmark to promulgate new laws to realize the goal of carbon neutrality in 2050 [1][2][3][4][5]. The other big industrial nations of the United States, Canada, Japan, and Australia also promise to achieve the target of carbon neutrality by 2050 [6][7][8]. ...
The greenhouse effect is a severe global problem [...]
... In particular, carbon-based C1 chemicals-such as CO, CO 2 , and CH 4 -are known to be major greenhouse gases [5][6][7][8][9]. Many countries are currently pursuing carbon-neutral strategies, and there has been vigorous research into carbon capture, storage, and utilization (CCUS) [10][11][12][13][14][15]. The chemical conversion of C1 chemistry-which is one of the most promising CCUS technologies-is attracting substantial attention due to its feasibility and economic efficiency, such as the conversion of syngas (including CO/CO 2 /H 2 ) to alternative fuels, including ethanol or iso-butanol as valuable chemicals [16][17][18][19]. ...
The direct conversion of syngas to methyl acetate (MA) via dimethyl ether (DME) was carried out in a combined fixed/fluidized bed reactor. Two catalysts were used in this study: Cu-ZnO-Al 2 O 3 (CZA) and spray-dried fer-rierite zeolite (SPD-FER). DME was synthesized with syngas to DME under CZA and SPD-FER, while DME carbonylation-i.e., that of DME to MA-proceeded with SPD-FER. DME synthesis was conducted in a fixed bed located at the bottom whereas DME carbonylation was conducted in a fluidized bed located at the top. As the space velocity increased, the X CO decreased, since the flow regime changed from particulate regime to bubbling regime, thus affecting attrition and the increase in the deactivation rate. Since the synthesis of DME from the syngas reaction is a mole reduced reaction, the regime transition occurred at a greater than predicted space velocity. When the molar fraction of CO increased, the X CO decreased whereas the X DME increased by approximately 50 %. Compared to the combined fixed/fixed bed results, the X CO and X DME both increased in the combined fixed/fluidized bed reactor. Lastly, the deactivation rate was higher in the combined fixed/fluidized bed than it was in the fixed/fixed bed.
... Researchers and scientists are continually seeking new ways to achieve carbon neutrality for a more sustainable society and overall healthier future. (1)(2)(3)(4)(5) Some often historically overlooked areas, such as the fashion and the textile industries, make a surprisingly large anthropogenic environmental impact. The term most often used today is "fast fashion" which has only recently gained significant traction and research focus. ...
In response to the growing fashion and textile industry, a market of reuse and recyclability to create alternative waste streams has emerged. With a more eco-friendly mindset, companies have begun...
... In largely anthropised territories, such as Europe, it was necessary to think about readjustment and modification of existing urban areas [16][17][18][19]. For this reason, research organisations have sprung up to promote punctual retrofits and modifications initially at the building scale, with the development of projects such as nearly-Zero Energy Buildings (n-ZEB) [20], Net-Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) [21], Zero Energy Buildings (ZEB) [21] and Positive Energy Buildings (PEB) [22]. ...
A Positive Energy District (PED) is a portion of urban area with defined boundaries that can produce energy in excess of its own consumption. The aim of this study is to analyse design variations among the six projects (12 case studies) of PED belonging to the European Smart Cities and Communities programme. Thus, it will be possible to identify the reasons behind the energy choices related to generation, storage and distribution that appear in the different geographical areas. To achieve this, different data were collected by consulting official documents and creating questionnaires that were communicated with the project representatives. Thus, the result of this study is a catalogue of the energy system solutions adopted in the studied PEDs with a critical analysis of the different motivations behind them in order to outline general trends in the geographical areas with similar characteristics. In conclusion, this study defined which technological choices are the most common in territories with similar profiles and how divergent those with different profiles are. Furthermore, applied to a large catalogue of PED, the methodology identified would make it possible to create different operating models for different territorial types and urban settlements.
... Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind produce little or no pollution when consumed, and thus can effectively reduce the adverse environmental impact of growing carbon emissions [1,2]. Most countries around the world are now taking active action to reduce CO 2 emissions [3]. China's goal is to equalize carbon dioxide emissions and absorption by 2060, most notably through the development of renewable energy [4,5]. ...
Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is an important technology in the development of renewable energy. The main advantages of CAES are its high energy capacity and environmental friendliness. One of the main challenges is its low energy density, meaning a natural cavern is required for air storage. High-pressure air compression can effectively solve the problem. A liquid piston gas compressor facilitates high-pressure compression, and efficient convective heat transfer can significantly reduce the compression energy consumption during air compression. In this paper, a near isothermal compression method is proposed to increase the surface area and heat exchange by using multiple tube bundles in parallel in the compression chamber in order to obtain high-pressure air using liquid-driven compression. Air compression with a compression ratio of 6.25:1 is achieved by reducing the tube diameter and increasing the parallel tube number while keeping the compression chamber cross-sectional area constant in order to obtain a high-pressure air of 5 MPa. The performances of this system are analyzed when different numbers of tubes are applied. A system compression efficiency of 93.0% and an expansion efficiency of 92.9% can be achieved when 1000 tubes are applied at a 1 minute period. A new approach is provided in this study to achieve high efficiency and high pressure compressed air energy storage.
... It encompasses 17 interconnected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets, with SDG 13 calling for urgent actions to combat climate change and its impacts. In line with SDG 13, countries adopted the Paris Agreement and agreed to keep the increase in the average world temperature to less than 2°C [14], with a goal of 1.5°C from its preindustrial level [15]. The average global surface temperature rose by around 1.2°C between 1850 and 2020 [11]. ...
Climate change is a significant long-term threat faced by humanity today. The urban energy transformation from a carbon-emissions-intensive environment to a carbon-emissions-free solution is vital to achieving carbon emissions neutrality. Future city planning shall include the carbon emissions neutrality concept for sustainable urban green energy development. This review covers the recent advances in green energy development in urban sectors, including thermal process and power systems in the industry, building and urban environment, transportation, and waste treatment. It includes the compendium of the recent publications reported in the Virtual Special Issue of ENERGY presented at the 5th International Conference of Modern Power Systems and Units (MPSU′21) and the 7th International Conference on Low Carbon Asia and Beyond (ICLCA′21). Recent research highlights the need to develop novel energy materials, increase the storage capacity and durability of battery cells, reduce the vulnerability of renewable energy sources, enhance the applicability of optimisation modelling, and improve new energy research and engineering design. This review also summarises the challenges and recommendations for green urban energy development in environmental, economic, and societal aspects to achieve carbon emissions neutrality. Innovative measures to minimise energy consumption for waste treatments are also recommended. Innovations in technology with strong institutional regulations and incentives support and behavioural change in social norms are needed for achieving carbon emissions neutrality in an urban environment.
... Although existing papers focus on carbon neutrality, little in the literature studies the economic cost of carbon neutrality by applying carbon pricing [40][41][42]. Thus, this paper wants to fill the knowledge gap, for exploring the impact of carbon neutrality by emission trading and carbon tax from the perspective of GDP loss, energy structure, the compensation of the total factor productivity, and commodity price. ...
The process of carbon neutrality does have economic costs; however, few studies have measured the cost and the economic neutral opportunities. This paper uses a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to simulate China’s carbon neutrality path from 2020 to 2060 and analyzes its economic impact. This paper innovatively adjusts the CGE modeling technology and simulates the boundary of the Porter hypothesis on the premise of economic neutrality. The results show that the carbon neutrality target may reduce the annual GDP growth rate by about 0.8% in 2020–2060. To make the carbon pricing method under the carbon neutrality framework meet the strong version of the Porter hypothesis (or economic neutrality), China must increase its annual total factor productivity by 0.56–0.57% in 2020–2060; this is hard to achieve. In addition, the study finds that China’s 2030 carbon target has little impact on the economy, but the achievement of the 2060 carbon neutrality target will have a significant effect. Therefore, the paper believes that the key to carbon neutrality lies in the coexistence of technological innovation and carbon pricing to ensure that we can cope with global warming with the lowest cost and resistance.
... The recovery of medium-temperature waste heat from the industrial sector for space heating in buildings can effectively decrease the consumption of fossil fuels [1][2][3]. The mismatch between waste heat sources and consumption in time and space usually requires thermal energy storage (TES) [4,5]. ...
Recovering medium-temperature (e.g., 150–180 °C) industrial waste heat through latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) can effectively attenuate the consumption of fossil fuels. However, the LHTES system containing a single medium-temperature phase change material (PCM), e.g., erythritol, cannot absorb the part of heat below the PCM's melting point (∼118 °C) during the charging process. Meanwhile, a single low-temperature PCM, e.g., paraffin wax, is unable to supply a significant amount of heat at temperatures higher than its melting point upon discharging. Therefore, a cascade LHTES system combining one erythritol unit and two paraffin wax units (melting point of ∼60 °C) was proposed to deeply recover the waste heat during charging and increase the heat supply temperature during discharging. Through prototype testing, the performance of such a cascade system was examined under various working conditions. It was shown that the cascade system could improve the efficiency of the waste heat recovery from 15.8% to 63.4% under the charging condition of 100 L/h and 160 °C, as compared to a single-stage erythritol-based system. The average heat supply temperature of the cascade system was also increased from 37 °C (at a constant flow rate) to 53.6 °C via an active discharging strategy (by tuning the flow rate). This highly efficient cascade LHTES system has great potential for recovery of medium-temperature waste heat towards a decarbonized future of space heating for buildings.
... Overall Fig. 6) describing the three groups of cities in our analysis illustrate that EUCoM cities tend to have more sizeable stationary fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions and be larger in population and population density than external cities, which could explain differences in their emissions trends, since larger cities with higher levels of GDP per capita have been shown to have more ambitious climate plans 2,18 . ...
Although cities have risen to prominence as climate actors, emissions’ data scarcity has been the primary challenge to evaluating their performance. Here we develop a scalable, replicable machine learning approach for evaluating the mitigation performance for nearly all local administrative areas in Europe from 2001-2018. By combining publicly available, spatially explicit environmental and socio-economic data with self-reported emissions data from European cities, we predict annual carbon dioxide emissions to explore trends in city-scale mitigation performance. We find that European cities participating in transnational climate initiatives have likely decreased emissions since 2001, with slightly more than half likely to have achieved their 2020 emissions reduction target. Cities who report emissions data are more likely to have achieved greater reductions than those who fail to report any data. Despite its limitations, our model provides a replicable, scalable starting point for understanding city-level climate emissions mitigation performance.
... Reducing the overall burden of the energy transition and fighting against energy poverty are two core concepts at the heart of energy productivity. It measures how much money we save by using energy per unit (Salvia et al., 2021). Mathematical energy productivity is calculated by the total energy used (kilowatt hours of electricity or barrels of oil equivalent) divided by gross energy produced (Huaman & Jun 2014). ...
This paper examines the asymmetric and long-run effect of energy productivity on the quality of the environment in Finland. Finland, as one of the Nordic countries, is a major contributor to the global drive to achieve decarbonization by 2050. In effect, this study seeks to contribute to the strides by querying the extent to which shocks in energy productivity make or mar the sustainability of the Finland environment from 1990:Q1 to 2019:Q4. The other impacts of financial development, economic growth, and trade openness are considered in the model estimated by using the novel hidden panel cointegration and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) methodology. The results reveal a significant asymmetric equilibrium cointegration relationship among the variables over long-run time horizons; energy productivity utilization enhances the quality of the environment in Finland over the long run while trade openness, financial development, and economic growth contribute to environmental degradation in Finland in the long term. In particular, a 1% positive and negative fluctuation in energy productivity lowers carbon emissions by 1.79442% and 0.84799% in the long term. Whereas 1% change in trade openness, financial development, and economic growth trigger CO2 emissions (CO2E) by 1.15298%, 0.271365%, and 2.93402% in Finland's economies. The results of the frequency domain causality model corroborate the NARDL results. On the basis of these empirical findings, this study suggests that policymakers in Finland should consider the asymmetric behavior among these variables in setting their trade, environmental, growth, and energy policies.
... Under the goal of carbon neutrality, many countries have been engaged in energy transformation [1][2][3][4]. High-quality natural gas has become the leading role of energy transformation and the best choice for high-quality development of China's economy [5]. China is rich in coal resources, but lacking in oil and natural gas resources, so the natural gas resources are heavily dependent on imports. ...
In order to take advantage of the special layered salt rock in China, the idea of using two-well-vertical (TWV) to construct cavern was put forward, and it has been applied in some salt mines. However, at present, there is still a lack of in-depth research on the two factors that greatly affect the stability of the TWV cavern: the roof shape and working conditions. In addition, there is still a lack of targeted research on the economic rationality of constructing caverns by TWV. Therefore, in this study, based on the cavern shape of the TWV method, salt cavern underground gas storage (UGS) model with buried depth of 1130 m was established, and numerical simulation research was conducted under different roof shapes and injection-production (IP) frequency. The simulation results show that the roof bulge will produce large deformation and is a potential unstable area. When the IP frequency increases, the risk of instability will increase to some extent. In addition, the design under different working conditions is optimized and the IP frequency and the minimum operation internal pressure (Pmin) suitable for different well spacing are put forward. Then, based on the discounted cash flow (DCF) method, the economic analysis of the proposed TWV salt cavern construction project was carried out. The internal rate of return (IRR), financial net present value, investment payback period and storage and transfer fee are evaluated, and the break-even point of the project was analyzed. Comprehensive research shows that it is feasible to use the TWV method to construct salt cavern in China.
... Anthropogenic climate change is one of our era's greatest challenges, and the central role of cities in mitigating it has widely been recognized. Several cities already have ambitious greenhouse reduction targets and roadmaps to carbon neutrality (Salvia et al, 2021;Mattinen-Yuryev et al, 2021;Seppälä et al, 2019). Alongside these ambitious climate goals, cities must provide and maintain infrastructure and services for their citizens, companies and other stakeholders. ...
Both climate communication and place branding are familiar concepts, whose potentials have been recognized. Cities have engaged in communication and climate work for several years, yet studies linking municipal climate action and communication are scarce. We conducted targeted interviews and a broader survey of climate workers and communicators of forerunner municipalities in Finland and found gaps between climate action and communication. Synergies could be achieved if the two functioned in synchronicity rather than separate tasks, as words require actions, but full impacts of actions fall short without communication. Municipalities have progressed on both fronts but are hindered by lacking time and human resources. Results revealed several opportunities of climate communication in amplifying local climate action and strengthening municipal brand image, but many remain underexploited. Sufficient resources and stronger legitimacy are still needed for climate matters to be better integrated into everything the municipality does and communicates.
... [20,22,62]), SDG 13-Climate change (69, e.g. [55]), SDG 7-Energy (28, e.g. [44]) and SDG 6 -Water and sanitation (28, e.g. ...
We analyse how ambitiously the underlying targets for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations Agenda 2030 are set in terms of their semantic formulation and discuss the implications of this for policy making. Our analysis is based on classifying ambitiousness into three types: semantic, relative and absolute ambitiousness; in this paper, we mainly analyse semantic ambitiousness . We establish an evaluation framework that shows clear differences in semantic ambitiousness levels between SDG targets. Awareness of these differences is essential, as semantic ambitiousness also lays the foundation for evaluating other types of ambitiousness of the SDGs in international cross-country comparisons and national policy making processes. We also analyse how progress towards the targets has been reported in the Sustainable Development Report of the SDG Index and in the SDGs Progress Chart of the United Nations. Finally, we discuss possible reasons for the differences in the level of ambitiousness and provide recommendations for operationalising the targets. Our aim is to provide a better understanding of the variability of interpretations that can occur in the evaluation of different SDGs, and to improve the coherence between the goals in developing any future development goal frameworks beyond Agenda 2030.
... In the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP26) in Glasgow (November 2021), 197 participating countries agreed to the Glasgow Climate Pact to reduce global CO 2 emissions by 45 per cent by 2030, aiming to hold the increase of global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels (Mountford et al., Masood and Tollefson 2021). Some countries and organizations such as EU (Salvia et al. 2021, Jäger-Waldau et al. 2020, U.S. (Williams et al. 2021), India (Fragkos et al. 2021, Chaturvedi et al. 2021, China (Wen andLi 2020, Wang et al. 2020) and Australia (Butler et al. 2020, Brinsmead et al. 2019) have enacted their own plans to reach the peak of carbon emissions in 2030-2040 and ultimately achieve carbon neutrality in 2050-2060. To entirely remove the dependence upon fossil fuels, it is estimated that the renewable energy should consistently provide at least 113,009 Terawatt hour (TWh, (Martins et al. 2019)) to fully satisfy the global energy consumption. ...
Objectives/Scope
Underground hydrogen storage (UHS) has been raising more interest to safely and cost-effectively store hydrogen at large-scale to help the transition from fossil fuel to sustainable energy and to achieve net-zero emission target. During hydrogen subsurface storage particularly in depleted gas reservoirs, the wellbore plays an important role in injection and reproduction to meet seasonal energy demand. However, it is still unclear how wellbore cement would react with stored hydrogen in the presence of formation brine, which may effect long-term cement integrity. We thus performed thermodynamic modelling on cement reactions with hydrogen and water at reservoirs conditions.
Methods, Procedures, Process
The dissolution of individual components of cement including C3S, C2S, C3A, C4AF and gypsum of Class G/H, and potential precipitation of twenty secondary minerals were simulated at an infinite time scale at reservoir temperature and pressure (representing the worst case scenario of cement degradation from geochemical perspective; in real case, the degree of cement degradation would be much less than the results from thermodynamic modelling as it is a time-dependent process). The extent of cement mineral reactions with hydrogen was compared with that of methane and carbon dioxide to assess the wellbore cement integrity during UHS compared to UGS and CCS.
Results, Observations, Conclusions
The cement hydration process would lead to the transformation of the major cement compositions C3S and C2S to C1.5SH (CSH) and portlandite. Adding hydrogen would only slightly change the percentage of C1.5SH and portlandite and generate a small fraction of new mineral mackinawite. As a comparison, adding methane would generate a considerable amount of calcite. When CO2 is involved, all CSH compounds would transform to calcite through the cement carbonation process. Overall, the compositional mineral phases of cement after cement hydration is more closed to the case involving H2 compared to CH4 and CO2, implying a relatively low risk of wellbore cement degradation during UHS.
Novel/Additive Information
Our work underlines the importance of incorporating geochemical modelling in hydrogen geo-storage evaluation when using existing old wells and new drilled wells.
City leaders are advancing low-carbon transitions in urban areas that require robust operational frameworks and innovative processes. This paper presents a novel interdisciplinary framework to support urban decision-makers in the design and implementation of low-carbon strategies based on participatory approaches. Using inductive reasoning, the framework was defined according to three methodological steps: the preliminary analysis, the indicator selection, and the decision-making implementation. The work is part of the MOLOC Interreg Europe project and is applied to the revision of the Turin General Master Plan.
Under the vision of carbon peak and carbon neutralization, profound changes have taken place in the construction of a new power system with new energy as the main body, power supply structure and main risks, which poses new challenges to the safe and stable operation of the power system. Combined with the development status of China’s power system, this paper analyzes the reform of power supply structure and the current generation capacity and installed proportion of new energy; Then, from the perspective of coordinated development of energy system, combined with SG126 node system, this paper establishes the outage accident evolution model of uncertain output of new energy, further puts forward three power system outage risk scenarios with different proportion of new energy access, and analyzes the loss load and power-law characteristics under different scenarios respectively; Finally, an over threshold model is established for the loss load under different risk scenarios, and the risk prediction of loss load in the next 3, 5 and 8 years is given by using “value at risk” VaR and CVaR.
Since a solution towards carbon neutrality in already highly populated territories that does not profoundly alter the territories has not yet been found, territorial acupuncture, a new methodology presented in this paper, proposes a solution to this challenge and simultaneously helps to counter the dysfunctional dichotomy between large urban centres and small towns. The aim of this study is therefore to present this new concept and its operation. Hence, a phased study was carried out. Territorial acupuncture is the result of merging different theories and practices, such as Biourbanism, urban acupuncture, and energy community design. For Territorial Acupuncture, the territory is conceived as a single organism and, just like acupuncture in traditional Chinese medicine, punctual interventions (in this case, interconnected energy communities) would benefit the entire territory organism. To make the theory work properly, it will be necessary to carry out multi-scalar and multi-disciplinary analyses over the entire territory to identify the intervention points and then proceed to the design and interconnection of the individual district. Thus, Territorial Acupuncture provides a new approach to the resilience of densely populated territories, which, through punctual interventions on a district scale, benefits the entire territory by modifying energy, socio-economic, and environmental dynamics.
The recent advancement in efficient and recoverable CO2 capture solvents has been stimulated by the environmental harm resulting from the accumulation of greenhouse gases. Ionic liquids (ILs) and IL-based solvents have given rise to a novel method of CO2 collection that is highly efficient, economical, and environmentally benign. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the implementation of this process on a wider scale, and it has limitations, including high solvent costs. This simulated study shows that [EMIM][NTF2] can remove up to 99.4% of the CO2 from industrial waste effluents using three distinct compositions. Following an economic study using a 20-year plant life estimate, with a plant capacity of 4000 kg/h (206.165 kmol/h) for the raw mixed stream flow (inlet) and a maximum CO2 capacity of 38.1 kmol/h, it was determined that the process’s overall annualized cost was USD 2.1 million with operating expenses being USD 1.8 million. The Aspen Activated Energy Analysis’s recommendation of adding a heat exchanger, with a payback year of 0.0586 years, a 23.34 m2 area, and potential energy cost savings of USD 340,182/Year was also implemented successfully. These findings propose a conceptual framework for the development of novel ionic liquids for CO2 capture. It also demonstrates that sustainable [EMIM][Tf2N]-based absorption techniques for CO2 capture have the potential to be an industrial technology.
The article presents the research results on some aspects of achieving carbon neutrality in Ukraine. Carbon neutrality is a challenge for the whole world. In 2020, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a historical maximum. The work aims to study the features of achieving carbon neutrality in Ukraine. The tasks of the work are the analysis of the components of the transition to low-carbon development, analysis of the consumption of fossil fuels, and activities related to the preservation of forests, natural steppe, and meadow ecosystems. Interest in carbon neutrality issues grows yearly, with a particularly in 2021-2022. Most articles on carbon neutrality were published by scientists from China, the USA, Great Britain, Turkey, and Pakistan. They are mainly devoted to carbon dioxide emissions, economic growth, renewable energy, energy consumption, financial development, co-integration, dioxin emissions, etc. Positive trends regarding the achievement of carbon neutrality have been identified: the supply of natural gas, coal, and peat has decreased, while the supply of renewable energy sources has increased; the share of coal and peat decreased by 26.4%, and the percentage of energy produced from renewable sources increased to 6.6%; the use of coal and peat decreased by 8.5%, natural gas by 5%, and biofuels increased by 16%; the share of biofuel use increased to 5.8%. Expenditures for environmental protection increased by 88.5%, for preserving biodiversity and habitat - by 3.6 times, and costs for air protection and climate change problems - by 2.5 times. The share of expenditures on the protection of biodiversity and habitat increased to 3.2%, and costs on atmospheric air protection and climate change problems to 19.3%. Negative trends that restrain the development of a carbon-neutral economy were also revealed: a low share of renewable sources in the structure of supply and use. Thus, the percentage of biofuel in aggregate use remains low - only 5.8% in 2020. The area of forest loss is increasing, and the area of forest regeneration has decreased by 36%. The area of reforestation remained at the same level, but the area of afforestation decreased ten times during 2010-2020.
Municipalities play a key role in transitioning to a climate neutral and 100% renewable energy system. Although alternative energy system models, feasibility analyses and strategic energy plans are being developed, municipalities lack the know-how, funding, authority or political demand needed to implement the plans. Collaborative design and implementation of energy plans through cross-sectoral networks could help overcome some of these barriers. However, there is little empirical evidence of how collaboration could be sustained during implementation and how it could be institutionalised in a permanent governance network, resulting in a perception that collaboration is ‘all talk and no action’. This paper presents a comparative case study of two municipal energy governance networks in Denmark with two different institutional designs: the municipality-led Energi2020 network in Ringkøbing-Skjern and the public–private network administrative organisation ProjectZero in Sønderborg, in which the municipality participates as a partner. It was found that institutional design influences the ability to mobilise private funding, the access to municipal resources and the degree of political control. In addition, it has important consequences for the design and evaluation of energy plans, their outputs and outcomes and the accountability for their implementation. As a result, Ringkøbing-Skjern has been more successful in renewable energy installation, while Sønderborg has been more successful in improving industrial energy efficiency and sector coupling. It is concluded that ultimately, the two approaches need to be combined to develop a smart energy system that relies on 100% renewable energy, energy efficiency and sector coupling.
Dual-band electrochromic smart windows (DESWs) can selectively control the transmittance of near-infrared (NIR) and visible (VIS) light, which can significantly reduce building energy consumption. However, almost all the reported DESW colors switch between clear colorless and dark blue. The single color combined with the dazzling visual experience of blue will undoubtedly limit the application scene of DESWs. Herein, for the first time, we report a robust and stable DESW with multicolor conversion capabilities based on the single-component organic polymer polyaniline (PANI). The results show that the progressive electrochemical reaction enabled PANI film to deliver not only efficient and independent control of NIR and VIS light transmittance but also impressive electrochromic performance-rich color conversion (yellow-green-black), good optical modulation (65% at 633 nm and 59% at 1600 nm), high coloration efficiency (367.1 cm2 C-1 at 633 nm and 299.6 cm2 C-1 at 1600 nm), and excellent cycling stability (optical modulation losses of 6% at 633 nm, and 4% at 1600 nm after 10 000 cycles). Thereby, we demonstrated a prototype PANI-based DESW device (10 × 5 cm2), which delivered a multicolor electrochromism together with independent control and modulation of the VIS (sunlight) and NIR (solar heat) transmittance.
en The National Climate Initiative (NKI) in Germany provides a strong incentive for local governments to apply for funding to engage in climate protection activities. Yet, the latest evaluation of the NKI confirms that there is a great disparity in the distribution of funding across regions. Taking this regional fragmentation as a starting point, we ask the following: How can we explain disparity in the amount of funding across counties and cities? We draw on climate policy literature pointing to the role of socioeconomic and political determinants and the settlement structure to answer this question. We study all 400 cities and counties to test hypotheses concerning disparity in the likelihood and amount of climate funding, using data from the German Ministry for the Environment and further regional statistics. Running different multilevel regression models, we show that local climate funding is more likely in cities and more urbanized counties than in rural counties with less population and oftentimes also with less young and educated people. We argue that despite the increasing number of local governments getting active in climate protection in Germany, there is important unused potential for climate change mitigation in rural counties. Therefore, we conclude by proposing a new research agenda focusing on climate change mitigation in rural areas.
Resumen
es La Iniciativa Climática Nacional (NKI) en Alemania brinda un fuerte incentivo para que los gobiernos locales soliciten financiamiento para participar en actividades de protección climática. Sin embargo, la última evaluación del NKI confirma que existe una gran disparidad en la distribución de la financiación entre regiones. Tomando esta fragmentación regional como punto de partida, nos preguntamos lo siguiente: ¿Cómo podemos explicar la disparidad en la cantidad de fondos entre condados y ciudades? Nos basamos en la literatura sobre política climática que señala el papel de los determinantes socioeconómicos y políticos y la estructura de los asentamientos para responder a esta pregunta. Estudiamos las 400 ciudades y condados para probar hipótesis sobre la disparidad en la probabilidad y la cantidad de financiamiento climático, utilizando datos del Ministerio de Medio Ambiente de Alemania y otras estadísticas regionales. Al ejecutar diferentes modelos de regresión multinivel, mostramos que la financiación climática local es más probable en las ciudades y los condados más urbanizados que en los condados rurales con menos población y, a menudo, también con menos gente joven y educada. Argumentamos que, a pesar del creciente número de gobiernos locales que se activan en la protección del clima en Alemania, existe un importante potencial no utilizado para la mitigación del cambio climático en los condados rurales. Por lo tanto, concluimos proponiendo una nueva agenda de investigación centrada en la mitigación del cambio climático en las zonas rurales.
摘要
zh 德国的国家气候倡议(NKI)为地方政府申请资金参与气候保护活动一事提供了强有力的激励。不过，NKI的最新评价证实，各地区的资金分配存在巨大差异。以这种区域碎片化为出发点，我们提出以下问题:我们能如何解释县市之间资金数额的差异?为回答该问题，我们借鉴了气候政策文献，后者有关于社会经济决定因素和政治决定因素的作用以及定居点的结构。我们使用德国环境部的数据和进一步的地区统计数据，研究了所有400个城市和县，以检验有关气候资金可能性及数量差异的假设。通过运行不同的多层次回归模型，我们表明，与人口较少且通常年轻人较少、受教育人数较少的农村县相比，城市和城市化程度更高的县更有可能获得地方气候资金。我们论证认为，尽管德国越来越多的地方政府积极参与气候保护，但农村地区在减缓气候变化方面具有重要的未开发的潜力。因此，我们最后提出了一项新的研究议程，聚焦于农村地区的气候变化缓解。
Hong Kong has planned to achieve zero-carbon emissions before 2050. Hong Kong's building sector is responsible for approximately 60 % of carbon emissions, while its evolutionary trajectories and neutrality pathway remain unclear. To this end, we adopt the STIRPAT model and machine learning approach to identify the most relevant factors and determine their historical correlation with building energy consumption. Then, the out-of-sample prediction is conducted to explore the energy pathway and carbon footprint towards 2050 in the Hong Kong building sector under various assumptions and scenarios. The predicted results suggest that electricity consumption and carbon emissions will continue to increase following current trends. In a moderate scenario, if 2.2 % and 1.6 % of residential and commercial buildings are replaced annually with 2.75 % better energy-performance construction, their electricity consumption is likely to reach 30 %–40 % and 20 %–30 % from the 2015 level as the HK2050 required. With lower electricity emission intensity, the Hong Kong building sector could achieve near zero emissions. Our projection is valuable for developing energy-saving and emission-mitigation strategies towards various carbon neutrality goals in the building sector.
The latest IPCC report states that it is unequivocally clear that human actions are the most prominent cause of present day global warming and climate change. While alarming, this news has mobilized nations, cities, and communities across the world to engage in an array of mitigation and adaptation activities. Our research focuses on San Diego County, CA, USA, to answer two major questions regarding mitigation and adaptation measures being taken in the region: (1) What climate change mitigation and adaptation activities have taken place, are underway, and are planned for the future in San Diego County? (2) How successful and effective have these activities been at meeting their objectives to mitigate climate change or adapt to the impacts of climate change? Through a mixed-methods online survey, we gathered responses from 28 climate change experts throughout San Diego County to ensure a cross-sectoral perspective of the actions being taken. Results document 39 different mitigation and/or adaptation activities taking place in San Diego County. Notably, the majority of activities were reported to be effective at meeting their mitigation and/or adaptation objectives and to be of high priority. However, the effectiveness of projects was not uniform across sectors, and respondents also highlighted challenges and areas for improvement. Based on our results, we provide three key recommendations: (1) improve communication and coordination across sectors, (2) ensure that adaptation activities are also a priority alongside mitigation, and (3) include environmental and climate justice issues in mitigation and adaptation activities.
Promoting energy transformation is a major issue in achieving China’s carbon neutrality target. The changes in China’s energy consumption stemming from the policies related to this issue were simulated based on the energy policy simulation model. The results show the following. (1) Implementing related policies will significantly decrease total primary energy consumption, and non-fossil energy will be China’s main source of energy consumption by 2050. (2) The energy consumption corresponding to buildings, transportation, and industry will be electricity-led by 2050, and electricity will mainly be generated with non-fossil energy sources. (3) In 2030, China will reach a carbon peak, and non-fossil energy will account for 43% of the country’s primary energy consumption, comprising electrical (73%), solar (11%), wind (7%), hydro (7%) and biomass (2%) energy. (4) COVID-19 has had a short-term driving effect on this process, as it initially slowed down global economic cooperation, but it has had a hindering effect on the process in the long term.
Photovoltaic (PV)‐fed motor pump system employs an advanced system that eliminates the need for batteries to reduce maintenance and equipment costs during the day in desert areas. Real‐time adjustment of the motor output speed stops the motor from drawing power from a storage capacitor in the DC link so that sensors and microcontrollers (MCU) do not lose power and restart. This paper proposes an extremum seeking control (ESC) to achieve high accuracy of the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm by improving the accuracy of current and voltage measurements. MPPT‐based motor speed vector control rule is proposed. A field‐oriented control (FOC) scheme and sensorless direct torque control (DTC) scheme are introduced for comparison. The control method and interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM) are tested on the PV simulator and dynamometer experimental test‐rig. The test results show that the sensorless DTC can regulate the motor speed and torque to the desired value without system power failure. In contrast, the speed fluctuation of FOC control is lower than sensorless DTC. However, the system tuning time of DTC is faster and easy to support the whole system operation. The main technical contribution of this study is to provide a coordinated control method to maintain the continuous operation of the entire system during the daytime.
We examine how local socioeconomic, institutional and political factors shape climate transformation pathways in 23 mid-sized German cities. We group our cities into three types: industrial cities (which may have experienced recent structural change), historic cities (in which a significant proportion of the buildings or landscape is under monument protection) and university cities (in which academic or research institutions play a major role in the local community). Drawing on document analysis and expert interviews, we find that budgetary constraints, weaker civil societies and lower levels of political support result in unfavourable structural conditions for successful transformations in industrial cities. Historic cities have often only limited options to change their built environments, but many have identified climate change as a major threat to their built heritage and are therefore keen to take action in climate adaptation. Lastly, university cities are further along the transformation pathways than the other city types, largely due to having more favourable economic conditions as well as greater support from civil society, politics and the local research community.
Assessing the world’s collective progress towards the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals is a global priority. Local authorities (LAs), in particular, play an important role in a just transition. This paper evaluates the real achievements of local climate action plans developed in Europe from 2008 to 2020 under the Covenant of Mayors initiative. On average, 85.6% of the GHG reduction targets were achieved way before the year 2020; however, our assessment shows different reduction patterns, with several leading LAs exceeding by 2–4 times their targets and 12% of LAs increasing their baseline emissions. This paper weighs the factors which have a determinant impact on these patterns, investigating the key drivers and barriers towards a clean energy transition under a new population-driven approach. While, for large LAs, the climate experience and the engagement of stakeholders is an asset for increasing their achievements, small LAs are much more conditioned by the political mandate and support from regional governments or external actors. The key factor for climate action planning appears to be the joint partnership between several government levels from a national perspective.
Although societal collapse has been part of human history for millennia, a growing fear is that social, economic, technological, and environmental systems have become so globally interconnected, and their resilience so under threat, that the next collapse could be global in scale. Drawing from the collapse and social-ecological resilience studies literatures, we conceptualize two stages of collapse-avoidance governance—the pre-trigger adaptive governance stage during which policies draw on systems resilience to avoid the initiation of the collapse spiral, and the post-trigger transformative governance stage during which policies are implemented to steer out of the collapse spiral through fundamental change of systems regimes. Even under continued good collapse-avoidance governance it is possible for a variety of reasons that adaptive governance policies fail to avoid triggering of the collapse spiral, in which case policies to facilitate transformation will likely need to be substantially different. When designing adaptive governance resilience policies, therefore, governance institutions should anticipate these contingencies by (1) supporting research and design of transformation policies to implement if the resilience policies ultimately fail and the collapse spiral is triggered, and (2) accepting that effective transformation policies may depart significantly from, and even conflict with, the resilience policies. Even if the pre-planned transformation policies ultimately are not implemented amid a collapse spiral, the pre-planning exercise can sharpen focus on the need for design and implementation of effective adaptation policies.
The paper uses a Spatial-Temporal decomposition approach to production to examine the relative environmental performances of eight geographic regions of China for the period 2006–2014. The study results show that the effects of the economic and energy usage efficiency are high, and their values indicate above-average performance. In terms of the effects of carbon intensity, GDP gap, and economic efficiency, the results indicate that most regions show below-average performances. Special attention should be given to the energy use production structure and product innovation to achieve a desirable level of output and the level of technical efficiency.
South Korea officially committed to reducing 40% of its total carbon emissions by 2030, but the country has a carbon-dependent economic structure based on the manufacturing industry. Additionally, the industrial structure of each region in South Korea is heterogeneous. In this regard, policymakers should analyze the carbon emission condition at a regional level because abatement aspects are heterogeneous by urban spatial production. However, although various studies have developed a methodology to evaluate the GHG emission condition, these studies failed to consider the fundamental aspect of regional heterogeneity. In this regard, this study suggests a quantitative method to assess the potential of the carbon neutrality of regions and industries by using both shift-share analysis and the Log Mean Divisia Index method. Shift share analysis is used to quantify the relation between the industry and regional characteristics, and the Log Mean Divisia Index method can decompose each effect for economic growth and technological progress. By combining these two methods, this study suggests four classifications to evaluate regional and industrial characteristics of GHG emissions and analyze each region’s emission status in terms of the mining and manufacturing industry in South Korea.
Cities have increasingly recognised the risks posed by climate change and the need to adapt. To support climate action, cities have formed cooperative networks such as the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, the Global Covenant of Mayors and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. However, a lack of scientific evidence exists when it comes to the actual impact of network participation, especially in the context of adaptation. This study is the first to test statistically the association between network membership and progress in adaptation planning in 377 cities globally. The results show that network members are more likely to have started the adaptation process than other cities, and that being a member of multiple networks is associated with higher levels of adaptation planning. Moreover, cities in wealthier countries are more likely to be more advanced in adaptation planning than others. We consider the possible explanations for these results based on the previous literature and information gathered from the networks. The main implications of our study are that network organisations should consider how to encourage the adaptation process among their members and the increased involvement of cities from lower-income countries.
Cities are gaining prominence committing to respond to the threat of climate change, e.g., by developing local climate plans or strategies. However, little is known regarding the approaches and processes of plan development and implementation, or the success and effectiveness of proposed measures. Mainstreaming is regarded as one approach associated with (implementation) success, but the extent of integration of local climate policies and plans in ongoing sectoral and/or development planning is unclear. This paper analyses 885 cities across the 28 European countries to create a first reference baseline on the degree of climate mainstreaming in local climate plans. This will help to compare the benefits of mainstreaming versus dedicated climate plans, looking at policy effectiveness and ultimately delivery of much needed climate change efforts at the city level. All core cities of the European Urban Audit sample were analyzed, and their local climate plans classified as dedicated or mainstreamed in other local policy initiatives. It was found that the degree of mainstreaming is low for mitigation (9% of reviewed cities; 12% of the identified plans) and somewhat higher for adaptation (10% of cities; 29% of plans). In particular horizontal mainstreaming is a major effort for local authorities; an effort that does not necessarily pay off in terms of success of action implementation. This study concludes that climate change issues in local municipalities are best tackled by either, developing a dedicated local climate plan in parallel to a mainstreamed plan or by subsequently developing first the dedicated and later a mainstreaming plan (joint or subsequent “dual track approach”). Cities that currently provide dedicated local climate plans (66% of cities for mitigation; 26% of cities for adaptation) may follow-up with a mainstreaming approach. This promises effective implementation of tangible climate actions as well as subsequent diffusion of climate issues into other local sector policies. The development of only broad sustainability or resilience strategies is seen as critical
This special issue contributes to scholarly debates about the role of cities in global climate governance, reflecting on the promise, limits, and politics of cities as agents of change. It takes an empirically-informed approach drawing on multiple diverse geographical and political contexts. Overall, the special issue aims to stimulate reflection and debate about where understanding and practice needs improvement to advance the role of cities in global climate governance. Key questions that are addressed in the special issue include: To what extent do real world experiences confirm or disconfirm the high expectations of cities as agents and sites of change in addressing global climate change as expressed in urban climate governance literature? In what ways do internal political dynamics of cities enable or constrain urban climate governance? How is climate governance in cities enabled and constrained by interactions with broader governance levels? In what ways can climate governance in cities be advanced through critical attention to the previous issues?
This article proposes an innovative theoretical framework that combines institutional and policy network approaches to study multi-level governance. The framework is used to derive a number of propositions on how cross-level power imbalances shape communication and collaboration across multiple levels of governance. The framework is then applied to examine the nature of cross-level interactions in climate change mitigation and adaptation policy processes in the land use sectors of Brazil and Indonesia. The paper identifies major barriers to cross-level communication and collaboration between national and sub-national levels. These are due to power imbalances across governance levels that reflect broader institutional differences between federal and decentralized systems of government. In addition, powerful communities operating predominantly at the national level hamper cross-level interactions. The analysis also reveals that engagement of national level actors is more extensive in the mitigation and that of local actors in the adaptation policy domain, and specialisation in one of the climate change responses at the national level hampers effective climate policy integration in the land use sector.
Plan quality has become an established framework for analyzing the contents of plans and assessing their strengths and deficiencies. The research presented in this paper contributes to academic scholarship on plan quality by evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of climate change plans in 63 of the most populous communities across Canada. Plans were evaluated using a coding protocol consisting of 46 indicators based on eight plan quality characteristics: fact base, goals, policies, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, inter-organizational coordination, participation, and plan organization and presentation. The analysis revealed three key findings that are important for policy and practice. First, Canadian municipal climate change plans prioritize climate change mitigation over adaptation. Second, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation are relatively weak aspects of municipal climate change plans in Canada. Finally, despite the importance that scholars and practitioners ascribe to stakeholder engagement, Canadian municipalities appear to have given insufficient consideration to this element of the climate change plan-making process.
Increasingly, local governments are creating resilience plans. What do these plans contain and how do they compare to other efforts to plan for climate change? We use plan evaluation to analyze resilience plans from U.S. cities in the 100 Resilient Cites program and compare them to 44 climate change adaptation plans. Resilience plans lack critical elements to prepare cities for climate change, but offer a platform to address economic, social, and environmental policies that may amplify climate change impacts. Resilience planning represents an alternative, potentially complementary, path to preparing for climate change, but there is room for improvement.
Political decision-makers need to consider the various challenges and opportunities that climate change can
bring, and they must take decisions under high uncertainty to achieve resilient cities. Here, we synthesise the
push and pull approaches reported in the literature and employed in practice to achieve sustainable and resilient
cities.
First, we present a literature review which identified the major research fields on transition theories, frameworks
and methods that underpin this concept. We analyse the conditions for change, identify enablers or
triggers for change at governance level for transitioning a city towards sustainability and resilience. We discuss
the theories, frameworks and methods which can be used to address the urban climate change challenge at city
level.
Second, we present an empirical approach based on stakeholder participation that we conducted to detect the
conditions for change. We report on the design and implementation of stakeholder exercises that helped us
detecting the conditions for changes.
Third, we combine the information obtained from these stakeholder exercises with that extracted from the
literature in order to provide a fuller picture on how stimulate the transition and transformation to achieve
sustainable and resilient cities. Based on our literature review and empirical approach, we formulate an integrated
conceptual model for transition that enables the design of adaptation (and mitigation) strategies that
consider the triggers of change. Uniquely we identified 8 triggers of change, including authority and political
leadership, learning from disasters, co-responsibility, increased public-private interface, social participation and
the living lab approach to innovation. The proposed model can be applied to the whole city or to a certain sector
of the city (e.g. energy). We demonstrate that triggers of change help to overcome planning and implementation
barriers and move the socio-ecological and socio-technical systems of any city towards those of a resilient city.
Urban issues have been under the policy attention of the European Union (EU) from the late 1980s. Its influence has been particularly significant in countries that had not developed an explicit urban national policy. This is the case of Spain, in which specific instruments aimed to address urban challenges co-funded by the Structural Funds have been developed over the last four programming periods of the Cohesion Policy. These instruments have been the following: URBAN (1994–99); URBAN II (2000–06); the Iniciativa Urbana (IU) (2007–13); and the Integrated Sustainable Urban Development Strategies (ISUDS/EDUSI) (2014–20). So far they have been the only explicit initiatives of urban regeneration that have operated at a national scale in the country. This fact, together with the sustained experience in implementing these kinds of instruments, points to Spain being an interesting case study in which to understand the evolution and contribution of the urban dimension of Cohesion Policy from 1994 to the present. In this context, the IU emerges as particularly relevant because it has worked as a nexus between the two rounds of URBAN and the ISUDS that are currently being implemented. It is also relevant because it continued the implementation of the URBAN method in Spain explicitly through 46 programmes of urban regeneration that were developed in all the regions (Autonomous Communities), something that did not happen in any other member states in the period 2007–13. Building on the literature on the contribution of URBAN to the practice of urban regeneration in the country, this study develops an in-depth analysis of the IU. The research has allowed the identification of the relevant lessons aimed to inform the implementation of the 181 ISUDS that are being developed at present in Spanish cities. These lessons can also contribute to the Spanish Urban Agenda (in progress) and, at the EU level, to the definition of the urban dimension of Cohesion Policy for the post-2020 period and its implementation in the member states.
Climate change is a cross-cutting issue and, as such, is most effectively addressed when mainstreamed in development planning. Assessing climate risk and mainstreaming adaptation into development plans ensures that hard-won development gains are not undermined, and that future development interventions are resilient in the face of a changing climate. We outline a five step process to mainstream climate change into development plans. The five steps are: preparation; current and future gender-sensitive climate risk assessment; climate risk screening to see how proposed activities are affected by climate risk; options to adapt and enable climate-resilient development; and implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The process is underpinned by theory on climate risk assessment and robust decision making, and informed by participatory methodologies and expert elicitation. It was applied to District and/or Integrated Development Plans in 6 districts in Western and Southern province of Zambia under the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience. Findings show that it is a useful methodology that can be applied in data-constrained environments with minimally-trained expertise to assess climate risk and enable adaptation and climate-resilient development.
The Paris Agreement aims to limit global mean temperature rise this century to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. This target has wide-ranging implications for Europe and its cities, which are the source of substantial greenhouse gas emissions. This paper reports the state of local planning for climate change by collecting and analysing information about local climate mitigation and adaptation plans across 885 urban areas of the EU-28. A typology and framework for analysis was developed that classifies local climate plans in terms of their alignment with spatial (local, national and international) and other climate related policies. Out of eight types of local climate plans identified in total we document three types of stand-alone local climate plans classified as type A1 (autonomously produced plans), A2 (plans produced to comply with national regulations) or A3 (plans developed for international climate networks). There is wide variation among countries in the prevalence of local climate plans, with generally more plans developed by central and northern European cities. Approximately 66% of EU cities have a type A1, A2, or A3 mitigation plan, 26% an adaptation plan, and 17% a joint adaptation and mitigation plan, while about 33% lack any form of stand-alone local climate plan (i.e. what we classify as A1, A2, A3 plans). Mitigation plans are more numerous than adaptation plans, but planning for mitigation does not always precede planning for adaptation. Our analysis reveals that city size, national legislation, and international networks can influence the development of local climate plans. We found that size does matter as about 80% of the cities with above 500,000 inhabitants have a comprehensive and stand-alone mitigation and/or an adaptation plan (A1). Cities in four countries with national climate legislation (A2), i.e. Denmark, France, Slovakia and the United Kingdom, are nearly twice as likely to produce local mitigation plans, and five times more likely to produce local adaptation plans, compared to cities in countries without such legislation. A1 and A2 mitigation plans are particularly numerous in Denmark, Poland, Germany, and Finland; while A1 and A2 adaptation plans are prevalent in Denmark, Finland, UK and France. The integration of adaptation and mitigation is country-specific and can mainly be observed in two countries where local climate plans are compulsory, i.e. France and the UK. Finally, local climate plans produced for international climate networks (A3) are mostly found in the many countries where autonomous (type A1) plans are less common. This is the most comprehensive analysis of local climate planning to date. The findings are of international importance as they will inform and support decision-making towards climate planning and policy development at national, EU and global level being based on the most comprehensive and up-to-date knowledge of local climate planning available to date.
Cities are key actors in reducing both the causes of climate change (mitigation) and its impact (adaptation), and many have developed separate mitigation and adaptation strategies and measures. However, in order to maximize outcomes, both scholars and practitioners are increasingly calling for more integrated and synergetic approaches. Unfortunately, related research remains scarce and fragmented, and there is a lack of systematic investigation into the necessary institutional conditions and processes. Against this background, this paper develops a framework to assess and support the joint institutionalization of climate adaptation and mitigation—here called adaptigation—in city administrations. This pioneering framework draws upon four key features of bureaucracies: organizational structure, visions and goals, actors, and technology and tools. Illustrated by pilot applications to the cities of Würzburg (Germany) and Mwanza (Tanzania), the framework provides a robust basis for future research, policy recommendations, and the development of context-specific guidelines for national and local decision-makers and officials. It highlights the importance of (i) clearly defined procedures for the implementation of adaptigation into urban planning processes (e.g., with the active involvement of stakeholders in the form of working groups or roundtable discussions), (ii) locally relevant goals and visions, established in collaboration with stakeholders, and (iii) the creation of mitigation and adaptation structures that are supported by the appropriate level of human resources, both within and outside city administrations. In this context, global, supranational, and national institutions play an important role in supporting institutionalization by providing targeted funding and promoting adaptigation, which requires the development of integrated goals, visions, and legislation.
Through an interpretive research paradigm, we investigated the extent to which six local governments across three administrative regions of Ghana have complied with mandated climate change financing and budgeting guidelines. Five interesting findings emerged. First, there is enormous evidence of climate change budgeting compliance across all six local governments despite weak compliance incentives. Second, local governments that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change are more willing to comply and also allocate more resources for adaptation-related activities than those that are less vulnerable. Third, local governments that complied least are likely to take ad hoc adaptation actions which are often uncoordinated and poorly monitored. These local governments are least likely to attract auxiliary funds that could provide additional resources for adaptation financing. Lastly, the evidence of compliance is only quantitative, presented in various local governments’ fiscal documents, with no qualitative or other relevant explanatory factors on the extent of impact on adaptation.
This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of mainstreaming efforts regarding climate change adaptation (CCA) in EU development cooperation. By constructing and operationalising an analytical framework capable of tracing the level of mainstreaming throughout different phases of the policy cycle, we provide an answer to the question ‘what works and what doesn't’ in the integration of climate change in development cooperation. We combine a document analysis with semi-structured expert interviews, encompassing both HQ level in Brussels as well as EU aid activities in nine different developing countries. Our findings indicate that the Commission envisions a harmonisation approach towards CCA mainstreaming, targeting aid activities related to sustainable agriculture, food security and rural development. Although the toolbox for mainstreaming allows for a prioritisation of CCA, the procedural approach is currently ineffective due to limited staff and mainstreaming fatigue. In contrast, the growing political salience of CCA mainstreaming can be considered the main driver of mainstreaming efforts in the Commission.
Adaptation to a changing climate is unavoidable. Mainstreaming climate adaptation objectives into existing policies, as opposed to developing dedicated adaptation policy, is widely advocated for public action. However, knowledge on what makes mainstreaming effective is scarce and fragmented. Against this background, this paper takes stock of peer-reviewed empirical analyses of climate adaptation mainstreaming, in order to assess current achievements and identify the critical factors that render mainstreaming effective. The results show that although in most cases adaptation policy outputs are identified, only in a minority of cases this translates into policy outcomes. This B implementation gap
is most strongly seen in developing countries. However, when it comes to the effectiveness of outcomes, we found no difference across countries. We conclude that more explicit definitions and unified frameworks for adaptation mainstreaming research are required to allow for future research syntheses
and well-informed policy recommendations.<br/
Purpose
In the face of climate change, environmental impact assessment (EIA) and strategic environmental assessment (SEA) are expected to translate global or national mitigation and adaptation targets to project and plan levels of decision-making. This paper aims to examine how to transform China’s EIA procedures to accommodate consideration of climate change and what constraints might be for doing so.
Design/methodology/approach
The main methodology used in this paper is doctrinal research, which is the primary legal methodology to find the law and interpret and analyse the document. Theoretical research is applied to analyse the ideas and assumptions of the mainstreaming approach. Comparative research is done to consider relevant international experiences.
Findings
Despite well-founded rationale for the mainstreaming approach, entrenched institutional, legal and technical obstacles cannot be neglected in the context of China. Urgent needs to fix existing EIA/SEA loopholes and improve the general enabling environment are also highlighted as a fundamental aspect of mainstreaming.
Originality/value
The potential of mainstreaming climate change into China’s EIA procedures remains largely unexplored. As a ground-breaking work from China’s perspective, the findings of this paper can serve as an important foundation for future research from legal and other perspectives.
City governments worldwide are increasingly introducing adaptation actions and climate responses in their policies and agendas, but the speed and success of these initiatives vary widely. Understanding these interventions, barriers and opportunities for urban adaptation remains a challenge for scholars and policy-makers. In this paper, we assess climate adaptation policy in the megacity of São Paulo, Brazil, paying special attention to missed opportunities and potential synergies. We focus on climate policies and urban interventions in São Paulo, specifically on the analysis of documents related to the Municipal Climate Change Policy (launched in 2009) and New Master Plan (concluded in 2014). We describe local responses to climate change already implemented in the city and explore some of the factors that affect its adaptation. We argue that although the megacity has recently implemented innovative urban policies and a set of municipal actions that aim to overcome many of the city's challenges, São Paulo is missing an opportunity to mainstream climate change to improve its adaptive capacity. In exploring some of the local initiatives implemented in recent years, we seek to understand responses to climate change that emerge in Brazilian cities, particularly considering that cities learn from each other to adapt.
Climate change threatens water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) facilities and services, as these are intimately linked to the water cycle and are vulnerable to changes in the quantity and quality of available water resources. Floods and droughts, which pollute and reduce water delivery respectively, have now become a perennial issue to deal with in the northern regions of Ghana. This study aimed to assess the degree to which climate change adaptation measures are mainstreamed into the water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) development planning process in Ghana. Stakeholders from government and non-government agencies were interviewed to gain perspectives on the threat of climate change, the inclusion of climate change in WaSH planning and the barriers preventing mainstreaming. Despite awareness of climate change, adaptation measures have not been considered, and the immediate WaSH needs remain the priority. Overall, stakeholders felt the adaptive capacity of the Municipality was low and that mainstreaming has not yet occurred. Despite the lack of progress, there are great opportunities for mainstreaming climate change adaptation into planning through increasing awareness and capacity, legislative and institutional changes and the development of participatory systems to provide early warning systems and disaster risk analyses that will inform future planning.
Developing and communicating knowledge about what will be sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions and stimulating planning processes that can generate more debate about what values and interests are really wanted to be promoted is vital in sustainable urban development planning. Adaptation to climate change refers to the process through which building adaptive capacity of the most vulnerable people is focused and exposure or sensitivity to climate impacts is reduced. Mainstreaming climate change adaptation refers to the process of integrating considerations of climate change adaptation into policy-making, budgeting, implementation and monitoring processes at national, sector and sub-national/regional levels. The purpose of the study was to assess the needs for mainstreaming climate change adaptation into urban land use planning and management and propose strategic actions for mainstreaming in Ambo town. Urban flooding, water stress/water shortage, urban heat island effect/increased urban heat, wind storms, and dust storms were identified as climate change related disaster risks in Ambo town. While it is commendable to appreciate the good start of urban greening and beautification by Ambo town administration and its municipality, the town administration has to take strategic actions of mainstreaming climate change adaptation into urban land use planning and management to promote sustainable urban development in the town and its surroundings.
In the face of a changing climate, many United States (US) local governments are creating plans to prepare. These plans layout how a community is vulnerable to existing and future changes in climate as well as what actions they propose taking to prepare. The actions included in these plans provide insight into what local governments feel they have the ability to undertake, as well as what actions they believe are important to building resilience. To date, little to no analysis has been conducted on the content of these plans, leaving researchers, practitioners, and those supporting communities with limited understanding of what gaps need to be filled or how best to support locally prioritized climate action. This paper analyzes the content of 43 stand alone climate adaptation plans from US local communities to identify the types of actions proposed and how those actions compare to what researchers indicate the communities should be prioritizing based on regional climate projections. The results indicate that local communities include numerous and varied actions in their adaptation plans and that the majority of communities are selecting actions that are theoretically appropriate given projected changes in regional climate. Yet some types of actions, such as building codes and advocacy, are not being widely used. These results contrast with previous studies, which found that local communities focus primarily on capacity building approaches. Findings also demonstrate that plans rarely contain significant details about how actions will be implemented, raising questions about whether plans will translate into real-world projects.
Attempts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions or manage the effects of climate change traditionally focus on management or policy options that promote single outcomes (e.g., either benefiting ecosystems or human health and well-being). In contrast, co-benefits approaches to climate change mitigation and adaptation address climate change impacts on human and ecological health in tandem and on a variety of spatial and temporal scales. The article engages the concept of co-benefits through four case studies. The case studies emphasize co-benefits approaches that are accessible and tractable in countries with human populations that are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts. They illustrate the potential of co-benefits approaches and provide a platform for further discussion of several interdependent principles relevant to the implementation of co-benefits strategies. These principles include providing incentives across multiple scales and time frames, promoting long-term integrated impact assessment, and fostering multidimensional communication networks.
Ecosystem-based adaptation (i.e. the use of ecosystem services to adapt to climate change) and its mainstreaming into municipal planning to foster sustainable transformation is receiving increasing interest from both academic and governmental bodies. However, little is known about the pathways for its systematic implementation, or the extent to which it is already mainstreamed in municipal planning practice. This article reports on a study in which local pathways to sustainably mainstream ecosystem-based adaptation were compared in 12 municipalities in Germany and Sweden. The results show that while progress is seemingly similar in the two countries, there are noticeable differences regarding the local triggers, the importance given to particular mainstreaming strategies and their link to climate policy integration. Ecosystem-based approaches to climate change adaptation are not labelled or systematised in either country. In addition, the mainstreaming of ecosystem-based adaptation is enabled through municipalities’ level of experience in mainstreaming other issues. In Sweden, the ecosystem service concept drives adaptation mainstreaming, which is often disconnected from the integration of climate mitigation policy. In contrast, German structures and planning processes established for climate change mitigation are paving the way. We conclude that systematic adaptation mainstreaming and its potential linkages and disconnects with climate mitigation policy integration require more explicit consideration, both in research and practice. We call for more research on the role of inclusive (as opposed to fragmented) climate policy integration to assure sustainable planning and transformation.
Despite the proliferation and promise of subnational climate initiatives, the institutional architecture of transnational municipal networks (TMNs) is not well understood. With a view to close this research gap, the article empirically assesses the assumption that TMNs are a viable substitute for ambitious international action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It addresses the aggregate phenomenon in terms of geographical distribution, central players, mitigation ambition and monitoring provisions. Examining thirteen networks, it finds that membership in TMNs is skewed toward Europe and North America while countries from the Global South are underrepresented; that only a minority of networks commit to quantified emission reductions and that these are not more ambitious than Parties to the UNFCCC; and finally that the monitoring provisions are fairly limited. In sum, the article shows that transnational municipal networks are not (yet) the representative, ambitious and transparent player they are thought to be.
Between 60% and 80% of global energy is consumed in urban areas and given the projected increase in world׳s urban population, this share is expected to further increase in the future. Continuity of energy supply in cities is affected by climate change and a growing array of other threats such as cyber attacks, terrorism, technical deficiencies, and market volatility. Determined efforts, acknowledging the interactions and interlinkages between energy and other sectors, are needed to avoid adverse consequences of disruption in energy supply. Resilience thinking is an approach to management of socio-ecological systems that aims to develop an integrated framework for bringing together the (often) fragmented, diverse research on disaster risk management. The literature on urban resilience is immense and still growing. This paper reviews literature related to energy resilience to develop a conceptual framework for assessing urban energy resilience, identify planning and design criteria that can be used for assessing urban energy resilience, and examine the relationship of these criteria with the underlying components of the conceptual framework. In the conceptual framework, it is proposed that in order to be resilient, urban energy system needs to be capable of “planning and preparing for”, “absorbing”, “recovering from”, and “adapting” to any adverse events that may happen in the future. Integrating these four abilities into the system would enable it to continuously address “availability”, “accessibility”, “affordability”, and “acceptability” as the four sustainability-related dimensions of energy. The paper explains different resilience principles associated with these abilities and sustainability dimensions. Also, different planning and design criteria were extracted from the literature and categorized into five themes: infrastructure; resources; land use, urban geometry and morphology; governance; and socio-demographic aspects and human behavior. Examination of the relationship of these criteria with the underlying components of the conceptual framework highlighted the complexity and multi-faceted nature of energy resilience. Exploration of the relevance of the identified criteria to climate change mitigation and adaptation revealed that most of the identified criteria can provide both mitigation and adaptation benefits.
Mainstreaming climate change adaptation (CCA) links adaptation and sustainable development goals by integrating climate change information, concerns, and considerations into existing development planning, policy- and decision-making processes. It is gaining popularity in developing countries, but its operationalization has been slow because of the challenges that hinder its on-ground application. To understand the nature of these challenges, this paper developed a four-stage mixed methodology that examined mainstreaming of CCA into local land use planning in Albay, Philippines. The methodology includes a modified Institutional Analysis and Development framework for the qualitative analysis, and 20 mainstreaming indicators for the quantitative assessment. The data used in the analysis were collected from a survey and the interviews conducted among the key players in local land use planning in Albay. The correlation analysis showed that the challenges related to knowledge and awareness, local government prioritization, institutional incentives, availability of funds, access to funds, and stability of funds had the highest frequency of interconnections with the other challenges. Also, a strong tripartite relationship among local leadership, local government prioritization, and local government’s commitment to CCA was observed. The paper suggests that mainstreaming challenges are interconnected at varying degrees. It presents analytical tools and quantifiable measures that can be used to develop a reliable basis for the qualitative assessments of adaptation needs and effectiveness. These sets of information can help analyst and practitioners make informed decisions regarding the operationalization of mainstreaming CCA.
Globally, efforts are underway to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change impacts at the local level. However, there is a poor understanding of the relationship between city strategies on climate change mitigation and adaptation and the relevant policies at national and European level. This paper describes a comparative study and evaluation of cross-national policy. It reports the findings of studying the climate change strategies or plans from 200 European cities from Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. The study highlights the shared responsibility of global, European, national, regional and city policies. An interpretation and illustration of the influences from international and national networks and policy makers in stimulating the development of local strategies and actions is proposed. It was found that there is no archetypical way of planning for climate change, and multiple interests and motivations are inevitable. Our research warrants the need for a multi-scale approach to climate policy in the future, mainly ensuring sufficient capacity and resource to enable local authorities to plan and respond to their specific climate change agenda for maximising the management potentials for translating environmental challenges into opportunities.
This research concentrates on the governance aspects of sustainability, and moreparticularly how local governments can work asnodes in a wider system of governance.The question at the center of the study is: how do cities address climate change mitigationand how do their actions relate to other levels of governance? The study takes a mixedqualitative-quantitative approach based on a multi-level theoretical framework to addressthe issue. The study concentrates on a smallnumber of cases and the material used isfound in official documents and semi-structured interviews with key individuals in thelocal governments. The results of the study show that the cities investigated do takeaction to mitigate climate change; however,their actions are heavily dependent on otherlevels of governance, i.e. regional or national, or other actors. This dependence,nonetheless, seems to be reciprocal. Thus, cities can constitute nodes or hubs in thegovernance of climate change mitigation,working simultaneously as actors ofimplementation and channelizing local knowledge and input.
Cities significantly contribute to climate change while at the same time have government capacity to efficiently act in the fields of mitigation and adaptation. Their climate capacity is being increasingly recognized by international institutions and has been pointed out as crucial in the multi-level government scenario of the European Union (EU).
Addressing the challenges of climate change at urban level is a complex issue which requires a holistic approach to strategic urban planning. Understanding why and how cities start action can help to identify the barriers they face when addressing climate change, and how national governments, regions and international bodies can support local authorities in their climate fight. This work aims to contribute to the provision of knowledge necessary to have a better and deeper insight in urban climate action.
The study investigates the state-of-art of urban climate plans in two countries, Spain and Italy, which share similarities on many levels (i.e. cultural, geographical, climate vulnerabilities, urban configurations and institutional framework). The research analyses 26 Spanish cities and 32 Italian cities included in the Eurostat Urban Audit (UA), focusing on the actions taken by big and medium municipalities in reducing their contribution to climate change and to become more resilient to changing weather patterns.
The results of the analysis show a trend towards an increasing awareness on climate mitigation (highly focused on energy efficiency and the promotion of cleaner energy sources), while adaptation remains an incipient local policy area in both countries. The analysis identifies also the beneficial influence of national and international climate city networks.
Cities are recognised as key players in global adaptation and mitigation efforts because the majority of people live in cities. However, in Europe, which is highly urbanized and one of the most advanced regions in terms of environmental policies, there is considerable diversity in the regional distribution, ambition and scope of climate change responses. This paper explores potential factors contributing to such diversity in 200 large and medium-sized cities across 11 European countries. We statistically investigate institutional, socioeconomic , environmental and vulnerability characteristics of cities as potential drivers of or barriers to the development of urban climate change plans. Our results show that factors such as membership of climate networks, population size, GDP per capita and adaptive capacity act as drivers of mitigation and adaptation plans. By contrast, factors such as the unemployment rate, warmer summers, proximity to the coast and projected exposure to future climate impacts act as barriers. We see that, overall, it is predominantly large and prosperous cities that engage in climate planning, while vulnerable cities and those at risk of severe climate impacts in the future are less active. Our analysis suggests that climate change planning in European cities is not proactive, i.e. not significantly influenced by anticipated future impacts. Instead, we found that the current adaptive capacity of a city significantly relates to climate planning. Along with the need to further explore these relations, we see a need for more economic and institutional support for smaller and less resourceful cities and those at high risk from climate change impacts in the future.
