http://www.igbp.net/download/18.5831d9ad13275d51c098000258/1376382967821/Kennedy_et_al_2010_UM_urbanplanning_design.pdf

The study of urban metabolism and its applications to urban planning and design.

China is the world's top energy consumer and CO2 emitter, accounting for 30% of global emissions. Compiling an accurate accounting of China's CO2 emissions is the first step in implementing reduction policies. However, no annual, officially published emissions data exist for China. The current emissions estimated by academic institutes and scholars exhibit great discrepancies. The gap between the different emissions estimates is approximately equal to the total emissions of the Russian Federation (the 4th highest emitter globally) in 2011. In this study, we constructed the time-series of CO2 emission inventories for China and its 30 provinces. We followed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emissions accounting method with a territorial administrative scope. The inventories include energy-related emissions (17 fossil fuels in 47 sectors) and process-related emissions (cement production). The first version of our dataset presents emission inventories from 1997 to 2015. We will update the dataset annually. The uniformly formatted emission inventories provide data support for further emission-related research as well as emissions reduction policy-making in China.

/pdf/china-co2-emission-accounts-1997-2015-1tsgik63va.pdf

China CO2 emission accounts 1997-2015.

The world’s population is now over 50% urban, and cities make an important contribution to national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Many cities are developing strategies to reduce their emissions. Here we ask how and why emissions differ between cities. Our study of ten global cities shows how a balance of geophysical factors (climate, access to resources, and gateway status) and technical factors (power generation, urban design, and waste processing) determine the GHGs attributable to cities. Within the overall trends, however, there are differences between cities with more or less public transit; while personal income also impacts heating and industrial fuel use. By including upstream emissions from fuels, GHG emissions attributable to cities exceed those from direct end use by up to 25%. Our findings should help foster intercity learning on reducing GHG emissions.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es200849z

Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Global Cities

Energy use in cities has attracted significant research in recent years. However such a broad topic inevitably results in number of alternative interpretations of the problem domain and the modelling tools used in its study. This paper seeks to pull together these strands by proposing a theoretical definition of an urban energy system model and then evaluating the state of current practice. Drawing on a review of 219 papers, five key areas of practice were identified – technology design, building design, urban climate, systems design, and policy assessment – each with distinct and incomplete interpretations of the problem domain. We also highlight a sixth field, land use and transportation modelling, which has direct relevance to the use of energy in cities but has been somewhat overlooked by the literature to date. Despite their diversity, these approaches to urban energy system modelling share four common challenges in understanding model complexity, data quality and uncertainty, model integration, and policy relevance. We then examine the opportunities for improving current practice in urban energy systems modelling, focusing on the potential of sensitivity analysis and cloud computing, data collection and integration techniques, and the use of activity-based modelling as an integrating framework. The results indicate that there is significant potential for urban energy systems modelling to move beyond single disciplinary approaches towards a sophisticated integrated perspective that more fully captures the theoretical intricacy of urban energy systems.

/pdf/a-review-of-urban-energy-system-models-approaches-challenges-3n6p1jv426.pdf

Yvonne Hansen

Papers

Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Global Cities

Methodology for inventorying greenhouse gas emissions from global cities

Erratum: Greenhouse gas emissions from global cities (Environmental Science & Technology (2009) 43 (7297-7302) (DOI: 10.1021/es900213p)