Creating Low Carbon Cities

This book addresses key topics in the current deliberations and debates on low carbon cities that are underway globally. Contributions by experts from around the world focus on the key factors required for creating low carbon cities. These include appropriate infrastructure, ensuring co-benefits of climate actions, making best use of knowledge and information, proper accounting of emissions, and social factors such as behavioral change. Readers will gain a better understanding of these drivers and explore potential transformation pathways for cities.

Particular emphasis is given to the current situation of energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the urban level, stressing the complexity of measuring GHG emissions from cities. Chapters also shed new light on the long-term transformation pathways towards low carbon. This book discusses key challenges and opportunities in all these domains to aid in creating low carbon cities, making it of value to policy makers, researchers in academia and consultants working on climate change and energy issues.

"The low carbon cities agenda is of bold ambition and demands rapid societal transformation. This book provides invaluable information and analysis on how the goals of this agenda can be achieved and what will be the significant obstacles in the way. The content in the book goes below the surface to reveal on-the-ground economic, engineering and equity issues that are at the heart of the Paris Climate Agreement and the ensuing policy debates. In this way, Creating Low Carbon Cities serves as a critical scholarly benchmark and as a toolkit for further action."

William Solecki, Professor, Institute for Sustainable Cities, City University of New York

"Creating Low Carbon Cities provides a refreshingly critical approach to low-carbon urban development, what has been achieved so far and the challenges ahead. It will be an important data-driven resource for local leaders, sustainability practitioners and urban planners."

Ms. Monika Zimmermann, Deputy Secretary General, ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability

Auteur
Dr. Shobhakar Dhakal is an Associate Professor at School of Environment Resources and Development of the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand. He, currently, heads its Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Change. His areas of expertize are in energy and climate policies, and cities and climate change and largely draws-on concepts from engineering, economics and environment and multidisciplinary in nature. He is also a visiting researcher of the National Institute for Environmental Studies Japan since 2012. Dr. Dhakal was one of the Coordinating Lead Authors for the Fifth Assessment Report of Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the Working Group on Mitigation (for the Chapter 'Human Settlements, Infrastructure and Spatial Planning'). He also currently a co-editor/leader of ongoing international Assessment Report on Climate Change and Cities. He serves as a member of the scientific steering committee of the Global Carbon Project,a premier scientific program under the Future Earth. He was a guest research scholar of International Institute for Applied System Analysis in Austria for 2010-2013, served as a lead author for the Global Energy Assessment, principal scientific reviewer for UNEP's GEO-5, member of the Consensus Panel on Low Carbon Cities of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa, member of the Cities Energy Modeling Group of the International Energy Agency, among others. He was founder editor and editor-in-chief of Carbon Management Journal (2010-2016) and currently an Associate Editor of Sustainable Cities and Society Journal.

Dr. Matthias Ruth is the Director of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University. He also serves as the founding director of Northeastern's Resilient Cities Laboratory and its Urban Informatics program. Professor Ruth holds a Masters degree in Economics from the University of Heidelberg, Germany and a PhDin Geography from the University of Illinois, where he also received training in engineering and biology. Prof. Ruth's research focuses on dynamic modeling of natural resource use, industrial and infrastructure systems analysis, and environmental economics and policy. His theoretical work heavily draws on concepts from engineering, economics and ecology, while his applied research utilizes methods of non-linear dynamic modeling as well as adaptive and anticipatory management. Applications of his work cover the full spectrum from local to regional, to national and global environmental challenges, as well as the investment and policy opportunities these challenges present. Professor Ruth has published 14 books and over 120 papers and book chapters in the scientific literature. He is a founder of Ecological Economics, serves on the boards of numerous journals and scientific organizations, is a founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Urban Climate, and collaborates extensively with scientists and policy makers worldwide.

Contenu
Chapter1. Challenges and opportunities for transition to low carbon cities.- Chapter2. Big data, people and low carbon cities.- Chapter3. Co-benefits and co-costs of climate action plans for low-carbon cities.- Chapter4. Optimizing Water-Energy-Carbon Nexus in Cities for Low Carbon Development.- Chapter5. Grassroots environmentalism and low-carbon cities.- Chapter6. Emerging low-carbon urban mega-projects.- Chapter7. Energy consumption and emissions assessment in cities: an overview.- Chapter8. Low carbon urban design: potentials and opportunities.- Chapter9. Low carbon cities: The Chinese experience.- Chapter10. Low-carbon urban infrastructure.- Chapter11. Low-carbon waste management.- Chapter12. Managing greenhouse gases emissions in cities: the role of inventories and mitigation actions planning.- Chapter13. Social factors affecting low carbon cities.- Chapter14. Key drivers and trends of urban greenhouse gas emissions.- Chapter15. Potential transformation pathways towards low carbon cities: the big picture.- Chapter16. Eco-Districts as a transition pathway to low-carbon cities.