A Measurement-Driven Approach to Understand Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Nordic Cities

Cities are main drivers for climate change mitigation and emission reduction today. However, in many cases they lack reliable baselines of emissions to validate current developments over time, assess the impact of their projects, and prioritize investments and actions. They also need better data on a small geospatial and temporal scale to really understand local emissions. This paper describes the rationale and the design of the Carbon Track and Trace project (CTT) that aims to develop an automated system for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions monitoring through a low-cost city-level sensor network. The system is based on a flexible architecture incorporating open source sensor platforms, an Internet-of-Things wireless backbone, and extensive data analytics. We describe concept, architecture, and deployment as well as initial results

Analysis and Visualization of Urban Emission Measurements in Smart Cities

Cities worldwide aim to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality for their citizens. Therefore, there is a need to implement smart city approaches to monitor, model, and understand local emissions to better guide these actions. We present our approach that deploys a number of low-cost sensors through a wireless Internet of Things (IoT) backbone and is thus capable of collecting high-granular data. Based on a flexible architecture, we built an ecosystem of data management and data analytics including processing, integration, analysis, and visualization as well as decision-support systems for cities to better understand their emissions. Our prototype system has so far been tested in two Scandinavian cities. We present this system and demonstrate how to collect, integrate, analyze, and visualize real-time air quality data

Personal indebtedness, spatial effects and crime : a comparison across the urban hierarchy

The recent recession has made understanding the relationship between economic conditions and crime crucial to public debate. In this paper we seek to understand the spatial pattern of property and theft crimes using a range of socioeconomic variables, as well as data on the level of personal indebtedness, for two regions of the UK: London (the capital city) and the North East of England (a peripheral region). Building on earlier published work in this area, this paper will contrast the regression results obtained in both of these regions. This allows a comparison of the factors that are important in explaining the observed pattern of theft and property crimes, including an analysis of the spatial dimension of these factors, between these two regions. Doing so will allow a comparison of the elements that are important in explaining the observed pattern of theft and property crimes across the two regions

The Critical Role of Public Charging Infrastructure

Editors: Peter Fox-Penner, PhD, Z. Justin Ren, PhD, David O. JermainA decade after the launch of the contemporary global electric vehicle (EV) market, most cities face a major challenge preparing for rising EV demand. Some cities, and the leaders who shape them, are meeting and even leading demand for EV infrastructure. This book aggregates deep, groundbreaking research in the areas of urban EV deployment for city managers, private developers, urban planners, and utilities who want to understand and lead change

Decarbonisation of the road transport sector in Stavanger

The transportation sector is the second-largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions by sector globally. In Stavanger, the transport sector is the primary contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. To decarbonise, the process of mitigation and reducing emissions, in 2010, the municipality adopted its own Climate and Environment Plan, which targeted a reduction of 20% by 2020 compared with 1991 emissions. In 2016, the Plan was effectively concluded, with the production of new targets from 2018. The targets were superseded, and no review of the document was undertaken following the conclusion of 2020. The current research seeks to address this. The approach taken was to review the 2010 plan, identify the targets set and the policy approach taken. We then compared it with a similar plan, the Trondheim Energy and Climate Plan (2010 – 2020). Secondly, we investigated whether emission targets had been met and if there were other indicators to determine whether decarbonisation was being made relative to specific policies. The significant findings of the research paper were that the 2010 plan adopted policies in line with the Avoid – Shift – Improve approach, which was also adopted within the Trondheim plan. Furthermore, the policies in the 2010 plan were primarily to encourage behaviours, through “carrot” policies, as opposed to restrictive policies or “stick”. When comparing with the Trondheim plan, it was evident that the Stavanger 2010 plan was less specific in terms of measures, targets identified and parties responsible for those measures. In terms of the statistical data, we deduced that emission targets were not met, and they fell short of their goals. However, there was progress in terms of technological improvements, with a significant increase in low-emission cars. In the period 2009 - 2019, there was evidence of modal shift, with increasing passenger numbers on modes of public transport and a reduction in the use of cars. Before a reversal in 2020, the year of Covid-19, where public transport usage fell significantly and there was an increase in car usage. There was less evidence concerning reducing the need to travel. Further findings were that, despite the restrictive nature of the transport sector in 2020 as a result of Covid-19, the municipality still fell short of its emission targets. Despite this, the targets for the new Climate and Environment Plan 2018-2030 are significantly higher, with a new goal of an 80% reduction in emissions. Based on historical data found over the course of the past ten years, they are likely to be significantly short of the target again. Further work is required to identify at a more detailed level where priorities need to be focussed for the municipality, but an overarching objective is that barriers need to be broken down to raise initiatives up the agenda

Proceedings of Abstracts 12th International Conference on Air Quality Science and Application

© 2020 The Author(s). This an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Final Published versio

Decarbonisation of the road transport sector in Stavanger

The transportation sector is the second-largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions by sector globally. In Stavanger, the transport sector is the primary contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. To decarbonise, the process of mitigation and reducing emissions, in 2010, the municipality adopted its own Climate and Environment Plan, which targeted a reduction of 20% by 2020 compared with 1991 emissions. In 2016, the Plan was effectively concluded, with the production of new targets from 2018. The targets were superseded, and no review of the document was undertaken following the conclusion of 2020. The current research seeks to address this. The approach taken was to review the 2010 plan, identify the targets set and the policy approach taken. We then compared it with a similar plan, the Trondheim Energy and Climate Plan (2010 – 2020). Secondly, we investigated whether emission targets had been met and if there were other indicators to determine whether decarbonisation was being made relative to specific policies. The significant findings of the research paper were that the 2010 plan adopted policies in line with the Avoid – Shift – Improve approach, which was also adopted within the Trondheim plan. Furthermore, the policies in the 2010 plan were primarily to encourage behaviours, through “carrot” policies, as opposed to restrictive policies or “stick”. When comparing with the Trondheim plan, it was evident that the Stavanger 2010 plan was less specific in terms of measures, targets identified and parties responsible for those measures. In terms of the statistical data, we deduced that emission targets were not met, and they fell short of their goals. However, there was progress in terms of technological improvements, with a significant increase in low-emission cars. In the period 2009 - 2019, there was evidence of modal shift, with increasing passenger numbers on modes of public transport and a reduction in the use of cars. Before a reversal in 2020, the year of Covid-19, where public transport usage fell significantly and there was an increase in car usage. There was less evidence concerning reducing the need to travel. Further findings were that, despite the restrictive nature of the transport sector in 2020 as a result of Covid-19, the municipality still fell short of its emission targets. Despite this, the targets for the new Climate and Environment Plan 2018-2030 are significantly higher, with a new goal of an 80% reduction in emissions. Based on historical data found over the course of the past ten years, they are likely to be significantly short of the target again. Further work is required to identify at a more detailed level where priorities need to be focussed for the municipality, but an overarching objective is that barriers need to be broken down to raise initiatives up the agenda

Climate policy at a local level in a multi-level governance system

The climate crisis is today one of the world’s biggest challenges. The climate policy framework is often sat by the national level but carried out at a local level. The local level’s climate policies can though be affected by several governance levels in today’s multi-level governance system. The intention with this thesis was to investigate how local level’s ability to make effective climate policies adequate to meet the challenges climate change is serving us, are affected by the multi-level governance system. Reykjavík is used as a case to illustrate the local level and the European Union is used to illustrate the European level in this research. Reykjavík is a unique case to study as Iceland is not a fully EU-member, but Reykjavík applied to be part of an EU driven initiative and got accepted as a participant after a comprehensive application process. It is hence interesting to investigate in which ways the EU climate policy affects climate policy at a local level, - where the local level is on the outside of a fully EU integration. The main findings in this thesis were because of an EU initiative (referred to as the 100 cities in this thesis) Reykjavík has moved their climate neutrality ambitions with 10 years before the national goal of fulfilling the objective of climate neutrality. Beside this, EU policies under the umbrella of the European Green Deal is steering for Iceland’s National climate Plan and sets the framework for dealing with climate change at the national and local level. Iceland not being a member-state is hence a paradox as the EU policies is strongly present for how climate policies and framework is formed in Iceland. Although the EU is a steering mechanism in the green transition in Iceland it has not been identified if the EU policies will internally lead to fulfil the objective of climate neutrality by 2030 and 2050. Regardless, the multileveled governance system is part of understanding how the EU is a steering mechanism in the green transition in a sovereign state, such as Iceland. This study is the first one to highlight the complexity of MLG in a Nordic country outside the EU when forming climate policy at a local level by using Reykjavík as a case study

Transition UGent: a bottom-up initiative towards a more sustainable university

The vibrant think-tank ‘Transition UGent’ engaged over 250 academics, students and people from the university management in suggesting objectives and actions for the Sustainability Policy of Ghent University (Belgium). Founded in 2012, this bottom-up initiative succeeded to place sustainability high on the policy agenda of our university. Through discussions within 9 working groups and using the transition management method, Transition UGent developed system analyses, sustainability visions and transition paths on 9 fields of Ghent University: mobility, energy, food, waste, nature and green, water, art, education and research. At the moment, many visions and ideas find their way into concrete actions and policies. In our presentation we focused on the broad participative process, on the most remarkable structural results (e.g. a formal and ambitious Sustainability Vision and a student-led Sustainability Office) and on recent actions and experiments (e.g. a sustainability assessment on food supply in student restaurants, artistic COP21 activities, ambitious mobility plans, food leftovers projects, an education network on sustainability controversies, a transdisciplinary platform on Sustainable Cities). We concluded with some recommendations and reflections on this transition approach, on the important role of ‘policy entrepreneurs’ and student involvement, on lock-ins and bottlenecks, and on convincing skeptical leaders