Low Carbon Development for Cities: Methods and Measures

Cities consume more than 60% of global energy and that share is expected to rise with the rapid rate of urbanization now underway (van der Hoeven, 2012). Cities\u27 energy consumption, along with the reshaping and resurfacing of land and the food and other resources they demand, lead to a similarly large share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, carbon-based and otherwise. With cities playing a crucial role in sustainable energy and climate systems, this chapter examines emerging efforts by cities around the world to shift to a development pattern with less energy and less carbon

Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats analysis of carbon footprint indicator and derived recommendations

ABSTRACT: Demand for a low carbon footprint may be a key factor in stimulating innovation, while prompting politicians to promote sustainable consumption. However, the variety of methodological approaches and techniques used to quantify life-cycle emissions prevents their successful and widespread implementation. This study aims to offer recommendations for researchers, policymakers and practitioners seeking to achieve a more consistent approach for carbon footprint analysis. This assessment is made on the basis of a comprehensive Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats or SWOT Analysis of the carbon footprint indicator. It is carried out bringing together the collective experience from the Carbonfeel Project following the Delphi technique principles. The results include the detailed SWOT Analysis from which specific recommendations to cope with the threats and the weaknesses are identified. In particular, results highlight the importance of the integrated approach to combine organizational and product carbon footprinting in order to achieve a more standardized and consistent approach. These recommendations can therefore serve to pave the way for the development of new, specific and highly-detailed guidelines

Rural Development Programme measures on cultivated land in Europe to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions – regional ‘hotspots’ and priority measures

© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Agriculture is a significant source of GHG emissions, contributing 10% of total emissions within the EU-28. Emissions from European agriculture have been reduced, albeit at the expense of crop yield and the risk of production displacement (the transfer of production, and associated emissions, to land outside of Europe). This article assesses the impact on GHG emissions of selected European Rural Development Program measures, representative of a diversity of management strategies implemented on cultivated land, within nine European Member States. Climatic zone and underlying spatial environmental variables were accounted for using a novel technique, “Regional Variation Categories,” developed with European-scale GIS data sets. Production displacement is assessed with two benchmarks: (1) compared with existing crop production and (2) relative to a “minimum requirement” land management scenario, where an emissions reduction of less than this does not constitute mitigation. Most measures reduce emissions relative to the baseline crop scenario; however, many do not reduce emissions beyond the “minimum requirement,” this being limited to measures such as catch crops and within-field grass areas to prevent soil erosion. The selection and targeting of measures to maximize agricultural GHG mitigation on cultivated land within Europe is discussed...Peer reviewedFinal Published versio