Cities, traffic, and CO2: A multidecadal assessment of trends, drivers, and scaling relationships

Emissions of CO2 from road vehicles were 1.57 billion metric tons in 2012, accounting for 28% of US fossil fuel CO2 emissions, but the spatial distributions of these emissions are highly uncertain. We develop a new emissions inventory, the Database of Road Transportation Emissions (DARTE), which estimates CO2 emitted by US road transport at a resolution of 1 km annually for 1980-2012. DARTE reveals that urban areas are responsible for 80% of on-road emissions growth since 1980 and for 63% of total 2012 emissions. We observe nonlinearities between CO2 emissions and population density at broad spatial/temporal scales, with total on-road CO2 increasing nonlinearly with population density, rapidly up to 1,650 persons per square kilometer and slowly thereafter. Per capita emissions decline as density rises, but at markedly varying rates depending on existing densities. We make use of DARTE's bottom-up construction to highlight the biases associated with the common practice of using population as a linear proxy for disaggregating national- or state-scale emissions. Comparing DARTE with existing downscaled inventories, we find biases of 100% or more in the spatial distribution of urban and rural emissions, largely driven by mismatches between inventory downscaling proxies and the actual spatial patterns of vehicle activity at urban scales. Given cities' dual importance as sources of CO2 and an emerging nexus of climate mitigation initiatives, high-resolution estimates such as DARTE are critical both for accurately quantifying surface carbon fluxes and for verifying the effectiveness of emissions mitigation efforts at urban scales.https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1421723112Published versio

A portrait of the different configurations between digitally-enabled innovations and climate governance

Rapid societal transformations are required to keep global average temperature rise well below 2 °C by 2050. An increasingly diverse set of initiatives are leveraging digital technologies to transform society. Given the rapid pace at which these initiatives emerge and the accelerated rate of technological innovation, few connections are made as to their common approaches and motivations. To address this, we developed a database of such initiatives from around the world. We propose a categorization of four types of strategies: data mobilization, optimization of existing strategies, incentivizing and automating behavioural change, and enhancing participation and empowerment of individuals. We analyse connections between types of strategies through the lens of the Earth System Governance framework's original 5 A's – Architecture, Agency, Adaptiveness, Accountability, and Allocation & Access. This work provides a first step towards understanding how digitally-enabled initiatives are contributing to re-imagining climate governance

Keynote: Motivating Private Climate Governance: The Role of the Efficiency Gap

In response to the shrinking federal role in environmental protection, many policy advocates have focused on the role of states and cities, but this symposium focuses on another important source of sustainability initiatives: the private sector, including corporations, households, civic and cultural organizations, religious organizations, private hospitals, colleges and universities, and other organizations. States, cities, and local governments are increasingly important, but the limited geographic reach of subnational governments and widespread concerns about the size and intrusiveness of the public sector constrain their ability to address many environmental problems. Private governance initiatives offer an opportunity to bypass concerns about big government and fill the gap. Although private initiatives cannot draw on the coercive power and resources of government, if these initiatives can accelerate efficiency gains in the private sector, they can motivate mitigation efforts even absent government action. This brief keynote address explores the literature on the size of the efficacy gap and the implications for private climate mitigation initiatives

Stylized Emission Path

human development, climate change

How to achieve climate-friendly behaviour changes ? A case study of the university of Grenoble

Climate change is definitely a huge challenge for the 21st century. Mitigation actions that stem from individual behaviour change towards a lower individual carbon footprint are part of the response. However, barriers are numerous for individuals to change their behaviour and actually reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Even individuals with positive attitudes may show much reluctance to behave in a climate-friendly way. Against this background, our paper aims to investigate how these barriers can be overcome so that individuals take action. The first section reviews the individual, sociological, and institutional barriers that have been identified in the social sciences literature, and options that may spur action. The second section presents the climate mitigation initiative that has been implemented at the university of Grenoble, France, to engage its members into reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, and draws lessons from the results obtained. Digging alternatively into economics, sociology, psychology, and marketing brings some tools to lift barriers to action. However, these social sciences fields are interwoven. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach drawing simultaneously on those social sciences may bring better results. The university of Grenoble could be an interesting place to define an action-research program accordingly.climate change ; attitude ; behaviour ; social sciences

Building smart cities, the just way. A critical review of “smart” and “just” initiatives in Bristol, UK

This article investigates the application of the “smart cities” and “urban climate justice” concepts to two urban initiatives based in Bristol, UK. Both ideas are increasingly popular in academic literature. Yet, little is known about their understanding by the practitioners such as policymakers, third sector organisations and citizens. Two case studies, a community-based energy efficiency initiative, and a local authority electric vehicle policy were critically reviewed using discourse analysis. The method helped to reveal the explicit, implied and obscured aims of the examined initiatives. Using discourse analysis, the researchers developed a heuristic which could improve traditional policy analysis approaches. The examination of case studies illustrates how practitioners understand the notions of “urban climate justice” and “smart cities” and whether their conceptualisations differ from those present in the academic literature. Finally, the paper offers methodological suggestions for embedding justice in “smart” initiatives at each stage of policy and project design

Diffusion and upscaling of municipal climate mitigation and adaptation strategies in Germany

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

Institutional context, innovations, and energy transitions: Exploring solar photovoltaics with hydrogen storage at a secondary school in Norway

Public administrative action is crucial in facilitating sustainability transitions. Although organizational structures, cultures and established practices have been shown to lead to differing innovation results and technological diffusion at various levels of governance, little attention has been paid to the role of local government and administration in sustainable energy transitions. This study analyses renewable energy innovation at the local level of public administration in Norway. Drawing on the institutional and entrepreneurial literature, we examine the key formal decisions and organizational culture development that, combined with policy entrepreneurship, ultimately led to an unlikely and risky decision: to include a costly and unusual local energy system in the construction of a new secondary school. Tracing the administrative processes over 20 years, and drawing on document data supported by 14 interviews, we find that the strong and politically shielded administrative section, backed by a firm mandate and an established internal culture of innovation anchored in historic and local identity among the population and local industry, led to this decision. These factors were further facilitated by acts of policy entrepreneurship at crucial moments, shaping the underlying structures and institutional culture. The independence and strong direction of the administrative section can be emulated in other contexts in order to facilitate innovation. With suitable adaptations to other contexts, our findings may help to accelerate energy transitions through system innovations elsewhere.Institutional context, innovations, and energy transitions: Exploring solar photovoltaics with hydrogen storage at a secondary school in NorwayacceptedVersio

The Role of Private Environmental Governance in Climate Adaption

This Article examines the role of private environmental governance (PEG) in climate change adaptation. PEG occurs when private organizations perform traditionally governmental functions such as providing public goods and reducing negative externalities. PEG initiatives that target climate change mitigation have expanded rapidly in the last decade and have been the subject of research in multiple fields, but PEG initiatives that target climate change adaptation have received less attention. As a first step, the Article develops a definition of private governance regarding climate adaptation, identifies several types of PEG adaptation initiatives, and briefly identifies research gaps

Subsidiary Initiatives in the Institutional Environment

We study subsidiaries of a MNC and research why they implement initiatives that deviate from organizational values of headquarters. Initially we relied only on the concept of institutional duality and expected that pressures in the institutional environment and values of headquarters explain the agency of the subsidiaries. But the results of our extensive participatory observation showed that the organizational values of subsidiaries (rather than those of headquarters) helped explain the subsidiaries' actions. In conclusion, we find that there are limits to the predictive power of the concept of institutional duality. Our study shows that a distinction between values of headquarters and values of subsidiaries is necessary in order to understand the agency of subsidiaries. We suggest a concept of ‘institutional trinity' that distinguishes between these two values as well as pressures in the institutional environment. Our research demonstrates that an MNC can benefit from a subsidiary that develops its own organizational values. If headquarters is subsequently ready to adopt some of these subsidiary values, it may be able to adapt more easily to a changing institutional environment