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Cities

Why Cities?

Intersection of Tech, Policies, Markets

Urban population has the major concentration of populations, and it is continuously increasing

urban-rural proportion 1

urban-rural proportion 2

‘The Balance Sheet’

Energy Consumption vs Sustainable Energy Production

Key Sources of Consumption

  • Transport
  • Cars
  • Planes
  • Freight
  • AC
  • Heating
  • Cooling
  • Lighting
  • Electronics
  • Food
  • Production
  • Transporting
  • Maintaining
  • Manufacturing

Key sources of sustainable production

  • Wind
  • Solar
  • photovoltaics
  • thermal
  • Biomass
  • Hydroelectric
  • Wave
  • Tide
  • Geothermal
  • Nuclear (unclear whether nuclear counts as sustainable)

Key Concepts

Energy

  • Quantitative property of doing work
  • Conserved: can neither be created/destroyed
  • Transformation: Light, heat, mass; \(E=mc^2\)
  • Forms: Kinetic, Chemical, potential, mechanical (elastic), biological
  • Units: kWh, Joules, calories, terms
  • Fossil fuels: Barrels, short tons, cubic feet

Power

  • Quantitative rate of doing work
  • Energy per time
  • Units: Watts, ergs, horsepower, lumen*

Emissions Intensity

  • Unit: mtcde: metric-ton carbon-dioxide equivalent
  • There are many forms of greenhouse gases, so we usually use CO2 equivalent
  • by gas, per unit of energy, per activity, per GDP, by region

Energy Consumption

Usually shown using Sankey diagrams

image-20240217185501479

Rejected energy is the by-product of energy generation that is not used (energy lost due to heat loss, air resistance, etc)

Deep Decarbonization

Goal of getting to net-zero emissions by 2050

deep_decarbonization_2050_Sankey_Diagram

Aspects of Urban Energy Planning

  • Technological Implementation
  • Geography
  • Politics
  • Land use & built environment

Key Issues with Monitoring

  • City, urban definitions
  • Types of emissions: upstream (import), downstream (exports & waste), goods & services
  • Measurement of affluence: Wealth vs Income

Just Energy Transition

Environmental equity: reducing risk for all communities; distribution and effects os environmental problems and policies and processes to reduce differences in who bears environmental risks

Climate Justice

  • Historical responsibility
  • Inter-generational equity
  • Disproportionate causes and burdens
  • Grassroots movements
  • Legal actions on climate change

Transformative justice

  • Practices designed to create change in social systems

Energy justice

  • Disproportionate access, harms, burdens
  • Unions & worker
  • Fossil-fuel dominated communities
    • Create a lot of jobs
  • Frontline/EJ communities
Distributional equitable distribution of burdens & benefits of energy and environmental decisions
Procedural Right to fair process for different stakeholders to take part equitably in decision-making process
Restorative Repair harm done to individuals, instead of focusing upon punishing the offender
Recognition Recognizing that parts of society might suffer as result of energy & environmental decisions, and identifying individuals and groups who might be impacted by such decisions
Cosmopolitan Reinforces all of the above, but states that “above forms of justice must apply universally to al human beings”

Just Framework

image-20240217201316631

Importance of land uses and land cover

  • Total sequestration potential is uncertain
  • Natural/existing ecosystems are more efficient than restored ones
  • Policy mechanisms may be wildly different for different ecosystems
  • Farm preservation vs biodiversity protections
  • Carbon storage may fit into different regimes

Controlling the spatial expansion of cities is crucial


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWFGkZ64ng4&list=PLUl4u3cNGP63SEOB1q95TFs0hwyf1d7BG&index=5

Last Updated: 2024-05-14 ; Contributors: AhmedThahir

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