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Urban infrastructure choices structure climate solutions

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 1054–1056 (2016)Cite this article

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Cities are becoming increasingly important in combatting climate change, but their overall role in global solution pathways remains unclear. Here we suggest structuring urban climate solutions along the use of existing and newly built infrastructures, providing estimates of the mitigation potential.

Cities and other human settlements are important drivers of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and contribute to mitigation actions world wide1,2. At the same time, carbon polluting activities and response measures to these are most tangible where people live and settle. However, the explicit representation of the urbanization process is consistently overlooked in global scenarios depicting solution pathways to mitigation. While urban transport and buildings are captured as part of sectoral approaches, the relevance of urban solutions within the global context remains obscure. This absence is rooted in the limited availability of consistent data, difficulty in synthesizing a heterogeneous body of literature, and reliance on only a few place-specific variables. In addition, global models induce climate mitigation by a generic policy instrument such as carbon pricing. This is inadequate to capture urban solutions, which are set apart by their built environment, and especially by the transport and building components of urban infrastructures. The built environment shapes and structures everyday life of its citizens specifically, and humanity generally. Urban infrastructure provides important boundary conditions — influencing the mitigation potential of energy efficiency improvements or lifestyle changes. Hence, an improved understanding of climate policy solutions hinges on progress in explicitly integrating human settlements in research on global emission pathways, presenting a core challenge for the upcoming sixth assessment cycle of the IPCC where urban-scale mitigation will take centre stage. To make urban solutions analytically accessible, mitigation opportunities need to adequately represent the importance of the built environment in cities worldwide. This would enable a mapping of established policy options on classes of urban infrastructures, demonstrating their importance across spatial scales.

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Figure 1: CO2e emissions from the three different urban categories.

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Acknowledgements

This manuscript is an output of the Global Carbon Project's research initiative Urban and Regional Carbon Management (http://www.cger.nies.go.jp/gcp/activities.html). GPP and RMA were supported by the Research Council of Norway (project 569980).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, Berlin, 10829, Germany

    Felix Creutzig, Peter Agoston & Jan C. Minx

  2. Technische Universität Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni 135, Berlin, 10623, Germany

    Felix Creutzig

  3. Hertie School of Governance, Friedrichstrasse 189, Berlin, 10117, Germany

    Jan C. Minx

  4. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Canberra, 2601, Australia

    Josep G. Canadell

  5. Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, Gaustadalléen 21, Oslo, 0349, Norway

    Robbie M. Andrew & Glen P. Peters

  6. Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 7TJ, UK

    Corinne Le Quéré

  7. National Institute of Environmental Studies, 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8506, Japan

    Ayyoob Sharifi & Yoshiki Yamagata

  8. Asian Institute of Technology, Pathumthani, 12120, Thailand

    Shobhakar Dhakal

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  1. Felix Creutzig
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Correspondence to Felix Creutzig.

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Creutzig, F., Agoston, P., Minx, J. et al. Urban infrastructure choices structure climate solutions. Nature Clim Change 6, 1054–1056 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3169

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