New study shows the way for sustainable cities

A new study of 274 cities has highlighted how energy consumption in urban areas can be addressed to make the future of urbanisation more efficient.

The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences United States of America (PNAS) and show that cities are crucial in mitigating emissions.

The United Nations estimates that around four billion people - 53 per cent of the global population - currently live in urban areas and that figure is set to grow to 6.3 billion by 2050.

In 1950, the urban population was under 750 million people.

Researchers from Germany and the US compiled the study and noted that: “The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report shows that urban areas consume between 67 per cent and 76 per cent of global energy and generate about three quarters of global carbon emissions. Additionally, to accommodate growing urbanising populations and economies, urban areas and their built environment are projected to more than triple between 2000 and 2030.”

The research team found that the mitigation potential of cities and towns on a global scale is “insufficiently understood”, which makes it difficult to quantify what energy savings could be made through more effective planning and development.

Co-author of the study, Felix Creutzig from the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, Berlin, said: “I think one of the central problems is that every city tends to view climate change and energy consumption as their own local problem. On the local level, it has been understood but at a global level it is different.”

The team analysed a dataset from 274 cities from 60 countries for the new study, including the world’s 21 megacities (urban areas with a population of over 10 million).

The dataset enabled the researchers to identify varied profiles of energy use by cities, which can then inform tailored climate mitigation policies that suit particular energy-use profile.