Cities are like a big vacuum cleaners, sucking up resources from all over the world, and spewing out the “waste”.
Rob Stokes, former NSW planning minister, says that countries and therefore cities won’t become net zero unless neighbourhoods do. We should be starting from the neighbourhood upwards, he believes.
So how many cities around the world are already doing this?
The answer is, not many. The biggest difficulty is that it involves refurbishing existing buildings, and it’s hard to find a financial model that can easily finance the expense.
It’s possible to find isolated areas of enthusiasm in the usual places – Copenhagen and Amsterdam for example.
England
Global built environment consultancy Arup is behind a project in England’s West Midlands that was announced by the local mayor at COP26. Homes would undergo “deep retrofit” using insulation with options for solar panels and low carbon heating systems.
Other measures introduced on a neighbourhood-wide scale as part of this project could include LED street lighting, new pocket parks, playgrounds, communal food growing initiatives, green roofs and sustainable drainage systems. It will be part financed by Wolverhampton City Council. A year later it has barely got going.
A research project in the UK, financed by the British government, will work with local authorities and communities to find new ways of renovating and retrofitting homes for a low carbon future.
In the past these types of activities have relied mainly on government grants.
The UK Energy Research Council’s stance is as follows: “Continued and expanded government support is needed, but we also need to find more bottom up solutions.
“Solutions which work for individual neighbourhoods, towns and cities. Solutions which leverage the billions of pounds people already spend as part of their aspirations for a ‘better home’.”
Arup is at the forefront of efforts to do this. Working with C40 Cities it believes its guide to Green and Thriving Neighbourhoods will provide a new focus to respond to the urgency of the global climate agenda.
“Neighbourhoods provide an ideal scale and context for equitable and sustainable recovery and an opportunity to develop replicable, net zero approaches that can be deployed city-wide and beyond,” writes Mark Watts, executive director of C40 Cities, and Arup chairperson Alan Belfield, in the introduction to the guide.
On the topic of buildings the guide says better construction must surely become circular, with zero waste to landfill, and a green and thriving neighbourhood will need to minimise building emissions by “adopting passive design principles, investing in high-efficiency neighbourhood-wide energy infrastructure and decarbonising energy supply”.
Melbourne
Melbourne is one city in Australia that has just committed to net zero emissions for the municipality by 2040. So far it has produced a plan which includes a deep retrofit of 77 buildings per year.
Most of the focus will be on buildings, especially calling upon owners of commercial properties to disclose their carbon footprints.
A carbon risk tool will be developed and the offer of a rate cut to incentivise building owners to invest in retrofit.
The city envisages passing a local law to implement a carbon cap.
Wales
Throughout the world definitions of net zero carbon neighbourhoods being used by cities vary widely.
To guide its eco-refurbishment programme, Wales is using a widely accepted existing standard for measuring carbon emissions: PAS 2035 (PAS 2035:2019 Specification for the energy retrofit of domestic buildings).
Others use different standards. Some use none at all. It’s a wild west free for all at the moment. It’s early days for all projects. The learning curve will be steep.
Most places trialing net zero neighbourhoods are like Wales in that administrations are financing specific projects in order to build an evidence base of what works and what doesn’t to inform future projects.
China
China is no different, although it is making a lot of noise about Chengdu’s Near-net-zero Initiative.
The city of Chengdu’s Work Plan for Pilot Near-Net-Zero Communities seeks to create 10 near-net-zero communities in 2022 and 30 more by the end of 2025. But these are new build areas which are relatively easy to plan for and finance.
Chengdu is part of 100 Resilient Cities, a club of cities managed by The Rockefeller Foundation, who, like C40, is pioneering different ways of transitioning to a low carbon future and adapting to climate change, as described here.
The Wuzhong District of Suzhou city is being used as a case study by C40 for modelling the path to a net zero community. Modeling results so far show how Wuzhong’s energy system might evolve if the technological options and decarbonisation strategies are pretty much confined to conventional technological pathways.
The modelling exercise helps local decision makers understand the limitations of the business-as-usual approach and why transformative measures might be needed.
More importantly, the report discusses the strategic areas enabling expansion of the decarbonisation options presented in the modelling results. These are building-integrated PV, demand-side flexibility, green hydrogen and urban energy planning.
That’s for electrical power, heating and cooling.
For transport, trackless trams are seen as a solution. These do not run on rails. They have more in common with bus rapid transit.
The above linked article on the website Transport Tomorrow says the trams are called Autonomous Rapid Transit (ART) and are guided by the same technology as self-driving cars and instead of using overhead wires for power they top up their own batteries at each station stop.
What a cool #tram without rails!
— Zhang Meifang??? (@CGMeifangZhang) August 30, 2022
Autonomous Rail Rapid #Transit(ART) combines the advantages of modern trams &buses & has zero-emission & pollution-free characteristics. It supports multi-methods power supply, bringing new choices to solve #traffic difficulties. pic.twitter.com/FQjA8ocfye
This is an ancient technology brought up to date, battery powered trams being first seen on the streets of New York in the 19th century.
The same article claims that they are to be introduced into Australia.
Net zero challenges
It’s early days for net zero neighbourhoods. They have many learning curves: refurbishment, renewable electricity, heating, transport are just the beginning.
They will need to take the population with them, to persuade people to change their habits of a lifetime. So they need to tackle the social element equitably.
They also need to consider waste and transitioning to the circular economy.
And whether to include food: the biggest footprint apart from buildings. No net zero neighbourhoods at the moment are considering this.
It would be considered as part of Scope 3 emissions associated with supply chains.
If you think about it, cities are like a big vacuum cleaners, sucking up resources from all over the world. Mostly they just consume and spew out the “waste” in their sewage and garbage.
This creates a local problem besides depleting the area which supplies them.
This is why the circular economy and greening the supply chain are so important.
