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Are you interested in carbon-neutral cities?

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Summary of the article titled Carbon-neutral cities: Critical review of theory and practice from 2022 by Aapo Huovila, Hanne Siikavirta, Carmen Antuña Rozado, Jyri Rökman, Pekka Tuominen, Satu Paiho, Åsa Hedman, and Peter Ylén, published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

This is a great preparation for our next interviewee, Dr Aapo Huovila in ⁠episode 174⁠ talking about sustainable and smart cities.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see what carbon-neutrality can mean for cities. This article presents the theory and practice of carbon-neutral efforts in the urban context, exploring the gaps between research and practice.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Cities, as major global resource consumers and emission contributors, are central to achieving climate goals through sustainability initiatives.
2. Ambiguities in the carbon-neutral city concept and varied emission scopes challenge consistent implementation and progress measurement.
3. A holistic, systemic approach with collaboration among various stakeholders is essential for effective carbon neutrality transitions.

Find the article through ⁠this link⁠.

Abstract: Carbon neutrality has become central in policy discourse and cities’ climate actions are crucial to achieve this goal. Consequently, many cities have already published ambitious climate neutrality target years and are preparing for transition to climate neutrality. This study presents findings from the first ever literature review on the carbon-neutral city concept, covering definition, assessment approaches, and barriers and drivers for transition to carbon neutrality. These findings are combined with interviews with Finnish cities aiming at carbon neutrality to explore gaps between research and practice. More clarity is needed on the definition of carbon-neutral city concept and especially on the role of offsetting the emissions (a specific feature compared to other urban climate concepts). The lack of consistency in city carbon accounting methods and emission scopes making cities’ carbon neutrality goals incomparable, thus calling for harmonization and guidance on common assessment methods. In addition to research, climate networks play an important role in the transition to carbon neutrality. Cities have set ambitious goals and need support to develop action plans, assess actions, come up with creative and innovative ideas and increase collaboration with various stakeholders. Development of ways to support cities that have taken on ambitious carbon neutrality targets would benefit from more systematic research on transition to carbon neutrality from different contexts capturing the lessons learned. There is a need for methods that are flexible enough to accommodate adjustments to local conditions and needs, but also consider broader system transition.

Connecting links you might be interested in:

• ⁠No.088R – The costs and benefits of environmental sustainability⁠;
• ⁠No.119R – Pessimism and optimism in the debate on climate change⁠;

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