The Concept of City Carbon Maps: A Case Study of Melbourne, Australia

Abstract

Summary Cities are thought to be associated with most of humanity's consumption of natural resources and impacts on the environment. Cities not only constitute major centers of economic activity, knowledge, innovation, and governance—they are also said to be linked to approximately 70% to 80% of global carbon dioxide emissions. This makes cities primary agents of change in a resource‐ and carbon‐constraint world. In order to set meaningful targets, design successful policies, and implement effective mitigation strategies, it is important that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting for cities is accurate, comparable, comprehensive, and complete. Despite recent developments in the standardization of city GHG accounting, there is still a lack of consistent guidelines regarding out‐of‐boundary emissions, thus hampering efforts to identify mitigation priorities and responsibilities. We introduce a new conceptual framework—based on environmental input‐output analysis—that allows for a consistent and complete reconciliation of direct and indirect GHG emissions from a city. The “city carbon map” shows local, regional, national, and global origins and destinations of flows of embodied emissions. We test the carbon map concept by applying it to the greater metropolitan area of Melbourne, Australia. We discuss the results and limitations of the approach in the light of possible mitigation strategies and policies by different urban stakeholders.

City Carbon Footprint Networks

“…In brief, a city carbon map displays the direct and indirect emissions of a city with local, regional, national and global origins and destinations of flows of embodied emissions. It is derived from multi-scale, multi-region input-output (MRIO) modelling that allows for the integration of multiple spatial scales, including the city scale [20,41]. Here we extend the concept of a single city carbon map to create an entire "city CF network", which refers to the case where input-output tables for multiple cities are nested into a global MRIO model, thus linking individual city carbon maps to reveal all intercity carbon flows.…”

“…This study is an application of the concept of city carbon maps, recently introduced by Wiedmann et al [20]. In brief, a city carbon map displays the direct and indirect emissions of a city with local, regional, national and global origins and destinations of flows of embodied emissions.…”

“…In this study, based on the carbon map concept [20], we introduce the concept of "city CF networks" by way of studying the five largest cities in Australia. These are the fastest growing areas where 60% of the nation's population resides.…”

Systems Thinking for Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment: A Review of Recent Developments, Applications, and Future Perspectives

“…This is important since the majority of countries are open economies and life-cycle sustainability impacts of products are found in the geographical boundary of multiple countries [98,99]. A recent study also emphasized that significant proportion (64%) of total environmental, social and economic impacts stem from international trade [100]. Owing to the importance of growing global trade, MRIO models have become a widely discussed topic and they are used for regional and international policy making in environmental impact analysis [101,102].…”

Industrial energy, materials and products: UK decarbonisation challenges and opportunities

“…This figure provides an analysis of energy flows {in the European Union (EU-27)}, but further studies have also considered other environmental pressures, such as water [35,36]. Increasingly, studies are undertaken to demonstrate the link of consumption at the city scale with global industrial energy demand [37,38].…”