European Cities Moving Towards Climate Neutrality - CLUE

Participation, Indicators and Benchmarking.

European Cities Moving Towards Climate Neutrality

Final Report

Summary This report aims at analyzing the state of today’s knowledge and tools that is relevant for moving European cities towards climate neutrality. The report has been created using both literature sources as well as analyses of case studies from European cites. The main issues dealt with are how the concept of climate neutrality applies to cities, what experiences cities have in planning carbon neutral urban districts and the tools that could be used such as indicators, scenarios and benchmarking. As the world’s population increases along with higher living standards more greenhouse gases (GHG) are emitted. The migration of the majority of the population into cities creates a possible opportunity to fight these pressures in a more efficient way. This is because cities are large and concentrated emitters of GHG and therefore also a good platform to cut emission. They are also expanding which means that new and modern technology can be introduced in new built districts. Moreover, cities are generally nodes for societal systems, facilitating the production and implementation of innovations. The concept of climate neutral urban districts is a way to approach the issue of carbon emissions in a smaller more controlled way, creating test beds where new ideas and technologies can be introduced. Climate neutrality aims at developing strategies and actions that avoid global climate change by elimination of carbon emissions arising from anthropogenic activities. However caution should be taken as the concept is not fully developed. Climate neutrality can be seen in many ways and a unified definition cannot be presented yet. However several projects can be identified that experimented with sustainable neighbourhood developments. These projects were amongst the first to directly apply the vision of sustainable development emerging from the UNCED Rio Summit in 1992 and the consequent Agenda 21 action plan. The knowledge and experience gained from these early projects is considerable, and their influence can be seen in a number of CLUEs. The CLUE case studies show that cities are increasingly moving towards the integration of renewable energy sources and a closed loop metabolism with instruments of planning, design and construction. At present, it can be said that the CLUE project cases show a range of initiatives currently applied in cities across Europe but, for the most part, do not show the application of holistic long term climate change mitigation strategies. Three main issues are considered in this report: frameworks for determining urban GHG emissions, scenario planning for stakeholder participation, and benchmarking the results that are achieved. In chapter 3 an overview of frameworks is sketched to calculate urban district GHG emissions. One of the main issues is the lack of clarity on what should be accounted for on an urban scale: the imported goods and services as well? The

CLUE – Climate Neutral Urban Districts in Europe

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issue about setting the system boundary in a way that the results get trustworthy and transparent is challenging and is still internationally debated. In chapter 4, the necessity of stakeholder participation is sketched, and what could be achieved by it. In chapter 5, scenario methods are reviewed. It is argued that it is important to distinguish external scenarios (sketching the uncertainties emerging from the outside world) from internal scenarios that are aiming at evaluating longer term impacts of courses of action. It is argued that scenarios are a good tool for providing stakeholders with expertise that is required for participation. Chapter 6 considers evaluation and benchmarking of CLUEs. Evaluation is valuable and necessary both to secure goal fulfilment and/or to define targets for further progress. The theoretical work within the area of evaluating GHG reduction measures is comprehensive both within general theory of evaluation guidelines but also for environmental and sustainability follow-up. The main function of indicators is the representation of information regarding the complex issues they address. They decrease the number of parameters that are usually necessary to present the situation and simplify the communication of results to the users. New sets of urban indicators are developed for benchmarking best practice in the search for climate neutrality, which are specified in terms of the fabric that serves the city-districts, neighbourhoods and blocks. Based on this approach, new mathematical formulas are used to generate urban sustainability indicators. The pros and cons of this approach are discussed. Using this approach it is possible to compare the performance of city-districts in terms of energy consumption and CO2 emission. This in turn allows each of their respective performances to be benchmarked against one another in terms of energy consumption and carbon emissions. Finally, chapter 7 discusses the outcomes of this study, and the challenges for further research and development. It develops 7 characteristics that are of key importance for a successful approach in planning, decision making and operation of a CLUE: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

A long term future orientation Participation of stakeholders Measuring progress Benchmarking Be sensitive non-climate related impacts of urban planning Being equity sensitive Creating a stepping stone to a Climate Neutral City/society

This project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the INTERREG IVC Programme.


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Table of Contents Summary .................................................................................................... 2 Preface ....................................................................................................... 6 1

2

Introduction .......................................................................................... 7 1.1

Why Climate Neutral Urban Districts? ..................................................... 8

1.2

Climate Mitigation and Climate Adaptation............................................ 10

1.3

What is Climate Neutrality? .................................................................... 10

Cities’ Role In Global Climate Mitigation ............................................ 13 2.1

3

Cities and Climate Neutrality – European Experience ............................ 14

2.1.1

BedZED........................................................................................... 14

2.1.2

BedZED Lessons Learned ........................................................... 15

2.1.3

Bo01 ................................................................................................ 15

2.1.4

Bo01 Lessons Learned................................................................. 15

2.1.5

Hammarby Sjöstad ........................................................................ 16

2.1.6

Hammarby Lessons Learned ...................................................... 16

2.2

Learning from the early adopters ............................................................ 17

2.3

Experiences of Climate Mitigation Processes in CLUE’s Cities ............ 17

Frameworks and Methodologies - Examples and Experiences ......... 22 3.1

Emissions Here and Elsewhere, What Counts? ....................................... 22

3.2

Standards and Guidelines ........................................................................ 24

3.3 A Climate Positive Urban District – The CCI Framework and Stockholm Royal Sea Port .................................................................................................... 27 3.3.1

SRS – Basic Information .............................................................. 27

3.3.2 A Planning Process Based on CCI’s Framework to be Climate Positive .......................................................................................................... 29 3.3.3 3.4 4

The Process of Setting the Baseline .......................................... 30

One Planet – London Borough of Sutton ................................................ 34

Participation ....................................................................................... 37 4.1

Why Participation in Urban Planning? .................................................... 37

4.2

Participation for Better Information and Conflict Prevention ................. 39

4.3

Participation for Mutual Learning ........................................................... 40

4.4

Living in a CLUE .................................................................................... 40

4.5

Problems of Participation ........................................................................ 42

4.6 Options for Effective Stakeholder Participation in Developing Climate Neutral Urban Areas ........................................................................................... 44


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5

Scenarios, Examples from Best Practice and Involved Cities ............ 44 5.1 Why a Long Term Future Orientation in Planning Climate Neutral Urban Areas? ................................................................................................................. 47

6

7

8

5.2

Internal and External Scenarios ............................................................... 49

5.3

Scenarios for Mapping External Developments ...................................... 49

5.4

Internal Scenarios .................................................................................... 51

5.5

Scenario Workshops and Participation .................................................... 53

5.6

After Care and Follow Up ....................................................................... 54

5.7

A Scenario Workshop Approach for Climate Neutral Urban Areas ........ 54

Indicators and Benchmarking ............................................................ 56 6.1

Indicators, Examples from Best Practice and Involved Cities ................ 56

6.2

Indicators – Definitions ........................................................................... 57

6.3

The Selection of Indicators – What Criteria to Use? ............................... 58

6.4

Practical Example - Renewable Wilhelmsburg ....................................... 60

6.5

Benchmarking, Examples from Best Practice ......................................... 61

Towards an approach for climate neutral urban areas in Europe ....... 68 7.1

Findings ................................................................................................... 68

7.2

Unanswered Questions and Research Challenges ................................... 69

7.3

A Clue Approach ..................................................................................... 71

References ........................................................................................ 72

Appendix ................................................................................................... 79 Context of Clueburgh ......................................................................................... 79 Scenario 1: Clueburgh geothermal ..................................................................... 80 Scenario 2: Passive Clueburgh ........................................................................... 83 Scenario 3: Compact Clueburgh ........................................................................ 85 Scenario 4: Green Clueburgh ............................................................................. 88


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Preface This report is the final product from the university partners (C4) in the INTERREG IVC CLUE project. It presents an overview of policy tools and options to deal with the climate change challenge at the level of urban districts as well as ideas that could lead to an improvement of current practice. These ideas are results of the project CLimate neutral Urban districts in Europe (CLUE), funded by the EU INTERREG IVC program (2007-2013). INTERREG IVC provides funding for interregional cooperation across Europe. It is implemented under the European Community’s territorial co-operation objective and financed through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The purpose of the INTERREG IVC program is to enable regional and local authorities and other stakeholders at the regional level to improve their policies, methods and capacities in the area of environment and risk prevention. The project idea Climate neutral Urban districts in Europe (CLUE) were formulated by a team of experts at the City of Stockholm and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The project idea was first presented during the EU Interregional Cooperation Forum, 20/21 September 2007, Lisbon. The objective of the CLUE regional development project is increased regional capacity in policy development to facilitate implementation and assessment of new solutions and technologies to support low carbon economy in urban areas. Furthermore a shared perception on Climate Neutral Urban Districts in the partnership is a project aim. CLUE explores good practices in planning and implementation of innovative solutions as well as methods for measuring, monitoring, reporting, verifying and assessing climate mitigating efforts. The project activities result in knowledge exchange and diffusion regarding best practices, and policy recommendations on the integration of climate aspects in the urban planning & development process. The CLUE project consortium brings together local and regional authorities as well as universities from nine European countries, which are all involved in developing innovative options to create climate neutral urban districts. This report is the result of case studies, methodological studies and debates that took place during the CLUE project. The authors of this report work at three universities: Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, Delft University of Technology, Delft and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. The university groups have together been responsible for collecting and analysing experiences of climate neutral urban district frameworks and methodologies. The intended target groups and readers for this document are urban planners, policy makers and other stakeholders with interest in climate mitigation and adaptation strategies for urban districts.


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1 Introduction Increasing world population combined with improved living standards are putting pressure on the world’s eco-systems and services. Emissions’ evolving from our way of living impact the global climate and have become one of modern time’s great challenges. The anthropogenic impact on the climate have been debated for many years but still much need to be done if this threat is to be avoided. This report presents an overview of possible tools and ideas to deal with the climate change challenge at the level of urban districts. In this report, an outline of methods and tools is presented that could help cities in decision-making, measuring, reporting, verifying and assessing climate neutral options. As the field of ‘Climate Neutrality’ is still very much an emerging field, with no clear consensus how things should be handled, this report will limit itself to presenting ‘options’ to work towards these aims. Based on the current state of knowledge, a specific prescription how to work towards climate neutral urban districts, that would be based on firm empirical evidence, and assure a reasonable rate of success, cannot be given. Hence we limit ourselves to a presentation of options and routes that are to our current insights most promising for success. Finally, we will present reflections that are to our insights most promising for creating a CLUE approach. We used several different sources to create this report:  Literature reviews  Analysis of written case studies provided by eight participating cities,  Best practice reports created by the cities in the CLUE project.  Direct interviews and discussions (expert meetings, personal interviews) with city experts concerning experiences in specific methodological areas. We aim at clarifying the concept of climate neutral urban districts, and how it could potentially be operationalized to be used in planning and policy making. To fulfil the aim the outline is structured as follows.  Cities’ role in global climate mitigation  City climate mitigation general methodological considerations  Frameworks and methodologies examples; experiences The main issues dealt are:  The concept of climate neutrality applied to cities,  Experiences using the framework of climate neutral urban districts and  Experiences using the methodologies of indicators, scenarios and benchmarking in the creation and evaluation of climate neutral urban districts. We observed that cities are working at different scales, using different approaches concerning climate mitigation actions in urban districts and projects, based on


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different technologies and policies. But one clear conclusion from the university work is that even if the context of “climate neutral city” is used in some cities in Europe, the concept of climate neutral urban districts is quite new and for many cities unused. 1.1 W HY CLIMATE NEUTRAL URBA N DISTRICTS? Throughout the world, people are moving to cities. Today more than half the world’s population is living in urban areas and this percentage is expected to rise (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, 2012). In Europe the same trend applies: The spectacular urbanization since WW II will continue, and four out of five Europeans will live in urban areas by 2050.

Figure 1 European urbanization. Based on data of (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, 2012).

Cities are important for reducing climate change:  They are large and rather concentrated emitters of greenhouse gases and therefore they are an ideal platform to cut emissions (Grimm et al., 2008, International Energy Agency, 2011).  They are still expanding, and so there is an opportunity to apply modern clean technologies in new development areas, instead of being obliged to bring old systems up to standards  In general cities comprise more young residents (Cf. e.g. UK Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs, 2013), which could be helpful in creating a culture for experiments and change.  Cities are often nodes in the societal systems that produce and implement innovation (research, education, start-up facilities, …) (Hekkert et al., 2007, Jacobsson and Johnson, 2000). Introducing solutions that could contribute to climate neutrality takes hardware, software and orgware: not just new technologies, but also new modes of organisation (like e.g. waste collection schemes) and new patterns of behaviour (citizens separating waste) are required. Instead of introducing generic measures, like changing construction codes or subsidy schemes, cities can develop urban


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districts as ‘niches’, i.e. protected test beds in which all these changes can be introduced in combination. Such test beds can stimulate learning (both among the residents and the infra-service companies) and deliver valuable insights for developing strategies towards climate neutrality (Kemp et al., 1998). Moreover, by concentrating on specific urban areas, the positive side-effects of climate neutral urban areas, not just regarding energy/climate, might reinforce each other. We experienced in the CLUE project that climate change mitigation solutions are to a large degree ‘localized’ i.e. the solutions have to be adapted to local conditions as there are no universal solutions that are equally effective everywhere: 1. First of all the use of fossil fuels, as a main source of greenhouse gas emissions, is determined by local conditions. Heating and cooling are depending on local climate (temperature, solar influx, precipitation). Also the quantity and quality of economic activities (e.g. industry and industry type, city being transport node) and geological conditions (hilly/flat soil, surface water availability, sea front) are determining fuel consumption. 2. Local climate and geophysical conditions also determine to a large extend the options for generating renewable energy: sufficient wind is needed for turbines, mountains for hydropower, sunlight for PV, and geothermal heat should not be too deep, etc. Even technologies that are in principle generic turn out to be more attractive in specific areas: for grid systems (like district heating and cooling) the ‘load factor’ of the system should be sufficient to make it economical feasible (Magnusson, 2013). 3. The feasibility of new climate neutral options is strongly depending on the technical and institutional history of the city: new emerging systems are vulnerable and depending on the available conditions such as existing infrastructure, legislation and know how. Institutional factors can facilitate specific options while creating barriers for others (Vernay, 2013). When electricity systems emerged more than a century ago, the variety of institutional and geophysical conditions shaped a wide variety of electricity systems (Hughes 1985). Today, in reshaping various urban systems that have emerged and have been shaped by different institutions and geophysical conditions, the variety is even larger (Vernay, 2013). From that perspective it would be presumptuous to describe uniform “CLUE guidelines” for policies, planning and benchmarking based on the limited experience of the participating cities. The fact that options for climate neutral urban areas should be determined locally, does not imply that there is nothing to learn among cities. On the contrary, the socio-technical systems cannot be copied as they need to be adjusted to local conditions, but cities can be inspired. Cities can learn how to organise the process of developing climate neutral urban areas, can pick up new creative ideas, can share experiences on stakeholder involvement, can learn from unforeseen impacts and mistakes, and can develop joint tools for measuring progress made towards climate neutrality. Innovative cities can learn much from each other.


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A conclusions can be drawn: Climate neutral urban areas of other cities can provide inspiration. They cannot act as ‘the original’ to be copied, as both the physical/climatic, and institutional/cultural conditions of each city are unique. In this phase of cities’ climate mitigation development it is important to discuss the concept of climate neutrality, and discuss how climate neutrality of urban areas could be further defined and measured. This will have implications for cities’ climate mitigation actions and policies which will be further discussed in this report. 1.2 CLIMATE MITIGATION AND CLIMATE ADA PTATION 1 Climate change is a fact. The IPCC concluded in September 2013:”Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased” (IPCC, 2013). But it is not just a scientific fact: various impacts of climate changes will be unavoidable. In the CLUE project, and this report, the focus is on climate neutrality of urban areas and therefore mitigation of climate change. However, urban planning will have to accommodate impacts of climate change as well. Adaptation measures should be included in urban planning, the earlier the better. A main reason for including adaptation in the early stages of urban planning is that it might contribute to mitigation or to the quality of the area as well: For example early attention for adaptation in the planning process might lead to the design of recreational space that could be used as reservoir to deal with floods. In later stages, one can often only deal with floods by flood walls and pumping equipment. Passive housing might not be completely economical in a specific area, but might be interesting as it also protects its inhabitants against the impacts of an increase in number of heat waves and against ruptures in the energy infrastructure. 1.3 W HAT IS CLIMATE NEUT RALITY? Climate neutrality aims to develop strategies and actions that avoid global climate change by elimination of the carbon emissions which arise from anthropogenic activities. Cities, companies and other stakeholders currently use the concept of ‘climate neutrality’ in rather different ways and generally not very well defined. Often, it is used more in a way to impress constituencies than as a well-defined and measurable target. Well known is the failed attempt of the Vatican to become carbon neutral by carbon offsetting (company went bankrupt) (Struck, 2010). 1

Climate change mitigation are actions to limit the magnitude and/or rate of long-term climate change, Climate change adaptation are actions that seeks to reduce the vulnerability of systems to climate change effects.


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Masdar City, near Abu Dhabi also advertises itself as becoming ‘carbon neutral’. As the United Arab Emirates were hit by the recession, investments slowed down in Masdar, and the city promoted itself as ‘low carbon’. However, clear definitions of both ‘carbon neutrality’ and ‘low carbon’ are not presented and the city is both criticized as being a ‘luxury resort’ and too much ‘green-policing’ its inhabitants (Ouroussoff, 2010). The practical use of the concept today is dependent on how cities define system borders concerning time, activity/sectors and geographical areas. The problems establishing climate neutrality are related to high level of interdependence and interconnection of communities. About a century ago, autarchic communities (i.e. climate neutral communities as far as they were not ‘mining’) could be found everywhere, now almost everyone plays a role in the global economy2 Unfortunately at present there are neither standards nor a consensus on a definition what climate neutrality should be, or not be. There is neither consensus regarding which products and services to include, nor on system boundaries. Current literature offers different concepts like “strictly zero carbon”, “net zero carbon”, “carbon neutral “ and “low carbon”, which are based on emission categorization determined in terms of scopes. Scope 1 including system bound internal emissions, scope 2 including core external emissions and scope 3 including noncore emission, see chapter 2.1 for further elaborations. What might be referred to as “strict carbon zero” concept means that no fossil carbon is emitted within scope 1 or 2, which means that no balancing or offsets are allowed. This is practically impossible. The other concepts use offset trade with a gradient from little to unlimited (Kennedy and Sgouridis, 2011). The restrictions on offsets trade are therefore crucial for the discussion of climate neutrality in practice. In the definition used by the UK Sustainable Development Commission (Sustainable Development Commission United Kingdom, 2007) the limitation on offsets are discussed in the definition of a carbon neutral organization, as follows: “one that causes no net accumulation of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. Therefore carbon neutrality allows emissions to be netted off in some other location, a process which is called ‘offsetting’. However the SDC would caution against a carbon neutrality policy which is focused solely on carbon offsetting. As the aim should be to reduce overall emissions over time, simply offsetting emissions without a carbon management strategy in place is at best misconceived, and at worst counter-productive.” (Sustainable Development Commission United Kingdom, 2007)

2

Cf. HARDING, S. F. 1984. Remaking Ibieca: rural life in Aragon under Franco. how this change occurred in rural Spain.


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There are various issues to be handled for carbon offsetting. There is wide consensus that no carbon credits should go to regular replacement activities like replanting trees, replacing amortized wind turbines, etc. For this reason, 'additionality' is required from greenhouse gas offset projects. However, this requirement might be hard to establish. For example: there are no carbon credits for replanting a chopped forest, but what if the chopped forest is not replanted, should it get negative carbon credits, i.e. a penalty? What if the forest is replanted after several years, or with different trees? Moreover, how to check if the CO2 reductions (established during an investment) are actually really delivered? This will take monitoring and policing (Gillenwater et al., 2007). Besides these practical objections, there are also rather ‘political’ objections against carbon offsetting: it will allow those who can afford to postpone greenhouse gas emission reductions (Smith, 2007). One definition of climate neutrality that could be useful is the suggestion of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in the report Climate Neutral Cities: How to make cities less energy and carbon intensive and more resilient to climatic challenges (UN Economic Commission for Europe, 2011). In this report UNECE suggests climate change policies for cities: “Mitigation and adaptation are two sides of an urban strategy for climate neutrality. Such a strategy suggests that: a. Cities aim to achieve net zero emissions of GHG by reducing such emissions as much as possible and developing mechanisms to offset the remaining unavoidable emissions; b. and cities aim to become climate-proof, or resilient to the negative impacts of the changing climate, by improving their adaptive capacities.” (UN Economic Commission for Europe, 2011 p. 14) The UNECE suggestion for mitigation and adaptation could be used to set goals for climate neutrality efforts in urban districts. This is a very open and at the same time vague concept, with both benefits and weaknesses. An open concept has the benefit of inviting new ideas and actors in a broad perspective to support innovation and development for climate neutrality. At the same time the UNECE concept urges the cities to be transparent in regard to system boundaries, so it is clear for different stakeholders which activities/sectors and geographical areas are included in different actions and strategies for climate neutral urban districts. Cities are also responsible for communicating and being transparent about the rules of engagement, trade-offs and offsets needed in order to avoid “green washing” and thereby meet the requirements for global emissions reductions. The UNECE report also relates climate neutrality to a more holistic view of development.


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“While climate neutrality is a strategy to be ‘climate-smart’, it is also a means to address other environmental, economic and social challenges (UN Economic Commission for Europe, 2011 p. 14) This is an important aspect and tends to reinforce the fundamental message that, climate neutrality in urban districts should be connected to the issues of urban sustainable development. Such a connection is required to secure participation from a wide range of different stakeholders in urban districts and avoid sub optimization i.e. implementing climate mitigation measures that create new problems in regard to other issues.

2 Cities’ Role In Global Climate Mitigation Cities occupy only 2 % of the world’s land area. At the same time they are major contributors to climate change accounting for 75 % of the world’s energy consumption and up to 80 % of global GHG emissions (Dulal and Akbar, 2013). As cities are rather concentrated emitters of greenhouse gasses, they might provide more opportunities for emission reductions. Moreover, by the continuing urbanisation, by far the most new build up areas will be created in urban areas. This creates a better opportunity for moving towards climate neutrality then retrofitting existing dwellings. Impacts of climate change such as rising sea levels, inland floods, more frequent and stronger hurricanes, more heat waves and droughts, tropical diseases in thus far temperate climate zones, shifting ecological zones, will have a devastating effect on various urban areas. Of the large cities 90 % is situated along coast lines (C40 Cities, not dated). Climate change can affect the urban infrastructure and urban services thus causing financial damage and worsening quality of life in the cities. However, cities are also places of innovation, communication and commerce and have an opportunity to drive global action for mitigation of climate changes. Policies of cities can have an impact. Cities can mitigate global effects especially if they learn from each other’s successes and failures. But the unavoidable climate change that is to come also takes efforts and also requires learning. Aiming to diminish the causes of climate change a number of cities have created a trend by including GHG reduction targets into the urban development plans. Adoption of emission reduction targets by governments all around the world started with the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. “Kyoto’ implied 5 % reduction of GHG emissions by the year 2012 relative to 1990 levels (UNFCCC 2006 cited in (Ibrahim et al., 2012)). The European Union sets its own ambitions as “20-2020” committing to 20 % reduction in EU greenhouse gases emissions, 20 %


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improvement in EU energy efficiency and a 20 % rise in the share of renewables for energy consumption by the year 2020 (European Comission, not dated). Currently there are about 6000 cities around the globe that have set targets for climate change mitigation. These cities developed local action plans to reduce GHG emissions (Ibrahim et al., 2012). Among those, about 1000 cities and local governments are part of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability that supports the local authorities in implementing climate policies (ICLEI, not dated). In aspiration to meet the carbon objectives of the EU many cities voluntarily commit themselves to increasing energy efficiency and use of renewable energy sources. Initiated by the European Commission, the Covenant of Mayors supports efforts of local governments for implementation of sustainable energy policy (Covenant of Mayors, not dated). Besides a number of other initiatives were established to help cities all around the globe to meet climate mitigation objectives. C40, the Clinton Climate Initiative, UN-Habitat and others were established to promote sustainable climate-related actions locally. These initiatives promote implementing climate policy at the level of a city or even municipality because local governments have a control over many factors related to GHG emissions and can make a decision regarding land use, transportation, waste disposal, residential and commercial regulations.

2.1 CITIES AND CLIMATE NEUTRALITY – EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE This section analyses four of the largest and best-known sustainable neighbourhood developments to emerge in Europe in the 1990s: BedZED and Hackbridge in London, UK; Bo01 in Malmö, and Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm, Sweden. These projects were amongst the first to directly apply the vision of sustainable development emerging from the UNCED Rio Summit in 1992 and the consequent Agenda 21 action plan. The knowledge and experience gained from these early projects is considerable, and their influence can be seen in a number of CLUEs and climate positive districts, most notably in the cases of the Stockholm Royal Seaport which draws upon the experiences of its predecessor Hammarby Sjöstad and in Hackbridge, London, where BedZED’s ethos of One Planet Living is applied at district level. This section goes on to consider the lessons to be learned from these projects and the implications for future climate neutral urban districts. 2.1.1 BEDZED BedZED was the first carbon-neutral urban development in the UK. Beginning in 1998, the project sought to promote a sustainable housing model within an overall concept for sustainable living, known as One Planet Living [see 2.1.2/3.4]. Upon completion in 2002, BedZED featured 100 south-facing, mixed-tenure terraced homes backed by 2500m2 North-facing office space, plus a community centre,


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café, shared roof gardens, a biomass CHP station and an on-site sewage treatment plant. 2.1.2 BEDZED LESSONS LEARNED As is mentioned in greater detail in 3.4, the success of BedZED has led to the local (district) council’s commitment to the sustainability principles of One Planet Living and the development of a “zero-carbon” regeneration strategy for the London suburb of Hackbridge. This strategy specifies the construction of new “zero energy” homes and the retrofitting of existing homes, district heating, and behavioural change as a means of achieving sustainable living. Despite the manifold low-carbon measures within the BedZED homes onsite monitoring has shown that the carbon footprint of an average BedZED resident is 9.9 tonnes, due to the embedded emissions from infrastructure, products and services beyond the boundaries of the BedZED site. In order to achieve One Planet Living, residents’ carbon footprints must be reduced to 1.1 tonnes by 2050. BioRegional, the development group behind BedZED, acknowledges the limitations of low-carbon technologies and active promotion of sustainable lifestyles within a small ecovillage such as BedZED; they state that larger-scale developments are necessary in order to build and maintain low-carbon, sustainable infrastructure to support the community as it moves towards achieving One Planet Living. 2.1.3 BO01 Bo01 was the first phase in the redevelopment of Malmö’s Western Harbour. The Bo01 housing estate comprises 800 homes and was completed in 2001 for the European Housing Expo. The objective was to develop “an internationally leading example of environmental adaptation of a densely built urban environment”. Underpinning the site’s redevelopment was the provision of 100% locally produced renewable energy, thus transforming the harbour into Sweden’s first climate neutral city district. In addition to the commitment to renewables, Bo01 was designed to maximise environmental sustainability: taller buildings face the seafront to shelter the smaller scale buildings from the cooling effects of the wind; rainwater is treated and recycled; homes contain waste separation units, connected to the district’s vacuum waste system, and a number of homes feature IT systems to monitor water, energy and heat consumption. 2.1.4 BO01 LESSONS LEARNED The Bo01 development has been criticised for attracting affluent, predominantly white, middle-class residents, with some of the new apartments priced at more than double the national average. The resident profile is cited as one possible reason for the poor energy performance in the new homes. The City set an energy performance standard of 105 kWh/m2/year and, following the assessment of 10 new apartments over one year, the estimated total energy requirement was calculated as 94.3 kWh/m2/year. However, average observed energy consumption was found to exceed this by 77%, at 167.6 kWh/m2/year. Heating was identified as the primary cause of the consumption increase, with the tallest buildings on the seafront performing worst of all. Research into the building performance


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highlighted flaws in the built fabric which coupled with the strong wind exposure, increased air filtration rates. Another key factor was residents’ behaviour, given that residents are able to control their domestic electricity consumption, hot water usage and thermostat settings. One of the more successful factors behind the development was the innovative management approach taken by the city. Further power was devolved to the 10 city districts within Malmö, giving them financial responsibility for local schools, healthcare, social services and leisure. The power to govern at neighbourhood scale has been cited as making choices such as Combined Heat and Power (CHP) more achievable. 2.1.5 HAMMARBY SJÖSTAD Hammarby Sjöstad is built on a former industrial brownfield site to the south of Stockholm city centre. From the outset, the city imposed strict environmental requirements on the project, with the aim that Hammarby would halve the environmental impacts of comparable early-1990s developments. On completion, the district will support a residential population of 25,000 in 11,000 homes. The district’s integrated environmental planning process, known as the Hammarby model, demonstrates the eco-cycle approach to energy, water and waste at district level. Residents are able to produce half the energy they require, by using the energy present in waste water and combustible waste. Advanced wastewater treatment separates organic material, which is then digested to produce biogas which in turn, is used both as a vehicle fuel and as fuel for domestic gas stoves. The resident community is described as upper middle class, with two thirds of homes owner-occupied and one third privately rented. 2.1.6 HAMMARBY LESSONS LEARNED Hammarby has come under criticism owing to the lack of a systematic data collection process to measure the results of the environmental programme. Research conducted by KTH suggests that none of the residential buildings have succeeded in reaching the target of 60kWh/m2/year of total supplied energy: the lowest observed energy consumption was 95kWh/m2/year, and the highest was 220kWh/m2/year. Further, Hammarby failed to meet its goal of using 50% less water than new inner city housing in Stockholm: assessment shows that average water consumption levels are the same in Hammarby as in the new inner city homes (Pandis Iveroth, 2014). Stakeholders reported that “the behaviour of residents in Hammarby Sjöstad hampered the achievement of several goals of the environmental programme” and went on to point out that a range of technological solutions at systems level could possibly solve some of these problems, thus taking responsibility away from residents. Hammarby’s successor, the Stockholm Royal Seaport, incorporates a range of systems interventions making it easier for residents to “do the right thing”.


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2.2 LEARNING FROM THE EA RLY ADOPTERS One of the key findings from the early eco-neighbourhoods is that properties tend to cost more than average, thus attracting residents with higher-than-average incomes and excluding low income earners. The extent to which residents adopt so-called sustainable lifestyles varies. BedZED, a small, self-contained ecocommunity which differs visibly from the surrounding neighbourhood, tends to attract residents with a strong interest in environmental issues and sustainable lifestyles: for example, 86% of residents purchase locally-grown organic food through an onsite scheme. It could be argued that this consumer group is likely to have a lower-than-average carbon footprint, regardless of where they live, due to their awareness of and adherence to sustainable living. The new homes in Bo01 and Hammarby, however, have not been marketed as ecohomes, but as high-quality, attractive homes which happen to be within an ecodistrict. As such, they are able to attract residents with a range of consumer behaviour patterns, albeit those from above-average income groups. Although this will include people with an interest in sustainable living, it will also include people whose lifestyles incur higher carbon footprints. The aim of these early lowcarbon developments was to use innovative technology and design to reduce residents’ carbon footprints, through low-energy housing, improved low-carbon mobility, increased recycling, and the implementation of district heating systems. However, residents’ behaviour has proven a barrier to achieving the low-energy targets. In both Bo01 and Hammarby, residents have control over their domestic energy and water consumption and, despite living in high-performing homes, continue to use more heat, electricity and water than data modelling suggests they require. The two projects following on from BedZED and Hammarby, namely Hackbridge and the Stockholm Royal Seaport, differ in their approaches to this problem. As mentioned previously, the Stockholm Royal Seaport aims to provide its residents with advanced systems to achieve sustainable living, without requiring that residents make conscious changes to their behaviour. Hackbridge, as a retrofit programme, relies less on “sustainability by design” but features the promotion of sustainable lifestyles, including home visits and personalised schemes to lower household carbon footprints. 2.3 EXPERIENCES OF CLIMA TE MITIGATION PROCES SES IN CLUE’S CITIES Each of the eight cities or regions involved in the CLUE project developed case study materials to showcase their own particular approach to climate change mitigation at city district level. Of these eight cities, few make explicit reference to the concept of “climate neutrality” as a key driver, yet all eight incorporate climate mitigation initiatives. Two of the cities are exclusively focused on the provision of geothermal energy. In Paggaio, a geothermal field has been identified with the potential to provide local


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communities with a low-emission heat network although work has yet to begin onsite. Małopolska, a regional authority within the CLUE project, is similarly focused on geothermal energy as a key solution to lowering the region’s GHG emissions and improving air quality. In an area where hard coal is still used for 9 months of the year, the region is actively promoting the expansion of their existing geothermal network, with the long-term goal of eliminating the use of coal as boiler fuel. Turin’s case study focuses on the Variante 200 project; the regeneration of three inner-city brownfield sites to be connected by the development of a new metro line to the city centre. Variante 200 is intended as a new “sustainable district”, characterised by “the highest standards of environmental sustainability”. The project sees the application of Turin’s new Environmental and Energy Annex to its building codes, specifying a number of mandatory requirements, such as the thermal insulation of external walls in new buildings, roof insulation in existing buildings, water saving measures including rain water re-use, and a boiler replacement scheme. New buildings will need to exceed the existing legal requirements in terms of energy efficiency and all new buildings will be connected to the new district heating and cooling network. The development of the new metro line offers residents a more sustainable method of transport and, within the new district, pedestrian and cycle routes will be prioritised. The new district incorporates existing low-income neighbourhoods, therefore a number of socioeconomic initiatives underpin the master plan. These include a programme of employment and economic development initiatives. Efforts to enhance social cohesion are evident in the district’s design, with new public spaces designed to “reunite” the peripheral social housing with the rest of the city. The new district will be mixed in use (residential, offices, retail, cultural) and in tenure, with at least 10% of the 6000 new homes designated as social housing. In Vienna’s Aspern Lakeside development, environmental sustainability is embedded within the project, rather than explicitly stated as a key driver. Rather, Aspern Lakeside aspires to be a “city within a city” offering its new residents “the full life”; an urban environment designed to provide a high quality of life, thus avoiding the “escape to suburbia”. The project features high-density compact buildings, a car-free network of green corridors spanning the district, work spaces, homes, services and cultural facilities thus meeting residents’ needs within the district; all of which contribute to the environmental sustainability of the district. Reducing energy consumption and GHG emissions are implicit targets, couched within the narrative of “the full life”; by providing 8,500 new homes within the city, the density itself means that residents will have lower ecological footprints than suburbanites. The Austrian Institute for Technology devised an Overall Energy Concept for Aspern Lakeside, including recommendations for geothermal exploration, use of solar energy for power generation, and the re-use of industrial waste heat through the district heating grid. The City makes explicit its climate neutral aspirations for Aspern Lakeside, stating that urban development can exert


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influence upon emissions from buildings and transport but that “private consumption, nutrition and public services are largely beyond its scope”. Rome’s CLUE case study describes the pilot application of its new Quality Protocol. Based upon the referring model of the dense European city, the Protocol emphasises integrated and sustainable urban regeneration. Essentially, the Protocol acts as an evaluation tool aimed at increasing the quality of urban development projects by assessing their sustainability. The tool features a Matrix of Urban Quality which benchmarks projects according to their performance in urban design, architecture, public space, energy consumption, and social, economic and environmental factors. The Museum of Rome project is the first to go through this evaluation procedure. Vallbona, in Barcelona, has been designated a Strategic Residential Area (SRA) by the regional government in response to the urgent need for affordable homes in the city. As an SRA, certain aspects of the district’s development are fixed, such as density, zoning and the provision of 60% affordable housing. Within these restrictions, the City aims to establish an eco-neighbourhood where reducing GHG emissions and increasing energy efficiency are key objectives, without necessarily reaching “climate neutrality”. The proposals can be grouped under the environmental sustainability criteria of mobility, energy consumption, re-use of waste materials and efficient use of water whilst also responding to socioeconomic needs. Vallbona, presently divided from neighbouring districts by major road and rail infrastructure, will be reconnected to and integrated with the rest of Barcelona. Plans include enhancement of the public transport network, development of new routes into and out of the district, and changes to the layout of existing roads to allow for dedicated cycle paths and pedestrian walkways. The City has established targets for the energy performance of new homes (90% to achieve an energy efficiency rating of B; 10% to achieve an A-rating) in addition to promoting “efficient architecture”, optimising the orientation of new buildings. Plans include the development of a district heating plant, with 70% of the energy required the district’s heating and hot water to come from renewable sources. Selective waste collection is to be maximised, with compost from food waste to be used in local agriculture. The water cycle is to be streamlined: the City aims to reduce household water consumption by implementing rainwater harvesting and grey water reuse. Proposals include diversifying water sources, prioritising locally-sourced water, and constructing separate sewers. The City of Hamburg provided three case studies: Mitte Altona, HafenCity, and Renewable Wilhelmsburg. Mitte Altona features a number of measures to enhance the environmental sustainability of the district, including a comprehensive carreduction scheme, extensive cycle and pedestrian networks, rainwater retention and re-use, low-energy buildings (exceeding current performance standards) and increased use of energy from renewable sources. As a designated “climate model district”, one of 19 in Hamburg, local climate action measures will be applied, appropriate to the density, age and usage of buildings within the district.


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HafenCity is also being developed around environmental sustainability themes: mixed use, high-density buildings, low-energy mobility, decentralised energy networks, greywater re-use, and a smart grid. Further, the HafenCity EcoLabel building certification system was developed, to evaluate new buildings in terms of ecological, social and economic sustainability criteria. The Renewable Wilhelmsburg programme goes one step further than Mitte Altona and HafenCity, both of which can be said to incorporate a number of environmental initiatives. Described as “a practical demonstration of climate neutrality”, Renewable Wilhelmsburg, which is part of the International Building Exhibition (known as IBA), is intended as “a model of sustainability and future-orientated inner city development”. The IBA showcases state-of-the-art technology and design, featuring: hybrid houses, capable of adapting to user needs; smart material houses, including the world’s first building with a bioreactor façade; and affordable smart price houses. The project incorporates long term measures to monitor and evaluate the performance of these buildings. The eventual target is to achieve a “virtually carbon-free” Elbe Island, which includes, but is not limited to, the new buildings on the IBA site. The City has conducted research into the energy performance of residential, service and office buildings across the Elbe Islands. As a result, the City has increased the rate of retrofitting existing homes, offering targeted support to residents in the large number of single family homes. Further, Hamburg proposes the early introduction of passive house standards for new homes, and to utilise building surfaces for PV units, thus enabling connection to the renewable heating network and smart grid. In meeting “almost all” of the electricity and heat requirements of the Elbe Islands by 2050, the City proposes the complete conversion to renewable energy, namely wind and solar power, geothermal, biogas (from waste wood, bio-waste and waste water), biomass, and the use of industrial waste heat. Stockholm’s Royal Seaport project, arguably the most ambitious of the CLUE projects, is aimed at supporting the city’s rapidly growing population within the context of environmental sustainability. The project takes a multi-faceted approach, setting ambitious targets in energy efficiency, use of renewables, ecocycles and “sustainable lifestyles” so that, by the project’s completion in 2030, the Royal Seaport will generate its own energy supply and reuse much of its waste. New buildings will be constructed to energy efficiency standards, such as passive houses, plus homes and active houses, and will be connected to a new bio-massfuelled CHP heat grid. Additionally, homes will be equipped with water-saving and waste assortment technologies in an extension of Hammarby’s circular urban metabolism model. Householders will be able to monitor their own energy and water consumption with new smart technologies, enabling them to adapt their electricity consumption to times of day when there is ample supply of cheaper, green electricity. A smart grid also makes it possible for local people to generate their own electricity from rooftop solar panels, giving them the option to sell it back to the grid or store it for their own consumption. These new user-friendly technologies focus on providing immediate feedback as to energy savings. Residents will be encouraged to take an active role in “making a difference”: the


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smart grid, with a user-friendly interface will help consumers understand how and where energy is consumed within their homes; under-sink waste disposal units collect food waste for the production of biogas and fertilizer; street-level vacuum waste inlets, opened by users‘ RFID tags, log data which can be used to “inform and motivate” residents. In providing smart technologies for energy saving and waste management, Stockholm makes it “easy [for residents] to do the right thing”. And with 80% of Stockholder’s living within a 30 minute cycle of their workplace, bike use is to take priority in the Royal Seaport. Each apartment has 2.5 bike spaces allocated to it, as opposed to 0,5 car parking spaces; further, there are 15 bike spaces allocated per 1,000 m2 of offices, compared to 0-4/1000 m2 car parking spaces. A new traffic hierarchy prioritises pedestrians and cyclists, with a wide range to sustainable transport options available to connect the Royal Seaport to the rest of the city, including the metro, low-emission buses, light rail, ferry and car-sharing schemes. The CLUE case studies show that cities are increasingly moving towards the integration of renewables and recycling with instruments of planning, design and construction to have a positive effect on the environmental sustainability of urban developments. There is evidence that cities across Europe are moving closer to the circular urban metabolism model, as exemplified by one of the earliest large scale eco-districts in Europe, Hammarby Sjöstad. However, whereas climate mitigation processes offer evidence of environmental and economic sustainability, a number of the early adopters, including Hammarby, have recently attracted criticism for not meeting the social needs of the communities they serve. Conscious of this emerging criticism the CLUE case studies have developed a range of initiatives aimed at meeting the “triple bottom-line” requirements of urban sustainability. For example:  Turin’s Variante 200 integrates a range of energy-saving, waste-reduction measures into the regeneration of a deprived inner city district.  In Barcelona, the sustainability criteria for the City’s “econeighbourhoods” have been applied to one of Catalonia’s designated SRAs, a district with 60% affordable housing provision.  Hamburg seeks to connect existing and new residents to a smart virtual network of renewable energy, with cheaper, cleaner energy for all.  Vienna is applying measures to reduce energy consumption in all Aspern Lakeside’s new buildings and new transport options, ensuring that residents will have lower ecological footprints than those dwelling in the suburbs by virtue of the dense, compact city model it embodies. Vienna deliberately avoids targeting “private consumption”, viewing it as beyond the scope of urban development.  Stockholm has developed a model of direct intervention in private consumption, with smart technologies making it “easy [for residents] to do the right thing”. At present, it can be said that the CLUE project examples demonstrate a range of environmental initiatives currently applied in cities across Europe but, for the most


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part, do not show the application of holistic climate change mitigation strategies. Currently, only the plans for the Stockholm Royal Seaport, in its application of the circular model of urban metabolism, meet the climate neutral requirements of urban districts.

3 Frameworks and Methodologies – Examples and Experiences In this chapter we describe and analyse examples of GHG emission frameworks. Since there exists several frameworks and no unified methodology for how to account GHG emissions on a district level, this chapter aims at giving a brief overview of what the literature state on this issue. The chapter also give an example from one of the case studies. 3.1 EMISSIONS HERE AND E LSEW HERE, W HAT COUNT S? Aiming to meet climate change mitigation targets, a number of communities and regions aspire to set up accounting systems in order to obtain data for target setting, evaluation and benchmarking of GHG emissions. However there is still lack of clarity regarding what type of GHG emissions3 cities should address and how to account for them on an urban scale. A city is a complex system not only limited by the geographical boundaries of all its active sectors but also interconnected in a broader sense (regional, globally) through many functional relationships, materials, energy and information exchange. What to include and what to exclude from the city emission accounting system, also depends deeply on the various political ambitions of cities. It is hardly possible to compare city emission targets, as the accounting methods are lacking in transparency and they differ in the type of emissions that are taken into account (Kramers et al., 2013). In order to set boundaries for city’s GHG emissions the concept of emission “scopes”, initially developed for organizations (World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2004) was also proposed for GHG accounting on a city level: GHG emissions are classified in “scopes” based on the emission sources and the system boundaries for emission accounting (Kennedy and Sgouridis, 2011). Four conceptual boundaries are defining the scopes: 3

The term “carbon emissions” refers to all chemical compounds that contribute to global warming and climate change. According to US EPA there are six key GHGs in the atmosphere, that have an effect on the planet: Carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Nitrous Oxide (N2O) and Fluorinated gases (Hydrofluorocarbons, Perfluorocarbons, Sulfur hexafluoride) (US EPA. not dated. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Greenhouse Gases Overview. [Online]. Available: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases.htm [Accessed December 2 2013].).


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Temporal boundary – The temporal boundary defines when the time period for the accounting of emissions starts and end. Some activities have long lasting effects (“Change the course of history”) What to include? When? Until? Activity boundary – outlines the activities in the city resulting in GHG emissions that the city should account for within a given scope Geographical boundary – defines “internal” and “external emissions” Lifecycle boundary – determines to which extend emissions from production and disposal of goods, used for any activity in the city, are accounted. Using these conceptual boundaries for emissions that should be accounted for in their carbon balance, three “scope” levels are defined in regard to urban areas (figure 2); Scope 1: Internal Emissions. These are direct emissions produced within the geographical/spatial boundary of the urban district and from its core activities. Core activities are those activities that are directly related to the geographical area such as construction, transportation, electricity-, water-, and thermal- production. Scope 2: Core External Emissions. These are emissions produced outside the spatial boundary of the district, but as a direct result of core activities within it. Production of energy in the district (without importing fuels), that is used outside the district (as e.g. sewage based biogas, or PV delivered to the grid that is consumed externally) will be accounted for as external emission reduction. Scope 3: Noncore Emission. These are all external emissions that are due to product or service consumption by the residents of the urban area. These are indirect or embodied emissions produced outside the urban boundary as a result of non-core activities within the boundary such as consumption of products produced externally, travel and tourism. The districts’ products and services that are consumed externally should be distracted. This division of emissions for urban areas is derived from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol for companies (World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2004). The definition of emission categories for urban areas is still under discussion. Especially transportation can be a problem: If for example the principle of the geographical boundary is applied then transportation of the residents might be included in the core activity as long as it is commuting and local (scope 1). Larger distance commuting might be scope 2, but business trips could be regarded as part of the embodied emissions under scope 3. Long distance trips and tourism might not be included in scope 1 but in scope 3. Clearly this requires adequate definitions in order to produce a feasible system.


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Figure 2 System boundaries and scoping of GHG emissions on an urban scale. Source: (Kennedy and Sgouridis, 2011)

When discussing system boundaries of city emissions, the scopes 1-3 typology developed and defined by the World Resource Institute-World Business Council for Sustainable Development (World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2004) can be used to help delineate direct and indirect emissions. Scope 1 is delimited to all direct emissions from sources within the geographical-political boundary. Scope 2 includes single process emissions from the production of electricity occurring outside the boundary as a consequence of activities within the geographical-political boundary. Scope 3 comprises all other emissions that occur outside the boundary, including product chain emissions not included in Scopes 1 and 2. The direct emissions include emissions from production processes and product use, fossil fuel combustion, landfill and other land use activities within the geographical-political area e.g. (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2006, World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2004, ICLEI, not dated). While the direct emission accounts are rather similar in the different protocols and methodologies, indirect emission accounts vary more widely, especially when considering what is mandatory to account according to the protocols, or what has been included in the study at hand. Neither the WRIWBCSD GHG Protocol Initiative Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard nor the ICLEI International Local Government GHG Emissions Analysis Protocol (IEAP) demands more than “Scope 2” emissions to be included in the account. (Kramers et al., 2013) 3.2 STANDARDS AND GUIDELINES In order to measure the progress towards city climate mitigation in the context of urban planning the greenhouse gases accounting frameworks need to be defined and applied to the urban scale (Kennedy & Sgouridis, 2011). For the purposes of creating an emission inventory on a country level there is a single standard, developed by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)


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and adopted by many countries. For carbon accounting on a company or organization level there are two main standards;  “The GHG Protocol – A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard“ (World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2004) and  Greenhouse Gases ISO 14064:2006 (ISO, 2006) For the scale of cities and local regions however there is still no global harmonized protocol for accounting of GHG emissions. Instead there are a number of international frameworks for GHG emissions inventory of urban regions under development like the pilot version of Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emissions. This is a joint activity of C40, ICLEI, World Resource Institute, World Bank, UNEP, and UN HABITAT. The pilot version was launched in 2012 and is currently being tested in 33 cities around the world. A next version is expected in 2014 (Arikan et al., 2012). This joint effort builds on earlier attempts of ICLEI: the Community-Scale GHG Emissions Accounting and Reporting Protocol (ICLEI, 2011) and the 2009 ICLEI International Local Government GHG Emissions, Analysis Protocol (ICLEI, 2009). Earlier work on urban and regional GHG emission standards:  The 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2006).  The GHG Protocol Initiative Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2004).  The draft Corporate Value Chain (Scope3) Accounting and Reporting Standard (World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2004).  Bilan Carbone – Methodological Guide for Companies and Local Authorities developed by the Agence de l’Environment et de la Maitrise de l’Energie (Agency for Environment and Energy Management (ADEME), 2010)  Covenant of Mayors. 2009. (Covenant of Mayors, not dated), Baseline emissions inventory guidelines. European commission, Part II: How to develop a sustainable energy action plan (SEAP) baseline emissions inventory (BEI)  Greenhouse Gas Regional Inventory Protocol (GRIP) developed by Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester and UK Environmental Agency (Carney and Shackley, 2009).  UNEP, International Standard for Reporting Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Cities and Regions by UNEP, UN-HABITAT and the World Bank (UN Environmental Program et al., 2010)  Although these protocols were developed for the same purpose and share a common terminology there are many differences in the approaches used that signify basic problems of GHG emission accounting.


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Protocols as ICLEI, EC-CoM, UN/WB and GRIP have been applied internationally and used for accounting of GHG emissions for cities in more than 10 countries (Ibrahim et al., 2012). ICLEI and UN/WB use the World Resource Institute (WRI) definitions of emissions for Scope 1, 2 and 3. Contrary to ICLEI, the frameworks of EC-CoM and GRIP do not use the WRI terminology. The emission factor-based methodology, according to which GHG emissions are calculated as a product of activity data and emission factors, is applied by four other frameworks (Ibrahim et al., 2012). The Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emissions is the latest project for creating a city standard for accounting city climate mitigation. It provides a standardized step-by-step approach for cities to quantify and report their GHG emissions (Arikan et al., 2012). GPC is intended for local authorities and city governments and is a production-based inventory. It uses practices adopted by such standards and protocols as ICLEI, UN/WB, WRI, WBCSD, ECCoM and ICLEI-USA. After the expected publication of the final version, GPC will replace the ICLEI and UN/WB protocols. For accounting and reporting of emissions GPC 2012 uses an Accounting and Reporting Pilot Framework that comprises a list of sources for community scale GHG emissions aggregated by source, as BASIC4, BASIC+5 and EXPANDED6, and by Scopes. Adoption of the scope framework helps to account for direct and indirect community emissions. The GPC 2012 Framework includes six main categories: 1. Stationary units 2. Mobile units 3. Waste 4. Industrial process and product use (IPUU) 5. Agriculture, forestry and land use (AFOLU) 6. Other indirect emissions In general the GPC 2012 Accounting and Reporting Pilot Framework presents information about emissions sorted by source and aggregated into scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3 separately; data for six main GHGs in tons of CO2 equivalents; information about data quality, year of inventory and report source. For the development of a GPC Full Version the main limitations inherent to the Pilot Version of the Framework should be negotiated and overcome. Currently the main problems are a lack of international consensus about accounting of crossboundary transportation and Agriculture, Forestry and Land Use (AFOLU) 4

GPC 2012 BASIC covers scope 1 and scope 2 emissions from stationary units, mobile units, wastes, IPPU and scope 3 emissions from waste 5 GPC 2012 Basic+ besides accounting of BASIC emissions also covers AFOLU and scope 3 emissions from mobile units 6 GPC 2012 EXPANDED covers all scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions.


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emissions, possibility of double counting between in-boundary power plant emissions (scope 1) and emissions from grid electricity (scope 2) and a lack of methodology for accounting full scope 3 emissions (Arikan et al., 2012).

3.3 A CLIMATE POSITIVE URBAN DISTRICT – THE CCI FRAMEW ORK AND STOCKHOLM ROYAL SEA PORT Stockholm Royal Seaport (SRS) has a goal of becoming a climate positive urban district and an example of environmentally benign urban planning. To achieve this goal SRS became one of 16 projects around the world participating in the Climate Positive Program, developed by Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI), giving a conceptual framework detailing the climate positive process. The framework focuses on low energy consumption, local on-site energy production, a high share of renewables and community impact for low carbon emissions measures (Johansson et al., 2012b). The Climate Positive Development Program was launched in a partnership between C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, CCI and the US Green Building Council in order to help urban development project to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below zero. The Program does not prescribe the path of development resulting in Climate Positive outcome but rather outlines a framework that allows program partners to set realistic plans, demonstrate that their implementation conforms with those plans and, finally, adjust implementation for achieving the target. Climate Positive Program focuses on operational emissions generated from on-site thermal energy and electrical use, solid wastes and waste water, and transportation. In order to achieve a climate positive result project partners should identify and implement solutions to reduce operational emissions, like increasing energy efficiency, followed by creation of emission “credits” to offset remaining emissions through, for example, generation of energy on-site and exporting it to other areas (CCI, 2011). The following chapter defines the concept of climate positive urban districts applying CCI’s framework to SRS. 3.3.1 SRS – BASIC INFORMATION The new city district SRS that is currently under construction is located in Stockholm’s port area 3 km from the city centre. It occupies a part of the National City Park in Central Stockholm and is a passageway for traffic in the harbour and to the island of Lidingö. The area is a former brownfield site which was partially used for housing, a CHP plant and city-gas production (Figure 3). On completion SRS will be have 12 000 new apartments housing 22 800 residents, 35 000 work places, commercial spaces, schools and a shopping mall (City of Stockholm, 2014).


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Figure 3 The Stockholm Royal Seaport area (http://nordiccleantechnews.com/blog/stockholm-royalseaport/)

Started in 2010 the project has as a goal transforming SRS into a showcase for sustainable urban development: Stockholm’s second eco-district with a strong sustainability profile. According to the City’s environmental program 2008 – 2011, a distinctive environmental profile of SRS should be based on experiences from Hammarby Sjöstad (HS), Stockholm’s first eco-district. The term “eco-district” defines the area addressing a number of targets for sustainability ranging from GHG emissions and emissions to water to social aspects and sustainable life style (City of Stockholm, 2010). SRS has also ambitious targets of reducing GHGs emissions and becoming a climate positive urban district in accordance with the CCI definition. By 2020 residents and workers in SRS should generate less than 1,5 tonnes of CO2 equivalents (CO2e) per person and year and on completion in 2030 the district should be fossil-fuel free and finally climate positive according to the CCI definition. As a reference the similar target for the City of Stockholm as a whole is to reduce GHG emissions to 3 tonnes of CO2ee per person and year by 2015 and become fossil-fuel free by 2050 (City of Stockholm, 2010). A short summary of the SRS data and goals is presented in Table 1. Table 1 Facts about SRS (City of Stockholm, 2014)

Size:

236 hectares

Start:

2009

Completion:

2030

First residents to move in:

2012

New apartments:

12 000

New jobs:

35 000


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Commercial area:

600 000 m2

Distance to the city:

3,5 km

Transport options:

Walk, cycle, biogas bus, tram, subway, boat bus

Energy target:

55 kWh per m2 per year (including heating, building, energy and hot water)

Environmental targets:

GHG emissions below 1,5 tonnes per person and year by 2020; fossil fuel-free by 2030

3.3.2 A PLANNING PROCESS BASED ON CCI’S FRAMEWORK TO BE CLIMATE POSITIVE A climate positive district could be defined as such where reduction, sequestrations, sinks and offsets outweigh direct (scope 1) and indirect (scope 2 and 3) carbon emissions that the district is responsible for. Participation of SRS in the CCI’s Climate Positive program facilitate the process of the district to become climate positive. This process includes using the CCI method for reporting emissions. This method is similar to the method for quantifying GHGs emissions used by the City of Stockholm. SRS’s process to become climate positive is analysed and described by Johansson et al (2012 a and 2012b). The process is based on the methodology provided by CCI and consists of two steps. The first step is to create GHGs baseline emissions for SRS’s area. This baseline will be used in the next step of the process that is development of a roadmap of actions to become climate positive in the end. These actions include increasing energy efficiency, switching from fossil fuels to renewables and local on-site energy production (Johansson et al., 2012a). The process of SRS to become climate positive using CCI methodology is presented in the Figure 4 .

Figure 4 SRS process steps to become a climate positive urban district (Source: Johansson et al, 2012a)


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3.3.3 THE PROCESS OF SETTING THE BASELINE According to the CCI methodology the process of becoming climate positive starts with the creation of the GHG emissions baseline for an urban district. This process consists on a number of steps; defining the emissions and accounting method, setting scopes and boundaries, collecting data and finally calculating the baseline emissions. If the baseline emissions show that the district is not climate positive, which is very likely, the emissions needs to be reduced. This can be done in a number of ways, reducing the energy used in the district by energy efficiency measures or switching from fossil fuels to renewables. Not only technical solutions are possible but changes in behaviour among residents and workers are of the outmost importance. The urban district can also invest into offset-like actions where the emissions outside of the urban districts boundaries are reduced (Johansson et al., 2012b). In CCI’s methodology these actions are generally defined as the climate positive roadmap. Thus the roadmap outlines actions to reduce the emissions from the baseline and the conditions when the district is considered to be climate positive is presented in Figure 5.

Figure 5 General conditions for when an urban district could be considered to be climate positive (Johansson et al, 2012 b)

The method for GHG accounting and setting the boundaries for SRS emissions baseline is based on the principle developed for GHG Protocol by WRI and the WBCSD (World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2004). This methodology adopts the concept of emission scopes based on system boundaries, helping to define what emissions should be reported under scope 1, 2 and 3. As it was mentioned in the previous chapters four system boundaries are taken into account; geographical, activity, temporal and life cycle system boundary. Figure 8 presents the process of defining the category of emissions within each scope used for SRS baseline development.


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Figure 6 Process for determining the scopes for GHG emissions baseline (Source: Johansson et al. 2012 b)

Using the concepts of scopes and boundaries it is possible to decide which emissions to include and which ones to exclude from the baseline for SRS. Annual GHG emissions accounting in the baseline includes three main emission categories; energy, transportation and waste. Emissions from consumption, longdistance travel by air, bus, ferry and train and from societal functions such as hospitals, public facilities and sport centres are excluded (Table 2). The named emissions are not considered in the baseline because they are happening outside the system boundaries for the SRS area. Production of the goods consumed in the area takes place outside SRS in most cases with an exception for energy use and emissions from wastes. Long distance travels do not take place within the geographical boundary of the area and emissions from societal functions are not within the SRS activity boundary. Table 2 GHG emissions baseline for the SRS (Source: Johansson et al. 2012a)

Included Emissions



Energy



 Transportation

Emissions related to heating, cooling and electricity linked to activities within the geographical boundaries of SRS Emissions reduction from local energy production directly related to the geographical boundary of SRS Energy used in infrastructure such as road maintenance, traffic lights etc.

40% of emissions related to transportation stemming from activities directly related to the geographical area of SRS:  Private trips (residents)  Commuting trips (residents & workers)  Business trips (workers)  Goods and services Emissions from the maintenance of the transportation infrastructure Locally produced energy used in the transportation infrastructure

Waste

Emissions and emission reductions from the collection, transportation and treatment of waste


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Excluded Emissions

Consumption

Exceptions are direct energy use and or emissions from waste that are included as emissions from consumption

Long distance travel

Emissions from societal functions not located within

   

Air travel Long distance bus Ferry Train

  

Hospitals Sport centres Public administration

SRS Construction

The data for calculating the GHG baseline are collected from different sources depending on their availability. Where local SRS-specific data are available, these are primarily used. If local data are not available, like in the case of emissions from the city district heating mix, the data for the City of Stockholm or greater Stockholm are used. And finally when there is no information on the city level the data for the country of Sweden are used. The baseline emissions are expressed in grams of Carbon dioxide equivalents (g CO2e) per unit of activity calculated using the following formula (Johansson et al., 2012 a): Activity * Emission factor = Emissions After the baseline emissions has been calculated as seen in table 3 it is clear that SRS will need to implement actions to become climate positive. In practice two roadmaps were developed called Scenario 1 (SC1) and Scenario 2 (SC2). SC1 calculates the effects of actions already in place by requirements on developers and SC2 calculates the effects of more ambitious actions which require the development of technology, legal frameworks policy making. Table 3. Summary of SRS's annual emissions in the baseline, after Scenario 1 (SC1) and Scenario 2 (SC2) (Source: Johansson et al. 2012a)

Emissions category

Baseline

After SC1

After SC2

Emissions

Emissions

Emissions

- Heating totals

10 128

6 849

4 667

- Cooling totals

252

123

117

- Electricity totals

4 534

3 130

2 144

Water

26

18

18

Energy Buildings


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Infrastructure electricity use

25

25

25

Transportation - Residents' transportation

3 099

2 289

1 863

-Workers transportation

2 440

1 614

1 290

- Mobility management

0

-203

-203

Goods and services

1 105

599

599

Local energy production

-587

-1 055

-2 053

Infrastructure road maintenance

2 571

2 571

2 571

Waste - Waste emissions

7 217

6 475

5 607

- Energy & materials recovery

-7 558

-6 335

-5 415

- Emissions already included in district

-2 265

-1 366

-1 123

20 987

14 734

10 107

heating Total emissions

Actions in SC1 include:  Reducing building energy demand to 55 kWh/m2, year excluding household and commercial electricity  25% of all commercial electricity shall be generated using green energy  10% of all trips are shifted from vehicles using fossil fuels to renewables  10% total waste reduction and increasing materials recovery by 5% Actions in SC2 include:  Reducing building energy demand to 45 kWh/m2, year excluding household and commercial electricity  Developers agree to build new green energy sources to generate 50 or 100% of the household electricity  More than 95% of all trips are shifted from vehicles using fossil fuels to renewables  Further total waste reduction as well as local on-site biogas production and waste collection/recycling are developed significantly. Even if all the actions of SC2 are fully developed the district is still not climate positive which shows the level of difficulty in such an undertaking if the effects of only local actions are included. According to the CCI methodology, when roadmap actions do not bring climate positive results on a local scale, it is possible to use credits based on the same principles as the flexible Kyoto mechanism. Certified emission reductions or credits are earned by the area or city when the emission reductions occur in other places outside of the urban district itself in this case. However contrary to the Kyoto mechanism the CCI framework does not recognize credits generated or purchased without a connection to the urban district. To generate credits according to the CCI framework the district should be connected through relevant infrastructure such as energy, transport or wastes or through decision making processes (Johansson et al. 2012a).


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To show the magnitude of emission reductions through credits Johansson et. al 2012b demonstrate a possible action identified by the city where a policy decision drawing on the experiences from SRS will be implemented the roughly 350 000m2 of refurbished and newly built area by the city per annum. The policy would dictate stricter energy requirements compared to current Swedish building codes. If fully implemented and taking into account reduced effect due to the “natural” development over time of the Swedish code a total of 140 000 MWh or 13 000 ton CO2e could be said to be saved per year. This means that SC1 would be almost climate positive and that SC2 would reach the target. Note however that SC2 requires significant development of technology, legal frameworks and political decisions and will be hard to implement fully. The calculated credit should also be seen as a magnitude calculation rather than a “factual” development. Still, the roadmap and credits, even if not resulting in a climate positive outcome right away, could be seen as a powerful catalyst for a district to reduce emissions and serve as a driving force for innovation. 3.4 ONE PLANET – LONDON BOROUGH OF S UTTON 7 BioRegional – the advocates of One Planet Living - state: if everyone in the world enjoyed the same level of natural resource consumption as a typical citizen of the UK, we would need three planets to support us. As they point out, this is clearly unsustainable. In view of this they advance 10 Principles of One Planet Living and a vision of a sustainable world as being: “A world in which it is easy, attractive and affordable for people everywhere, allowing them to lead happy, healthy lives within their fair share of the earth’s resources”. Armed with this vision of One Planet Living, Bioregional set out to demonstrate what a sustainable future looks like and show how such development can be a desirable and positive lifestyle choice for communities. It is BedZED in Hackbridge, the London Borough of Sutton that prototypes Bioregional’s vision of a sustainable future and which demonstrates One Planet Living as a desirable and positive lifestyle choice for the development of communities. BEDington Zero (fossil) Energy Development (BedZED) captures what is significant about the development of the first large-scale carbon neutral or zero energy community. Completed in 2002, BedZED is now home to around 220 residents living in 100 houses and apartments. In addition there is 2,500 m2 of commercial space, which is home to offices and community space. Generating 20% of its energy onsite from renewable sources, BedZED’s level of consumption is 45% lower than the average in surrounding areas and carbon emissions are reduced by 72% compared to comparable homes. Likewise energy consumption and carbon emissions from 7

The London Burough of Sutton is no partner in the CLUE project.


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transport are also reduced by 50% and 60% respectively. The recycling of grey water also means consumption is 58% lower than the local average. Waste audits have also found that 60% of waste by weight is recycled or composted, which is about twice the recycling rate in a typical development in the UK. Indeed BedZED’s commitment to zero (fossil) energy-carbon neutral buildings, with pedestrian priority streets, set in green spaces and served by public transport, means the future of this sustainable community development offers a critical insight into the garden city ideal of the 21st century. The 10 principles of One Planet Living not only offer a model of a metabolism that is both based on social and environmental sustainability credentials. In particular, social and environmental credentials which have the integrity communities need to support lifestyles which are easy, attractive and affordable. The main criticism of BedZED concerns the difficulties it has experienced generating any more that 20% of the development’s energy consumption from renewable resources. Plans for the development of an onsite combined heat and power plant (CHP) were not realized due to the restricted scale of the development making this unfeasible. As a consequence, the generation of renewable energy was limited to solar power captured from photovoltaic panels. The economies of scale prohibited carbon neutral developments. This means that a metabolic system is needed that allow to exploit the social and ecological opportunities of decentralized energy systems. It also means diffusing the innovations so the zero carbon energy and carbon neutral principles, which this sustainable community stands for, are no longer limited to the development of new neighbourhoods, but extend into surrounding existing districts. As a suburb within the London Borough of Sutton, Hackbridge is home to approximately 8,000 people. The area is largely residential and the housing comprises 18th century listed cottages, late 19th century terraced houses, inter-war semi-detached homes and BedZED. In 2005, Sutton Council stated its commitment to move towards One Planet Living as a concept based around 10 sustainability principles developed by BioRegional. This is set out in the Core Planning Strategy BP61 as a: “... key long-term target …to reduce the ecological footprint of residents to a more sustainable level of 3 global hectares per person by 2020 from the current ‘3planet’ baseline of 5.4 global hectares. To deliver this Vision, the Council is working in partnership with BioRegional to prepare a ‘Sustainability Action Plan’ based on the 10 One Planet Living principles of zero carbon; zero waste; sustainable transport; local and sustainable materials; local and sustainable food; sustainable water; natural habitats and wildlife cultural and heritage; equity and fair trade; and health and happiness.” The Core Planning Strategy also states Hackbridge: “…will be the focus for a flagship sustainable [urban] regeneration project that brings about the renewal of the fabric of the area through environmentally innovative mixed-use redevelopment schemes.”


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In promoting this urban regeneration strategy, BioRegional has taken on the responsibility of drafting a Sustainability Action Plan. Under this institutional arrangement, a Masterplan has been commissioned from Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design. The vision which the master-plan sets out should support the transformation of Hackbridge into a sustainable suburb. The Sustainable Suburb Charter, a voluntarily-produced document complementing the plan’s vision, also makes explicit reference to the “One Planet Living” principles. Particular attention is given to how a mass retrofit of the area’s residential sector (approximately 2,000 homes) can reduce energy consumption and lower levels of carbon emissions. The Energy Options Appraisal for Domestic Buildings (Francis and Bioregional, 2008) sets out the programme of work for improving the energy efficiency of the stock of housing within Hackbridge. Brief attention is also given to profiling the resident community of the London Borough of Sutton. This analysis also details a number of energy efficiency measures that can be taken in order to turn the area under investigation into a low carbon zone (Deakin et al., 2013, Deakin, 2012). The option appraisal is unclear as to whether the benefits generated from the forecast levels of energy consumption and carbon emissions will be spread equally amongst all residents. The reason for this is simple: it is because in order to offer such an evaluation it is necessary to first of all "baseline" the social-demographic composition of Hackbridge. The next stage is to assess whether this “innovative” environment has the capacity to carry the energy consumption targets the mixeduse redevelopment scheme sets for the suburb and if this process of urban regeneration has the means to sustain them (Deakin et.al, 2013). While zero-energy innovations may be the standards in the new neighbourhood developments, these are difficult to uphold when extended in the pre-existing districts of suburban settlements. For unlike the situation in the former, with the latter fairness and ecological integrity cannot be met. Part of the explanation for this lies in the decision not to drive for the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable sources, but to instead aim at innovations that offer suburban communities the means to benefit from technical efficiencies in existing heating and power systems. The technical innovations of this nature tend to be counterproductive in promoting a social sustainable community development, because they expose the inequalities, lack of fairness and ecological disintegration. The following captures some of the reasons for this:  The mass retrofit proposals focus almost exclusively on energy savings from fossil fuels and attending reduction in carbon emissions, rather than on the generation of heat and power from renewable sources;  While these efficiencies do add value, cut costs and eliminate waste this is limited to the existing heating and power systems and fails to address other components of energy consumption and carbon emission.  As this only accounts for 20% of the total consumption of energy and emissions, other major areas of consumption i.e. transport (16%), food (21%) and infrastructures (waste, water, health, education: 30%) need to be systematically integrated into the plans for the development of sustainable communities.


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This calls for further actions along two lines: 1) aiming for reduction in fossil fuel energy consumption, by decentralized heating and power systems able to increase the proportion of renewables and driving towards zero fossil fuel energy consumption 2) the systematic integration of transport, food and water into the zero carbon and carbon neutral developments

4 Participation ‘Participation’ or ‘stakeholder participation’ has become a buzz word. Often, ‘participation’ is added to project plans without much discussion. However, in societies that are governed by elected representatives, why would we need participation as an additional activity? Is not the election of officials (and associated procedures within political parties) the mechanism for ‘participation’? Is ‘participation’ not built on mistrust towards the elected representatives? In this paragraph, the main arguments for a wider participation than the electoral process are reviewed. We will subsequently focus on the implication of these arguments for ‘participation’ in the development of climate neutral urban areas. Afterwards, the main problems of stakeholder participation in decision making will be discussed. 4.1 W HY PARTICIPATION IN URBAN PLANNING? The origins of urban planning can be found in the rapid growth of industrial cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The disorderly fashion by which industry and residential areas intermingled gave rise to a planning approach. As such, urban planning emerged as a way to make the urban landscape a subject for public decision making. Initially, the call for participation in urban planning aimed at giving ‘the public’ a much stronger say in shaping the urban structure through ordinary political processes (Augur, 1945). Democratic systems have a fundamental problem: the border lines that structure the democratic decision making process are not necessarily relevant for each issue under scrutiny, for instance, people living just across a border might be affected by elections that were not held in their own area. Moreover, some issues are only relevant at a much smaller scale than the scale of the deciding political entities. In addition to this problem, the interest in public services may differ hugely between citizens, which raises the question if it might be better that users of certain services or infrastructures are more involved in shaping that service or infrastructure than people who never use it or do not care about it? For a common good, like for example ‘the safety of transport on a shipping canal’, the main interest in the issue is in a rather specific segment of the electorate, namely various types of users and operators. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to give them a bigger say in the issue? For infrastructures and common goods, like the ‘neighbourhood landscape’, there is often no option for a citizen to influence decisions outside the electoral process.


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Interests play a role: the joint interests of stakeholders in a certain project should be balanced with the ‘general interest’ if public funding is involved: Residents of an urban district will not just be interested in planning their area in the best way for all; they will also have a joint interest in extending the public funding for the development of their area. However, the city has to balance such claims with other claims for public support8. Stakeholder participation can be seen as an addition to the ordinary democratic institutions; as a way to deal somewhat more flexible with the rather static institutions of parliamentary democracies and acknowledge that not everybody is equally involved in the totality of the decisions at stake. But also if we take the democratic nature of local and regional decision making institutions for granted, there are good reasons to invite stakeholders to participate in specific issues of urban planning. Stakeholder participation might lead to better decisions or to more successful implementation of decisions (Fiorino, 1989): -

-

-

-

Improved understanding/conflict prevention: By participation of stakeholders, stakeholders and planners will better understand each other’s perceptions and interests which will lead to improved decisions and a possibility to avoid conflicts. This might also prevent problems in the implementation phase. Mutual Learning: By participation of stakeholders, mutual learning processes among stakeholders might occur that enable planners to develop better options (and get rid of misconceptions) to work towards climate neutral urban areas. Behavioural change: Real breakthrough solutions require not just picking widely accepted innovative options but also behavioural change of users and other stakeholders. To explore how this works out prolonged participation in the form of experimenting, stakeholder learning and evaluation are good means. Learning from previous experience. A final issue of participation might be learning from previous experiments. Planners learn from their experiences with a previously planned urban area. However, especially for radical new designs, longer term evaluations might be appropriate. Also the residents and infrastructure operators should learn from previous experiments.

Various countries have created institutionalized forms of participation like public hearings and consultation. Some of these procedures work out well, but others fail completely as many procedures fail to fulfil these roles (van der Arend and Behagel, 2011). Especially if formal procedures do not facilitate 8

The ‘general interest’ is a rather problematic concept, but this is not the place to deal with that.


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dialogue in the early stages of planning, an irreversible controversy might emerge (Bruning, 1994).

4.2 PARTICIPATION FOR BE TTER INFORMATION AND CONFLICT PREVENTION Information exchange In the EU 27, the share of the population having completed tertiary education is rising (36% in 2012, goal 40% in 2020)9. The consequence of this development might be that these higher educated stakeholders have a higher competence in contributing to an optimum solution and representing their own interests in the planning process. However, their ‘blocking power’ has also increased considerably (Mulder, 2005). This makes planning vulnerable: legal actions might postpone or prevent implementation of political decisions, and controversy might persuade politicians to change priorities. Hence, participation is crucial for the implementation of any decision: decisions with high levels of consensus hardly carry such risks. The whole planning process takes more time. After decisions have been taken, legal procedures and political actions (sometimes affected by shifts in the political landscape) might still derail decisions. Whether decisions might be challenged and adapted afterwards, or even be completely reversed, is very much dependent on the degree of consensus among the major stakeholders and the process by which this was achieved (Hirschi, 2002). NIMBY An important issue here is the NIMBY (Not in my backyard) effect. Certain infrastructures produce considerable local nuisance, but society cannot do without these infrastructures. The local citizens that are most affected are often qualified as NIMBY; as being selfish, unreasonable and not willing to consider the common good. Such a NIMBY qualification is often a way to stop communication, i.e. a way to exclude a stakeholder group from playing a serious role in the participation process. Disqualifying stakeholders as NIMBY activists is often not successful as the debate will shift to the media, and as large projects almost all suffer from a ‘strategic misrepresentation of costs’, there is always ammunition for media debate (Flyvbjerg, 2002). Therefore a better strategy might be to compromise with the stakeholders that are most negatively affected, e.g. by offering compensation. Also the psychological element might be important: it is important to acknowledge negative impacts that planning decisions cause to stakeholders. The fear of conflict makes things worse! 9

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/3-11042013-BP/EN/3-11042013-BP-EN.PDF (October 18th, 2013) http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/3-11042013-BP/EN/3-11042013-BPEN.PDF (October 18th, 2013)


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In urban planning, difficulties with strongly organized stakeholders can often be foreseen in early stages of planning: a neighbourhood will not like a new motorway, or will not like that a nearby forest will be used for urban expansion. However, the reaction of civil servants to the fear of public controversy can easily be counterproductive: When issues are anticipated that might trigger resistance or lead to a controversy, there is a strong tendency to neutralize them as far as possible by an abundance of data that support the proposed decision. As a result, the policy preparation phase takes much longer. Moreover, the result is often a proposal that takes away every scope for debate, literally as well as emotionally;  The more well prepared a plan is, the less scope there is for debate  The more a person has invested in a policy proposal the less he/she is willing to revise it. In these cases, legal obligations to apply ‘participation’ (often as an obligation to have ‘public hearings’) might easily become rituals, with no real communicative result. In other cases, the hearings become occasions to express anger, with stakeholders taking the opportunity of the hearing to attract media attention to their protest (Bruning, 1994). A promising process to organize participation in such cases might be to prevent this ‘digging in’ of the various contestants. Especially if one fears controversy, participation should take place right from the beginning, when the problem(s) to be solved by a new project is still being formulated. This might contribute to the stakeholder understanding of the nature of the problem to be solved and prevents the planners from locking into specific options for solutions that cannot be undone anymore when one engages in interaction with stakeholders. 4.3 PARTICIPATION FOR MUTUAL LEARNING Participation is not only about better understanding an issue. It is also about understanding each other’s interests and perceptions of that issue. Very often, various stakeholder groups should learn to understand each other’s demands. For example the demands of blind or wheel chaired persons might not be in accordance with the demands of citizens to shut off traffic in a pedestrian zone. In numbers, the blind or wheel chaired citizens are hardly existent, but other stakeholders should be able to understand the problems of these citizens in order to be able to reach a compromise that might satisfy everyone. So the point here is not so much to take all visions of all stakeholders into regard, but to facilitate learning among stakeholders in order to find solutions for opposing demands. 4.4 LIVING IN A CLUE Behavioural Change In urban planning for climate neutral urban areas, an important aim is often to stimulate or facilitate a behavioural change: A new technology or system is often not enough; users, maintenance firms, operators should adapt their behaviour to it


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in order to achieve most benefits. A well-known example is to stimulate, facilitate, or persuade citizens to use public transport, bicycles, or feet for transport. Forcing citizens into a mode of new behaviour can create resistance. Moreover, people have rather fixed habitual patterns of behaviour. Social experiments might make them aware of their own habits and show them new options for behaviour. Those experiments might also facilitate a change of behaviour: Experiments on Technological and Behavioural change Behavioural change almost occurs by itself if attractive new technologies or innovative forms of organization appear. However, this is not always for the good. For instance, traffic is an emitter of pollution and in many urban areas a real nuisance. But what about electric vehicles? They are not emitting toxic fumes and they are silent, but they still require public space, so to what degree should they be treated differently in road planning? Will they cause more traffic fatalities by their low noise levels? Experiments might also play a role here, but in a different form: Experiments should show how citizens and planners could deal with the new situations that are created by new technologies or systems (and eventually, how the technology should be adapted to that). And what about residents who are supposed to use new waste or recycling systems: will they act as they are supposed to by the designers, will they hate the stench or noise of new facilities? Will the facilities become a mess, or will some form of social control prevail? The point here is that these issues are not so much clear cut ones for which the interests are clear and an acceptable compromise should be developed; the issues are often new, and hence people sometimes hardly have an idea what the nature of these issues is and how they have to be valued. The aim of participation is to facilitate mutual learning to identify the issues and learn how to deal with them. Triggering the imagination of stakeholders to imagine how a new situation would be for them, and fostering discussion to help them understand how others would perceive this new situation is crucial here. Setting up local experiments, with good evaluations, could be an interesting way to facilitate this learning. In these cases of innovation, public opinion can change rapidly: What is uncontroversial today can bring thousands of protestors in the street within some months: the shale gas controversy that spread across the US and Europe is a good example. Therefore, a proactive attitude is required: if a problem has become a public issue, it is often too late to organize meaningful interaction (Cuppen, 2012). Participation in CLUE operations and maintenance Sustainable solutions require the cooperation of stakeholders, not just in the decision making process, but also in the operation and maintenance of systems. The assumption that merely increasing the awareness of environmental problems will change the environmental behaviour of residents has various serious flaws:


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behaviour is determined by personal situation, psychological perceptions and personality characteristics, and finally environmental values (Barr, 2003). In the US there has been citizen participation in neighbourhood projects that are often regarded as ‘municipal’ in the European context (Burke, 1968). Proponents claim that citizen participation in neighbourhood projects improves the quality of work, as residents have special knowledge, and it increases feelings of helpfulness and responsibility among citizens (Wandersman and Florin, 2000). But there is also criticism: citizen participation might reinforce inequality between neighbourhoods, lead to inefficiency and promote NIMBY reactions of neighbourhoods (Cf. e.g. Wallace, 2012). Increasing participation of citizens in operating and maintaining CLUE facilities might be important for the social fabric of the CLUE, for maintaining the quality of facilities while keeping costs low, and for continuous improvement of CLUEs (if new options might become available). It might promote environmental awareness, but if this would affect citizens’ environmental behaviour is question for further research. The Vienna Citizens’ Solar Power Station is a project that especially focusses at participation in the CLUE operations, by involving tenants in the operation of Solar Energy projects on apartment buildings in their area. 4.5 PROBLEMS OF PARTICIPATI ON Distrust Stakeholder participation projects face various challenges. One of the main challenges might be ‘distrust’: distrust for a secret agenda, of budget cuts for example. Distrust might create controversy. The fear for controversy does not necessarily have to be determined by the content of the issue or the interests related to it. History shapes the perceptions of all stakeholders, and distrust is often determined by past experiences. A city administration might be distrusted as it could have a ‘secret agenda’, using stakeholder participation for other aims than the one under debate. Stakeholders might be mistrusted as they could also have a ‘secret agenda’: they could use a stakeholder participation process for postponing decisions or blocking decisions more effectively later. Distrust is a barrier to effective exchange of ideas in participation processes. It is generally rooted in the wider social fabric of societies. Living in different worlds Another problem of participation is the lack of communication between specific stakeholder groups. In our complex societies, some groups hardly ever interact. They ‘live in different worlds’ which might lead to misconceptions regarding each other’s needs and wants. Even contestants in a controversy might find out that their mutual ideas are biased (Mulder, 2012). Especially if innovation is at stake, it might be crucial to bring unrelated stakeholder groups together (Parandian, 2012). A classic example involves the relation between equipment manufacturers and users. The young designers of the equipment manufacturer add functionalities that allow the user to take maximum benefit of the equipment. However, the (older)


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users do not appreciate this maximum benefit, and cannot operate the equipment anymore, or can only use it in an inefficient standard mode. Expertise Many of the decisions on climate neutral urban areas involve a great deal of expertise. Expertise is important for question such as: What is the nature of the problems at stake? How will these problems evolve in the future? What measures can be taken? What are the costs of measures, now or in the future? What are the risks and unknowns? The relevant expertise for all stakeholders is generally not of the nature of detailed scientific or technological knowledge; that kind of expertise can generally be acquired for free on the internet. The relevant expertise to discuss with stakeholders is related with assessing implications of choices and their alternatives. As was said before, a stakeholder participation process is often not taking place in a void: it has a history and interests are connected to various options, i.e. it is a political process. Expertise, linked to specific stakeholders or the urban planning agency has for that reason also a political nature. Some stakeholder groups might feel overwhelmed and manipulated by the use of expertise by others. When expert issues are at stake, it is therefore crucial that there either is an independent and trustworthy source of expertise for all or that each stakeholder can access a source of expertise of choice. Time Many people implicitly believe that the future looks like today. Hence, planning for the future means planning to get rid of the nuisances of today, or planning to prevent the mistake that just led to a catastrophe. Hence, catastrophes are likely to happen again if they have faded from our collective memory. New problems often emerge from the successful implementation of solutions for old problems. Fighting contagious diseases was an important reason to get rid of horse& carriages in urban areas at the end of the 19th century. The car took over with all its emissions and nuisances (McShane, 1997). But it did even more: people adapted their lives to the car, and so the car created suburbia, a split between living and working place, and contributed to obesity. CFCs were introduced to diminish health & safety issues of refrigerators, but they created a world-wide catastrophe as they destructed the ozone layer (Mulder, 2011). Depletion of various ores is caused by our successful replacement of the traditional biomaterials in the past. Successful solutions today can be the problems of tomorrow. Climate neutrality of urban areas is a long journey. For a successful journey, we should not hop on the first train, but at least think about the whole journey. Planners might already recognize the problematic nature of long term planning,


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but for stakeholder participation, it is of crucial importance that the stakeholders are on board too: they should also think beyond the options of today.

4.6 OPTIONS FOR EFFECTIVE ST AKEHOLDER PARTICIPATION IN DEV ELOPING CLIMATE NEUT RAL URBAN AREAS In conclusion, effective stakeholder participation in decision making should aim at: • Learning • Strategy • experimenting • Stimulating creativity Depending on the aim of participation, it should be:  (long term) future oriented  create bridges for stakeholder interaction  provide expertise It should especially facilitate open interaction between stakeholders and should therefore be: • transparent • accountable Citizen participation in operations and maintenance of CLUE systems could be interesting but as there are also some potential disadvantages, this should be subject of further studies

5 Scenarios, Examples from Best Practice and Involved Cities As planning has a long term goal, dealing with the uncertainties of the future is of crucial importance for urban planning. Scenarios and scenario workshops are of key importance for long range planning(Van Notten et al., 2003). Various cities have extensive experiences using scenario methods as a planning tool to deal with uncertainties. Scenarios could sketch the future developments that a city should cope with, evaluate the various strategies that a city could develop to cope with the future and develop pathways that are aimed at reaching a specific desired outcome. This distinction refers to the most common forms of scenario analysis (Börjeson et al., 2006): 1. External scenarios, sketching the (future) uncertainties emerging from the outside world, i.e. the world that is outside the sphere of influence of the decision maker. What should we cope with?


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2. Internal scenarios sketching pathways into the future that are based on specific sets of policy measures that city/region might pursue. What are the impacts of consistent policies? 3. Backcasting aiming at reaching a specific predetermined goal in the future, and try to develop a pathway that could lead there. How to reach a specific result? Backcasting has often been applied recently. (Cf. Holmberg and Robèrt, 2000, Quist, 2007, Robinson et al., 2011). Backcasting requires a rather specified future vision. ‘A climate neutral urban area’ is not sufficiently specified to qualify as such a future vision10.Internal and external scenarios might be used to come up with a more specified future vision that could guide the backcasting process. The first type of scenarios, the external scenario, is most well-known. They might comprise (inter-)national economic developments, interest rates, migration, climate change mitigation objectives, national policies and national infrastructure development. These scenarios might be used to set targets regarding the number of new dwellings to plan for, the required capacity development of infrastructures, etc. These scenarios are aimed to be value free. The second type of scenarios starts with a specific set of values that determines a policy. What will be the long term results of such a specific policy? Policies might sometimes have unforeseen, and even reverse long term effects: e.g. energy efficiency might lead to more energy consumption(Alcott, 2005) and the short term effect of more motorways might be less traffic jams, the long term effect might be more traffic (Tenner, 1997). EUCO2 80/50 Scenarios have been used in urban planning in various ways. One way has been to map the external future developments that a city should cope with. Another more recent approach has been to develop pathways in order to realise specific policy objectives, i.e. back casting. Both approaches have predominantly not been applied in a participative framework. The EUCO2 80/50 is a good illustration. This project was initiated by Metrex and took place in 2009-2010. 15 European metropolitan regions participated in developing strategies for achieving an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050. The project developed a three-step mitigation approach for Metropolitan Areas. After the production of regional greenhouse gas inventories, political and economic stakeholders came together in scenario/strategy workshops in order to find a consensual long term CO2 reduction strategy. Initiator of this project was METREX, the Network of European Metropolitan Regions and Areas, which has members from some 50

10

Like e.g. J.F. Kennedy’s famous 1961 quote: “We commit ourselves that before the end of this decade…… landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”.


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metropolitan regions and areas. Clue partners Hamburg, Torino, and Stockholm participated in the project. In the project, an inventory and scenario tool was developed, GRIP. This tool was used to inform participants in various local workshops. The tool could show workshop participants the GHG emission effects of various measures, based on the data of the specific region. In this way the tool was used for various scenario workshop with local politicians and planners (EUCO2 80/50, 2014). The strength of this tool, representing the interrelations that make up the local energy system and filling it with rich local data, is at the same time its weakness:  

One can easily see the consequences of any (combination of) measures. This makes issues tangible. If systemic change occurs, i.e. the parameters of the underlying model itself change, or new interdependencies develop, the model will become imprecise. In the longer term, this will definitely occur.

As a consequence, the scenario strong point, its tangibility might be delusive for longer term changes and lead to conservatism. Scenarios in participation In scenario workshops, participants from rather different background are enabled to bridge the ‘different worlds’ from which they are a part. Scenario workshops can be bridging events, making people aware of different world views and paradigms (Cf. Parandian, 2012). Scenario workshops are in that respect a strong networking process, creating bonds between various, thus far unrelated, participants (Roubelat, 2000). Participative use of scenarios might fit into the procedures of the Hamburger “Stadtwerkstatt”. This organization acts like a roof-organization that aims at shaping a new culture of participation in urban planning. Different forms of participation are applied that go beyond the legally prescribed procedures: City officials hold public meetings within development areas, ranging from general information events to workshops each addressing a different theme, such as traffic, housing and open space. These meetings are organized on a regular basis and are aimed at informing resident communities and other interested people on the subject. Regarding Hamburg’s future growth the Stadtwerkstatt organized a meeting that called for: ”Gemeinsam mit Expertinnen und Experten und Bürgerinnen und Bürgern erörtern der Bürgermeister und die Senatorin für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt Fragen zu: Wie könnte Hamburg im Jahr 2030 aussehen? Wie


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wollen die Hamburger dann leben, arbeiten und wohnen? Welche Chancen bietet die Großstadt der Zukunft?11” ("Together with experts and citizens the Mayor and the Senator for Urban Development and Environmental Issues discuss questions like: How could Hamburg look like in 2030? How will the Hamburgers behave, work and live then? What opportunities does the city of the future provide") This description appears almost identical to the aims of a participative scenario workshop. Hence, the method could fit here like a glove. Various cities have organized (series of) hearings (Rome, Barcelona, Vienna) to discuss new plans for climate neutral urban areas with stakeholders. Stockholm organized a capacity development program to transfer expertise to various stakeholders involved in climate neutral urban areas. Both types of activities relate to scenario workshops, as the main aim is to organize dialogue and learning regarding issues that require considerable expertise. 5.1 W HY A LONG TERM FUTU RE ORIENTATION IN PLANNING CLIMATE NEUTRAL URBAN AREAS? Given the urgency of Climate Change and the inability thus far of the international community to reach consensus on effective measures, there is a tendency to applaud direct action and despise reflection on the measures to be taken (Godet, 2000). In this chapter, we will show first that an orientation on (possible) future developments is crucial to take effective action for creating climate neutral urban areas and argue in favour of using scenarios and normative forecasting. Afterwards, we will scrutinize current practice of scenarios in urban planning. Finally, we will analyse the benefits that scenarios could provide to engage in participatory decision-making on climate neutral urban areas and how scenarios and scenario workshops should be created for that aim. There are many reasons to start implementing greenhouse gas emission mitigating measures without further ado, it seems. However, a bold call for direct action could easily lead to large mistakes. Implementing mitigation measures that later on turn out to be superfluous, ineffective or inefficient is a waste of resources and might undermine the public support for investments in mitigation measures. Before investing in climate neutral urban areas some questions should be thoroughly considered, although they cannot be definitively answered:      11

What needs will an urban district have to fulfil, not just now, but also given various future developments? What will be the main sources of future greenhouse gas emissions without further action? What options are available, now and in the future, that could lead to climate neutrality? Are any of these options inconsistent with other options? What are (potential) side effects of these options?

http://www.hamburg.de/pressearchiv-fhh/3397940/2012-05-02-bsu-stadtwerkstatt.html


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The reason why it is important to get some indication of the answers up front is that actions now often cannot be undone (without much cost) in future: real estate is intended to be used for 30-50 years, infrastructures sometimes even longer. The impacts of our choices now could even go deeper: by a decision for one option now, only that option will be further optimised. The not chosen option will not be developed any further and, hence, might never be able to return: This phenomenon is called ‘path dependency’12 (Arthur, 1989). It necessitates us to take long term future developments into regard for our current decisions. Especially if clearly divergent pathways for urban development can be foreseen a thorough future analysis is appropriate. For example, should a new be supplied with heat by a geothermally fed district heating system or should priority be given to passive housing? The answer is of course dependent on climatic conditions, but passive housing and geothermal district heating are often excluding options: If passive housing is successful, the district heating system will have too low (and dispersed) demand to be economically feasible; if district heating is successful, the exploitation will be economically harmed by introducing passive housing. The path dependency phenomenon shows that developments can branch of in various stable patterns of development. Such a phenomenon can be clearly exemplified by the different routes taken in urban planning in most European and most North America cities. The implication is that there is not a single future for an urban area, but there are several possible futures. A scenario approach is therefore most appropriate to show these futures (Cf. e.g. Khakee, 1991). A similar dilemma might occur for increasing the population density of an area: this will increase the efficiency of the infrastructures and promote the use of public transport. However, the residents might in turn seek their space by having more summerhouses or holiday trips. A less dense, and more green urban districtmight be less efficient to supply with energy and public transport, but residents might be inclined to travel less. This exemplifies also the importance of holistic visioning, recognising the interrelations between various elements of an urban system. The time frame of developments is also important: higher transport costs will lead in short term to a search for cheaper transport options. On the longer term people/businesses might leave the areas with higher transport costs. For planning of a climate neutral urban district it is important to get an idea of potential future developments that might influence urban areas to be developed For planning of a climate neutral urban district it is important to get an impression of how the urban district and the options to work towards climate neutrality are affected by these developments

12

A famous example of path dependency problems is the problem of European cross border railway connections: in the 19th century, gauge, safety systems, signalling and electric power supply were all determined nationally, which was no problem until the tracks met … This means that train border-crossing often takes extra time and special equipment that is able to function in two systems.


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5.2 INTERNAL AND EXTERNA L SCENARIOS Future uncertainties might have their origin in two different realms: the external world, beyond the control of the urban planners and other stakeholders, and the internal world, i.e. the interplay of the actions of all stakeholders, which is of course subject to the planning decisions at stake. However, due to the complexity of processes, and sometimes also by the non-linear character of the interrelations, the long term results of the decisions might sometimes be rather unpredictable, or might be different from linear projections. Distinguishing external and internal developments is important, because the external developments just have to be dealt with, while the internal developments are directly linked to the decision making on various options for climate neutrality. External and internal should therefore not be interpreted too much in a geographical sense as being outside and inside the new urban area; for example the clothing behaviour or general behavioural patterns might be important for climate neutrality of an urban area, but these factors are more or less external factors to climate neutral urban areas as individuals are entitled to take their own decisions on these issues. Even campaigns to change residents’ behaviour, might sometimes be considered as illegitimate. So, as far as these factors are relevant for climate neutrality of the urban area, they might be considered to be external. However, various developments outside the urban area, like remote systems connected to the urban district infrastructure, might be completely dependent on the urban area, so they might be considered as internal factors. 5.3 SCENARIOS FOR MAPPIN G EXTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS Hence there are good reasons for carefully assessing future developments when working towards climate neutrality. In scenarios, the basic issue is to make estimates of the ‘unknown’. A main problem is that there are two forms of ‘unknown: the known ‘unknown’ and the unknown ‘unknown’. The known ‘unknowns’ are phenomena that are known to exist, but the size and dynamics are hard to establish. Economic parameters, like interests rates, or price levels are known unknowns. The unknown ‘unknowns’ refers to new phenomena that we normally do not take into regard. The cell phone revolution in the ’90s was in many branches such an unknown ‘unknown’, as many organisations were ill prepared and surprised by the impacts. In long term energy scenarios, Shell accounts for this phenomenon by introducing an ‘unknown’ source of energy. This ‘unknown’ does not exist of fossil reservoirs that still need to be explored (these are as known ‘unknowns’ part of the fossil stock) but refers to entirely new forms of energy generation. By definition the unknown is unknown, but by brainstorming ideas could be generated that could at least stimulate the imagination about unknown unknowns. Afterwards one could aim at assessing the probability and impacts of these imaginary developments. One should not underestimate the importance of such a brainstorming exercise. People tend to think about the future as a continuation of the present. Thinking about discontinuities might have a value as such as it might help us analysing the vulnerabilities of our current socio-technical systems.


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Becoming aware of the impacts of external unknowns might also help developing change strategies. The ‘known unknowns’ might also create surprises: for example if people live at further distances from their workplace, it might lead to less CO2 emissions for the city as the number of residents within the city might diminish (Gomi et al., 2010). ‘Wishful thinking’ and ‘Group think’ should not be leading the brainstorming exercise. Futures in which climate change is a less important problem should not be neglected. Having external participants in the brainstorm session might be beneficial for preventing ‘group think’. Ultimately the aim of the efforts to make estimates of unknowns should be to have a list of unknowns, their impacts and estimates of the probabilities that events of that nature really might occur. Based on such a list ‘highest’ and ‘lowest’ probability occurrences might be skipped: the highest probability events could be assumed to be like certainties and will be made part of every scenario, the lowest probability events can also be neglected unless they could be clustered to one event with a reasonable probability. In order to go from events to external scenarios, the different events should be clustered in a coherent way. A first step for such clustering is to analyse if there are events that exclude each other. Often, there are intrinsic incompatibilities between events: High energy prices are likely to raise high interest in renewable energy; High interest rates might cause a low level of building activities, etc. The clustering should preferably lead to 3-5 clusters of events that could act as the bases for writing scenarios. In writing the actual scenarios, creativity might play a role to trigger the imagination of the target audience: issues that are not really relevant to the key issues of the scenario (who is the mayor, a new king/queen is opening the urban area, etc. etc.) might be added. External scenarios should span the future space in which the climate neutral urban district has to be realised and operated, i.e. it is the space in which the stakeholders have to operate. For our aim of climate neutral urban areas, there might be some specific unknowns that could be useful to trigger imagination: Climate Climate change scenarios still have considerable uncertainties. What if accelerated climate change will occur? What if there is hardly any climate change? What if specific Climate change impacts are more pronounced? Urban heat and heat related mortality show up as new issues in various cities New species show up, new contagious diseases Droughts, downpours, storms …. Demography and behaviour Number of inhabitants Age distribution


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Culture, minorities, income Energy Technology Incremental improvements in current technologies are almost a certainty. However speed of improvements might differ very much: Moore’s law stated that the performance of integrated circuits doubles every 18 months, while efficiencies of cars increase by about 0.5 % per year. Radical technological breakthroughs in various appliances might lead to vast changes in energy consumption Fuel prices, CO2 emission charges and interest rates are important determinants for any option. Breakthroughs in renewable energy technology could be very interesting: for example a price drop in PV or in fuel cells. Energy-sector Circular economy, will lead to no waste to burn. Relative importance of various energy carriers: electricity/gas/hydrogen/(bio-)fuels (Micro) market liberalisation, regulation? General trends for urban areas Building costs: Materials costs and construction costs are important determinants for the size of dwellings but also for costs of passive housing. Shopping and services areas: impact of more ICTs, 3D printing, etc. Transport More public/private transport? More/less car sharing systems Work-economy More/less e-work? Reindustrialising Europe? More distributed/dispersed economic activity, ‘Metropolisation’? In external scenarios, prevent group think and wishful thinking by engaging outsiders and stimulating creativity: relevant issues can also emerge outside energy/climate change/urban planning fields. Evaluate probability of separate external events by literature/web study: Forks are interesting 5.4 INTERNAL SCENARIOS The external scenarios create more or less the space in which the future of an urban district will most probably unfold. However, the future is not fully determined by external factors; it is in part shaped by our decisions. Internal scenarios aim at evaluating the longer term consequences of the choices to be made. The external scenarios show us the conditions that the internal scenarios should cope with, and the sensitivity of the internal scenarios. The Renewable Wilhelmsburg scenario and German reference scenario (see 6.4) are two internal


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scenarios that might have been evaluated against various external scenarios (considering the energy market, climate change economic and political conditions). Internal scenarios could be considered as consistent strategies for creating climate neutral urban areas. Evidently, there are stakeholder interests connected to the various strategies. However, the scenarios are not mere political choices; they should be longer term strategies that might have to:   

cope with backlashes of the decisions that were taken, interact with other measures, and create side effects that might become of growing importance.

In fact every decision might generate its own reaction, (partly) undoing the effects of the decision. Choices might have longer term consequences that are not evident at first sight. The scenario analyst should evaluate the (especially longer term) consequences of decisions. The basis of each internal scenario should be a specific and consistent set of values regarding the issue at stake. For example one could develop climate neutral urban district strategies that are more individual based or more collective strategies. One could emphasize reduction of energy consumption or supply by clean energy, one could emphasize stakeholder responsibility/initiative and could model the interdependence of these variables (Porter, 1991). In the first place, every scenario should be credible. The quality of the scenarios is not determined by being representations of the reality of a future (in 20/50 years or ….) as there is no way to establish what that future is. The aim of a scenario is that the audience regards the sketched course of events as something credible, i.e. it might occur, and that it gets insights in what such a course of events implies. Stakeholder interviews are of great importance for internal scenarios: - because interviews stimulate the strategic thinking process at the respondents in an early stage - because interviews reveal what respondents regard as consistent values for their strategy. They could be challenged, and the interaction will show these values more pronounced. Naturally, values might intermingle with interests. The analyst should take care that the internal scenarios are consistent expressions of a set of values and should disregard opportunism. Probably, not all internal scenarios will be regarded as equally probable by all participants. This results from the inherent value character of the scenarios. As the scenarios are intended to foster creative thinking and interaction among stakeholders, it is crucial that they are presented in a convincing and imaginative way. Internal scenarios might differ for example on the following aspects: -

Collective solutions Reduce energy consumption Utilities take lead


individual solutions Renewable energy production new organizations take lead

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- ‘Consume as normal’ ‘engaged consumers’ - A beautiful urban area cheap and effective solutions. (Cf. e.g. Nekkers, 2012, Porter, 1991, Mulder, 2012) Scenario making requires imagination and hard work. Inspiration might perhaps come from other urban climate/energy scenario scenarios like Aalborg (Alberg Østergaard et al., 2010) Beijing (Feng and Zhang, 2012), Shanghai (Li et al., 2010), Cleveland (Grewal and Grewal, 2013) Brussels, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Hamburg, Helsinki, Madrid, Naples, Oslo, Paris, Porto, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Stuttgart, Torino (EUCO2 80/50, 2014) Internal scenarios are strategies that can be implemented by stakeholders that are based on a consistent set of values. Internal scenario preparation is not just about getting information: it is the first round of stakeholder interaction. 5.5 SCENARIO W ORKSHOPS A ND PARTICIPATION In the past scenario studies have been criticized as being part of expert driven decision making in which citizens could play no role (Wynne, 1975). The scenario approach could basically be used to widen the circle of decision making. They could not only be used for the inner circle of planners, decision makers and key stakeholders, but also to support the quality of interaction with a wider circle of stakeholders where virtually everyone can engage. Participation and transparency are important values nowadays. Scenarios can be used to support larger scale discussions with non-experts by reducing complexity and uncertainty to tangible storylines (Loukopoulos and Scholz 2004; Mulder 2012,(Andersen and Jæger, 1999)). However, clearly some actors will refrain from such discussion. Participation will make them vulnerable. Moreover, especially institutional actors will force their representatives to really represent their interest. Participants that are not allowed to move in a debate do not lead to fruitful discussion: there is no scope for any consensus seeking interaction. Representatives might even afterwards face consequences for too much openness or behaving too positive towards opponents. In other words, there might be a tension between an open and transparent discussion process and an interaction process in which the stakeholders will really engage in finding mutually acceptable (or even mutually beneficial) strategies towards climate neutral urban area. On many occasions where debates are organised on more or less controversial issues, the ‘framing of the debate’ is already such that consensus seeking interaction is almost impossible: sometimes even debates are organised as contests with winners and losers. In such settings, participants do not feel at ease, and do not ‘open up’ to each other. For this reason, it can beneficial not to organise debates as ‘public’ events, but as discussion sessions with limited and controlled access, without media coverage. This creates a ‘safe’ environment that allows participant to act vulnerably in discussions. They might for example show under what conditions their unacceptable options might become acceptable for them.


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A major goal of a scenario workshop is learning; not so much learning unknown facts, but learning how others perceive certain developments and events. Learning mechanisms at a workshop that might be discerned are:  



Probing each other’s worlds (for example checking how local and global motives played a role in each other’s vision) (Garud and Ahlstrom, 1997) Reflexive articulation i.e. by discussions with others, participants are better able to formulate their own strategy, or modify that strategy, e.g. by including others’ objectives in stakeholder’s own plans.(Rip and Te Kulve, 2008) Improving the participants understanding of dynamics at the collective level (e.g. that their individual solution might be collectively harmful and trigger government action)

5.6 AFTER CARE AND FOLLOW UP An entire scenario project will take half a year. In the initial stage the demands are studied, as well as examples from other cities and relevant forecast. Afterwards, a series of interviews is in fact already the start of interaction between stakeholders (as generally, stakeholders define their position in relation to others). After the interview phase has been completed, external scenarios and internal scenarios are made. The scenarios should be tested among a small test group to check if they are clear in presentation and sufficiently discriminative. It is important not to make a scenario workshop the final event of such a project. Reserve time and effort to trigger additional reactions from participants later, and eventually, try to formulate a direction for a future pathway, that the participants could react at. One long term scenario exercise is not sufficient. Such processes should be repeated regularly. Moreover, there are more options to keep stakeholders involved in pathways towards climate neutral urban area: transparency, public information, options to submit viewpoints, and options to participate in the operations of the urban infrastructure could contribute to participation. (Partial) ownership of the energy infrastructure by climate neutral urban district residents could be a powerful means to certify their participation. Do not neglect the participants after the workshop and be open to additional reactions

5.7 A SCENARIO W ORKSHOP APPROACH FOR CLIMATE NEUTRAL URBAN AREAS The aim of making the scenario workshop approach is to stimulate quality in thinking and stakeholder interaction about future pathways towards a climate neutral urban area. The scenarios are the key element in the approach, but this aim of the approach is achieved by all activities, from interviewing to workshop evaluation. The scenarios should be credible and tantalizing to trigger serious thinking and interaction. They should therefore be consistent and sufficiently detailed. Internal scenarios are the key issue of the workshop as the outcome of the workshop should play a key role in establishing a joint strategy. The external scenarios might


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be used as an evaluating context, i.e. “how would this internal scenario work out if the external environment develops according to external scenario X?” In creating the scenarios the stakeholders should play a profound role. This generates their interests, and helps focusing the scenarios on the interesting issues. The workshop itself could be set up in two stages. In the first stage the external scenarios could be discussed. Generally, this stage will not generate much controversy. This might be helpful for the workshop atmosphere. In the second stage of the workshop, these external scenarios could then be used to evaluate the internal scenarios. Discussions could focus on evaluating an internal scenario, given the reality of an external scenario: For example: What would happen if we would embark on a climate neutral urban district scenario of individual energy solutions, driven by a market mechanism, if the external scenario would be one of enhanced climate change and economic crisis? In order to activate scenario workshop participants, it is advisable to give the participants a role as presenter. As the internal value based scenarios should not be seen as the point of view of particular stakeholders, but as an account of a possible future pathway for everybody, the presenting stakeholders should not present scenarios that might resemble their own position/interest in the debate. For a really new CLUE, there are no inhabitants. Still the voice of inhabitants might be heard in a scenario workshop: for example, inhabitants of an earlier urban district with ‘a high climate ambition’ might be willing to represent the residents of the new area in a stakeholder workshop. Internal scenarios can be discussed in the framework of an external scenario Aim at activating participants by making them responsible for parts of the workshop Take care that scenarios are as long as possible presented as possible pathways, with pros and cons

A Scheme The main aim of a CLUE scenario workshop procedure is learning among stakeholders regarding each other’s position and world view (Garmendia and Stagl, 2010) in order to reach a higher level of understanding regarding joint actions. Consensus formation might be a bridge to far. Cities themselves might be regarded as stakeholders (“They might be seen as pushing decisions, and might pressure other stakeholders”). Hence they should not be responsible for this procedure themselves. 1) Establish the hard (external) goals of the new urban district (number & type of inhabitants to accommodate, space, structures to be maintained, climate mitigation and adaptation goals, etc.)


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2) Create preliminary ‘external’ scenarios based on literature, long term city plans, national scenarios, etc.. Important elements: Climate change & Climate policies, energy prices, interest rates. Internal testing. 3) A first round of stakeholder interviews (25) regarding the external scenarios, and how these stakeholders would like to react to these scenarios. What do stakeholders regard as important trends, showstoppers and opportunities, and why? 4) The external scenarios are revised and further specified, to focus on the question: Under what external conditions will the new CLUE have to operate? 5) Internal scenarios are prepared, possibly focussing on two main issues of divergence. Some additional interviews might be required (as new issues might have emerged in previous interviews, or some issues should be further specified) 6) Scenario workshop a. external scenarios: Output: key trends in the CLUE environment. b. Internal scenarios: Output: An overview of costs and benefits of strategies, and a direction for strategy development for a CLUE that has considerable support among participants. 7) Follow up. Participants might have second thoughts. Question main participants after the workshop, invite further reactions. Make a preliminary workshop report and invite comments. The results of this approach are not valid forever. Depending on changes that might become relevant, and requirements of citizens, this procedure might be updated, or repeated.

6 Indicators and Benchmarking This chapter will address the issue of indicators and benchmarking with regards to best practice and examples from the participating cities. As these two areas overlap, clear separation between them is at this stage not possible to make. Therefore they will be presented together as a joint chapter, starting with indicators and moving forward to benchmarking. 6.1 Indicators, E xamples from Best Practice and Involved Cities Evaluation is valuable and necessary both to secure goal fulfilment and/or to define targets for further progress. The theoretical work within the area of evaluating GHG reduction measures is comprehensive both within general theory of evaluation guidelines but also for environmental and sustainability follow-up.


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However the theoretical work is seldom fully translated into practice and therefore numerous local adaptations and modifications can be found and are implemented around the world (Sharifi and Murayama, 2013). This chapter will address the processes of evaluating urban districts in the context of climate neutrality and defining follow-up targets. Since the subject of climate neutrality is not clearly defined in terms of what should be included, the literature defining climate neutral cities or climate neutral urban districts is still scarce and more on a conceptual level. There are several different definitions for concepts that aim at helping urban districts to reduce GHG emissions. For example, among these concepts are:   

low-carbon, no carbon, or carbon neutral cities (Kennedy and Sgouridis, 2011, Murray and Dey, 2009)

The different concepts, while intuitively understandable, are often vaguely defined when put into evaluation as well as during practical implementations (Pandey et al. 2010, Murray & Dey 2010, Kennedy & Sgouridis 2011). This creates uncertainty and problems when for instance comparing two different cities using the same concept (carbon neutral etc.). The differences are not necessarily there because of differences in the concepts themselves but rather in the cities’, or urban districts’ interpretation(s) of them (Kennedy & Sgouridis 2011, Murray & Dey 2010). A city is a complex system not only limited by its geographical boundaries but also interconnected with the broader region through materials, energy and information exchange. This complicates the task of determining what to include in accounting a city carbon balance, and how to account for the progress towards climate neutral urban districts. But in spite of these unclear definitions and differences in target formulations and system borders, there are many cities in Europe with ongoing high ambitions to go through mitigation action programs, and with a strong need of relevant indicators to benchmark and evaluate city climate policies. 6.2 INDICATORS – DEFINITIONS The European Environmental Agency defined an indicator as “an observed value representative of a phenomenon of study that quantify information by aggregating different and multiple data” (Gabrielsen and Bosch, 2003). According to another definition given by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) an indicator is “a parameter or a value derived from parameters, which points to, provides information about, describes the state of a phenomenon/environment/area, with a significance extending beyond that directly associated with a parameter value” (OECD, 2003) and environmental indicators are those that “typically include physical, biological and chemical indicators and generally comprise indicators of environmental pressure, conditions and (societal)


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responses ” (Smeets and Weterings, 1999 and OECD, 1993 cited in (Niemeijer and de Groot, 2008). The main function of indicators is the representation of information regarding the complex issues they address. They decrease the number of parameters that are usually necessary to present the situation and simplify the communication of results to the users (OECD 2003). In the same way environmental indicators communicate information regarding environmental quality in a simplified way (Gabrielsen & Bosch 2003). Thus indicators are communication tools that simplify complex issues and make them accessible to a wider audience. 6.3 THE SELECTION OF INDICAT ORS – W HAT CRITERIA TO USE? Climate neutrality and climate mitigation could be identified as complex issues to be represented by environmental indicators. Environmental indicators are an important source of information for policy makers in terms of guidance, evaluation and monitoring for decision making (Niemeijer & Groot 2008). As a policy making tool environmental indicators are used for evaluation of the seriousness of environmental problems, identification of the key factors causing the problem, monitoring the effectiveness of policy responses and raising the public awareness about environmental issues (Gabrielsen & Bosch 2003). In such a way they are useful tools that tackle environmental progress, provide a feedback for policy-makers and measure the environmental performance. The effectiveness of such indicators as analytical tools depends on how relevant, truthful and comprehensive they are (Gabrielsen & Bosch 2003). Thus there is a need to define which of the numerous indicators that measure ecological systems represent the whole system in sufficient detail and at the same time are simple enough for monitoring and communicating the results. In order to evaluate the set of indicators regarding their relevance, analytically utility and measurability, selection criteria should be used (Advisory Committee on Official Statistics, 2009). However no formal selection criteria applied to indicators with regard to their analytical utility have been developed so far. As a result indicators are generally selected during an iterative process in consultation with interested stakeholders and with involvement of experts. As a tool for validating the choice of indicators the selection criteria should be used (Advisory Committee on Official Statistics, 2009). In Niemeijer and Groot (2008) an overview of indicator selection criteria is presented. According to Schomaker (1997) indicators should be: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Criteria offered by the National Research Council (NRC) include: general importance, conceptual basis, reliability, temporal and spatial scales of applicability, statistical properties, data requirements, necessary skills, robustness, international compatibility and costeffectiveness (Niemeijer & Groot 2008). The OECD uses only three criteria for validating the choice of indicators:


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  

policy relevance and utility for user, analytical soundness and measurability (OECD 2003)

The EEA chose their core set of indicators according to:  their policy relevance,  progress towards targets,  availability of data,  spatial and temporal coverage,  representativeness of data and  understandability of indicators (EEA, 2005). Another approach was presented in (Kurtz et al., 2001). Here indicators are evaluated by means of guidelines that provide a framework to ask the right questions without by themselves determining the indicators utility and effectiveness. In general the most common criteria used for selection of indicators are:  measurability,  low resource demand,  analytical soundness,  policy relevance and  sensitivity to policy change (Niemeijer & Groot 2008). In table 3 a list of common selection criteria for environmental indicators is presented. Table 4 Common selection criteria for environmental indicators (Niemeijer & Groot 2008)

Dimension Scientific Historic Systematic Intrinsic Financial and practical

Policy and management

Criteria Analytical soundness Historical records Reliability Time-bound Measurability Statistical properties Resource demand Data requirements and availability Operational simplicity Relevance Links with management Spatial and temporal scales of applicability International compatibility Comprehensiveness

Different alternative approaches and indicator frameworks to estimate the macro progress towards sustainable development have been developed. Many of these frameworks integrate the aspect of climate change however not as a main focus


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but rather as a component of sustainable development. Moreover there have not been developed yet any common framework or a set of sustainability indicators that fits to all situations and can be used in any city or urban-based practice. As a result most sets of indicators for measuring urban sustainability and thus issues related to climate neutrality have been either city-specific or adopted from the sustainability indicator systems defined at the global level. Various international organizations like OECD, EEA and UN developed environmental indicators conceptual frameworks (Balaban, 2011). In this regard existing environmental indicators sets are a useful starting point to derive indicators for climate neutrality. The main drivers for climate change are GHG emissions. Around 80 % of those net emissions originate from burning fossil fuels for the generation of heat and electricity production, transport, industry and households both on the global and national scale (Dimitroulopoulou and Ziomas, 2011). These categories, with some deviations depending on the chosen spatial boundary, are usually considered by cities for inventories of GHG emissions. The GHG emissions, within the categories mentioned above, could be monitored and measured using indicators derived from already developed international environmental or sustainability indicator sets. In this context the indicators related to climate change, transportation, energy use and waste management are considered as the most relevant for measuring the level of achievement of climate neutrality. 6.4 PRACTICAL E XAMPLE - RENEW ABLE W ILHELMSBU RG Renewable Wilhelmsburg is an interesting practical example of a project explicitly aiming for climate neutrality. It is a project that has taken a hands-on approach and tries to show in practice what climate neutrality could be. As earlier described the project is part of the International Building Exhibition (IBA) that includes several initiatives for reduction of energy use, shifting to renewable sources of energy and thereby lowering CO2 emissions. IBA started in 2007 and was finalized in 2013 which also provides an interesting opportunity in terms of evaluation as it is one of few large scale projects that are in this stage of completion. Included in IBA is the Renewable Wilhelmsburg Climate Protection Concept which attempts to be a route to describe how the pilot area can reach climate neutrality. It incorporates a step-wise approach to shift from fossil fuel dependence to full use of renewable energies. So far internal scenarios have been used to evaluate expected results for three years, 2007, 2013 and 2020 (Cf. 5.2). For each of these years two possible outcomes have been estimated, one reference scenario which assumes that the development is based on the regular requirements in Germany in terms of energy savings and technical improvements and one excellent scenario which is based on the Climate Protection Concept. According to these scenarios it is possible to reach independence of fossil fuels provided that the Climate Protection Concept is used (IBA Hamburg, 2010).


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Figure 7 Example of an excellent scenario for the production and demand of electricity within the area. (Source: IBA Hamburg 2010)

One focus of Renewable Wilhelmsburg Climate Protection Concept is that local sources of renewable energies should be used. For the Wilhelmsburg area this means that focus is put on geothermal energy, biomass and biogas from waste wood, solar and wind energy, bio waste and waste water and waste heat from industries. This should also mean that indicators and evaluation should be focused on these aspects. Many of the parameters of interest in this case are not new but could be found in already existing indicators sets e.g. the Hamburg Climate Action Plan or in international produced indicators sets as earlier presented. 6.5 Benchmarking, Examples from Best Practice In proposing a new set of indicators for benchmarking best practice in the search for climate neutrality Bourdic and Salat (2012) are particularly keen to specify them in terms of the fabric which serves the morphological models of the citydistricts, neighbourhoods and blocks. They advocate for assessing the consumption of energy and emission of carbon in the built environment. This is because: “these models provide aggregations which take into account all the scales that constitute the urban fabric of buildings, blocks, neighbourhoods and districts. By using intermediate scales of aggregation, the loss of information in the process is structurally lower than with other models. They provide them an undeniable opportunity to monitor the impact of energy performances on several scales.” Bourdic et.al (2012) suggest the only downside of these morphological models lies in the fact the assessments they offer are restricted to the context (city-districts, neighbourhoods and blocks) of built environments and do not extend into either the construction systems, or occupation components of energy consumption and


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carbon emissions (see Figure 8). Reflecting on this dividing line in the build environment, their energy consumption and carbon emissions, Bourdic et.al (2012) “it is probable that no single model or calculation tool will succeed in taking into account these four factors [city-district, neighbourhood, construction system and occupational components]at the same time. This is why research efforts should focus on the inter-actions and relationships between existing models. Transversal approaches based on existing models and tools may lead to a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of urban efficiency, making good – or at least better – use of all of the intervention opportunities” (ibid:592). An innovative system of indicators In responding to this challenge, Bourdic et al. (2012) advance what they call: “an innovative system of indicators” which in their opinion should meet the call for multi-scalar and cross-sectional indicators that encompass the “intrinsic complexity” of the situation. Based on this morphologic approach, new mathematical formulas are used to generate urban sustainability indicators. They suggest the resulting indicators are “exceptional” and of particular value because as measures of sustainable urban development they are not based on the simple metrics of absolute target values, but instead founded on techniques of analysis able to relate the part (occupational components, construction systems, blocks, neighbourhoods and city-districts) to the whole. In their view, not being over-dependant on simple indicators and instead being founded on techniques of analysis that encompass intrinsic complexity also has the advantage of using indicators to nurture a “dialogue-based investigative technique”, able to engage with stakeholders and account for the relationship between the part and the whole Theme Land use

Concepts of triptych Urban form

Indicator type

Name

Intensity

Human density Building density Housing density Density of legal entities Job density Co-efficient of land occupancy Subdivision intensity

Mobility

Urban form

Diversity

Diversity of subdivisions size

Intensity

Diversity of land use (road network, built environment, courtyards, green spaces) Diversity of subdivision use (housing, offices, shops, public facilities, etc.) Surface occupied by pedestrian and bicycle paths Surface occupied by the road network

Connectivity

Proportion of the road network dedicated to public transport Connectivity of the pedestrian / bike grid


Scale District/Neighborhood D/N D/N D/N D/N D/N D/N D/N D/N D/N D/N City/D D D/N

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Connectivity of the car grid Cyclomatic complexity of the car grid Cyclomatic complexity of the pedestrian / bike grid Average distance between intersections (bike / pedestrian grid) Average distance between intersections (car grid) Proximity

Complexity

Percentage of the population more than 300m away from a public transport stop Number of public transport modes accessible within 300m Scale hierarchy of the street network

Intensity

Hydrological intensity

Diversity

Water

Environ mental

Impermeability of land Intensity of water treatment: rate of waste collection and treatment Efficiency of water use Accessibility of drinking water

Biodiversity

Equity

Environ mental/ urban form

Socioeconomic

Intensity

Proportion of agricultural surfaces Proportion of green fabric

Connectivity

Connectivity of green habitats

Distribution

Distribution of green spaces (distance from an even distribution) Proportion of jobs in relation to housing

Intensity

Proportion of social housing Diversity

Diversity of ages (structural distribution) Diversity of incomes (structural diversity)

Economy

Socioeconomic

Intensity

Resource productivity Intensity of learning activities Job potential

Diversity

Waste

Urban form/ socioeconomy

Proximity

Environmental

Intensity

Distribution

Structural diversity of uses (shops, offices, housing, public buildings: schools, administrations, etc.) Percentage of residents living less than x from a convenience store Distance of the distribution of each district from the global distribution of shops, offices, housing or public buildings Proportion of recycled materials in the construction of new buildings Productivity of urban metabolism

Intensity of emissions to produce wealth

Energy & Bioclimatic

Social

Intensity

Noise pollution Intensity of cultural activities

Urban/ social Environmental

Proximity

Proximity of leisure facilities

Intensity

Energy intensity per resident Surface energy intensity Proportion of local production Rate of renewable energy used

Urban

Form

D N D/N D City/D D City/D D D City/D City D City/D D D City/D D/N D/N D/N/Block D/N/B City D D

Structural diversity of jobs

Intensity of greenhouse gas emissions per resident

Culture / well-being

D

Volumetric compactness Size factor


City/D D City

City/D City/D City/D City/D D/N City/D D D/N D/N D/N C/D N/B N/B

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Form factor Rate of passive volume Energy consumed for heating Energy consumed for air conditioning

N/B N/B D/N/B/Block D/N/B/Block

Figure 8 List of urban indicators (Source: Bourdic et al. 2012: 598-599)

If we look at the connectivity indicator (The average distance between intersections of the bike/pedestrian grid), this acts as a proxy for how pedestrian-friendly a city is. It ultimately determines the distances to be crossed and gives a sense of whether-or-not it is possible to walk to a destination. The rule here is that if the distance to travel is greater than 500 meters, there is a possibility that pedestrians will switch to another mode of transport. Figure 9 benchmarks these distances against 9 peers in this group of cities and indicates Turin, Paris, Kyoto and Hong Kong are the most pedestrian-friendly cities and both Brasilia and Canton are on the margin of this critical threshold.

Figure 9: average distance between intersections per square metre (Source: Bourdic et al. 2102:599)

If we now switch attention to the Energy and Bioclimatic indicators shown in Figure 8, it is possible to illustrate how a series of them can be benchmarked against one another to demonstrate the away four selected cities are performing across a range of measurements relating to the urban fabric of their respective city districts.


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Figure 10: Energy and bioclimatic indicators for selected residential city-districts (Source: compiled from Salat, 2009 and Deakin et al. 2012)

From figure 10 it is evident that each of the 4 cities share the same performance measures for residential land uses up to the more generic measures of energy consumption (kWh/m2/per year) and CO2 emission (kg per capita). This in turn allowing each of them to be benchmarked against one another on this basis and indicating that Berlin out-performs London, Toulouse and Paris, in terms of the critical markers know as: surface-to-volume ratio (size factor) and passive volume to non-passive volume measures (rate of passive volume). These particular indicators benchmark the consumption of energy and emission of carbon in relation to the:  

surface of land they occupy relative to the volume of a building (STVR); passiveness of the internal environment relative to the envelop of the building (PVTVR).

While the former benchmarks the relationship between land surface, volume, energy consumption and carbon emission, the latter also captures the sensitivity of the consumption rates and levels of emission relative to both the volume and depth of the building. This is calculated using the formula because energy consumption and carbon emission is not just a measure of volume, but distance from the external skin of the building. This is because those areas closer to the external skin of the building experience greater heat transfer, whereas those areas approximately 9 meters from the external wall are more passive in terms of energy-transfer and carbon storage.


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In terms of performance the lower the STVR the better the building performance as is the case for the PVTVR. The PVTRVs of between 0.66 and 0.99 mark the difference between inner city-district block developments and suburban detached, semi-detached and linked buildings. While this range of values indicates each of the city-districts would benefit from retrofit programmes, the figures also tend to suggest those with a value of 0.99 offer the greatest potential in terms of energy saving and carbon reduction. The value of the last 2 indicators have already been identified by the CLUE City Partners who have calculated the rates of energy consumption and carbon emission per capita as current baselines and as the potential outcomes of their interventions into the built environment. 90

2 80

Percentage

70

60

EU 2040 carbon emission target

50

C02

40

Energy (estimate) C02

1 30

Energy Linear (C02 )

20

10

Hackbridge - UR

Royal Sea Port - UI

Spina 4 + - UI

Vie dei Carchi - UI

Vallbona - UE

0

1. The Hackbridge - UR figures only relate to the mass residential retrofit component of the sustainable development 2. Relates to a comprehensive district-wide (re)development of communities as a sustainable suburb

Figure 11: energy saving and carbon reductions for selected CLUE partner projects (Source: data supplied from participating cities)


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Figure 12: projected carbon emission tons/per capita for selected CLUE projects

Figure 11 illustrates the expected energy saving and carbon reduction outcomes of selected CLUE partner cities development proposals. It benchmarks them against the comparable selection of development projects (see Figure 12) and as a measure of percentage savings and reductions. These figures also serve to identify where these savings and reductions stand in terms of meeting the EC target reductions measures for CO2 in particular. Figure 12 translates these percentage CO2 reductions into the standard measure of tons per capita. This allows for a comparison of the “top level” measure in terms of emissions and their contribution to climate change, across a range of the city districts in the CLUE project. If we adopt Siemen’s European Green City index to benchmark the city districts in question, it indicates 5 of the 8 (approximately 60%) have the ambition for their developments to secure a “world class” ranking of below 3 tons per capita CO2 emission.13 This also suggests their contribution to climate change is to be neutral in the sense which the city-district developments shall sit within the +/- 2% band that is set by the UN and adopted by the EC for global warming over the medium to long-term.14 While this measure of “neutrality” offers a valuable headline indicator and benchmark to compare the climate change ambitions of development projects against, it should also be borne in mind this top level measure is an aggregate for the city districts in question and does not break down into their equivalent morphological components at the scale of either neighbourhoods, blocks or districts as Figure 8 suggests they should. This suggests that as city district benchmarks, the measures which are currently available are not only limited to the most critical, but currently not available at the respective scales of analysis. 13

http://www.siemens.com/entry/cc/en/greencityindex.htm http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/Flagship-Projects/Global-Energy-Assessment/GEA-Summaryweb.pdf 14


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Unfortunately this tends to leave a considerable gap in the data sets needed and information required to know whether the actions taken to develop CLUEs as urban districts are progressing in the right direction and if they are climate neutral. For this requires just as much, if not more information on the inputs to the developments at their relevant scales of analysis, as it does require knowledge of the outputs, either in terms of their impact on global warming, or contribution to climate change. This calls for an innovative system of indicators that doesn’t just baseline the current situation, but which also offers a more extensive set of benchmarks able to measure what each input contributes to the energy savings and carbon reductions and how this combination of factor inputs can bear down on existing levels of consumption and rates of emissions, so developments of this kind can perform as world class standard bearers of climate neutrality on the basis laid down by the UN and EC.

7 Towards an approach for climate neutral urban areas in Europe In this report, tools and methods have been sketched and evaluated that could be helpful for cities to create climate neutral urban areas. It is clear that these tools have not reached a state of complete perfection. Moreover, having tools is not a sufficient condition to guarantee the desired results. This chapter discusses findings and concrete measures that could be drawn from the analysis of this report (7.1), relevant knowledge gaps that should be issues for further research (7.2), and an outline of a CLUE approach (7.3). 7.1 FINDINGS The initiatives that have been taken thus far to mitigate the climate impacts of cities are limited in terms of their ambition. Early adopters of the climate change agenda offer critical insights into how “green” and “eco-sensitive” interventions into the built environment can tackle adverse effects of global warming, by saving more energy and reducing more carbon emissions relative to their counterparts. In this respect they set a baseline for further progress. There are now a number of cities throughout Europe who are keen to capitalise on the progress of the early adopters by aiming for climate neutrality. It represents nothing less than a stepchange in the type, scope and range of policies adopted to deal with climate change. This shift emerged because green buildings or neighbourhoods (no matter how green or ecologically sensitive they are) are insufficient to move to climate neutrality. Climate neutrality calls for a range of policies that make it possible to transcend the level of green buildings and green neighbourhoods. The urban district as a unit of intervention allows setting up innovative infrastructures and new forms of organising district services. Citizen participation in deciding on these changes is of key importance, as the social and technological changes in the urban district are strongly interrelated. Citizen participation in decision making could also facilitate their participation in the operations and maintenance of CLUE systems.


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Planning climate neutral urban districts involves expertise regarding various future conditions to take into regard and takes expertise regarding the impacts of the options that could diminish GHG emissions. Scenarios are a good tool not just for taking future conditions into regard and evaluate options in the planning procedure; Scenarios can also provide the content for a dialogue with citizens and other stakeholders. Such active stakeholder participation can prevent group think and wishful thinking in planning, and can create a wider support for measures to be taken. Climate neutrality in urban districts should replicate itself to achieve climate neutrality at the level of cities. District focussed measures that have proven to be successful should be translated into statutory measures as a crucial step to climate neutral cities. This means the innovative cities should no longer focus on voluntary measures at either the building, or neighbourhood scale, but gradually shift to measures being promoted by statutory bodies. This adaptation process in turn calls for structures to support innovations in urban development. Various frameworks for measuring climate impact are still discussed internationally. The available frameworks are still lacking uniform and unambiguous definitions. A widely accepted GHG emission framework is crucial for evaluating the outcomes of policy measures and to monitor progress toward climate neutrality. Picking one of the available frameworks makes no sense as wide acceptance of a framework is crucial for benchmarking various CLUES. 7.2 UNANSW ERED QUESTIONS AND RESEARCH CHALLENGES Clues have thus far been developed as the exception, as showcases that rightfully gave credits to the cities that initiated these green urban areas. In the future, there is a challenge of going broader and deeper: -

Broader in the sense that the ‘the exception’ needs to become more and more ‘mainstream’. However, mainstream urban planning must manage to be efficient without being a showcase, within the ordinary financial constraints. General solutions must be easily accessible, although the actual shaping of a CLUE is very much depending on local conditions. What does this require from the institutional context of urban planning (regulation and de-regulation, the role of private and public parties), how should knowledge be diffused in the building sector, should people be retrained? Is the educational sector able to offer the relevant training, is the financial sector able to provide the financial services, can the infrastructures companies deal with the changes? Or to put it in other words, are the various elements of a dynamic innovation system in place to produce far more CLUES? (Cf. Hekkert et al., 2007)


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-

Deeper in the sense that climate neutrality has not been achieved. And why should climate neutrality be sufficient? Probably, some urban districts will never be able to reach climate neutrality (just by their climatic/geophysical conditions) while other areas might surpass that mark. As the low hanging fruits have been reaped, how to continue innovation for even better climate performance as next measures might be harder as they require changes that are more risky, take more time, and are more complex as more stakeholders are involved?

-

Climate neutral urban districts can only be successful if they also are socially vivid urban areas. Such a characteristic is hard to plan. Citizen participation in planning might contribute to creating vivid districts, but there is no guarantee that it does. Moreover, a new district has no residents, who should participate?

-

Citizen participation is time consuming, and might therefore be expensive. How to organise both efficient and effective processes of citizen participation?

-

Participation in the operations maintenance of CLUE infrastructures/services might be both economically efficient and stimulating for the social life in the district. The district is somehow rewarded for the efforts of its residents. However, what happens if this participation is not emerging, or breaks down? Municipalities are responsible for a basic level of public services/infrastructures.

-

GHG emission frameworks will never be able to give a complete account of all GHG emissions related to a district. However, imperfect systems tend to reward shifting GHG emissions to sources that are unaccounted for. What is required for measuring the progress of CLUEs and mutually benchmarking CLUEs, is an internationally standardized framework, with clear indications of its limitations (to create awareness of ‘shifting behaviour’) and high transparency (to provide indications for improvement). It should allow for open access and exchange of data.

-

CLUEs affect the surrounding urban areas, as well as the city as a whole. The ‘role model’ function of a CLUE is important for all citizens and for the construction and infrastructures sectors and should be facilitated. However, there might also be equity issues, especially in neighbourhoods surrounding a CLUE that might face some burdens. The balance of costs and benefits of a CLUE for a city as a whole are still not well analysed.


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7.3 A CLUE APPROACH Planning and realising a successful CLUE doe not only take new, clean technologies and technological systems; it also takes a new process to plan and implement them. Key elements of this approach have been sketched in this report: 8. A long term future orientation 9. Participation of stakeholders 10. Measuring progress 11. Benchmarking 12. Be sensitive non-climate related impacts of urban planning 13. Being equity sensitive 14. Creating a stepping stone to a Climate Neutral City/society All of these elements, and the tools to realise them that are described in this report, are not unique. They all have been used before, although some need further elaboration. However, the combination of these key elements is new and is a precondition for successful creating a CLUE. 1. Becoming climate neutral is easier said than done. Although a widely accepted framework for establishing climate neutrality is still absent, no real CLUE exists today. Measures that cut down GHG emissions today, might lead to barriers for progress in the future, just because investments in infrastructures lock developments into a specific development path. A long term orientation can help preventing such ‘lock ins’. It requires taking the long term challenges of the global society into regard, as well as the long term impacts of our decisions today. Scenarios are excellent tools for this aim. 2. Participation of stakeholders leads to decisions that have a higher level of acceptance. As CLUES cannot be fully realized without the cooperation of stakeholders, participation is crucial. However, participation does not necessarily lead to better solutions: stakeholders need to informed/educated regarding potentially changing conditions for their urban district, and regarding the longer term impacts of actions, which might be rather different from the short term impacts. 3. Progress is hard to establish. Measures might even be counterproductive, as higher energy efficiencies tend to foster energy consumption. Moreover, cosmetic measures might create a blurred picture of reality. Even worse, the urban district might change to ‘CO2 emissions elsewhere’, which is normally worse, by the additional transport. A reliable GHG emissions framework is crucial for establishing progress. 4. The Climate Change issue will not be high on the political agenda forever. One of the mechanisms to foster progress is to benchmark the achievements of cities. Competition fosters performance. Therefore, an


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internationally accepted GHG emission framework is crucial for progress towards CLUES. 5. Climate change is not the only problem that the modern society has to cope with. We should not solve a problem by creating new ones. Climate Change should not be solved by ecological destruction, resource depletion or a wasting renewable resources, 6. Cutting GHG emissions takes money. The returns for the individual, energy saving might not outweigh the investments. Public and private costs and benefits intermingle. However, measures might also affect others: reduced parking spaces might imply that surrounding neighbourhoods will be more crowded. Improved public transport might also benefit surrounding areas. Planners should be aware of these issues and take them into regard. 7. No matter how successful a CLUE is, climate neutrality at district level is not sufficient A CLUE is not just created for its own sake: it is also an experiment that should lead to learning and the results should be diffused into the city and society at large. The planning process of CLUEs, and the CLUE itself have to be geared to that aim; learning should be documented (including the failures!), results should be exposed and transferred to urban planners, the construction sector, and the public at large. Successes should be further optimized and be made part of statutory requirements.

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Appendix

EXAMPLE OF 4 INTERNAL SCENARIOS, CLUEBURGH Clueburgh has 500.000 inhabitants. It aims to renovate one of its neighbourhoods in a carbon-neutral way. The question is how to do so? CONTEXT OF CLUEBURGH Housing corporations A first specific element of the Netherlands is the role of housing corporations, which are organizations that construct, manage, and rent affordable residences without making profit. These organizations are nowadays mostly private, their public assignment is guaranteed by governmental regulation and budget allocation. In the Netherlands, about 30% of houses are owned by housing corporations, in Clueburgh this percentage is about 40%. Especially in neighbourhoods in which lower social-economic classes live, most houses are owned by corporations. Since the 1990s the system of housing corporations has been subject to criticism. 1. Many corporations extended their activities: they started investing in office buildings, educational buildings, event centres, etc. With that, managers of building corporations began to take large entrepreneurial risks, while most basically fulfilling a public function. Moreover, the salaries of these managers became higher and higher, raising a lot of public controversy. 2. In its mission to make housing affordable, housing corporations do not take account of the income of tenants, which means that tenants are being subsidized to live in a cheap house, even if they could easily afford a more expensive house. Mortgage rent deduction Private possession of houses is supported by government, and stimulated by having tax-deductible rents on mortgages. De facto, this means that people will pay more for a house than they would have been able to in a free market. In combination with the shortage of houses, and the limited opportunity to build houses in a condense country like the Netherlands, this led to a huge increase in prices of housing. Since the financial crisis of 2008, banks have been much more stringent in their granting of new mortgages, which led to a price fall of 19%. Making it very undesirable to buy a new house, ‘locking’ the housing market, even though the shortage of houses still exists. Lack of space The Netherlands is one of most densely populated countries in Europe. Especially the part of the Netherlands in which Clueburgh, can be found, is very populated, with a density of more than 1200 inhabitants per square kilometre. One side of the city has the sea as its natural boundary. South of Clueburgh is an agricultural area. North of the city is natural area of woodlands and dunes. The Eastern boundary


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exists of a motorway, behind which other municipalities can be found. Earlier Clueburgh has appropriated land of these municipalities to construct new residential areas. In terms of car traffic, Clueburgh is a problematic case. Two highways basically end up in the city centre, after which there are only a few roads that have to accommodate all traffic, leading to congestion, lack of parking space, and air quality problems. SCENARIO 1: CLUEBURG H GEOTHERMAL In the early 2000s, geothermal heat had been introduced as a promising technology. The core of the Earth provides a constant flow of heat and by pumping up warm water from the subsurface, houses could be heated in a carbon-neutral way. Originally, it was also thought that geothermal heat could be used to provide green electricity, just by pumping water from such depths that its temperature would be over 300 degrees Centigrade. ‘Go Geothermal Energy’ was an organization that had been established in 2002, which brought together experts and policymakers in order to stimulate the development and implementation of geothermal energy. In the greenhouse area close to Clueburgh, there had been some successful projects. Individual greenhouse owners had drilled a well to provide heat for their greenhouses. This helped to convince the municipality of Clueburgh that geothermal heat might also be a good source of urban heating, and as such helpful to reach the city’s goal of being carbon neutral in 2050. In the Southwest part of Clueburgh, a residential area that had to be restructured was designated as a potential case for geothermal-based district heating. Another important occurrence here was that NEO, the company that provided heat to the city, had to invest in its boiler installations. NTO, a leading Dutch expertise organization, was asked to provide knowledge about the subsurface. Also the energy company Conene was by the municipality of Clueburgh asked to join the project. Conene is an organization which showed great interest in sustainable development and moreover an organization of which a significant percentage of the shares were owned by the municipality of Clueburgh. A final set of partners that were asked to participate were three housing corporations, which owned most of the residences in the area to be restructured. In 2010, a well was drilled and 3000 houses were connected to the geothermal net. Now 20 years later, we may say that the project has been relatively successful – although there have been severe financial setbacks. On a wider scale, geothermal energy never realized its initial promise: it has never become a widespread source of urban heating nor of electricity production. To finance the project, a joint venture was made in 2008 between the municipality of Clueburgh, three housing corporations, NEO and Conene. With that, financial risks were spread along the partners. A business case was made to research the


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risks and benefits of the project, including such factors as heat demand, gas prices, costs of drilling, and management of pumped water (which is often polluted). Although investigations showed that the risks were quite severe, and the price was much higher than initially expected (15 million Euro instead 6 million Euro) the rewarding of a European subsidy of 3,4 million Euro and the persuasive skills of the alderman who was driving the project, made it possible for all parties to join the project. Initially, some residential resistance had to be overcome, as some tenants were unhappy with the drilling site in the middle of the city, and with the closing off of streets that was necessary to construct the heating infrastructure, but in the end, residents were successfully informed and convinced about the benefits of the project. The drilling commenced in 2010. An exciting moment for the project owners, as the uncertainty of success is quite high. First, there is an 80 to 90% chance of pumping warm water, which may be considerable for actors from the petrochemical industry, but which is considered to be very risky for a public or a not-for-profit organization. Second, it is uncertain whether the temperature of the water that is pumped up is high enough for the project. Third, it is uncertain which kind of dangerous materials are brought to the surface, such as gas, arsenic, radioactivity, etc. Fortunately, the well that was drilled at 2300 meter deep proved to be successful in all respects. At the same time, the banking crisis of 2008 led to a deep crisis in the Dutch housing market. This implied for the project that a huge amount of the envisioned houses that had to be connected to the system would not be build. Instead of 6000 houses, only 3000 houses would now be heated by geothermal energy. The contracts that were closed between the six parties obliged the housing corporations to buy a fixed amount of geothermal heat, however, with the reduction of houses, it proved to be impossible for the housing corporations to fulfil the aspired demand, leading to sincere fines. In all, each year the corporations lost millions of Euros on the project. It was far from the only problem that the housing corporations were confronted with. The bubble in the housing market of the early 2000s led to risky forms of entrepreneurship and overconfident management. In the 2010s, the big housing corporations came in deep financial trouble. The housing crisis was not only propelled by the housing corporations, but also by the tax deductible mortgage rents. The system proved to be untenable. The tax deduction of mortgage rents was fully abolished halfway the 2010s, and the housing corporations were collectivized again. The three corporations that participated in the geothermal project were taken over by Clueburgh, which had to take a huge financial loss. The mission of the now municipal housing corporation was to provide affordable houses only for the lowest social-economic classes. Most residences were sold to


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tenants and private owners. The bulk of houses, however, because buying a house came of be out of reach for most people, were bought by market parties, which now asked rents that were in line with market prices. The municipality kept possession of most houses in the geothermal district. Houses were quite small and not that attractive to well-off people. Despite all attempts to make the housing market dynamic again, people who lived in this area kept living there, basically for the rest of their lives. Following the American success in the production of shale gas and shale oil, European countries like also invested heavily in this fossil fuel. The new flood of cheap oil and gas, led to a steep decline in energy prices, which produced an additional financial setback to the project. In the end, the project never led to any financial gain. Clueburgh and the two energy organizations simply had to take their financial losses. On a larger scale, geothermal energy was never applied widely in the Netherlands. The enthusiasm for extracting warmth from the subsurface had been diminished since the increased number of (minor) earthquakes in areas that had been subjected to gas and oil mining. Licenses for new sites became very hard to acquire. Public resistance against drilling projects was massive. The costs of drilling also remained to be very high, over 10 million Euros for a system that has many inherent uncertainties, and discouraged most potential investors. Moreover, passive housing has come to be the standard for newly build and renovated houses. The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive of the European Union that was passed in 2009, imposed that all new houses had to be nearly zero energy from 2018 onwards. Construction companies, project developers, municipalities came to be accustomed with passive housing. Though the European Directive meant that renewable heating systems are allowed, there simply is no need any longer to invest in such systems. Passive houses are cheaper to build, their functioning is proven, and people know how to construct them and how to live in them. At the same time, the residents using geothermal heat are quite happy with the system. People that live in the residential area are now usually quite aged, they liked their rooms to be a few degrees than average. Geothermal heating allows raising the thermostat with only a mild financial penalty – also the municipality of Clueburgh is happy with some additional heat consumption in order to at least earn back some investment costs. Moreover, the provision of cheap heating provided by a radiator gave people the sense of old-fashioned warmth, instead of having a constant flow of air with an even temperature. Nevertheless, in a couple of years, when the houses have to be reconstructed, or in most cases, torn down, the geothermal system will be ended. The new and the renovated houses, like most houses will become passive.


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SCENARIO 2: PASSIVE CLUEBURGH The Tasman quarter is a residential area in Clueburgh that has been constructed in the early 2010s. With the application of passive housing, the municipality of Clueburgh tried to contribute to its goal of being carbon neutral in 2050. Moreover, the municipality was well aware that in 2018, all newly build houses would have to be nearly zero, which basically meant that for the construction of most new buildings, passive housing would be the obvious choice, as not all buildings cannot be easily connected to the infrastructures that are necessary in case of renewable energy provision. A passive house means that buildings will only consume 15 kwh/m2 per year. They do so by having very good isolation and for instance by having a balanced air circulation system and a ground heat exchanger. Biomass and solar panels may be used to provide energy. In terms of heating, a passive house will only have a demand for warm water, there is no additional demand for heating the building itself. Even in 2010, the concept of passive housing was not very challenging in terms of technology. It basically integrates existing technologies, of which the functioning had been proven. The Tasman quarter aimed at the high end of the market, most notably for well-off people that wanted to live in a ‘green’ way. The project was instigated by one of the largest project developers in the Netherlands, Stalladam. Although being a very experienced company, the Tasman quarter was the first passive housing project that it constructed. Also outside Clueburgh there was not much experience with passive building. At that time, certification and standards were simply lacking, which meant that Stalladam had not much guidance to go by – which unfortunately showed in the construction of the residential area. The crisis in the housing market led to budget costs and hiring inexperienced subcontractors. The first things to go were the sunscreens on the façade of the houses. In the Netherlands, sunscreens are not standard on a house, so the contractor thought it no problem to not apply them. Obviously, the installation of a balanced ventilation system requires a certain level of understanding of how the system works. The installation crew however did not have this expertise. For instance, the tubing has to have a minimum of bends in order to function well. However, the availability of flexible (ribbed) tubes was taken as making it very easy to install the tubing system, enabling a lot of twists and bends without much difficulty. Not only construction workers were unacquainted with the new system. Also the new residents, in spite of all their environmental friendliness, had some problems with their new houses. Some of these were the result of wrong construction. A first problem was noise. The tubing system buzzed, driving some residents mad. Some of them even cut the wiring, just to get rid of the noise. A second problem was the excessive indoor heat, because of the lack of sunscreens. A more severe problem


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was caused by bad ventilation. The insufficient circulation of fresh air led to a lot of complaints about headaches and nausea among the residents. Some houses were put on sale, but given the crisis in the housing market and the bad press the neighbourhood received, it is no surprise that there was not a lot of interest in buying a house in the Tasman quarter – giving rise to even more chagrin. Others residents simply installed windows that could be opened. Another problem was that people started to use their house differently than expected. People who bought houses in the Tasman quarter often worked from home, office workers, a possibility created by the internet. Often they worked from their bedroom, which however, was subjected to another climate regime as the living rooms. In other words, it was not really comfortable to work in your bedroom. A number of home owners started an association, Activepassive ownership that went to court to compel Stelladam to repair the shortcomings of their houses. The defence of Stelladam was that there is no certification of passive houses, so that the company was not liable: there are different understandings of what a passive house exactly is, the understanding of Stelladam had not been better or worse than the understanding of the home owners. Despite this defence, the judge granted the complaint of the home owners. He said that Stelladam sold its houses as passive, and that it should have known better what this concept implied. Stelladam had to repair the shortcomings. The downside of this development was that it discouraged Stelladam and other building companies to invest in new passive houses. The upside was that it led to national certification and quality control. With that, there were less new passive districts, but the district that were build did satisfy the norms of passive houses. The uptake of passive houses was also slowed down by the decrease of fossil fuel prices, which was caused by the availability of oil from the arctic, tar sand, and shale. The decrease of prices of fossil fuel also led to a renegotiation of the Member States on the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. One of the arguments that was given by the Netherlands, one of the strongest opponents of the new directive, was that the directive would obstruct the economic resurrection of the building sector. More cynically, it has been claimed that the cheap prices of oil took away the sense of urgency to make the transition towards a carbon neutral energy system. Moreover, the Netherlands had been slow in its uptake of renewable forms of energy. The end result of the renegotiations was that the directive would only be implemented 5 years later, at the same time the stringency of the norms was sincerely diminished. In 2010, passive housing was introduced as a big promise. 20 years later, we may say that this status has stayed the same. It still is very much a promise, as we are still waiting for the previously expected rise in energy prices to happen. In the meantime, people in the Tasman quarter are very happy with their houses. The absence of radiators allows them to have more spacious houses. The architecture remains state of the art, even 30 years later. After the long dip in house prices, the


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market has been restored since the late 2010s. The houses in the Tasman quarters nowadays belong to the most desirable real-estate in the Clueburgh area. SCENARIO 3: COMPACT CLUEBURGH Different problems in the early 2000s urged the municipality of Clueburgh. First of these was the burden caused by car traffic. Not only congestion was a problem, also the air quality was very bad. After a monitoring system was installed, one street in Clueburgh acquired the label ‘dirtiest street in the Netherlands due to the high concentration of particulate matter. This relatively small street basically was an extension of a highway, and as such obstructed the flow of traffic immensely. Given the height of the buildings, exhaustion gasses had nowhere to go. At the same time, the area in which this street lays, the Purgedistrict, was highly impoverished, landlords offered cheap, but lousy, housing, which were especially occupied by poor immigrants. An integral plan was made that tackled traffic, public and cultural facilities, and interesting architecture. In this way, the municipality hoped to break down the downward spiral of ghettoization. By attracting people with an interest in culture, such as artists and young professionals who worked in the city, and as such were not dependent on cars, Clueburgh aimed to revive the Purgedistrict. Moreover, the city aimed to make the district as environmentally friendly as possible as well by having a having a ‘green’ sewerage system and by using carbon-neutral energy, most notably by installing PV-panels, and a bio based district heating system. The master plan consisted of the following elements. First, the central square of the district was to be restructured, by building a new city hall, a museum for modern art, and a new theatre that would come in the place of a cinema, a theatre for dance, and a music hall. Second, blocks of houses had to be purchased in order to be renovated or rebuild. Third, the traffic infrastructure was dramatically altered. Large sections of the district were closed off for cars, and only accessible for buses and bikes. Other traffic was redirected via a ‘traffic circulation plan’, which concerned the development of a ring road around the city centre so that traffic would not drive straight into the city any longer. In order to further public transport, a plan was made to construct a tunnel to accommodate trams. Obviously, the realization of this plan would take a long time and a lot of money, but on the other hand, it would make the centre of Clueburgh one of a highly attractive area, combining all the benefits of city life, without its disadvantages. The restructuring of the central square started with the construction of a new city hall. This new building included the state of the art-technology to deal with its energy challenges. On the roof a large collection of PV-panels was constructed, and the heating was provided by the district heating system. The museum, which was established in the old city hall, was also connected to these energy systems. Both buildings were seen as big successes. The construction of the new theatre, however, was subject to many problems. First, the construction of a new theatre led to public resistance, as the existing theatres that could already be found at the square were only a few decades old. Local residents accused the municipality of squandering money. The city council still agreed with the construction, one of the


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arguments being that such construction was necessary to support the building sector, which was in big economic trouble because of the financial crisis. A condition that the city council posed was that construction workers had to be unemployed workforces from the Clueburgh area. Another consequence of the financial crisis was that the budget had to be reduced, which meant that some of the most challenging assets had to be given up. The aspiration to have a carbonneutral building was one of these. In the end, the theatre became a rather conventional building, which nevertheless took a long and difficult time to construct. Fraudulent practices among contractors were manifold, most notably in relation to the hiring of unemployed workforces, for instance, lists of non-existing people were used. The unmasking of such practices in the media led to even more resentment of the local population. Nowadays the theatre is finished, still there are problems such as leakage and a lack of appeal. The revival of the residences in the Purgedistrict was done in several phases. Houses were bought of small landlords who were neglecting their property, in many cases their tenants were illegal immigrants living in bad circumstances. Quite some hemp plantations at attics and cellars were found. Other residences were owned by housing corporations, with whom the municipality could make agreements and covenants. The general idea of the restructured district was to diversify the area. Some blocks would be demolished, some would be renovated. There would be a lot of space for galleries and small shops, as well as for ateliers. Some blocks would be sold cheaply to people who were given the opportunity to fully design their own interiors. The reconstruction of the energy and water infrastructure was in the hands of the municipality. It was not the idea to evict people from their houses, apart from illegal immigrants. First, that was not necessary, as there was quite a high degree of vacancy and in general people did not dwell long in the district. Moreover, it was thought that the coming of new, open-minded people would contribute significantly to the socio-economic integration of immigrants. Having direct contact with people in schools, shops, and cultural activities was thought to be an important prerequisite for this goal of integration. Nowadays, in 2030, we are well aware that in terms of integration, the Purgedistrict cannot be considered a huge success. Although there is no friction between different groups, a clear watershed between different societal segments can be observed. On the one hand, there are the rich professionals, generally welleducated, who work as artists, civil servants, consultants, etc. They usually have a Dutch, or a Western European background. On the other hand, there are the second, third, and sometimes even fourth generation immigrants. Their economic position and their education are in general low. Both groups appear to be quite satisfied with living in the Purgedistrict, even though their disposition towards living is completely different.


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For the rich professionals, living in the Purgedistrict means living close to their job, close to cultural facilities, and living amongst many of their peers. Their children go to so-called ‘white schools’, which are surprisingly homogeneous, given the multi-cultural character of the district. These young professionals often see themselves as ‘green’, and they are proud to make use of the environmentally friendly facilities that are offered to them. Then again it has to be admitted that their ecological footprint is far from small. The one thing they miss in their neighbourhood, space, can be easily found elsewhere. Many families have a second house outside of the city, these homes are usually not connected to carbonneutral energy networks, and they often consume quite a lot of space. Moreover, the young professionals are used to having quite a number of holidays every year, some of lasting only a couple of days. Such holidays include, almost without exception, travel by planes. The inhabitants of Purgedistrict who have a foreign background do not have a lot of interest in being environmentally friendly. Most people are still very much relying on their cars. In fact, if there has been any kind of friction in the Purgedistrict between different groups of resident, it is due to having people park their cars in places that have not been designated for that goal. Also in adjacent residential areas, there have been protests against people from Purgedistrict parking their cars over there. Children who have immigrant ancestors go to socalled ‘black schools’, which obstructs the integration of children from different backgrounds, as well as obstructs the integration of their parents. The reason for this segregation of schools lies in the law on free schools in the Netherlands that prevents governmental interference in school policies. It is simply prohibited to distribute children to certain schools. Another difficulty is that people with a foreign background have different patterns of energy consumption. In an admittedly overgeneralizing way one might say that they like to have big flat screen television sets, and they like to have their homes a few degrees warmer than Dutch people. There have been quite a lot of people for whom the district heating system just did not give enough warmth. To solve this problem, they used electric heaters, so that the net electricity demand of the Purgedistrict vastly exceeded the supply by carbon-neutral sources. Nevertheless, if one would calculate the respective ecological footprints of the two groups of residents, it is not completely evident whose footprint would be the largest. The third element of the Purgedistrict master plan was the plan to reduce traffic and to stimulate public transport. The traffic circulation plan meant a great reduction of car traffic in the district. Air quality was sincerely improved and congestion was very much limited (or displaced to other locations). This made it safe and comfortable to use bicycles, which a lot people came to do, especially among the young professionals. As said, the use of cars remains to be common among people with a foreign background, sometimes leading to frustration about the lack of parking space on the one hand, or the occupation of space by cars on the other hand.


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The public transport system has been an expensive one to construct, especially in case of the tram tunnel. The costs of the construction were twice as high as planned, and the realization of the tunnel took four years more than was scheduled. The tunnel was plagued by subsidence and severe leakage. However, nowadays the consensus is that the tunnel is aesthetically attractive as well functioning very satisfactorily. A problem that only emerged in the late 2020s is the rise of clean and smart car traffic, albeit not cheap. Electric cars that are now able to communicate promise to make individual traffic available without the shortcomings of pollution and congestion. More and more, we see that people are well-off buy cars that are smart & green. Making car use attractive again, even for environmentally friendly people. The question is what will happen to Purgedistrict when young professionals lose their interest in living there, because their cars cannot be accommodated over there. It may be that the district becomes an area again troubled by petrol-fuelled old-fashioned cars, the only ones that can be afforded by the people who could not leave the rapidly deteriorating neighbourhood. SCENARIO 4: GREEN CL UEBURGH For years, Clueburgh wanted to build in the dune and woodlands area in the Northern part of the city. Environmental groups however always obstructed the realization of these plans. Around 2010, Clueburgh decided to change its strategy. Instead of fighting with the environmental organizations, it realized it might be more sensible to work together. The municipality started to organize meetings in order to find out under which conditions it would be possible to build residences in the dune and woodland area. Architects and urban planners were invited to think about approaches that could harmonize the standpoints on urban development and ecology. A number of starting points were formulated and signed by all parties involved and gave rise to the design of a district that should grow out to be the standard of reconciliation of ecology and urban planning, which would receive the name of Sandytown. A first condition was that it district should be carbon-neutral in terms of energy. Second, the natural surroundings would have to be protected, and open space and forest should be respected as much as possible. Third, the visual impact of houses had to be minimal, and as much as possible in line with nature. Fourth, the district should not become only affordable for rich people. Finally, the design of the district would be done by the continuous engagement of environmental organizations. Not all environmental organizations joined the process, while the Natural Conservation Foundation, the largest environmental NGO in the Netherlands, fully cooperated with the municipality of Clueburgh, Ecodefense did not want to participate in the process. But as Ecodefense was a much smaller organization than the Natural Conservation Foundation, Clueburgh was not much discomforted with this.


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The final design was one in which larger and smaller houses were blended in the natural environment. With that the aesthetic challenge was achieved. Other elements of the design however proved to be much harder to realize. In many respects, the conditions that had been set up in the beginning of the process appeared to be conflicting or led to profound questions. For instance, how would people get to their houses? Parking space would be regarded as visually obtrusive. Buses and trams were also not acceptable, and digging a tunnel would be too disruptive for nature. For the more expensive residences, underground garages could be constructed. However, for the cheaper residences a number of larger parking spaces that were found at the outskirts of the district were considered to be the most preferable option. Parking near the house was only for loading and unloading. It was expected that the people that wanted to live in such a natural environment would not mind walking a bit from their car to their house. Unfortunately, they did. Not just because people did not want to, however, many people, especially women, felt quite unsafe walking home, especially after dark. In 2018, rumours, that never have been substantiated, about a rapist in the district led to a common practice of residents parking their cars next to their houses. That meant that they destroyed the underground, so in the end, the municipality had to make paved parking spaces. The second big issue concerned the production of energy. Where to get the carbonneutral energy? The Netherlands has limited ways to produce renewable forms of energy, wind and solar power are basically the only viable options. The Clueburgh municipality pushed the wind energy option, which implied the construction of wind turbines. At that time, wind turbines were subject to quite some controversy. They were thought to spoil the landscape and they were claimed to kill many birds. Obviously, this meant that they could not be erected in the vicinity of Sandytown. The Natural Conservation Foundation was willing to have wind turbines elsewhere: a few kilometres to the west of Sandytown was a polder that was very suitable for having turbines, and it was thought that the visual appeal of that location was not negatively affected by these turbines. Ecodefense thought differently and went to court. It successfully appealed to the Supreme Court that Clueburgh contradicted its own appointments about the minimization of visual impact of the project. This meant that another source of carbon-neutral energy would have to be found. As the installation of PV-panels was also considered to have negative visual impact, the only solution that could be thought of was the import of green energy certificates from abroad. The problem of such import is that it is merely a paper transaction, the energy that is actually used is still fossil-based, but by buying certificates it is made sure that somewhere else green energy is sold. This practice of green energy certificates has become quite controversial, and as more recent research has shown, it does not contribute significantly to the reduction of the use of fossil fuels.


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These events led to negative media coverage, affecting the legitimacy of Sandytown as a project. It also led to a loss of credibility of the Natural Conservation Foundation. Many people thought that this organization had been compromised by participating in a project that was bound to fail from an environmental point of view. These people agreed with Ecodefense that of Sandytown is that a valuable natural area has been sacrificed for residential development. People living in Sandytown however are still very much satisfied with their neighbourhood. The environment and the architecture are found to be attractive. As an effect, the prices of houses have risen considerably. Even the residences that were meant to be affordable are now out of reach for most people.


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Imprint CLUE – Climate Neutral Urban Districts in Europe

www.clue-project.eu Lead partner:

City of Stockholm Authors:

Nils Brandt, Fiona Cambell, Mark Deakin, Stefan Johansson, Maria Malmström, Karel Mulder, Udo Pesch, Hossein Shahrokni, Olena Tatarchenko and Louise Årman

Supported and funded by:

European Union European Regional Development Fund

This project is funded by he European Regional Development Fund through the INTERREG IVC Programme.


European Union European Regional Development Fund

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