Each effort to integrate a city’s historically separated land-use, building, power, transportation, waste and food, and forestry systems typically requires a wide range of specialized innovations. For example, the introduction and scaling up of rooftop solar power systems on residential and commercial buildings has required technological and business service innovations, such as solar and storage product offerings. However, it also typically and crucially involves the deregulation of central power grids to permit feed-in from small generators, in addition to the establishment of special feed-in tariffs and economic incentives, the design and establishment of mini- and microgrids, retrofits in buildings’ power conversion systems and training of households on the management and maintenance of their systems. Similarly, the system- wide reduction of carbon intensity in urban transportation systems eventually requires the full integration of transportation planning and development with land-use planning, development and building design, as well as transportation behaviours, to fundamentally reduce the demand for fossil fuel-powered mobility.


Ultimately, systemic change in a city’s energy metabolism needs to involve a series of systemic change initiatives if dramatic reductions are to be achieved in the demand for additional energy inputs to meet future human and economic needs. For example, a systemic transformation of urban transportation involves more than the electrification of vehicles, the increased use of transit services or cycling. It also requires a shift in the need for mobility to provide access to parts of the city, in addition to changes in the energy sources needed to power the different modes of transportation.


Creating new systems and enabling policy and regulatory environments that can eventually replace legacy systems often requires coordinated innovations and interventions at all levels of government and across the public and private sectors (C40 Cities and Arup 2017), as the Beijing (China) case study shows (Box 5.4).


Urban decarbonization needs to address a wide range of carbon emission drivers, which extend far beyond the


Box 5.4: Case study – Integrating decarbonization into the growth agenda of a fast-growing city (Beijing, China)


The Beijing case study illustrates how the decarbonization of urban regions generally requires a scaled, system-wide transformation of power systems that includes the region’s development, the decarbonization of national and regional power grids, a reduction in the energy intensity of key metropolitan industry sectors and significant innovation in the regional building industry. In this case, top-down decision-making aligned city-level climate and environmental targets with national targets (such as carbon neutrality) and the performance evaluation system for government officials to achieve the targets set in the city’s five-year plans.


Beijing’s achievements are also notable for the way in which decarbonization has been integrated into its regional growth strategy. For example, in terms of gross domestic product, the city’s carbon intensity declined by 23 per cent from 2015 to 2020, exceeding the mitigation target of an 18 per cent reduction included in its 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020). In its upcoming 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025), Beijing aims to peak its carbon emissions before 2025, with a continuous reduction in emissions thereafter (The Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China 2021).


Beijing’s achievements – and further efforts within the context of the city’s 13th and 14th Five-Year Plans – have mainly focused on five lines of work: 1. Decarbonization of the energy fuel mix and end-use by: a) managing the city’s growth in energy end-use within an overall limit of 10 per cent between 2015 and 2020; b) shutting down all coal-fired power plants and continuing to implement the coal to clean energy policy (The Municipal Government of Beijing 2017) through an initial conversion to natural gas; and c) subsidizing the development of renewable energy sources for all sectors, importing green power from other provinces and promoting the establishment of a cross-province green power trading market.


2. A phase-out of traditional industry within the industrial sector, which are being replaced with lower carbon industry, and carbon-intensity reductions within the traditional manufacturing sector. Specific industrial development areas include clean energy vehicles, cloud computing, big data, 5G, next-generation health care, and aviation and satellite applications. In 2013, Beijing launched one of the first carbon emission trading markets in China, which includes eight energy-intensive industries such as power generation, heating and aviation. In 2020, 4.7 million tons of emissions were traded.


3. A reduction of the region’s traffic congestion (The Municipal Government of Beijing 2016) through further development and promotion of public transportation and the construction of a large network of electric vehicle charging infrastructure to reduce the average service radius to 5 km (The Municipal Government of Beijing 2019).


4. The entry into force of new mandatory waste sorting regulations in 2020, which aim to reduce methane and carbon emissions in the waste management sector through increasing the reuse and recycling of solid waste (Standing Committee of Beijing Municipal People’s Congress 2019).


5. Partnerships with its neighbouring city, Tianjin (China’s fourth largest city), to accelerate coordinated greenhouse gas emissions reductions and quality improvements in the previous action areas, and with Hebei Province to coordinate decarbonization efforts across the larger urbanized region.


106 GEO for Cities


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