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At the beginning of each year I invested in a sustainability topic that reminds me of the progress that we have made on global issues, and offers a certain confidence in the progress that we will make for the New Year's Eve. Last year I focused on promising developments in the rail industry. This year I watch Net-Zero cities.
The movement falls under a handful of different initiatives and names, including no carbon cities and carbon -free cities, and refers to the frequently worked together efforts to decarbonize the urban areas of the world. Cities of all sizes use various common methods to create individual plans that are tailored to their needs.
Although some major cities wanted to reach Net Zero this year, most of them are now planning this between 2030 and 2050. Here are some who are worth seeing.
Reach 100 percent renewable energies
Chicago made headlines at the beginning of this month because he had reached one goal in 2017: all buildings in city ownership with renewable energies until 2025. From the first day of the year, from the international airports O'Hare and Midway until the first day of the year to Firefighters, up to fire stations, water treatment plants and public libraries, receive 100 percent of their power from renewable energies.
Most of the electricity comes from a new 593 megawatt-low arm south of the city. The rest is delivered by the purchase of renewable energy edits. These certificates represent the environmental advantages of the generation of renewable energies and are sold separately from the electricity to help companies reach their sustainability goals.
The city's electricity purchase contract with the local solar arm gives the network more renewable power than most similar contracts in the United States – only to Houston, reports Grist. However, Chicago hopes that his demand will continue to develop the development of local Clean Energy in order to replace the purchase of credits for renewable energies.
The city expects this milestone to reduce its annual carbon emissions by 290,000 tons. This is comparable to 62,000 cars off the street. It is all part of a larger plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 62 percent by 2040 and to obtain the entire stream in the city from renewable energies by 2035.
It is not new to reach 100 percent renewable energies. Aspen, Colorado, adopted a plan for the first time in 2004 and reached his destination a year in early 2014. The almost 2.7 million inhabitants of Chicago in dwarfs of Aspen 6,600. It is one of the largest US cities that take on the challenge.
The street to fossil fuels -free streets
While they are working on electrifying municipal fleets, improving public transport and increasing accessibility, the cities also try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on public roads. London raised both support and protests when his ultra low emission zone was announced in 2019, as well as many other European cities.
The zone is an overload price guideline to improve air quality throughout the city by required to pay highly enemy vehicles to pay a daily fee of 12.50 GBP that drive around $ 15.50 in selected areas. After the guideline had been issued, the percentage of vehicles in the city, which met the emission standards on an average day, rose to 96 percent and prompted the officials to expand the zone in 2023 throughout London.
The ultra low emission zone has contributed to the fact that the harmful nitrogen dioxide emissions in the city center are reduced by 53 percent and 21 percent in external quarter. Recently, the researchers have followed another advantage: more children go, cycle or use public transport to get to school than go in front of the zone. Of the children of Central London surveyed, 42 percent made the change from taking a car. Although the students were not asked why they made the change and supplementary changes such as safer cycle paths probably also play a role, this is a promising development for public and ecological health.
Over 300 low emission zones have already taken place in European cities, and according to the research results of the Advocacy Organization Transport and Environment, over 500 further work is in the works. The trend extends across Europe of cities such as Los Angeles, Cape Town, Mexico City, Tokyo and Vancouver. Since cities like New York are trying to implement fees for driving in overloaded areas to improve air capital and the financing of public transport-a policy that London has successfully implemented since 2003, I would not be surprised that more important names in the direction of low recording zones Become this year.
Cleaner construction
Over half of the people on the planet live in cities, and this number is expected to reach two thirds by 2050. When the cities grow, they build and the built environment is responsible for almost 40 percent of global carbon emissions. For a net zero-focused city like Norway's Oslo, which is also one of the fastest growing cities in Europe, the elimination of greenhouse gas emissions from local construction is crucial.
After he had already established himself as a city to observe public transport efforts and the bold emission mining goals, Oslo joined an initiative from C40 cities in 2023 that focused on making the construction industry more sustainable. C40 is a coalition of mayors who work together to shorten the emissions of their cities in half.
The Norwegian city began promoting emission -free construction machinery in 2019. Since the city government is a fifth of the local market construction contracts according to value, the industry -wide change occurred relatively quickly from there. According to C40, 77 percent of the building sets in Oslo are now emission -free. A current multi-purpose renovation project for multi-purpose buildings, for example, will probably only produce 17 tons of carbon thanks to zero emission devices. This is compared to almost 250 tons with conventional equipment.
From this year, no equipment is required for all public projects in Oslo to issue tasks.
London is also part of the C40 Construction Initiative and has recently implemented a new low-emission zone on construction sites. The non-road mobile machines with a low emission zone referred to and requires that building points only have zero emission machines by 2040.
Of course, the net-zero city movement is not perfect. It is not particularly organized. The pursuit and comparison of the progress between cities is difficult. There are no defined standards if a city can be declared carbon -free. And some methods for achieving this target and carbon offset, loans for renewable energies and zones with a low recording-sind.
Nevertheless, the movement shows how a single city with global effects can lead to local changes, as can several cities can bring together. It is a memory that global cooperation and progress are received in many different forms.