| Zusammenfassung |
Abstract
Substantive and concerted action is needed to mitigate climate change. However, international negotiations
struggle to adopt ambitious legislation and to anticipate more climate-friendly developments. Thus, stronger
actions are needed fromother players. Cities, being greenhouse gasemission centers, play a key role in promoting
the climate change mitigation movement by becoming hubs for smart and low-carbon lifestyles. In this context,
a stronger linkage between greenhouse gas emissions and urban development and policy-making seems
promising. Therefore, simple approaches are needed to objectively identify crucial emission drivers for deriving
appropriate emission reduction strategies. In analyzing 44 European cities, the authors investigate possible
socioeconomic and spatial determinants of urban greenhouse gas emissions. Multiple statistical analyses reveal
that the average household size and the edge density of discontinuous dense urban fabric explain up to 86% of
the total variance of greenhouse gas emissions of EU cities (when controlled for varying electricity carbon
intensities). Finally, based on these findings, a multiple regression model is presented to determine greenhouse
gas emissions. It is independently evaluated with ten further EU cities. The reliance on only two indicators shows
that the model can be easily applied in addressing important greenhouse gas emission sources of European
urbanites, when varying power generations are considered. This knowledge can help cities develop adequate
climate change mitigation strategies and promote respective policies on the EU or the regional level. The results
can further be used to derive first estimates of urban greenhouse gas emissions, if no other analyses are available. |
