The climate effects of urbanization and urbanized economy have received increasing concerns in recent decades ( Georgeson et al., 2016 Sun et al., 2016). Greater and sustainable efforts are still needed worldwide to address climate change. Although there is an ~66% possibility of achieving the goal of limiting global temperature increase to below 2☌ when green recovery is prioritized by international communities, the relevant efforts are insufficient to achieve the 1.5☌ targets ( UNEP, 2020). According to Emission Gap Report 2020, the world is still heading for a temperature rise in excess of 3☌ by the end of the twenty-first century.
However, there is still a significant gap in achieving these climate targets. Under this agreement, many global regions have proposed specific targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation and stricter environmental polices ( Liobikiene and Butkus, 2017 Sobrinho et al., 2020 Zhou et al., 2021). The aim of this agreement is to constrain global warming to levels well below 2☌ or even 1.5☌ compared with pre-industrial levels ( UNFCCC, 2015 Rogelj et al., 2019). The Paris Agreement was adopted by more than 170 countries in 2015. More ambitious and easily-tracked climate targets should be proposed by cities and more effective measures of reducing GHG emissions are required to stay consistent with the global ambition of climate change mitigation. However, cities in more developed nations have been inclined to set absolute carbon reduction targets before 2050, while intensity reduction target has been largely set for cities at the stage of rapid economic growth and accelerated industrialization. In terms of sectors, the GHG emissions from the stationary energy uses (such as residential, commercial, and industrial buildings) and transportation sector contributed the most. We found that, although Asian cities are the biggest carbon emitters in totals, the per capita GHG emissions of cities in developed countries are still generally higher than that in developing countries. On this basis, we propose mitigation strategies to achieve local and global climate targets. To identify the effectiveness of historical carbon reduction policies, our study conducted energy-related GHG emission inventories for 167 globally distributed cities with information from different sectors, and assessed the city-scale near-term, mid-term, and long-term goals carbon mitigation targets from 2020 to 2050. Accurate and consistent carbon inventories are essential for identifying the main sources of emissions and global comparison of carbon reduction progress and would help inform targeted policies for low-carbon transition.
2Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Environmental Pollution Control and Remediation Technology, Guangzhou, ChinaĪctions in cities shape the outcome of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission mitigation and our climate change response.1School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.Ting Wei 1 † Junliang Wu 1 † Shaoqing Chen 1,2 *
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