From the University of California – Berkeley
Suburban sprawl cancels carbon footprint savings of dense urban cores
Interactive maps of US metro areas shows striking differences between cities and suburbs
According to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, population-dense cities contribute less greenhouse gas emissions per person than other areas of the country, but these cities’ extensive suburbs essentially wipe out the climate benefits.
Dominated by emissions from cars, trucks and other forms of transportation, suburbs account for about 50 percent of all household emissions – largely carbon dioxide – in United States.
The study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T), uses local census, weather and other data – 37 variables in total – to approximate greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the energy, transportation, food, goods and services consumed by U.S. households, so-called household carbon footprints.
Interactive carbon footprint maps for more than 31,000 U.S. zip codes in all 50 states are available online at http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps.
“The goal of the project is to help cities better understand the primary drivers of household carbon footprints in each location,” said Daniel Kammen, Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor of Energy in the Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy, and director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory. “We hope cities will use this information to begin to create highly tailored, community-scale climate action plans.”
A key finding of the UC Berkeley study is that suburbs account for half of all household greenhouse gas emissions, even though they account for less than half the population. The average carbon footprint of households living in the center of large, population-dense urban cities is about 50 percent below average, while households in distant suburbs are up to twice the average: a factor of four difference between lowest and highest locations.
“Metropolitan areas look like carbon footprint hurricanes, with dark green, low-carbon urban cores surrounded by red, high-carbon suburbs,” said Christopher Jones, a doctoral student working with Kammen in the Energy and Resources Group. “Unfortunately, while the most populous metropolitan areas tend to have the lowest carbon footprint centers, they also tend to have the most extensive high carbon footprint suburbs.”
Taking into account the impact of all urban and suburban residents, large metropolitan areas have a slightly higher average carbon footprint than smaller metro areas.
Developing sustainable cities
“A number of cities nationwide have developed exceptionally interesting and thoughtful sustainability plans, many of them very innovative,” Kammen said. “The challenge, however, is to reduce overall emissions. Chris and I wanted to determine analytically and present in a visually striking way the impacts and interactions of our energy, transportation, land use, shopping, and other choices. Cities are not islands: they exist in a complex landscape that we need to understand better both theoretically and empirically.”
The UC Berkeley researchers found that the primary drivers of carbon footprints are household income, vehicle ownership and home size, all of which are considerably higher in suburbs. Other important factors include population density, the carbon-intensity of electricity production, energy prices and weather.
“Cities need information on which actions have the highest potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their communities,” explained Kammen. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution.”
Efforts to increase population density, for example, appear not to be a very effective strategy locally for reducing emissions. A 10-fold increase in population density in central cities yields only a 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
“That would require a really extraordinary transformation for very little benefit, and high carbon suburbanization would result as a side effect,” Jones said.
Increasing population density in suburbs appears to be an even a worse strategy, he said. Surprisingly, population dense suburbs have significantly higher carbon footprints than less dense suburbs.
“Population dense suburbs also tend to create their own suburbs, which is bad news for the climate,” explains Jones.
So if building more population-dense cities is not a viable solution for city planners, what is? The project website includes a tool that calculates carbon footprints for essentially every populated U.S. zip code, city, county and U.S. state (31,531 zip codes, 10,093 cities and towns, 3,124 counties, 276 metropolitan regions and 50 states) as well as an interactive online map allowing users to zoom in and out of different locations. Households and cities can calculate their own carbon footprints to see how they compare to their neighbors and create customized climate action plan from over 40 mitigation options.
In some locations, motor vehicles are the largest source of emissions, while in other locations it might be electricity, food, or goods and services. California, for example, has relatively low emissions associated with household electricity, but large emissions from transportation. The opposite is true in parts of the Midwest, where electricity is produced largely from coal.
Tailored emission lowering strategies
The real opportunity, say the authors, is tailoring climate solutions to demographically similar populations within locations.
“Suburbs are excellent candidates for a combination of solar photovoltaic systems, electric vehicles and energy-efficient technologies,” said Kammen. “When you package low carbon technologies together you find real financial savings and big social and environmental benefits.”
The authors argue that cities need to step out of traditional roles in planning urban infrastructure and learn how to better understand the needs of residents in order to craft policies and programs that enable the adoption of energy and carbon-efficient technologies and practices.
One example of this is the CoolCalifornia Challenge, a statewide carbon footprint reduction competition to name the “Coolest California City.” The program, run by Jones and Kammen and sponsored by the California Air Resources Board and Energy Upgrade California, will be accepting applications for new cities in February. Each city creates their own, targeted strategies to reduce barriers and increase motivation to engage residents in climate action.
“People need to act within their own spheres of influence, where they feel they can make the most difference,” Jones said. “We hope the information provided in these tools will help individuals, organization and cities understand what makes the most impact locally and to enable more tailored climate strategies.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the California Air Resources Board.
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M Courtney says:
January 7, 2014 at 2:00 am
Each city creates their own, targeted strategies to reduce barriers and increase motivation to engage residents in climate action.
Fair enough…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually it is not fair because the inhabitants of the cities are not independently making plans they have UN directed ICLEI representatives doing the planing and then orchestrating the acceptance via the Delphi Technique
See: Transit Villages and a very good video of a presentation by a California bureaucrat.
These are actual video of town meeting where the residents knew what was going on:
Near Riot at Delphi Meeting–Part 1
Near Riot at a Delphi Meeting–Part 2
Near Riot at a Delphi Meeting–Part 3
and there are more.
I first came across the Delphi Technique several years ago when the USDA tried to use it to drive a ‘Concensus’ among farmers and ranchers. The concensus wanted was that “Farmers want a tracking system to cover all livestock”
2009 USDA employing Delphi Technique: Prepare to be Delphi’d!
Please note, even though consensus was shot down 99% HE!! NO!, even though the new reg in the Federal Register got resoundingly shot down, the tracking system got implemented anyway.
Ain’t government by the people great?
They’ve got it 180° out of sync. CO2 is the gas of life. Up to around 1200 ppm we should be working to increase the atmospheric concentration. We should be celebrating a big CO2 footprint. (does that make Al Gore a real hero?).
Kids today want to live in high density areas where the bodega, laudromat, BART station, etc. are all in an easy walk. None of that is possible without the suburbs and rural areas. The allegedly low carbon footprint shown is based on a study desigend to support what is considered cool today: living in neo-villages of high density, easy foot traffic, etc. What is not shown is where the energy, consumables, tax revenue, water, and infrastructure suport all come from. For a truly low carbon footprint, look at Detroit or N Korea.
The architect Solieri tried to sell mega structures and ultra dense populations back in the 1960’s. They are niche products, fun for a limited number of people.
It is the CO2 obsession that makes this sort of study laughable: Allowing CO2 obsessed people to control anythign has proven to be bad everytime it is tried. Let’s not allow the climate kooks to ruin our living decisions like they are with power grids, science, food crops, and finance.
tty says:
January 7, 2014 at 2:25 am
“500,000 litres of fuel in one station.”
That is less than 1,400 litres per day for all purposes. Electricity, Vehicles, Boats, Aircraft and heating (and it’s cold in the Antarctic). I don’t know whether they have wind power at Casey (Mawson station has), but this part of Antarctica is one of the very few places on Earth where windpower is fairly reliable since it is usually windy even when it is very cold.
And what is your point exactly?
Kit Blanke says:
January 7, 2014 at 2:14 am
Models and more models
to be used for “sustainability” implementations.
I expect this to be quoted by members of the legislature in Sacramento as proof that we must not use our cars and must live in small apartments. “Bullet Train” anyone
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The plans are already underway:
Just from my book marks.
L.A. Weekly: L.A. County’s Private Property War
Now think of all the retirees in the homes they bought thirty years ago and have finally paid off, their retirement savings that have lost a tremendous amount of value especially recently and the high cost of renovation.
Wall Street Journal: California Declares War on Suburbia: …governments are adopting plans that would require most new housing to be built at 20 or more to the acre I have been to one of these new subdivisions. The front lawn is a grass strip about 3 ft wide with no room for a garden, you can barely walk between the buildings, there is no garages or off street parking and the streets are so narrow, there is barely room for two small cars to park and a third to carefully thread its way through. Worse the houses are in the quarter to a half million range or more!
The apartments are even worse.
The ‘micro-unit’ mini-apartment building is coming to New York City
200 Square Feet and Room to Swivel
5 Super-Efficient Tiny New York Apartments: …For a couple living in a 460 square foot apartment … even for some, 400 square feet is a luxury. Take Zach Motl‘s 178 square foot…
San Francisco considers allowing nation’s tiniest micro-apartments (NYC already beat them to it.)
Boston’s Wharf Tower is a “project will help turn this neighborhood into a vibrant, 24-hour mixed-use community.”
Mini-Prisons & Micro-Apartments Built Across America in the Name of Sustainability Susanne Posel is a globally syndicated independent journalist and radio host from Portland, Oregon. link
You have to admit the efficiency of the Agenda 21 plan.
Instead of creating so much CO2 moving people into
concentrationre-education camps, draw people into the core cities with the lower CO2 footprint. THEN wrap barbed wire and cement wall around the core.The Soviets+East Germans surrounded West Berlin overnight, Aug 13, 1961 and were tearing up streets and laying the concrete of the first wall by the end of the weekend.
Hmmm. Maybe it should be called “Agenda ’61”
“Increase population density…” Thanks but no thanks. My suburb is dense enough. How do they plan to increase density, removing parks and putting in more multifamily housing? No thanks.
JJ says: @ur momisugly January 7, 2014 at 6:46 am
Y’all need to pay attention to this part:
They have identified the “problems” in need of “fixing.”
There has never been a more concise statement of the true focus of the ‘global warming’ campaign.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well yes there was. The statement by Maurice Strong as Chair of the Kyoto gabfest.
That industrialized countries have:
And earlier the statement written by Obama’s Science Czar John Holdern and his co-authors Anne Ehrlich, and Paul Ehrlich.
And again two years later
That such a man is high up in the US government is truly frightening. What is more frightening is the apathy, the acceptance, even the desire to be reduced to third world poverty by the general population.
The next step will be the banning of suburbs.
Steve from Rockwood says: @ur momisugly January 7, 2014 at 6:47 am
…3. Effect of using newspaper for newspapers in a digital world….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Now Steve, newspaper is so useful for wrapping fish, lining bird cages, lining bottoms of the crates that my baby goats deposit bupkis on, that puppies learn to pee and potty on instead of the kitchen floor….
Why would you want to deprive us of such a useful resource?
Pet peeve: Considering the terms “CO2 Emissions reduction” and “Sustainability” to be “Synonymous”. Same goes for “Carbon Emissions” and “CO2”, and for “CO2 Emissions” and “Pollution”.
And there are other facts concerning the impacts of California’s high-density centralized planning that the planners would rather you didn’t know.
See this article by Randal O’Toole over at the Cato Institute for the details.
California Thinks Your Time Is Worthless
California’s S.B. 375 mandates that cities increase the population densities of targeted neighborhoods because everyone knows that people drive less in higher densities and transit-oriented developments relieve congestion. One problem, however, is that transportation models reveal that increased densities actually increase congestion, as measured by “level of service,” which measures traffic as a percent of a roadway’s capacity and which in turn can be used to estimate the hours of delay people suffer.
The California legislature has come up with a solution: S.B. 743, which exempts cities from having to calculate and disclose levels of service in their environmental impact reports for densification projects. Instead, the law requires planners to come up with alternative measures of the impacts of densification….
-Chip Knappenberger
How long can the sensible people of the USA put up with this socialist agenda?
The USA needs is rapidly becoming a socialist/marxist state under Obama-et-al.
What is needed is a Democracy/Freedom Spring in the USA [or a rebellion].
The Rose Bowl is a terribly awful event. A nice green field surrounded by concrete and being maintained by a few people produces a small carbon footprint. On game day that carbon footprint increases by about 100,000 times.
You must enjoy the humor in such studies.
Another stilted study to validate a liberal false assumption. This is merely an attempt to divert attention from earlier studies that demonstrate suburban living is LESS carbon intensive than high density city living. Pols and Stats are the two biggest liars and here we have yet another example of a liberal agenda masquerading as scientific observation of the data. Population density being the prime mover of energy consumption and more importantly, waste. The more dense the population, the more energy that must be wasted to idle electrical equipment during non peak periods ready at a moment’s notice to move even a single person. An example of this would be mass transit, who’s passenger mile energy efficiency drops drastically in NON peak hours, whereas in the suburban environment individual vehicle use, there is no energy waste because it isn’t being idled waiting to be used, it is shut OFF. This goes for heating and cooling as well in city commercial and apartment buildings, they are in idle in off hours – using energy, where as suburban dwelling’s energy usage is turned OFF until the thermostat calls for the equipment to come on, achieve setpoint and then turn OFF. The assumption of energy usage is completely different for suburban versus city energy usages.
The idea that packing people like sardines to save energy is a childish oversimplification that liberals use to make absurd assumptions to be used in computer models. Always check the unstated assumptions, the chief fallacy of liberal assumptions is that there aren’t any non peak periods of utilization and second related fallacy, periods of non peak use, when acknowledged, are proportional in efficiency utilization rates, therefore waste is minimized. Waste as a general rule is increased not decreased when groups of people get bigger.
As several previous posters have mentioned this is yet another move toward implementation of Agenda 21. ‘Management of Human Settlements’ is the fourth of the Seven central themes of Agenda 21. The next year will see the feverish implementation of Agenda 21 in Europe and the United States as its proponents appear to be aware that they may be ‘just missing the wave’ as the world is not warming and the sheeple are starting to notice.
Agenda 21 is about 5 tiers up the house of cards the bottom level of which is CO2 driven Global warming. Yet the atmosphere is not warming even the IPCC has admitted that there has been no warming for more than 15 years. Therefore, the bottom layer of their house of cards has collapsed. Arguing about the way they are putting the top layer together is nugtory and only gives credence to their false claims of CO2 warming. Therefore, a study like this one should be met with the statement that CO2 has no measurable effect on the Earth’s climate but it does improve the growth of food crops and plants, so their base assumption for study is flawed and therefore it is meanngless.
Do not get drawn into arguments about the top layer of cards, as the house of cards is falling.
Ian W says:
January 7, 2014 at 9:57 am
“Do not get drawn into arguments about the top layer of cards, as the house of cards is falling.”
That is the biggest mistake we can make.
We are already screwed by all the existing legislation in place.
If we don’t actively kill this scam and role back the legal consequences of all the precautionary measures now in place we’re all riding bicycles with no where to go.
We have to “clean up” the system.
It’s them or us.
What did they measure? In San Francisco the majority drive to work and many reverse commute.
Ian W says:
January 7, 2014 at 9:57 am
“Do not get drawn into arguments about the top layer of cards, as the house of cards is falling.”
Disagree. They don’t work with logic; they work with nonstop brainwashing and history rewriting (GISS cooling the past, for instance). They also work on replacement McGuffins for the day CO2AGW drops.
Exactly, Don E and George. What did they assume in order to rig their conclusions in line with their political desires? What did they measure? This is Berkeley, after all.
Back in the early 1980s there was a study of Los Angeles commuting that concluded that the vast majority of people planned things to limit their commutes to about 20 minutes. They were not commuting between central city and sub-urbs, as the central planners assumed, but between sub-urban locations.
This also vindicates my uneasiness in preparing a GIS feasibility study for an electric company, that they would inevitably be abused by power-mad people, just as power-mad people had done with maps over 500 years ago. Perhaps, this is why the power-mad set is so eager for “intelligent transportation systems” and black-boxes in “private” vehicles — privately owned, used to travel in privacy, rather than controlled by government, to provide information for power-mad bureaubums.
Good thing there is absolutely no reason to reduce carbon footprints. Increase them maybe, to increase plant growth, and the greenhouse warming effect of CO2 does get stronger as the world cools (less redundant with water vapor, which gets squeezed from the atmosphere), so that is a benefit, since that is the direction we are headed. But reduce carbon? Only the sheerest idiot would want to do that.
I always enjoy comments by Alec Rawls:
“But reduce carbon? Only the sheerest idiot would want to do that.”
That is a Truth that is not mentioned nearly often enough. Our planet is now at the very lowest point of atmospheric CO2. More is better. Much more is much better.
Nice CO2 graphic Dave. More detailed than others that are available. Do you know who compiled it? I did an image search and couldn’t find any provenance.
This is tailor made for the left’s overall viewpoint and strategy and dates all the way back before the golden goose of global warming was even a mere twinkle in its father’s eye.
The left hates the suburbs.
They genuinely believe that the suburbs were initiated through racism. They believe that the problems, and concentrations of poverty, in the cities were caused by “white flight” to the suburbs. They believe that the Progressive experiment in Detroit probably would have worked, instead of producing the utter disaster that it did, if white flight to the surrounding areas had not occurred.
They want to continue their experiment. The NSF has received a chunk of change from the $800,000,000,000 stimulus. It’s no secret that the Obama Administration used stimulus funds to quietly pursue their agenda. Otherwise, why would monies intended to revive a moribund economy have gone to organizations such as the NSF in the first place? (And, you can verify that by checking out their very own website.)
The foregoing study, funded by the NSF, is just one more tool. The Obama Administration intends to use every agency of the federal government that it can, and most particularly the EPA and HUD, to force us out of our suburbs and back into high density housing in the city cores: zoning restrictions, discrimination lawsuits, FHA home mortgage rules, HUD grants, EPA land use and energy diktats. The list is endless and the mechanisms are being put in place.
They want to tell you where to live.
Owen in Ga says: “Humans are only able to handle so many interactions before they need some alone time” Don’t give any more crazy ideas. their interpretation of alone time maybe somewhat different than yours and mine.
And to those that pointed out the “21 UN plan” for awhile I thought that was crazy but the more I read and now see some of the things that are happening I am starting to believe it more and more. The sustainability crowd that invaded our area are now so entrenched you could not get them out There is not a day they don’t infiltrate the media and the local institution such as our schools and “community” services and institutions it is frightening to see. Letters to editors don’t get published and the herd mentality is becoming stifling. The social services networks in many countries are not that anymore they have become social establishments and will never go away again. FI, you are now frowned upon if you don’t donate to food banks or join “community clean up days or something like that etc etc. Where and when I grew up every-one keep their houses spiffy and that included the street in front and if the neighbor was away you did his but nowadays you would have a union rep on your door step stating “your taking the food out of union members mouths”! The solution the Berkeley people have smell of FEMA camps and plan 21 to me..