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The Summary for Urban Policymakers (SUP) initiative provides a distillation of the IPCC reports into accessible and targeted summaries that can help inform action at city and regional scales. Volume I in the series, What the Latest Physical Science of Climate Change Means for Cities, identified the ways in which human-induced climate change is affecting every region of the world, and the cities and urban areas therein. Volume II, Climate Change in Cities and Urban Areas: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, assessed the feasibility and effectiveness of different adaptation options. To achieve climate resilient development, synergies between policies and actions for climate change adaptation, mitigation and other development goals are needed. This third volume in the series, What the Latest Science on Climate Change Mitigation Means For Cities and Urban Areas offers a concise and accessible distillation of the IPCC Working Group III Report for urban policymakers. The 21st century is characterized by a rapidly growing urban population, urban land expansion and associated rise in demand for resources, infrastructure and services. These trends are expected to drive the growth in emissions from urban consumption and production through 2100, although the rate of urban emissions growth will depend on the type of urbanisation and the speed and scale of mitigation action implemented. Aggressive and ambitious policies for transition towards net zero greenhouse gas emissions can be implemented in cities and urban areas, while contributing to sustainable development. Ultimately, mitigation action and adaptation are interdependent processes, and pursuing these actions together can promote sustainable development.

The Summary for Urban Policymakers (SUP) initiative provides a distillation of the IPCC reports into accessible and targeted summaries that can help inform action at city and regional scales. This is a collection of the three volumes of the SUP series combined together.

Endowed with over 40,000 MW of economic hydropower potential relative to its nascent domestic demand, Nepal can export electricity to its power-deficit neighbours in the BBIN (Bhutan, Bangladesh, I...

Addressing consumption-based CO2 emissions, often called CO2 requirements, of households is key for developing a low carbon society. In this study, we analyzed the factors influencing these consumption-based CO2 emissions of households in Thailand. Household survey data, economic input-output tables, and panel data regression analyses for the years 1995–2010 were used to investigate the effects of socio-economic and demographic factors on energy and CO2 requirements of households in Thailand. The empirical results showed that socio-economic and demographic factors influenced the changes in energy and CO2 requirements. Temperature is the most significant factor influencing energy and CO2 requirements (a 1 °C increase in temperature resulted in a 200% increase in energy and CO2 requirements). Education is a key driving factor which positively influenced direct energy and CO2 requirements but negatively influenced the indirect energy and CO2 requirements. Our results provide important information for decision makers on how socio-economic and demographic factors influence consumption-based CO2 emissions of households in Thailand. Since most household-related energy policies in Thailand are voluntary in nature, the awareness, education and behavioral aspects need to be thought through more carefully when designing efficient policies towards low energy and low carbon society.

Comprehensive and accurate city-level carbon dioxide emissions inventory is key to success in China’s pursuit of low-carbon development. Based on a high-resolution gridded data, this paper evaluates and benchmarks the carbon emissions efficiency of 280 Chinese cities using three different methods, i.e., composite index, data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis. The comparative analysis reveals that the average carbon emissions efficiency of Chinese cities is about 70–90%, with only 9 efficient cities (3%). Although the ranking of intermediate cities varies greatly according to the method employed, the most and least carbon-efficient cities remain consistent. While the best-performing cities are found in the coastal regions, the worst-performing cities are located in the central and western regions, which suggests an imbalanced low-carbon development in China. Guided by the results, local governments are encouraged to compete and learn from similar ranking benchmarks in a new regime of “Top Runner City”. Finally, the scores of carbon emissions efficiency can provide a scientific basis for the bottom-up allocation of carbon emissions rights to boost the development of the nationwide carbon market in China.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted social, economic, and environmental systems worldwide, slowing down and reversing the progress made in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDGs belong to the 2030 Agenda to transform our world by tackling humankind's challenges to ensure well-being, economic prosperity, and environmental protection. We explore the potential impacts of the pandemic on SDGs for Nepal. We followed a knowledge co-creation process with experts from various professional backgrounds, involving five steps: online survey, online workshop, assessment of expert's opinions, review and validation, and revision and synthesis. The pandemic has negatively impacted most SDGs in the short term. Particularly, the targets of SDG 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13 have and will continue to have weakly to moderately restricting impacts. However, a few targets of SDG 2, 3, 6, and 11 could also have weakly promoting impacts. The negative impacts have resulted from impeding factors linked to the pandemic. Many of the negative impacts may subside in the medium and long terms. The key five impeding factors are lockdowns, underemployment and unemployment, closure of institutions and facilities, diluted focus and funds for non-COVID-19-related issues, and anticipated reduction in support from development partners. The pandemic has also opened a window of opportunity for sustainable transformation, which is short-lived and narrow. These opportunities are lessons learned for planning and action, socio-economic recovery plan, use of information and communication technologies and the digital economy, reverse migration and “brain gain,” and local governments' exercising authorities. The current pandemic has impacts on social, economic, and environmental systems, including Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDGs consist of 17 interlinked goals that aim to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. We studied the pandemic's impacts on SDGs for Nepal by following a knowledge co-creation process. For this, we conducted online surveys and workshops with experts from various professional backgrounds and assessed expert's opinions articulated in the surveys and workshops. The experts reviewed and validated our assessment. Then, we revised and synthesized the assessment. Our study highlights that the pandemic has negatively impacted most SDGs, particularly the targets of SDG 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13. These negative impacts may subside in the medium and long terms. The key factors behind the negative impacts are: lockdowns, underemployment and unemployment, closure of facilities, diluted focus and funds for non-pandemic issues, and anticipated reduction in development support. The pandemic has also opened a short-lived and narrow window of opportunity for sustainable transformation. The transformative opportunities consist of lessons learned for planning and actions, socio-economic recovery plan, use of information and communication technologies and the digital economy, reverse migration and “brain gain,” and local governments' exercising authorities.

Mastering Energy Supply focusing on Isolated Areas (MESfIA) Erasmus+ Capacity Building project, aims to provide high quality postgraduate education on energy supply systems for engineers and graduates from science departments, aiming to have activity or to be employed in projects in countries with many isolated areas and insular systems. It is a transnational cooperation activity between Europe and SouthEast Asian Countries (namely in our case Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia) to improve capacity of Postgraduate Students in S.E. Asian Universities. Energy efficiency is among the items to be addressed in this training.

Thailand is the leader in biofuel, biodiesel and bioethanol production in South East Asia, using cassava, sugar cane and palm oil as feedstock. This study used econometric estimation to feed into a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model to analyze the impacts of biofuel policies on the economy of Thailand. We carried out several simulations on two set of issues (a) policy of increasing excise tax that consists of 12 scenarios such as increasing excise tax on oil products at a higher rate than biofuel products. The excise tax varies from 10 to 40% and (b) policy of increasing subsidy on biofuel consisting of four scenarios by subsidizing at 10–40% rate. The simulations indicate that increasing excise tax on oil products and biofuel products would increase Thailand’s gross domestic product, social welfare and total energy consumption. For subsidy on biofuel, increasing subsidy would not lead to significant increase in GDP, social welfare and energy factors. These results imply that government should carefully decide on a balance of excise tax and subsidy, but ensure that price of biofuel products cheaper than other oil products to attractive the biofuel consumption.

Meeting the ambitions of the Paris Agreement will require rapid and massive decarbonization of cities, as well as adaptation. Capacity and requirement differs across cities, with challenges and opportunities for transformational action in both the Global North and South.

Well-intended climate actions are confounding each other. Cities must take a strategic and integrated approach to lock into a climate-resilient and low-emission future.

This paper developed internationally compatible methods for delineating boundaries of urban areas in China. By integrating emission source data with existing official statistics as well as using rescaling methodology of data mapping for 1 km grid, the authors constructed high resolution emission gridded data in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (Jing-Jin-Ji) region in China for 2012. Comparisons between urban and non-urban areas of carbon emissions from industry, agriculture, household and transport exhibited regional disparities as well as sectoral differences. Except for the Hebei province, per capita total direct carbon emissions from urban extents in Beijing and Tianjin were both lower than provincial averages, indicating the climate benefit of urbanization, comparable to results from developed countries. Urban extents in the Hebei province were mainly industrial centers while those in Beijing and Tianjin were more service oriented. Further decomposition analysis revealed population to be a common major driver for increased carbon emissions but climate implications of urban design, economic productivity of land use, and carbon intensity of GDP were both cluster- and sector-specific. This study disapproves the one-size-fits-all solution for carbon mitigation but calls for down-scaled analysis of carbon emissions and formulation of localized carbon reduction strategies in the Jing-Jin-Ji as well as other regions in China.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission inventories and basic data sources for energy consumption in cities are important for the mitigation of carbon emissions and the development of low-carbon strategies. However, recent IPCC reports and other studies have highlighted significant data gaps in the place-based literature for cities’ carbon emissions and their drivers. In the last few years, literature related to cities’ carbon emissions in China has grown rapidly. This study reviews the literature on city-level carbon emissions in China and examines the emission estimates. A detailed literature search, a regression analysis, and an inductive analysis of city carbon emission data were conducted. Our findings showed that approximately 45% of prefecture-level cities have emission estimates with different levels. The CO2 emission data available for prefecture-level cities are scarce. The methodologies, sectoral coverage, and other aspects of the estimates are limited. The energy-related carbon emissions of the cities differ significantly across city typologies in China. The values of Intensity of Concern (IC) and Clustering Intensity (CI) are spatially aggregated, with the highest values in eastern China, middle values in the central area, and lowest values in western China. There are significant differences and gaps in the carbon emissions inventories and capabilities of low-carbon development in Chinese cities. A number of advanced cities could act as model cities for data collection, and reliable basic data sources could be provided for low-carbon development by perfecting the nation’s carbon emissions accounting system, the statistical system, and shared mechanisms.

Reduction of carbon emissions and climate-resilience in cities are becoming important objectives to be achieved in order to ensure sustainable urban development pathways. Traditionally, cities have treated climate mitigation and adaptation strategies in isolation, without addressing their potential synergies, conflicts or trade-offs. Recent studies have shown that this can lead to inefficiencies in urban planning, conflicting policy objectives and lost opportunities for synergistic actions. However, in the last few years, we have observed that cities are increasingly moving towards addressing both mitigation and adaptation in urban planning. Cities need to pay particular attention and understand the rationale of both policy objectives whilst considering the integration of the two policies in urban planning and decision-making. This study presents an analytical framework to evaluate the level of integration of climate mitigation and adaptation in cities’ local climate action plans. We tested this framework in nine selected major cities, representatives from all inhabited continents, which are frontrunners in climate action both in their regions and globally. We applied the framework in order to evaluate the level of mitigation and adaptation integration in cities’ CCAPs and further explored the different types of mitigation—adaptation interrelationships that have been considered. A scoring system was also devised in order to allow comparing and ranking of the different CCAPs for their level of integration of adaptation and mitigation. The paper draws good practices to support cities in developing climate change action plans in an integrated way.

This study is focused on two aspects of the urban heat island (UHI). Firstly, the study is aimed at examining the difference in temperature between zones that are classified into different built areas and other land cover types instead of using the urban and rural classification, which is prevalent in the existing literature. Secondly, we consider the heat-intensity-related physical structure of the city such as the sky view, building coverage, building height, surface albedo, and pervious and impervious surfaces, as well as non-physical factors such as anthropogenic heat, travel demand, electricity consumption, and air pollutant concentration. The local climate zone (LCZ) is used as an approach for characterizing the landscape and physical structure of the study areas. The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) is used as the case study and 2016 as the base year for examination. The LCZ is classified using Landsat data and the training areas are created using Google Earth and Google Street View. The heat intensity is studied by deriving the land surface temperature (LST) from the thermal band of the Landsat satellite images of March 3, April 4, and April 12, in 2016, which represent the summer season in Bangkok. The result shows that the industry building areas have the highest mean LST is 32.41 °C, while the lowest LST is 28.32 °C in areas of water bodies; the temperature difference was approximately 4 °C. The factors significantly influencing the warming in the BMA are pervious and impervious surfaces, the building coverage ratio, and the anthropogenic heat flux, while the sky view factor, vehicular traffic, and air pollutant concentration are the weak drivers of UHI.

This paper focuses on land use and land cover (LULC) expansion and local climate zone (LCZ) changes in relation to warming in the future, the study concentrates on three major parts. First, this research analyzes LULC and LCZ changes from 1991 to 2016 using Landsat satellite images data. This reveals the history of urban expansion over the study period, urban growth rate and urban land demand projection in the target year (2026). Second, the study determines LULC and LCZ changes in the future by using spatial logistic regression model. Third, the examination of urban expansion in relation to warming in the future was conducted. The result shows that the built-up area has more development and expansion to the northern, southern and western parts of Bangkok. The built-up surface temperature climbed and continued to increase between 1991 and 2016. The trend of temperature differences between the built-up areas and other areas, significantly widened in 2026. Most of green area on the western part of Bangkok was replaced by compact mid-rise, compact low-rise, and open low-rise building. The study means that the western part of the city will be warmer approximately 1 to 2 °C in the future.

In recent years, Thailand Government has made ambitious targets for biofuels and the demand for biofuels has increased. This study estimates the long-term factors that affect the supply and demand for biofuels (bioethanol and biodiesel) in Thailand by developing a theoretical model based on simultaneous equations, using Two stage least square and Three stage least square approaches. Quarterly data were collected for the years 2007–2013:2. Amongst many factors, we found three major factors affecting the long-term demand for biofuels: the price of biofuels, the real gross domestic product and the number of vehicles. On the other hand, the long-run supply of biodiesel and bioethanol was influenced by the gross domestic product, the cost of substitution using biofuel (i.e., price of gasoline 95 compared to blended gasoline) and the price of biodiesel. These findings have important policy implications to the government plans for biofuel development, suggesting that maintaining the price difference between gasoline and gasohol (blended gasoline) and a greater penetration of biofuel vehicles in fleet would be important policies for biofuel consumption. On biofuel supply side, results indicate that policies to compensate the biofuel producers for prices and reducing cost of bio-fuel production are important.

Studies on the implications of population density on energy consumption in small and medium-sized cities in low- and middle-income countries are limited. This paper estimates and analyses energy consumption, using a diverse set of methods, to compare two medium-sized cities in Thailand with similar urban forms and socioeconomic characteristics but different population densities – namely, the less dense city Chaiyaphum and denser city Roi Et. The results reveal that the annual household electricity consumption per capita of these two cities is similar, showing no implications of density. However, private transport energy consumption per capita in Chaiyaphum is 22 per cent higher, supporting the hypothesis that a less dense city will have higher transport energy consumption. The key factor identified is the greater distance travelled by households located in the peri-urban areas in the less dense city. This has important policy implications for urban planning and urban development practices in Thailand.

Thailand is Southeast Asia's largest promoter of biofuels. Although, Thailand promotes the use of biofuels, it has yet to achieve its policy targets. This paper focuses on the first generation biofuel development in Thailand and examines the perceptions of seven stakeholder groups to guide further policy development. These stakeholders were feedstock producers, biofuel producers, government agencies, car manufacturers, oil companies, non-profit organizations and end users. It combines a Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) framework with an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) framework and a TOWS Matrix for analysis of stakeholder's perceptions to propose priorities for policy development. Five policies were of high priority for development of biofuel. These are: (1) promoting biofuel production and use in long term through government policies, (2) revising government regulations to allow sale of biofuel products to other domestic industries while keeping retail prices of blended biofuels below those of regular ethanol and biodiesel, (3) improving farm management and promoting contract farming, (4) expanding cultivation area and yield without affecting food production and environmental sustainability, and (5) balancing biofuel feedstock use between the food and energy industries.

As mentioned in earlier chapters, the HKH regions form the entirety of some countries, a major part of other countries, and a small percentage of yet others. Because of this, when we speak about meeting the energy needs of the HKH region we need to be clear that we are not necessarily talking about the countries that host the HKH, but the clearly delineated mountainous regions that form the HKH within these countries. It then immediately becomes clear that energy provisioning has to be done in a mountain context characterized by low densities of population, low incomes, dispersed populations, grossly underdeveloped markets, low capabilities, and poor economies of scale. In other words, the energy policies and strategies for the HKH region have to be specific to these mountain contexts.

Climate actions are centered on either mitigation or adaptation or both. Mitigation and adaptation actions can interact with each other resulting in synergies or tradeoffs. An integrated approach that considers these interactions is important to harness the synergies to create win-win situations and to avoid trade-offs for no-regret decisions. In this context, this study presents a qualitative analysis of the existing national level climate policies of Nepal to identify the extent and mechanism of their mitigation-adaptation interactions based on expert survey. Four key sectors having inter-relationships between mitigation and adaptation were identified as Agriculture, Forestry and Land use (AFOLU), urban planning, energy and water. We used Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) to rank and prioritize the opportunities and barriers for harnessing synergies and avoiding trade-offs of mitigation-adaptation interlinkage with these sectors in view. Our results show that such interactions in the Nepalese policy context are present mostly in the form of synergies in the order of AFOLU > Urban Planning > Energy > Water. We identified that developing an institution dedicated to climate change at the national level is the most important opportunity while inadequate institutional co-ordination is the most important barrier for harnessing these synergies.

We present a global dataset of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO

Xuemei Bai and colleagues call for long-term, cross-disciplinary studies to reduce carbon emissions and urban risks from global warming. Xuemei Bai and colleagues call for long-term, cross-disciplinary studies to reduce carbon emissions and urban risks from global warming.