Berlin 2015 – scientific programme
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AKE: Arbeitskreis Energie
AKE 10: Energy efficient Building envelopes
AKE 10.2: Talk
Wednesday, March 18, 2015, 10:00–10:15, A 151
City Density and CO2 Efficiency — •Ramana Gudipudi1, Till Fluschnik1, Anselmo Cantu1, Carsten Walther1, and Juergen Kropp1,2 — 1Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam 14473, Germany — 2University of Potsdam, Department of Geo- and Environmental Sciences, Potsdam 14469, Germany
Previous research on the relationship between population density and greenhouse gas (GHG)emissions often yielded mixed results majorly because of the ambiguity in defining the city boundaries and the emission inventories used. In this paper we suggest a methodology for calculating this relationship using the gridded CO2 emissions data and the City Clustering Algorithm (CCA). We found sublinear relationship between population density and the total emissions (sum of on-road and building emissions) on a per capita basis where ß value ranges between -0.62 to -0.88 depending on the land use data used and the threshold distance in the CCA which means doubling the population density will improve the CO2 efficiency by atleast 35%. Furthermore, we found out that population density impacts on-road emissions more than the emissions from buildings which are more influenced by the local climate. At a county scale within selected MSA*s, we found out that building emissions increased and on-road emissions decreased pointing out towards a potential threshold density beyond which the building emissions surpass the emissions from on-road emissions on a per capita basis. Our results suggest that decreasing urban population density worldwide will lead to an increase in on-road energy consumption.