Towards fossil free cities – Emission assessment of food and resources consumption with the FEWprint carbon accounting platform

Towards fossil free cities – Emission assessment of food and resources consumption with the FEWprint carbon accounting platform

ten Caat, P.N. (TU Delft Climate Design and Sustainability)
Tenpierik, M.J. (TU Delft Building Physics)
Sanyal, Tithi (University of Michigan)
Tilie, Nico (TU Delft Landscape Architecture)
van den Dobbelsteen, A.A.J.F. (TU Delft Climate Design and Sustainability)
Thün, Geoffrey (University of Michigan)
Cullen, Sean (Queen's University Belfast)
Nakayama, Shun (Keio University)
Karanisa, Theodora (Qatar University)
Monti, Stewart (Atelier Ten)

2022

Current urbanization rates concentrate the ever growing demand for food, energy and water (FEW) resources particularly in cities, making them one of the main drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. The FEW nexus integrative approach offers a potential framework for sustainable resource management in cities. However, existing nexus evaluation tools are limited in application and often inadequate. This is primarily due to the FEW nexus intricacy, the tools’ operational complexity and/or the need to input comprehensive data that is often unavailable to users. Having outlined these current gaps, this paper introduces the FEWprint, an integrated carbon accounting platform that provides an accessible process for FEW nexus-based evaluations of urban areas. This spreadsheet-based framework is employed to calculate a consumption-based footprint derived from food consumption, thermal/electrical energy use, car fuel demand, water management, and domestic waste processing. A comparative assessment between six different communities reveals significant differences in total annual emissions. The food sector impact shows emissions ranging between 993Kg/cap∗yr and 1366Kg/cap∗yr in Amsterdam and Tokyo respectively, but is also the least deviating from all considered resource sectors. This holistic carbon footprint and considered food inventory will serve as a baseline for future integrated urban farming strategies and urban design proposals to be tested.

Assessment model
Carbon accounting
Carbon emissions
Nexus
Sustainable cities
Urban food production

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:0ee9315c-f0c0-4bf7-89ee-2398e74d092e

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cesys.2022.100074

Cleaner Environmental Systems, 4

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2022 P.N. ten Caat, M.J. Tenpierik, Tithi Sanyal, Nico Tilie, A.A.J.F. van den Dobbelsteen, Geoffrey Thün, Sean Cullen, Shun Nakayama, Theodora Karanisa, Stewart Monti