Decarbonization of tropical city using digital twin technology: case study of Bertam city

Abstract

The urban population in Malaysia has increased to 77.7% in 2021, from 66% two decades ago, of which the current percentage shows Malaysia has more than 25 million city dwellers out of the 32.7 million total population. This statistic resulted in 80% of carbon emissions, roughly 200 million tCO2e, being produced by the urban cities in Malaysia. To balance out the high number of carbon emissions from urban settings, our government has aimed to reduce 33% of carbon by 2030, aligning with the COP commitment by Malaysia in 2021, and later aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050. Carbon neutrality can be achieved by using digital twin technology, which can virtually represent any physical system, including a whole city to its real-world counterpart. Bertam, a city in Pulau Pinang is used as a case study in this study. A baseline simulation has been made of the digital twin city, resulting in 253 kWh/m2 of total energy consumption in 2021, and 1.75 tonnes of carbon per capita. The recent applications of active and passive design strategies will be applied to the virtual city, to obtain its potential energy savings and carbon reduction data. At the end of the study, the digital twin technology will discover the city’s potential energy savings and carbon reduction after the optimization.