Carbon Footprint Of Cities Research Articles

A tale of two generations: Justice in cities for a low-carbon world

According to the greenhouse gas (GHG) protocol for cities, GHGs are responsible for an estimated 75 per cent of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. This represents a key opportunity to tackle climate change. With the year 2023 and, in particular, the month of July delivering record-breaking temperatures, this demonstrates a clear need to accelerate decarbonisation and, in this context, to reduce the carbon footprint of cities. Further, acting on urban development addresses a number of key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs). Many cities, however, are struggling to break away from a reliance on carbon and some are economically dependent on it. This paper seeks to investigate, through an energy justice lens, some first considerations of how to secure just and sustainable urban regeneration. It posits that energy justice, and its five core principles, is a useful analytical tool for considering the justice and development concerns related to the transition to a low-carbon world. The cities examined in brief in this comparative study are Bordeaux in France, Venice in Italy, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and Bangkok in Thailand. The research posits that despite different trajectories, cities can play a leading role in ensuring justice and sustainability in our low-carbon world.

A tale of two generations: Justice in cities for a low-carbon world

According to the greenhouse gas (GHG) protocol for cities, GHGs are responsible for an estimated 75 per cent of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. This represents a key opportunity to tackle climate change. With the year 2023 and, in particular, the month of July delivering record-breaking temperatures, this demonstrates a clear need to accelerate decarbonisation and, in this context, to reduce the carbon footprint of cities. Further, acting on urban development addresses a number of key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs). Many cities, however, are struggling to break away from a reliance on carbon and some are economically dependent on it. This paper seeks to investigate, through an energy justice lens, some first considerations of how to secure just and sustainable urban regeneration. It posits that energy justice, and its five core principles, is a useful analytical tool for considering the justice and development concerns related to the transition to a low-carbon world. The cities examined in brief in this comparative study are Bordeaux in France, Venice in Italy, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and Bangkok in Thailand. The research posits that despite different trajectories, cities can play a leading role in ensuring justice and sustainability in our low-carbon world.

Hybrid Approach for Developing Strategic ICT Framework for Smart Cities—A Case Study of Dubai’s Toll Gates (Salik)

Information and communication technologies (ICT), systems, and people are driving innovative approaches and actions to address issues such as urbanization, demographic change, and carbon footprints of cities. Current research on smart city technologies is typically focused on the areas of technology and applications. As a result, a holistic strategic framework is lacking, as partner organizations often fail to adopt and comply with the necessary interoperability standards, which can undermine the effective and rapid roll-out and transformation of smart city project strategies. This study aims to develop an ICT framework on the determinants of smart city adoption that is developed to help society and policymakers achieve the goals pursued under the smart city initiative, such as maximizing synergies between different ICT infrastructure activities and avoiding large-scale investments without increasing their potential or focusing on short-term solutions without considering long-term needs. Based on data from the literature review and expert interviews, combined with a case study of the United Arab Emirates, this paper identifies the relevant determinants, which are conceptually grouped into seven basic dimensions. For each of these dimensions, relevant sub-dimensions are specified. The framework was developed and validated through three methods: interviews with experts, a desktop study of 62 smart cities, and finally a case study of the Salik system in Dubai based on the concept of the framework. By identifying key adoption determinants, the framework provides a useful analytical perspective for policymakers and researchers involved in the strategic feasibility roll-out and transformation of smart cities.

Bridging CBA and MCA for evaluating green infrastructure: Proposal of a new evaluation model (MAGICA)

The evaluation of green roofs and walls has been overlooking their real contribution to the built environment. This limits the application and development of these solutions, that have the potential to improve biodiversity, resilience, and carbon footprint of cities. In addition to the difficulty in measuring some ecosystem services, conventional cost-benefit analyses have proven to be inefficient as they cannot deal with non-monetized benefits. To overcome this gap, this study develops a comprehensive decision-making tool for assessing the value of green roofs and walls. The proposed methodology combines two well-known approaches - cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and multi-criteria analysis (MCA) - giving preference to the economic rationale for project investment optimization. This new model – MAGICA (Modelling the Attractiveness of Green Infrastructure through a Combined Approach) – addresses differently monetary and non-monetary benefits for a more robust and complete consideration of all financial, economic, socio-environmental impacts of green infrastructure as well as the preferences of the investors and users. The methodology covers different scales of implementation, including new and existing built assets, and it can be easily adapted to other nature-based solutions. Despite determining an economic indicator, the model is best suited for making relative comparisons between different solutions and identifying which is most appropriate for a particular project context. A case study is applied to demonstrate the methodology, assessing 16 green roof systems for installation in a university building in Lisbon, Portugal. The analysis is based on the results of an experimental campaign and field surveys of students, professors, and staff.

System dynamics life cycle-based carbon model for consumption changes in urban metabolism

Materials and energy consumed by urban systems are one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Measuring these flows and their associated emissions is necessary to estimate the impact of cities on climate change in the future. In this research we developed a dynamic model for measuring the carbon footprint of cities’ urban metabolism using an integrated socio-ecological systems approach. Illustrated with a case study in Montreal we modelled the urban carbon footprint between 2000 and 2018, and simulated on to 2030 under four scenarios: baseline, increasing adoption of plant-based diets (PBD), pavement/road material circularity (PMC), and a combined approach of the latter two. By simultaneously modelling Montreal's population growth the GHG per capita trend was compared to the anticipated 2030 global threshold of 2.9 t CO2e per person needed to meet the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target. All scenarios result in decreased per capita emissions from 15.0 t CO2e/capita in 2018, in part due to the increasing urban population. The baseline scenario estimates a decrease to 12.7 t CO2e by 2030; the PBD and PMC scenarios estimate respective reductions to 10.8 and 12.4 t CO2e/capita by 2030. The combined scenario estimates a greater reduction to 10.5 t CO2e/capita, but this is still 7.6 t CO2e/capita over the Paris Agreement target for 1.5°C global warming.

SeeCarbon: a review of digital approaches for revealing and reducing infrastructure, building and City's carbon footprint

Dealing with climate change and its consequences on the environment have been one of the biggest challenges nowadays, where reducing the carbon footprint has been the focus of most sustainable strategies. The infrastructure is the dominant sector responsible for the total carbon footprint, accounting for approximately 70% of global carbon emissions. This study aims to illustrate the state-of-the-art of digital development and transformation of revealing and reducing carbon footprint in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Facility Management (AEC/FM) sectors. The digital tools for revealing and reducing infrastructure's carbon footprint would be summarized and also compared with other sectors, namely the tools for building and city. Current challenges and future development are also included.

Entropy-based Chinese city-level MRIO table framework

Cities are pivotal hubs of socioeconomic activities, and consumption in cities contributes to global environmental pressures. Compiling city-level multi-regional input-output (MRIO) tables is challenging due to the scarcity of city-level data. Here we propose an entropy-based framework to construct city-level MRIO tables. We demonstrate the new construction method and present an analysis of the carbon footprint of cities in China's Hebei province. A sensitivity analysis is conducted by introducing a weight reflecting the heterogeneity between city and province data, as an important source of uncertainty is the degree to which cities and provinces have an identical ratio of intermediate demand to total demand. We compare consumption-based emissions generated from the new MRIO to results of the MRIO based on individual city input-output tables. The findings reveal a large discrepancy in consumption-based emissions between the two MRIO tables but this is due to conflicting benchmark data used in the two tables.

Roofpedia: Automatic mapping of green and solar roofs for an open roofscape registry and evaluation of urban sustainability

Sustainable roofs, such as those with greenery and photovoltaic panels, contribute to the roadmap for reducing the carbon footprint of cities. However, research on sustainable urban roofscapes is rather focused on their potential and it is hindered by the scarcity of data, limiting our understanding of their current content, spatial distribution, and temporal evolution. To tackle this issue, we introduce Roofpedia, a set of three contributions: (i) automatic mapping of relevant urban roof typology from satellite imagery; (ii) an open roof registry mapping the spatial distribution and area of solar and green roofs of more than one million buildings across 17 cities; and (iii) the Roofpedia Index, a derivative of the registry, to benchmark the cities by the extent of sustainable roofscape in term of solar and green roof penetration. This project, partly inspired by its street greenery counterpart ‘Treepedia’, is made possible by a multi-step pipeline that combines deep learning and geospatial techniques, demonstrating the feasibility of an automated methodology that generalises successfully across cities with an accuracy of detecting sustainable roofs of up to 100% in some cities. We offer our results as an interactive map and open dataset so that our work could aid researchers, local governments, and the public to uncover the pattern of sustainable rooftops across cities, track and monitor the current use of rooftops, complement studies on their potential, evaluate the effectiveness of existing incentives, verify the use of subsidies and fulfilment of climate pledges, estimate carbon offset capacities of cities, and ultimately support better policies and strategies to increase the adoption of instruments contributing to the sustainable development of cities.

Opportunities for city carbon footprint reductions through imports source shifting: The case of Bogota

Achieving the Paris Agreement goals calls for higher ambition across actors. In this article, we address the carbon emission responsibility of the city of Bogota from a consumption-based perspective, by assessing the carbon footprint for the whole city. We use an environmentally extended multiregional input-output model where a survey-based input-output table of Bogota is nested, avoiding the downside of using assumptions regarding the production and trade structure of the city. We identify city's emissions hotspots across the globe, mainly in China and the United States, proving that consumption-based accounting is required when highly open systems as cities are under analysis, to finally propose source shifting scenarios as mitigation strategies. Our results indicate that Bogota is a net importer of CO2 emissions and, the city's carbon footprint almost double direct emissions generated within its territory. China, the rest of Colombia, and the United States are heavily affected by Bogota's carbon footprint as those three regions bear 38% of the city's footprint. The main drivers of those emissions are Electrical equipment, Computers, Vehicles and Machinery, goods that are imported and consumed by Bogota's residents. Important opportunities for emission reductions arise when sourcing changes from China to the US and Latin American countries, which provide fresh evidence for national and local authorities to improve their efforts on reducing emissions.

CARBON FOOTPRINT OF THE LEGALIZATION OF ACTIVITIES AT THE CITY OF SEVILLE

The reduction of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emission in cities is vital because cities generate 60% of global GHG emissions. By the middle of this century, two-thirds of the planet's population is expected to be concentrated in cities. For this reason, energy demand and GHG emissions in large cities will continue to increase, concentrating on urban centres, productive, transport and commercial activities. This increase in economic activities in cities leads to an increase in the number of legalization procedures that are processed by municipalities to authorize and control their implementation. In response to the problems raised, it is presented the results of an investigation undertaken to demonstrate that the application of a Knowledge-Based System (KBS) can significantly reduce the carbon footprint that is currently generated in the Licensing Service of the city council of Seville, as a consequence of the current high failure rate in the subsequent control after the start-up of activities by responsible declaration. The implementation of the SBC would reduce the carbon footprint by 78%, considering an average establishment with 300 m2 of built area. This proposal can be applied in any city council of the more than 8000 that exist in Spain, which would have an enormous impact on reducing the carbon footprint of cities and reducing costs for public coffers, and all this without the need to invest in renewing the fleet of vehicles with others that produce fewer emissions, and facilitating the task of promoters of economic activities, with the help of knowledge management. Keywords: Carbon footprint, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Local administration, Knowledge-based system, Compliance.

Evaluating the carbon footprint of a Spanish city through environmentally extended input output analysis and comparison with life cycle assessment

Currently, most of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are attributed to cities, as they are the global centers of business, residential and cultural activity, cities are expected to play a leading role in proposing climate change mitigation actions. To do so, it is important to have tools that allow the carbon footprint of cities to be assessed as accurately as possible. This study aims to quantify the carbon footprint (CF) associated with the activities developed in a Spanish city (Cadiz, Southwest Spain) by means of two available environmental methodologies, namely Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis (EEIOA) and Life Cycle assessment (LCA). When EEIOA is considered, two downscaling factors were proposed for the analysis due to the nature of the data handled (monetary data), based on the incomes (DF1) and expenditures (DF2) per inhabitant at city level. Regarding LCA, the rates of consumption of goods and production of waste per inhabitant have been processed to estimate the CF. The CF scores identified were 5.25 and 3.83 tCO2-eq·inhabitant−1·year−1 for DF1 and DF2 respectively, according to EEIOA, and 5.43 tCO2-eq·inhabitant−1·year−1, considering LCA. Therefore, a similarity can be concluded between the results obtained with both methodologies despite the inherent differences. Considering the results, the downscaling procedure based on income per inhabitant should be preferred, pointing to EEIOA as a good alternative to LCA for evaluating the CF at city level, requiring less time and effort. In contrast, EEIOA reports more limitations when critical flows were identified, which LCA can solve. Finally, this study can be of great interest to policy makers and city governments to know the CF and the main flows that contribute and in this way, can develop new policies and city models for reducing GHG emission new policies and city models for reducing GHG emission and addressing climate change.

Urban carbon footprints across scale: Important considerations for choosing system boundaries

Cities dominate global anthropogenic carbon emissions. Here, we develop an approach to interpret carbon footprints of cities by focusing on their system boundaries, double counting recognition, spatial paths and policy sensitivities. Using four megacities in China as a case study, we quantify and map urban carbon footprints from various accounting perspectives: territorial carbon emissions, community-wide infrastructure carbon footprint, consumption-based carbon footprint, wider production carbon footprint, and full-scope carbon footprint. We find that the megacities’ infrastructure carbon footprints are dominated by electricity-related emissions, whereas their consumption-based carbon footprints are significantly impacted by imports of both electricity and other products and services. Over 55% of the full-scope carbon footprints (sums of all three scopes) of Beijing and Shanghai can be attributed to upstream emissions, while in Chongqing and Tianjin territorial emissions are more important. Key urban infrastructure contributes over 70% to the total carbon emissions in import supply chains, determining the spatial paths and the carbon intensities of imports for these megacities. The main destinations of outsourced carbon emissions across the country from the megacities are found to be similar due to market domination of bulk suppliers of infrastructure-related and other carbon-intensive products. In addition, double counting of certain footprint indicators is considered small in this case, but could be amplified with increasing number of cities being assessed.

Dynamic Carbon Emission Linkages Across Boundaries

AbstractCities are increasingly linked to domestic and foreign markets during rapid globalization of trade. While transboundary carbon footprints of cities have been recently highlighted, we still have limited understanding of how carbon emission linkages between sectors are reshaping urban carbon footprints through time. In this study, we propose an integrated input‐output approach to trace the dynamics of various types of carbon emission linkages associated with a city. This approach quantifies full linkages in the urban carbon system from both production‐ and consumption‐based perspectives. We assess the dynamic roles that economic sectors and activities play in manipulating multiscale linkages induced by local, domestic, and international inputs. Using Beijing as a case study, we find that imports from domestic and foreign markets have an increasing impact on the city's carbon footprint with more distant linkages during the period from 1990 to 2012. The manufacturing‐related carbon emission linkages have been increasingly transferred outside the urban boundary since 2005, while the linkages from the energy sector to services sectors remain important in Beijing's local economy. Applying systems thinking to input‐output linkage analysis provides important details on when and how carbon emission linkages evolved in cities, whereby sector‐oriented and activity‐oriented carbon mitigation policies can be formulated.

City Carbon Footprint Evaluation and Forecasting Case Study: Dan Sai Municipality

In this research, City Carbon Footprint (CCF) of Dan Sai municipality was evaluated according to the Global Protocol for Community-scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) guideline. Related activity data in 2015 were collected and analyzed which presented into 3 scopes (Scope1, 2, 3). As the results, the total CCF of Dan Sai Municipality is 8,528.04 tCO2eq which contributed from scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3 of 5,524 tCO2eq, 2,164 tCO2eq, 1,140 tCO2eq, respectively. Fossil fuel combustion from industrial sub-sector in scope 1 showed the greatest contribution of 40% of the total, followed by electricity consumption in scope 2, solid waste treatment in scope 1 accounting for 25% and 13%, respectively. The data of CCF in 2015 was used as baseline (Business as Usual: BAU) in order to predict city emissions in 2030 using mathematical forecasting model. The result indicated that CCF of Dan Sai can be reach up to 11,662.39 t CO2eq (27%). Consequently, applying mitigation options to reduce the emission for Dan Sai has been proposed. It was found that implementation of reduction projects including installation of solar rooftop, composting organic waste, producing RDF from waste and convert waste to energy by using RDF hybrid ORC could reduce CCF accounting for 20%, 0.53%, 1% and 3%, respectively. This study can provide benefits and offer better solutions for maximizing the potential of low carbon city and minimizing the climate change problem issues for municipality in the near future.

Assessing carbon footprints of cities under limited information

City carbon footprints have become an important tool for monitoring the progress of cities towards lowering their greenhouse gas emissions and contribution to climate change. Cities usually source a major part of their natural resource demand from their local, national and global hinterland, and cause emissions across the whole global supply chain of a city's final demand. It is important that the data underlying carbon footprint assessments of cities capture these supply chains adequately and comprehensively. In this research, we determine the carbon footprints of four Chinese cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Tianjin based on different levels of data availability. Using these case studies, we show conclusively that city carbon footprint analyses must include input-output databases and associated calculus in order to avoid severe errors that arise from unacceptable scope limitations caused by the truncation of the footprint assessment boundary. We also show that city input-output databases must fulfil a number of requirements for city comparisons and for informed decision-making to be feasible. Our findings suggest that investment into multi-layered national input-output tables and datasets will be necessary to monitor progress of cities reducing their greenhouse emissions across the whole supply chain and to inform evidence based policy making that guides greenhouse abatement.

Exploring the indirect household carbon emissions by source: Analysis on 49 Japanese cities

Cities accommodate more than half of the world's population and are responsible for most of the global environmental footprints of carbon and resource consumption. Hence, countermeasures to reduce the carbon footprint of cities is critical to confront global and national challenges on climate changes in the “Post Paris Era”. Particularly, carbon emissions arising from the residential sector are of great importance to urban emissions, considering their scale and contribution to the indirect emissions caused by supply chains. Despite much consideration on national or provincial household carbon footprints, there has been little discussion on city-level carbon emissions by source and their correlation with residents-related attributes. Given such a circumstance, the present research explored the indirect household carbon emissions by source and its relationship with potentially affecting attributes through a case study on 49 Japanese prefecture capital-level cities (comprising 47 prefectural capitals and Kitakyushu City and Kawasaki City). We combined data from a national expenditure survey with the Embodied Energy and Emission Intensity Data for Japan Using Input-Output Tables (3EID) to calculate consumption-based carbon footprints. Furthermore, to investigate the correlation between the indirect household carbon footprint (IHCF) and residents-related attributes, we divided IHCF into seven sources (food, accommodation, recreation, education, medical service, energy, and transportation) and analyzed the relation with various attributes. The main results highlight that 1). Spatial unbalanced distribution is observed by IHCF types. 2). Each type of IHCF affected by different socio-economic variables according to stepwise regression analysis result. 3). We found that although total IHCF exhibited a comparatively weak correlation with the selected residents-related attributes, food, transportation, and education separately exhibited significant correlations. The insights obtained in terms of source categories and household-related features of IHCF are expected to provide detailed information for future mitigation policies, i.e., city-level mitigation priority setting.

Transnational city carbon footprint networks – Exploring carbon links between Australian and Chinese cities

Cities are leading actions against climate change through global networks. More than 360 global cities announced during the 2015 Paris Climate Conference that the collective impact of their commitments will deliver over half of the world’s urban greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2020. Previous studies on multi-city carbon footprint networks using sub-national, multi-region input-output (MRIO) modelling have identified additional opportunities for addressing the negative impacts of climate change through joint actions between cities within a country. However, similar links between city carbon footprints have not yet been studied across countries. In this study we focus on inter-city and inter-country carbon flows between two trading partners in a first attempt to address this gap. We construct a multi-scale, global MRIO model to describe a transnational city carbon footprint network among five Chinese megacities and the five largest Australian capital cities. First, we quantify city carbon footprints by sectors and regions. Based on the carbon map concept we show how local emissions reductions influence other regions’ carbon footprints. We then present a city emissions ’outsourcing hierarchy’ based on the balance of emissions embodied in intercity and international trade. The differences between cities and their position in the hierarchy emphasize the need for a bespoke treatment of their responsibilities towards climate change mitigation. Finally, we evaluate and discuss the potentially significant benefits of harmonising and aligning China’s carbon trading schemes with Australia’s cap and trade policy.

Research Priorities for NCD Prevention and Climate Change: An International Delphi Survey.

Climate change and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are arguably the greatest global challenges of the 21st Century. However, the confluence between them remains under-examined and there is little evidence of a comprehensive, systematic approach to identifying research priorities to mitigate their joint impact. Consequently, we: (i) convened a workshop of academics (n = 25) from the Worldwide Universities Network to identify priority areas at the interface between NCDs and climate change; (ii) conducted a Delphi survey of international opinion leaders in public health and relevant other disciplines; and (iii) convened an expert panel to review and advise on final priorities. Three research areas (water security; transport; conceptualising NCD harms to support policy formation) were listed among the top 10 priorities by >90% of Delphi respondents, and ranked among the top 12 priorities by >60% of respondents who ranked the order of priority. A fourth area (reducing the carbon footprint of cities) was ranked highest by the same >60% of respondents. Our results are consistent with existing frameworks on health and climate change, and extends them by focusing specifically on NCDs. Researching these priorities could progress understanding of climate change and NCDs, and inform global and national policy decisions for mitigating associated harms.

New York City Panel on Climate Change 2015 Report. Chapter 6: Indicators and monitoring.

William Solecki,1,a Cynthia Rosenzweig,2,a Reginald Blake,3,a Alex de Sherbinin,4 Tom Matte,5 Fred Moshary,6 Bernice Rosenzweig,7 Mark Arend,6 Stuart Gaffin,8 Elie Bou-Zeid,9 Keith Rule,10 Geraldine Sweeny,11 and Wendy Dessy11 1City University of New York, CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities, New York, NY. 2Climate Impacts Group, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University Earth Institute, New York, NY. 3Physics Department, New York City College of Technology, CUNY, Brooklyn, NY; Climate Impacts Group, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. 4 Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University, Palisades, NY. 5New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New York, NY. 6NOAA CREST, City College of New York, CUNY, New York, NY. 7CUNY Environmental Crossroads, City College of New York, CUNY, New York, NY. 8Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University Earth Institute, New York, NY. 9Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. 10Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ. 11New York City Mayor’s Office of Operation, New York, NY

Location of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions from thermal power plants in India along the urban-rural continuum

Greenhouse gases are the prime cause of climate change, to which India is a significant party. Globally the issue of sub-national or local emissions is increasingly gaining relevance, particularly post-2009, when greater-half of the world has become urbanized for the first time in the human history. International Energy Agency, in its World Energy Outlook report estimates that 70% of the greenhouse gases are produced within the cities. But, there is limited empirical evidence to substantiate such claims in the Indian context. It being a developing country with a large rural population base, the carbon footprint of cities goes unnoticed. On the other hand, unreeling economic growth and rapid urbanization during the last two decades, coupled with limited data in the subject pressingly seeks a systematic determination of urban emission baseline. This research analyzes historic trends of urbanization, thermal power generation and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, and evaluates their growth trajectories for the imminent future. This paper is also a first time investigation of urban India's (covering over 7000 Indian towns and cities) contribution of GHG emissions. In absence of any international protocol or a standard methodology to estimate urban GHG burdens of a nation, this paper deals with theoretical issues evident while allocating city emissions like methodological differences, defining ‘urban’ and its boundary and the need to consider downscaling of nationally reported emissions using spatial analysis based on production or location perspective of the most significantly contributing sector namely, energy. Dataset of 454 thermal units reported by Central Electricity Authority for 2011–12 from over hundred coal, diesel, gas and liquid fuel based gas turbine plants has been assessed. The individual plants are verified for their name, capacity, generation and local address from their respective state generation corporations or electricity boards, as applicable. They are then spatially located real time, using universally available (and verifiable) web-based mapping tool of Google Earth and Wikimapia. The information has been assessed on the urban-rural gradient, using population based Census definition for class/hierarchy of towns and their location with respect to the urban boundary. The thermal power plants have eventually been classified within the urban area, on the periphery, transitional or rurban and absolutely rural. The results present an array of emissions, across the urban hierarchy and location in space, underpinning how substantial GHG emissions are attributable to urban and urbanizing areas. The research puts forth, with strong evidence, that in contrast to the general postulation, urban settlements radically contribute to national carbon footprint, which is further bound to increase with urbanization. The findings bear significance to influence research, policy and action in energy and urban sectors and greater cross-sector integration for co-benefits in climate change mitigation at the local city level.