Introduction

Fossil fuels remain the major source of energy for this century. Growing fossil-fuel use will continue to drive up global energy-related CO2 emissions. In the World Energy Outlook Reference Scenario, emissions jump by 57% between 2005 and 2030. The United States, China, Russia, and India contribute two-thirds of this increase.2 The fossil fuel-based CO2 emissions from large emerging countries, such as China and India, could match the United States’ 2000 greenhouse gas emissions within two to three decades. As evident from Figure 1, emerging countries hold the maximum promise of emission reductions.3 It suggests that for point-of-emission analysis, a large part of the long-term mitigation potential is in the energy supply sector. However, for an end-use sector analysis used for the results in Figure 1, the urban areas hold the highest potential for CO2 reduction.

Figure1: Estimated sectoral economic potential for global mitigation for different regions as a function of carbon price in 2030 from bottom-up studies, compared to the respective baselines assumed in the sector assessments.

Cities, national economic growth, energy demand, and environmental quality are interdependent, as outlined in Figure 2. Rapidly urbanizing cities consume more than 75 percent of global energy, and account for more than 70 percent of global CO2 emissions.5 As increasing energy demands are outpacing supply, it is critical for cities to provide enough energy on a reliable basis, and at prices that will not diminish economic growth. Along with energy challenges, cities are facing numerous problems of economic development and environmental protection. Inclined to give stopgap measures priority, they tend to regard long-term solutions, like demand-side management, distributed generation, and clean energy sources, as secondary. However, we consider that cities in emerging economies will be at the forefront of leapfrogging and implementing groundbreaking technologies and policies, as evidenced by the initiatives taken by many cities here and worldwide to resolve issues in energy and climate change. In addition to affording energy and environmental benefits, investments in energy-efficient and renewable technologies have huge potential to boost local economies, as demonstrated by the recent Federal allocation of Stimulus funding.

Figure 2: Overlap among National priorities for development, importance of cities and environmental concerns

We encourage developing each city in the reconstruction efforts of Ukraine as a Low-Carbon/Near-Zero Energy city, as a community-consuming substantially low energy with very efficiently planned and operated buildings, transportation, industries, water supply, sanitation, and solid waste sectors and producing at least as much annual energy needed through renewable sources. We would expect to reduce the amount of grid energy required for city operations by incorporating energy-saving and distributed renewable energy concepts, technologies, and practices. Benefits may include:

This document is aimed only at putting forth a full spectrum of diverse energy technologies and strategies. For simplicity and adaptability, it specifically avoids any reference to embodied energy use in goods and services.