Christopher Kennedy

An urban approach to planetary boundaries.

The achievement of global sustainable development goals subject to planetary boundaries will mostly be determined by cities as they drive cultures, economies, material use, and waste generation. Locally relevant, applied and quantitative methodologies are critical to capture the complexity of urban infrastructure systems, global inter-connections, and to monitor local and global progress toward sustainability. An urban monitoring (and communications) tool is presented here illustrating that a city-based approach to sustainable development is possible. Following efforts to define and quantify safe planetary boundaries in areas such as climate change, biosphere integrity, and freshwater use, this paper modifies the methodology to propose boundaries from a city’s perspective. Socio-economic boundaries, or targets, largely derived from the Sustainable Development Goals are added to bio-physical boundaries. Issues such as data availability, city priorities, and ease of implementation are considered. The framework is trialed for Toronto, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, and Dakar, as well as aggregated for the world’s larger cities. The methodology provides an important tool for cities to play a more fulsome and active role in global sustainable development.

Global Trade Creation, Trade Diversion, and Economic Impacts from Changing Global Transport Costs

Despite the complex political and economic trade environment, the generalized costs of transportation still play an important role in determining trade patterns. This paper analyzes how global trade patterns would simultaneously change as a result of new global transportation costs and for which countries the new patterns of global trade would be beneficial or detrimental. A random utility-based multiregion input–output model helps quantify the size of the impacts, identify the countries and sectors that would gain or lose the most, and explain the change in trade patterns that would create these impacts. Results suggest that Canada is most susceptible to negative economic impacts caused by decreases in global transportation costs, mainly because of its important trade relationship with the United States. Canada’s economy benefits from its proximity to the United States, but as transportation costs decrease, this proximity becomes less relevant as the United States increasingly trades with more distant countries. The United States suffers the same susceptibility to negative economic impacts with decreases in global transportation costs, but to a larger absolute (smaller relative) extent. However, global transportation cost reductions are especially beneficial to Japan, China, and South Korea, which absorb much of the trade diverted away from the United States and Canada.

The Energy Structure of the Canadian Economy

Summary We developed a model of a national economy in which the phenomena of supply, demand, economic growth, and international trade are represented in terms of energy flows. In examining the structure of the economy, we distinguish between the energy embodied in capital assets used in the production and distribution of energy and that embodied in capital assets and goods that consume energy. Sources used to quantify the energy flows include: end-use energy data by economic sector; International Energy Agency–style national energy balances, and national input-output tables. As an example, the Canadian economy for 2008 produced 16.97 exajoules (EJ) of energy, which after net export of 6.16 EJ and other adjustments left a total primary energy consumption of 10.61 EJ. The energy supply and distribution sectors used close to 32% (3.36 EJ) of total primary consumption. Analysis of primary energy consumption shows that 25.14% was embodied in household consumption, 22.85% was consumed directly by households, 7.88% was embodied in government services, and 34.07% was embodied in exports. Of significance to economic growth, 7.14% was embodied in capital in energy demanding sectors, 1.25% in energy consuming personal assets, and 1.52% in supply sector capital. The energy return on energy investment was relatively constant, averaging 5.14 between 1990 and 2008. Capital investments required to decouple the Canadian economy from its dependence on fossil fuels are discerned.

Infrastructure for China’s Ecologically Balanced Civilization

Abstract China’s green investment needs up to 2020 are ¥1.7 trillion–2.9 trillion CNY (

The Electric City as a Solution to Sustainable Urban Development

274 billion–468 billion USD) per year. Estimates of financing requirements are provided for multiple sectors, including sustainable energy, infrastructure (including for environmental protection), environmental remediation, industrial pollution control, energy and water efficiency, and green products. The context to China’s green financing is discussed, covering urbanization, climate change, interactions between infrastructure sectors, and the transformation of industry. Much of the infrastructure financing will occur in cities, with a focus on equity, environmental protection, and quality of life under the National New-Type Urbanization Plan (2014–2020). China has implemented many successful policies in the building sector, but there is still considerable scope for improvement in the energy efficiency of Chinese buildings. China is currently pursuing low-carbon growth strategies that are consistent with its overall environmental and quality-of-life objectives. Beyond 2020, China’s future as an ecologically balanced civilization will rest on the implementation of a central infrastructure policy: China 2050 High Renewable Energy Penetration Scenario and Roadmap Study. As exemplified by the Circular Economy Development Strategy and Near-Term Action Plan, an essential part of China’s green industrial transformation involves engineering systems that conserve materials, thereby reducing or even eliminating wastes. To better understand changes to China’s economy under its green transformation and to unlock large potential sources of finance, it is necessary to undertake a fuller examination of all of China’s infrastructure sectors, particularly freight rail infrastructure and ports. Large investments are required to clean up a legacy of environmental contamination of soil and groundwater and to reduce industrial pollution. Transformation of the power sector away from coal will avoid some industrial treatment costs. The contribution of engineers in planning, designing, and constructing China’s new green infrastructure will be furthered by understanding the broad policy context and the interactions between land use, infrastructure, and environmental performance.

The Nexus of Carbon, Nitrogen, and Biodiversity Impacts from Urban Metabolism

ABSTRACT Comprehensive frameworks for sustainable urban development have been advanced by many scholars and global institutions in recent years. These frameworks are broad and overlapping in nature, but each has its own structure and emphasis. We review a cross-section of these frameworks, examining their foundations and general predictions for an urban future. From this review, we cultivate an argument that continued progress toward sustainable urban development hinges on low-carbon electrification. Our position for electric cities is supported by the sustainability literature and by empirical evidence gathered from the worlds largest cities, which shows that economy, physical environment, and basic service delivery improve with per capita electricity consumption. We close with an overview of the challenges associated with urban electrification.

Towards a Green Investment Policy Framework: The Case of Low-Carbon, Climate-Resilient Infrastructure

Summary Methodology is developed for linking the urban metabolism (UM) to global environmental stresses on the carbon (C) cycle, nitrogen (N) cycle, and biodiversity loss. UM variables are systematically mapped to the drivers of carbon, nitrogen, and biodiversity impacts. Change in mean species abundance is used as metric of biodiversity loss, by adopting the dose-response relationships from the GLOBIO model. The main biodiversity drivers related to UM included here are land-use change (LUC) and atmospheric N deposition. The methodology is demonstrated by studying the nexus for Shanghai in 2006, based on energy and soybean consumption. Results for Shanghai show a strong nexus between C, N, and biodiversity impact due to electricity consumption and energy used in manufacturing industries and construction. Prioritization of the shift away from coal energy will therefore lead to lowering the urban growth impact on all three dimensions. Road transportation, domestic aviation, and the metal industry impact only the C footprint highly, whereas district energy impacts only biodiversity loss highly, showing a weak nexus. Among the global impacts of soybean consumption in Shanghai on biodiversity loss (due to LUC only), the highest impact occurs in Uruguay (0.52%) followed by Brazil (0.05%) and Argentina (0.02%). The local impact on biodiversity loss (i.e., within China) of soybean consumption in Shanghai is 1.03%. However, the methodology and results are limited due to the partial inclusion of drivers, a carbon footprint based on carbon dioxide emissions only, and limitations of biodiversity loss models. Potential to overcome methodological limitations is discussed.