COP28 no breakthrough for cities, but at least a step in the right direction

Did COP28 do anything for the push towards sustainable cities? As the desert dust settles on the outcomes of the climate summit, cities likely to take the brunt of global warming impacts are working out whether the gathering has helped, hindered or just held time on their efforts towards environmental justice.

On one level, their reaction will be the same as the wider environmental community: that the pledge by political leaders at the end of the COP28 climate summit to “transition away” from fossil fuels in energy systems was good, but the lack of a timetable or finance was very disappointing.

The reaction by the joint chairs of the C40 Cities caucus, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, Mayor of Freetown, and Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, as urban leaders was fairly typical. Aki-Sawyerr said it did not “go far enough”, while Khan echoed the disappointment at the failure to include a pledge to “phase out” fossil fuel use.

While the statement on the first global stocktake of progress since the 2015 Paris Agreement grabbed the headlines, COP28 also saw a “10-point plan” of outcomes unveiled after a Ministerial Meeting on Urbanization and Climate Change midway through the two-week summit.

Inevitably they seem soft. Resembling an unusual football starting line-up of 5-3-1-1, the final statement issues five pledges to “encourage” leaders to take action, “welcomes” three agreements, “recognises” one set of opportunities and “takes note” of an achievement. Hardly the Declaration of Independence.

COP28 was a gathering of heads of state and government leaders, so the urban agenda was only ever going to be a part of that. But cities are both contributors to the causes of climate change and at the same time some of its key likely victims. On the one hand, cities contribute more than 70% of the world’s CO2 emissions, but on the other hand, around one in 10 cities are threatened by rising sea levels and storms and their residents are exposed to 10 degrees higher temperatures than those in rural areas.

This means that they need to be encouraged to reduce the carbon output of their activities, whether that is manufacturing, transportation, or the heating and cooling of their commercial and residential buildings. They also need to invest in re-design their infrastructure to withstand higher floods, fiercer heatwaves and more severe droughts.

Both mitigation and adaption will require money. Wealthy countries most responsible for the climate emergency have pledged a combined total of just over $700 million (£556m) to the loss and damage fund, whose announcement on the first day on the summit was a highlight of COP28. However as the final global stocktake conceded, these financial pledges are far short of the $5.9 trillion that will be needed to support developing countries with clean energy transitions, implementing their national climate plans and adaptation efforts.

One step forward was the adoption by the COP process of the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships (CHAMP) for climate action to increase cooperation, where applicable and appropriate, with our subnational governments. The agreement, signed by a mix of 71 advanced, emerging an developing economies, pledged the members to consult wand collaborate with lower tiers of government and include subnational government projects in national in climate-related investment priorities.

To the extent that it bring cities more closely into their national governments’ strategies, it can only be a good thing. As Mark Watts, the executive director of C40, put as COP28 wrapped up, the CHAMP initiative created a “bigger opportunity” for mayors and governors to work with national governments to achieve the eventual phase-out of fossil fuels.

Small success highlight the failure at governmental level

Faced with the scale of the climate change threat, one imagines that only governments working together can solve it. But the meagre progress since the 2015 Paris Agreement shatters that hope. Meanwhile, however, small community-based projects are doing their bit to sculpt a sustainable city, often melding environmental solutions with social justice.

Many people feel overwhelmed by climate change. As one of 70 million people in the UK, what can we do? Maybe recycle properly, cut down on the foreign travel and take up cycling to work. But it won’t make much difference as the big decisions are made by the giant energy and industrial conglomerates who can behave as they — and their shareholders — wish, while making the right noises for governments and protest groups.

On the other hand, 70 million people acting together could make a substantial difference and even 70 would make some inroads. One example is a couple in Walthamstow, northeast London.

Inspired by the title of a chapter heading in a book co-written by the economist Ann Pettifor, artist and filmmaker Daniel Edelstyn and partner Hilary Powell decided to try to turn every house on his street into a power station.

After investing time talking to his fellow residents, he used imaginative techniques such as creating banknotes to sell as artworks and sleeping for 23 nights on the roof of his home in the winter of 2022, he and his friends raised more than £100,000 to buy solar panels. So far Power Station, working with Octopus Energy have installed 15 rooftop panels while a local school has been wired up thanks to a separate fundraiser.

As well as generating renewable energy, the cheaper price charges have brought relief to a street where many residents are impacted by the cost of living as well as the climate crisis. As one resident told Edelstyn in his film about the project, he was using a blanket for warmth at night because he couldn’t afford to pay the bill in the wake of surges in domestic energy prices that are forecast to continue into 2024.

The original ambition has been to turn the street into a grid to send a message of what the government could and should be doing. However, different housing tenures – especially rentals and council tenancies – made that impossible. Ironically Walthamstow was in the first wave of boroughs to supply electricity with Walthamstow Power Station supplying power between 1901 and 1968.

In Lawrence Weston, a housing estate on the edge of Bristol, Ambition Community Energy has built a 150 metre high wind turbine after seven years of fundraising, meetings, and complying with planning requirements.

It estimates the turbine will generate electricity equivalent to Lawrence Weston’s domestic use, around 3,000 homes, and save 120,000 tonnes of CO2e over its lifetime. ACE estimates that about £100,000 a year could be provided as a donation to be invested back into the local community.

Away from energy and Too Good to Go is one of many apps aiming to tackle the shockingly large amount of food that goes to waste by showing users local restaurants, bakeries and grocery stores where they can buy “surprise bags” filled with whatever remaining fresh food was left over at the end of the day.

However, to deliver mass-scale change will involve radical reform of how the entire, say energy system, is owned and governed. According to People's Power : Reclaiming the Energy Commons, a book by US author and activist Ashley Dawson, there needs to be a “shift” from thinking of energy as a commodity and instead conceiving of it as part of the global commons.

His vision is to bring power under public and community ownership or control. But with the COP28 climate summit being chaired by the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, that seems well off the radar. For now environmental and social justice campaigners will have to carry on looking for the small wins.

Controversy may have hit COP28 but delegates should look at the host’s sustainable city

The COP28 climate summit may have gotten off to a tricky start for the host, the United Arab Emirates, over claims it is using the talks as a platform for oil and gas sales. But that should not distract from the effort Dubai is putting in create a sustainable city.

More than 80,000 people attended the 28th Conference of the Parties summit (COP28) in Dubai, UAE, that began on 30 November and is scheduled to last until at least 12 December. It goes without saying that the inbound flights and limousines will generate harmful emissions although it is fair to add that meeting like these will never achieve much via Zoom or Teams.

The darker stain on the event has been claims the UAE is using the meetings, which are chaired by Sultan al-Jaber, who is also chief executive of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, one of the biggest fossil fuel companies, planned to discuss boosting fossil fuel business in bilateral meetings (something he has rejected as “false”).

The media dogs did a lot of barking but the caravan moved on. Whatever the outcome of the summit, Dubai has been keen to use the summit to display its environmental credentials. The thousands of attendees have been encouraged to take the Metro's Red Line from Dubai International Airport to major hotels, extending from the heart of Dubai to the Expo City Dubai entrance, where COP28 takes place.

For some time, the city authorities have focused on tightening standards of building to make them greener. In 2011 it set out the Green Buildings Regulations and Specification which were declared required for governmental buildings and voluntary for private ones. The municipality made the standards mandatory for all new buildings in Dubai in 2014. The rules cover usage of energy, water and materials and waste as well as looking at ecology and planning and “building vitality”.

The fact that the UAE urban population is forecast to reach 91 million by 2050 — 85% of its citizens reside in its cities — has prompted moves towards delivering what are known as “smart cities”. Although there is no strict definition, the European Commission describes it as a place where “traditional networks and services are made more efficient with the use of digital solutions for the benefit of its inhabitants and business”.

Dubai has implemented projects to significantly reduce electricity use, including smart metering, demand-side management, and distributed generation to encourage energy customers to consume more effectively. One study found these methods saved about 1,100 gigawatt-hours of electricity and 5.4 billion gallons of water between 2009 and 2014 and reduced carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 536,000 tonnes.

The author from the UAE’s Ajman University concluded that the Emirates government can “step in and help the country build a more sustainable future”.

Solar panels and strawberries

One specific example of that is the net zero Sustainable City, which Diamond Developers, a private sector real estate company, launched in 2014 and welcomed its first tenants in November 2015. The 500-unit community in the heart of Dubai includes a school and an autism rehabilitation centre, as well as recreational facilities like an equestrian centre.

The city takes advantage of the gruelling temperatures by installing solar panels on top of almost all the buildings and car parking spaces, generating enough energy to meet most of the community’s needs. Residents are also encouraged to grow their own food in allotments adjacent to their properties using organic practices. The developer claims self-contained hydroponic grow rooms — branded as "cooltainers" —can produce 1.5 tonnes of strawberries from 300 plant over a three-month season.

The World Bank, which invests an average of $6 billion in urban development and resilience projects every year, dubbed it “remarkable” after a team of economists paid a visit.

Thery found that in 2021, the city “avoided” more than 8,000 tons of CO2e — roughly equivalent to removing 853 cars from the roads for a year. Average daily water consumption stood at 162 litres per person compared to Dubai’s average of 278. And more than 80% of household waste was sorted and recycled.

Both the Bank and an independent academic study by the British University in Dubai concluded that many of the findings were applicable to other countries and regions, especially those with the same social and harsh environmental conditions as the UAE.

One challenge, as another study identified, is that sustainable developments tend to be positioned as premium-priced properties, which make them harder to roll out as sustainable residential options for a broader population mix.

The latest in the region is NEOM, a sustainable development promoted by the Saudi Arabian government, that will include a 170km (105m) long city but just 200 metres wide, called The Line, which will run in a straight line through the desert and clad in long mirrors and house 9 million people.

The jury is out on NEOM, which will be "be rolled out between now and 2045" with some warning that the environmental impact of the construction will outweigh the likely benefits. But Dubai’s Sustainable City shows that what the oil rich gulf states want to happen will get built. It will be the next generation of Saudis who will find whom the city will be home to.