AT COP27 in Egypt, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and partners are launching Toolbox of Solutions, an open-access platform containing over 300 practical solutions to help city leaders, national governments and businesses identify proven decarbonization solutions. It comes as achieving net-zero by 2050 and halving emissions by 2030 calls for urgent decarbonizing solutions in cities worldwide, writes the WEF in a statement.
In the statement, the WEF interviewed three experts involved in the Toolbox. Brian Dean of Sustainable Energy for All highlights that leveraging natural resources such as trees and vegetation, as well as well-designed placement of water storage to manage the urban heat island effect, is critical. He says: “Such nature-based solutions can further reduce demand for active cooling and optimize how and when energy-driven technologies are used.”
For Dimitris Karamitsos of Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy, energy efficiency and renewable energy “strongly support our path to a climate resilient future in cities”. However, he explains, these solutions are often disregarded due to higher upfront cost and lack of trust towards new technologies. This can be tackled, he says, with “servitisation or ‘Products as a service’”. This is a business model in which companies charge customers for the use of their products instead of selling the product.
Achieving water and energy efficiency through hydroponic farming is, for David Porter of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the best global solution to decarbonize cities. EPRI’s Indoor Agriculture project has “brought together energy providers and community partners across the US to utilize controlled environment agriculture in container farms powered via urban electrification”, he explains. Each container yields annual produce roughly equivalent to one acre of a traditional farm. With controlled environment agriculture, says Porter, “crops consume as much as 95 per cent less water than conventional farms”.
