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ID
1935
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TypeJournal Article
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Published in
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Year2015
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Author(s)
Ahmet Duran Sahin Angelo Facchini Anthony Chiu Arun Kansal Bin Chen Bruno Cunha Carolina Dubeux Christopher Kennedy Emilio Lebre La Rovere Florencia González Otharán Gemma Cervantes Iain D. Stewart Igor Cersosimo James Keirstead Juniati Gunawan Kwi-gon Kim Mariko Uda Mehrdad Nazariha Michael Adegbile Nadine Ibrahim Peter J. Marcotullio Renata Mele Rizwan U. Farooqui Sabine Barles Semerdanta Pusaka Shamsul Hoque Stephanie Pincetl Tarek Genena -
Tags
Electricity Energy Balance Fossil Fuels Material Flow Analysis (MFA) Single point in time Steel UM review paper import Urban Waste Water -
LanguageEnglish
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Website
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DOI
10.1073/pnas.1504315112 -
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Energy and material flows of megacities
Understanding the drivers of energy and material flows of cities is important for addressing global environmental challenges. Accessing, sharing, and managing energy and material resources is particularly critical for megacities, which face enormous social stresses because of their sheer size and complexity. Here we quantify the energy and material flows through the world's 27 megacities with populations greater than 10 million people as of 2010. Collectively the resource flows through megacities are largely consistent with scaling laws established in the emerging science of cities. Correlations are established for electricity consumption, heating and industrial fuel use, ground transportation energy use, water consumption, waste generation, and steel production in terms of heating-degree-days, urban form, economic activity, and population growth. The results help identify megacities exhibiting high and low levels of consumption and those making efficient use of resources. The correlation between per capita electricity use and urbanized area per capita is shown to be a consequence of gross building floor area per capita, which is found to increase for lower-density cities. Many of the megacities are growing rapidly in population but are growing even faster in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and energy use. In the decade from 2001-2011, electricity use and ground transportation fuel use in megacities grew at approximately half the rate of GDP growth.