Smart cities expert Aapo Huovila – Crucial role of collaborative leadership

Interviews

Aapo Huovila is a Senior scientist at Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. His research is currently focused on evaluation of climate-neutral, sustainable and smart cities. He works as a project manager and senior researcher in research, innovation and commercial projects (for examples, NetZeroCities, Matchup Project or Sparcs). He is the chair of the “Monitoring & Evaluation” Task group within the EU H2020 Smart cities & communities research & innovation program and acts as subject editor in the journal IET Smart cities. His work has been cited over 2200 times.

Huovila and his colleagues Hanne Siikavirta, Carmen Antuña Rozado, Jyri Rökman, Pekka Tuominen, Satu Paiho, Åsa Hedman, Peter Ylén are authors of the study Carbon-neutral cities: Critical review of theory and practice, openly available here.

This study presents findings from the first ever literature review on the carbon-neutral city concept, covering definition, assessment approaches, and barriers and drivers for transition to carbon neutrality. These findings are combined with interviews with Finnish cities aiming at carbon neutrality to explore gaps between research and practice.

Cities provide the right scale to implement policies into concrete actions in response to societal needs (Lombardi and Sonetti, 2017) and they have already widely engaged in local climate plan implementation (Reckien et al., 2018). Cities play a key role in achieving the climate goals of Paris Agreement as the world is becoming increasingly urban. In 2019, the share of urban population was 56% globally (World Bank, 2020) with the United Nations (UN) projecting that the share will grow to 68% by 2050. According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the current trend of rapid urbanization is “crucial to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2018).

The drive to urbanization is largely driven by the economic opportunities offered by cities. With their share of 56% of population, cities still manage to produce 70% of the global GDP (United Nations, 2016). A high level of economic activity leads to high levels of ecological impacts: while cities occupy only about 2% of land surface (Sodiq et al., 2019), about 70% of global resources and energy are consumed in cities and cities produce about 70% of wastes and emit 70% of all greenhouse gases globally (United Nations, 2016).

Many cities have already published their carbon neutrality targets and carbon neutrality concept is becoming increasingly central in policy discourse. There is, however, still not a common understanding on the definition of the concept and many open questions remain on its practical application (Hsu et al., 2020).

Mr Huovila, for the last 13 years you have been working in sustainability assessment helping cities in setting meaningful targets, optimize resource usage and assess the impacts of urban solutions. In your current work as senior scientists for VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland which is the leading research and technology company in the Nordic countries, you help cities transition to climate neutrality and advance towards smart cities. Do you think academia and science are currently heard and included enough in the process of designing the cities of future? Do you see collaborative leadership and coalitions of academia, science, private sector and policy decision makers fostering faster advancement towards carbon-neutral cities?

In short, I believe that cities need much more support from research but might need some external funding to cover related costs.

Cities are setting the tone in climate action by defining ambitious carbon neutrality target years (varying between 2025 and 2050 in Europe). The key question now is how to achieve these targets. For that, cities are dependent on other stakeholders as urban emissions are largely affected by national measures and other actors such as companies and citizens. Cities can act as enablers and catalysts of change. They can show the vision and orchestrate several actors in common action towards the vision. But city organisations operate with limited budgets. They need expert support from researchers and companies to define, design and implement the solutions needed to achieve the ambitious carbon neutrality targets on time. The achievement of city visions requires collaboration between local and national decision-makers, researchers, citizens and companies. There are many good examples initiated by specific cities or initiatives, often funded by public money. Most interesting are win-win coalitions that do not need additional funding, and they are becoming more common as the green solution is more and more often also economically more appealing at least in the long run.

Your study offers a definition of a carbon-neutral city, so can you share what is a carbon-neutral city?

In simple terms, the concept means that the amount of carbon emissions in a city equals emissions removed or avoided over a certain time (typically one year). The natural and recommended way to remove emissions is the absorption from the atmosphere in carbon sinks, such as forests, soil and oceans. Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and then storing it is known as carbon sequestration. In order to achieve net zero emissions, all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions should be counterbalanced by carbon sequestration. This is not yet possible without the not-yet widely used carbon capture and storage technologies. Therefore, the “carbon-neutral cities” concept allows part of the “hard-to-abate” emissions to be offset by reducing the corresponding amount of emissions outside the city boundaries. This can be done through investment in renewable energy, energy efficiency or other clean, low-carbon technologies. The EU’s emissions trading system (ETS) is an example of a carbon offsetting system.

There are varying definitions of a “carbon-neutral city” available. The most crucial choice is what emissions to include in the calculations and how to calculate those. Currently, cities usually include production-based Scope 1 and 2 emissions meaning emissions produced and consumed within the city boundaries as well as emissions from consumed energy supplied to the city from elsewhere through a grid. Scope 3 emissions, meaning indirect emissions, i.e. emissions due to activities in the city but occurring elsewhere, are not yet included but will be included in the future. Currently, emissions are typically accounted based on the location where they are produced but there is also an alternative approach promoted in the literature where emissions are accounted based on the location of consumption. The choice between the two is important as there are differences between cities’ balance of imports and exports and thus the choice has a big effect on cities’ carbon footprints. Other differences in the existing “carbon-neutral city” definitions relate to the sectors that are included in the emission calculations, what type of greenhouse gases are accounted (only CO2 or also other) and how big share of offsetting is allowed for carbon neutrality (e.g. max 20%).

Transformation of our cities requires doing things differently, both for local Governments and citizens. What will local Governments need to do differently in the future?

Silos and counteracting goals are still common in city organisations. Achieving cities’ ambitious carbon neutrality goals will require better coordination, collaboration and commitment within and outside the city organisation and at different time scales. The long-term goals need to be translated into concrete actions at different time scales and there should be better continuity between election cycles. Such a roadmap needs to be flexible to changes in the external world and technology development. Within the city organisation, the vision needs to be implemented into practice at all units and levels of the organisation so that the strategic goals are translated into operational level and concrete actions, and all actions are aligned to the common goal using impact assessment that gives decision makers reliable information on where progress is taking place and where it is lacking.

While they often are already excellent collaborators, cities will need to collaborate even more closely with citizens, companies and research to make the transition to carbon neutrality possible.

Will certain level of commodity be compromised in everyday life of the citizens when we foresee the near future of life in the urban areas? And what are the new habits citizens will need to adopt?

In my opinion, policymakers should try to make the environmentally-friendly choice the most appealing for citizens. In big cities public transport or bike / e-bike / e-scooter is already often the easiest way to travel. In sparsely populated areas, a car is still needed, but with the electrification of transport, I don’t see a need for big compromises for citizens in transport in the long term. Heating of houses was a bigger concern during the past winter due to the increased energy prices but I expect the prices to be more reasonable next winter. Energy poverty is a serious problem in some parts of Europe and some individuals need to decrease the inside temperature to be able to pay their energy bills. This measure could be promoted also more widely due to environmental concerns at times of high energy demand and low renewable energy supply but smart building automation systems can help in optimising the heating in a way that does not create much harm to the users. The biggest change for some individuals could be the need to change their diet (less meat and milk-based products) and the need to consume less in general.

What do you see as most common drivers and barriers for cities’ transition to carbon neutrality?

Starting with drivers, being a forerunner in climate action provides branding value and can help to attract additional investments. Use of “green” technologies can help attract new companies and young professionals in addition to contributing to the creation of new jobs. Climate actions and ambitious targets can also help to access certain funding. For example, sustainability criteria are becoming a prerequisite for loans due to EU taxonomy regulation and other green finance initiatives.

At the same time, money is also a barrier to climate action as cities operate with limited resources and expensive innovative investments can be hard to justify. The other barrier is that cities can directly cut only a relatively small part of emissions and thus need to motivate citizens and businesses to achieve their environmental goals. Finally, the lack of continuity can be a challenge as new local governments are typically elected every four years and their strategic goals vary.

Can you share some of the cities that are a good example, on a good path to become carbon neutral city?

There is a wealth of cities that are good examples, and I don’t want to compare them as they each have their own context and conditions to which different innovations are appropriate.

My home country Finland has one of the most ambitious carbon neutrality target years in the world, 2035. Still, all the biggest cities in Finland have set an even more ambitious target which is not easy to reach as urban emissions largely depend on national measures.

My home city Helsinki is innovative in many ways. The city with its partners developed a climate watch where they can track the impact of their own actions on the achievement of their climate neutrality goal. Helsinki’s open data portal is also exemplary as it offers through its 3D city model and Energy & Climate Atlas many science-based environmental services to citizens and companies: e.g. analysis of solar energy potential at different locations, heating demand prediction, geoenergy potential analysis and energy data of buildings allowing estimation of savings of energy refurbishments.

The city owns the local energy company, and the collaboration has helped to make key decisions such as quitting using coal by 2024. The energy company has implemented many innovations such as an integrated heat pump based heating and cooling system. They also covered the roofs of large buildings with solar panels that customers can rent which became popular. Also, concepts integrating solar energy, eV charging and storage have been piloted. Now a hydrogen hub is under construction in a port. It will combine zero emissions with the four uses of hydrogen: electricity, transport, heating, and energy storage. Wind and solar power will be used to produce green hydrogen which then enables emission reductions especially in heavy road transport.

(Photo credit: Kevin Buy)