The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Environmental assessment platform for cities racing to net zero

Environmental assessment platform for cities racing to net zero
Environmental assessment platform for cities racing to net zero
The UK was the first major economy to pass a Climate Change Act in 2008, which was revised in 2019 to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. In 2019, Southampton City Council (SCC) declared a climate emergency setting ambitious targets for the city to become carbon neutral under the banner Green City Charter (GCC), which was signed by 70 city-based organisations. There is, however, no specific methodology to quantify progress towards the targets. Here we present the outcomes from developing the GCC Tracker in collaboration with local authorities and stakeholders. The approach is based on the Analytical Hierarchy Process, with expertise agreed weights to measure the success or otherwise of carbon environmental commitments. The outcome is the Green City Tracker encompassing an assessment matrix that provides ratings and quantifies annual progress for achieving committed targets. The Tracker was applied to 10 institutions and the results show their ratings as a function of each sub-criteria and as an overarching rating. The approach highlighted the importance of generating a universally applicable and time/resource efficient processes in order to incentivise organisation participation. The Tracker was widely accepted by regional local authorities with a plan to widely adapt it to other cities declared targets.
1742-6588
Turner, Philip
772d9dd5-829d-4e40-83a2-f8ea70ee2b14
Bahaj, Abubakr
a64074cc-2b6e-43df-adac-a8437e7f1b37
Mahdy, Mostafa
9e2c23e6-a70e-43a0-bfda-626ba4ff4f85
Turner, Philip
772d9dd5-829d-4e40-83a2-f8ea70ee2b14
Bahaj, Abubakr
a64074cc-2b6e-43df-adac-a8437e7f1b37
Mahdy, Mostafa
9e2c23e6-a70e-43a0-bfda-626ba4ff4f85

Turner, Philip, Bahaj, Abubakr and Mahdy, Mostafa (2021) Environmental assessment platform for cities racing to net zero. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2042 (1), [012140]. (doi:10.1088/1742-6596/2042/1/012140).

Record type: Article

Abstract

The UK was the first major economy to pass a Climate Change Act in 2008, which was revised in 2019 to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. In 2019, Southampton City Council (SCC) declared a climate emergency setting ambitious targets for the city to become carbon neutral under the banner Green City Charter (GCC), which was signed by 70 city-based organisations. There is, however, no specific methodology to quantify progress towards the targets. Here we present the outcomes from developing the GCC Tracker in collaboration with local authorities and stakeholders. The approach is based on the Analytical Hierarchy Process, with expertise agreed weights to measure the success or otherwise of carbon environmental commitments. The outcome is the Green City Tracker encompassing an assessment matrix that provides ratings and quantifies annual progress for achieving committed targets. The Tracker was applied to 10 institutions and the results show their ratings as a function of each sub-criteria and as an overarching rating. The approach highlighted the importance of generating a universally applicable and time/resource efficient processes in order to incentivise organisation participation. The Tracker was widely accepted by regional local authorities with a plan to widely adapt it to other cities declared targets.

This record has no associated files available for download.

More information

Published date: 18 November 2021
Additional Information: Funding Information: This work is part of the activities of the Energy and Climate Change Division at the University of Southampton (www.energy.soton.ac.uk). This work is also in partnership with Southampton City Council, Winchester City Council and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. The work is supported by an EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA). with partial support by the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia through project number 714, coordinated through the Deputyship for Research and Innovation, KAU. Publisher Copyright: © Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 452958
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/452958
ISSN: 1742-6588
PURE UUID: 8e0bb435-7c32-4264-b75c-390e2471216c
ORCID for Philip Turner: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8146-0249
ORCID for Abubakr Bahaj: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-0043-6045
ORCID for Mostafa Mahdy: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-2006-870X

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 07 Jan 2022 11:46
Last modified: 06 Jun 2024 02:05

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: Philip Turner ORCID iD
Author: Abubakr Bahaj ORCID iD
Author: Mostafa Mahdy ORCID iD

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×