Cities and energy consumption: strategies for an energy saving planning

A growing body of international researchers has been studying the complex relationship between cities and energy consumption so to support local policy makers’ decisions and foster the transition towards a low-carbon future. However, despite the great interest of the literature for this topic, a consistent number of interactions between urban features and energy use at urban scale still lacks consensus. Therefore, this research aims to identify the urban factors that significantly affect a city’s energy and carbon footprint, thus supporting policy-makers in the definition of effective strategies and policies that can be implemented on an urban scale to reduce energy consumption and resulting CO2 emissions. Using a holistic approach rather than a sectorial one, we consider together a comprehensive set of urban factors – physical, functional, geographical, and socio-economic – describing the complexity and multidimensionality of cities for measuring their impacts on CO2 emissions. The results of the statistical analyses show that the two main categories of urban factors directly affecting CO2 emissions per capita are the geographical and physical features, whereas the functional and socio-economic characteristics of urban areas have an indirect effect on CO2 emissions. In other words, the climate condition of a city and its physical structure (both in terms of urban density and buildings characteristics) are in large part responsible for the use of energy and the resulting CO2 emissions within the urban perimeter. Given that the geographical factors of cities cannot be changed by human intervention, the key role of urban policies and spatial planning in addressing energy and environmental issues becomes of strategic importance for addressing climate change.