Energy and material flows of megacities
College
Gokongwei College of Engineering
Department/Unit
Industrial Engineering
Document Type
Article
Source Title
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume
112
Issue
19
First Page
5985
Last Page
5990
Publication Date
5-12-2015
Abstract
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.
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Digitial Object Identifier (DOI)
10.1073/pnas.1504315112
Recommended Citation
Kennedy, C., Stewart, I., Facchini, A., Cersosimo, I., Mele, R., Chen, B., Uda, M., Kansal, A., Chiu, A., Kim, K., Dubeux, C., La Rovere, E., Cunha, B., Pincetl, S., Keirstead, J., Barles, S., Pusaka, S., Gunawan, J., Adegbile, M., Nazariha, M., Hoque, S., Marcotullio, P. J., Otharán, F., Genena, T., Ibrahim, N., Farooqui, R., Cervantes, G., & Sahin, A. (2015). Energy and material flows of megacities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112 (19), 5985-5990. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1504315112
Disciplines
Industrial Technology | Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering
Keywords
Industrial ecology; Sustainability; Urbanization--Environmental aspects
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