Indicators

of Well-Being and
Sustainability
Climate-Adjusted Carbon Footprint Indicator for
Cities

Heikki Keskivli & Suraj Nambiar

Table of Contents
1. Introduction and background ........................................................................................................... 2
1.1

Global urbanization .................................................................................................................... 3

1.2

Existing indicators ...................................................................................................................... 3

2. Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 4
2.1

Heating and cooling degree days ............................................................................................... 4

3. Data ................................................................................................................................................... 5
3.1

CO2 emissions ............................................................................................................................ 5

3.2

City specifications ...................................................................................................................... 6

3.3

Heating and cooling degree days ............................................................................................... 6

4. Results ............................................................................................................................................... 6
4.1

Approach used ........................................................................................................................... 6

4.2

Findings ...................................................................................................................................... 8

5. Discussion ........................................................................................................................................ 14
5.1

Used data ................................................................................................................................. 14

5.2

Alternative data source ............................................................................................................ 15

5.3

Policy recommendations ......................................................................................................... 16

5.4

Building the Perfect Indicator: Scope and Shortcomings ......................................................... 17

Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 19
Appendix 1 .............................................................................................................................................. 20
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................ 21

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli

1. Introduction and background

As the world population increases, the importance of urbanization, and therefore cities, has grown
significantly. Cities have an increasingly important role in reducing emissions globally because even
though they account for only 2 % of the Earths land surface, roughly 75 % percent of the worlds
emissions are produced in cities (City of Sydney, 2013).
Current widely used indicators for cities rely mostly on gross domestic product (GDP) that is proven to
be an inaccurate metric for environmental impact and sustainability in various geographies. Electricity
consumption and carbon emissions, however, do give more accurate results on these aspects.
Moreover, indicators that take carbon emissions into account and aim to compare electricity
consumed in cities across the world, do not cover the fundamental aspect of cities varying
temperature, a component that directly affects per capita electrical consumption. For example, it is
not meaningful to compare a city in Antarctica with a city in California with each other, since the
extremes of the climate vary significantly.
The purpose of the indicator is to understand and compare cities across the world based on their
carbon emissions taking into consideration varying climate conditions. This however is easier said
than done. Cities and their power consumption can differ based on factors such as country, continent,
governance, history, primary industry, topography, population and most importantly, climate. In this
document, we try and eliminate the effect of such discrepancies in a dual pronged approach by:

Normalizing the weather conditions of different cities (sophisticated adjustments where

the intention is to bring the entire distributions of adjusted values into alignment)

Looking at citys energy use not by electrical consumption, but rather by taking into
account their total carbon emissions.

This analysis aims to create an indicator to globally benchmark cities based on their carbon emissions,
adjusted with climate characteristics and population, thereby allowing cities to be measured on a
level playing field. The indicator could be used in the future as a guideline for energy efficiency, city
planning, or regulative improvements for any given city.

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli

1.1 Global urbanization

According to the United Nations, 3.6 billion people, equaling over 51 % of the world population of 7.0
billion, were living in urban areas in 2011, and this share is set to increase. In 2050, it is expected that
the world population will reach 9.3 billion, of which 6.3 billion would live in urban areas. Therefore,
cities are not only covering for all population growth, they are also accounted for population decrease
in rural areas. (The United Nations, 2012)
Even though over half of the world population lives already in urban areas, there are significant
geographical differences between continents. For example, it is expected that the level of
urbanization will reach 50 % of the population in Asia and Africa by 2020 and 2035, respectively.
Therefore, cities and towns in less developed countries are in general gaining most of the urban
population growth in the coming years. Asia, Africa, and Latin America along with Caribbean will add
1.4 billion, 0.9 billion and 0.2 billion to their urban population, respectively. This means that roughly
2.5 billion out of 2.7 billion people, who will begin living in urban areas, will do so outside the more
developed world. (The United Nations, 2012)
These growing trends do not come without complications. Some cities have already faced severe
environmental problems that have made everyday lives difficult due environmental issues such as
poor outdoor air quality. Centralized burning of fossil fuels near the population centers combined
with increasing amount of combustion engines in the traffic have generated high amounts of
emissions and small particles. Especially in China, concepts of eco-city, low carbon city and low carbon
eco-city are introduced to make an impact to local policies, since the rapid urbanization and
development in standard of living have been testing the limits of sustainability (Yu, 2014).

1.2 Existing indicators

One of the most extensive indicators for cities and their environmental efficiency is the Siemens
Green City Index. The Index research series has measured environmental performance of over 120
cities in Europe, Latin America, US & Canada, Asia and Africa. For example, the European Green City
Index, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Siemens, has collected 30
different countries from Europe to form a ranking of cities based on several factors that include CO2
emissions, energy, buildings, transport, water, waste and land use, air quality and environmental

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli


governance. The scope of this study is limited to redefining the CO2 emissions in city comparison.
(Siemens, 2014)
According to the Green City Index, best environmental performance in Europe can be found from
Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Oslo. North America is led by San Francisco, Vancouver and New York,
as Asia is led by Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul. Even though this indicator takes CO2 emissions into
account, different climates are not accounted for in the calculations, hence the findings from this
study could be used to complement further analysis of the Green City Index.
Many respectable entities such as WorldBank and CIA World Factbook do also have nationwide
carbon emission figures but most of the data is not detailed in the resolution of metropolitan areas.

2. Methodology
2.1 Heating and cooling degree days
It is obvious that installing and maintaining infrastructure in different countries and cities is use
different amounts of electricity for its needs, but often the impact of the surrounding climate is not
taken into account. To normalize such different data, heating degree days (HDD) and cooling degree
days (CDD) are used. These metrics indicate the amount of required heating or cooling, reflecting the
outdoor temperatures difference from the base temperature of indoors.
Calculating degree days is usually a compromise between the effort and the accuracy of data. The
most accurate data can be obtained by integrating temperature distribution density throughout each
day but this approach requires high amounts of accurate data and a lot of processing power for long-
term information (Martinaitis, 1998).
More effortless, but yet sufficiently accurate approach, is to compare the base indoor temperature
with the mean of the daily maximum and minimum temperatures. This data is widely available and
therefore more suitable for low-resource research. Simple method to calculate heating and cooling
degree days could be conducted with Equation (1) and Equation (2):
Heating:

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli

! =

!"
!!!(!,!

!,! )!

(1)


Cooling:

! =

!"
!!!(!,!

!,! )! ,

(2)

where Te,d equals the mean of daily minimum and maximum values of outdoor temperature of a day
d, while Tb,h and Tb,c represent the chosen base temperatures for heating and cooling, respectively.
Plus sign indicates that only positive values in the calculation are taken into account. (De Rosa, et al.,
2014)
For this paper, a temperature data resolution of 30 minutes to 60 minutes is used, depending on the
quality of the local data provided. The same aforementioned approach is used, but with higher
accuracy since instead of two data points during the day1, 24 to 48 data points are used2.
Temperatures chosen for this paper are 17 degrees Celsius for HDD, and 23 degrees Celsius for CDD.
These values can be widely used as the range for comfortable living, but preferences differ slightly
between geographical location. However, these preferences are not taken into account in this
analysis.

3. Data
3.1 CO2 emissions
To conduct our analysis on several cities, homogenous information across all the comparative cities
had to be used.
OECD provides CO2 emission data for metropolitan areas with a breakdown to energy industry and
transportation emissions. This data is easily accessible and covers several hundreds of locations,
exportable conveniently in Excel format. Since homogenous data for multiple locations in different
climates is needed to conduct this analysis, this database was used. By using data from one single
source mitigates risk from comparing apples with oranges and should provide coherent picture of the
existing reality. (OECD, 2014)

1
2

Minimum and maximum temperatures.

Temperatures every 30 to 60 minutes.

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli

3.2 City specifications

As part of our analysis, population density is one of the defining factors of city characteristics. To have
reliable population density data, both the total amount of population and the area of the city are
required. Since data discrepancy might affect our results substantially, our primary data for both city
population and area are obtained from the same survey responses than those of the emissions. It is
important to use the data for all the metrics from the same source since the three3 are highly
correlated with each other. This will mitigate the risk of having different interpretations of the citys
specifications that would widely affect our outcome.
However, if all of the aforementioned data is not available from OECD, the use other sources for the
analysis have been identified for backtracking purposes.

3.3 Heating and cooling degree days

To acquire substantial amounts of temperature data for the analysis, a web-based service by BizEE
Software, DegreeDays, was used. The platform acquires temperature data from Weather
Underground database with 30 to 60 minute resolution, and calculates the HDD and CDD with given
range of temperature. The temperature for HDD was chosen to be 17 degrees Celsius, and for CDD,
23 degrees Celsius. Airport weather stations are used as primary source for HDD and CDD due to the
nature of its high quality and low-resolution data. (DegreeDays, 2014)
Averaged data for the last 5 years is used to get as extensive dataset as possible to mitigate the risk of
using extreme years as a base for the analysis. All the gathered data used from the platform can be
found from Appendix 1.

4. Results
4.1 Approach used
The objective in this paper is to achieve a temperature-neutral indicator for the carbon footprint of
cities around the world. Currently power consumption figures are paired up with whole countries and
while doing so, no adjustments based on the climate are being made. It is easy to see why it is unfair

3

Area, population and emissions.

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli


for a city that faces extreme climate requiring substantial amounts of heating and cooling throughout
the year to be compared with one that has more forgiving weather conditions.
For temperature adjusting, heating and cooling degree days are used. For each city, the sum of both
will be generated. Additionally, the CO2 emissions are emissions are used to enable the paper to
comment on the amount of clean energy used. Note that CO2emissions that are caused due to waste
are omitt, since those emissions do not correlate with outdoor temperature. By combining HDD, CDD
and CO2 emissions, we find base level and temperature-correlated emissions from the results, as

CO2 emissions per capita (in tonnes)

illustrated in Figure 1.
300

y = 0.0347x + 83.022

City G
City H

200
City D

150
100

City K

City J

250

City I
City F

City A
City B

50

City
sample

City C

Linear
(City
sample)

City E

0
0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

4500

5000

HDD + CDD = Total degree days

Figure 1. Expected illustration of the gathered data. No real data was used to generate this graph.

With the help of this dynamic illustration, we can determine the average per capita CO2 emissions in a
city. This value, to be called base value in this paper, attains a value of 83 as shown in the illustration
above. The value is determined by the point where the city sample data trend line crosses the y-axis.
This is the data point where corresponding to zero degree days, (no temperature correlated
emissions, such as heating or cooling) is taken into account. As the amount of heating and cooling
increases, the trend line signals the correlation factor that is being awarded for cities because of the
more extreme climate. Hence, it is more acceptable for a city with 5000 degree days of cooling and
heating to generate more emissions than it is for one with a 10 degree days city.

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli


After generating this formula, every city is then issued with a difference value. This is calculated as the
negative or positive difference of the citys data from the trend line of all cities, and this value is then
combined with the base value. For example, say City C and D have emission values of 100 and 150,
respectively. Both of these cities have degree-days of 1000, where trend line is at 1184. This means
that City C is below it by 18 and City D above by 32. These differences are then applied to the zero-
point figure of 83, which means City C and D will end up with temperature-adjusted emission values
of 65 and 115, respectively.
The higher the number, the more the city has to do with its energy efficiency. Below average numbers
indicate that given cities are ahead of the game. Hence, as more data is applied, the values change
dynamically and there will always be cities above and below average (trend line).

4.2 Findings
The carbon footprint and degree days for 50 cities5 were collected for further analysis. These results
can be found from Figure 2. These emissions were defined as estimates of CO2 emissions (expressed
in tonnes) in metropolitan areas divided by population. The values are disaggregated from the
corresponding national values after (OECD, 2014). As can be seen from Figure 2, there are three
cities with significantly higher CO2 emissions than any other location chosen for this analysis. The city
with 5473 total degree days is Edmonton, the city with 2797 total degree days is Aachen, and the city
with 2767 total degree days is Kansas City.
Further studying showed that all the aforementioned cities had a significant presence of either
manufacturing or energy industry within the metropolitan limits that account for the abnormal
numbers. Edmonton has 12,8 % of its GDP generated by manufacturing industry and 12,7 % by
construction (City of Edmonton, 2014), while Aachen houses several energy intensive manufacturing
and communications companies like Denso Automotive, Ericsson, Phillips and Ford (NRW.Invest,
2014), and Kansas City works as a hub for intermodal transportation, warehousing, manufacturing,
and distribution (City-Data.com, 2005).

4
5

This can be calculated by using the formula found on Figure 1. In this case, 0.0347*1000+83.022=117.72.
All used data can be found from Appendix 1.

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli

CO2 per capita (in tonnes)

50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0

Edmonton
Aachen
Kansas City

1000

2000

3000

y = 0.0026x + 4.6159

4000

5000

6000

Total degree days

Figure 2. CO2 emissions of 50 metropolitan areas.

Since the aim of this study is to evaluate the energy efficiency and carbon footprint of cities in
different climates, these distinctive samples were removed from the group, which leads to a total
number of used cities at 47 for further analysis. Our motivation is to produce statistical methods that
are not unduly affected by such outliers, and hence these distinctive samples are taken out of the
group of cities under observation.
The CO2 emissions of the remaining cities by total amount, energy industry6, transportation7, and

CO2 emissions per capita

(in tonnes)

other8 are presented in Figure 3, Figure 4, Figure 5 and Figure 6.

20
y = 0.0013x + 6.7473

15
10
5
0
0

1000

2000

3000
Total degree days

4000

5000

6000

Figure 3. Total CO2 emissions of 47 metropolitan areas, excluding Kansas City, Edmonton and Aachen.

Share of CO2 emissions from the energy industry over total metropolitan CO2 emissions, after (OECD, 2014).
Share of CO2 emissions from transport (road and non-road ground transport) over total metropolitan CO2 emissions,
after (OECD, 2014).
8
As energy industry and transportation emissions are deducted from the total amount, the remaining is considered as
other emissions.
7

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli

CO2 emissions per capite (in

tonnes)

7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0

y = 0.0001x + 1.2745

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

Total degree days

CO2 emissions per capita (in

tonnes)

Figure 4. CO2 emissions of 47 metropolitan areas from energy industry, excluding Kansas City, Edmonton and Aachen.

9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0

y = -4E-05x + 2.6718

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

Total degree days

CO2 emissions per capita (in

tonnes)

Figure 5. CO2 emissions of 47 metropolitan areas from transportation, excluding Kansas City, Edmonton and Aachen.

20
15
y = 0.0012x + 2.801

10
Krakow

5
0
0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

Total degree days

Figure 6. CO2 emissions of 47 metropolitan areas from category other, excluding Kansas City, Edmonton and Aachen.

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli


As can be seen from the figures, energy industry consumption and transportation emissions show
very little, if any, correlation with the increased amount of total degree days. Also, Transportation
emissions not correlating with the climate makes sense, but findings with the energy industry are
surprising. As it seems from the results, OECD is calculating energy industry emissions from where
they are produced, and not where they are consumed. This strongly distorts the values attained from
several cities where OECD reports no energy industry emissions at all, which is highly unlikely
considering global energy needs.
To demonstrate one citys new index, lets use Krakow as an example (marked to Figure 6). Krakow
had CO2 emissions per capita at 7,99 tonnes, which positioned Krakow to be 19th best city in the
sample of 47 cities. Krakows emissions were 1,32 and 2,10 tonnes per capita for transportation and
energy industry, respectively. Other category amounted to 4,57 tonnes, which was then adjusted with
3511 degree days, since it correlates with temperature. As the trend line has a value of 7,01 with this
many degree days, the benefit for the city is 7,01 4,57 = 2,44. This benefit is then deducted from the
temperature correlated emissions baseline of 2,80, which will result in other categorys emissions of
2,80 2,44 = 0,36. To compare different cities with each other, all temperature adjusted9 and non-
adjusted10 emissions are summed up, forming a value of 3,7811 for Krakow. The same value is then
determined for all 47 cities and then normalizing the index by using Equation (3):
!"#$!% !"#$%!!"#"!$! !"#$%
!"#$!%! !"#$%!!"#"!$! !"#$%

= ,

(3)

where actual value is Krakows 3,78, minimum value Guadalajaras 1,33 and maximum value New
Yorks 14,79. Therefore, index value for Krakow is 0,18, zero being the best and 1,00 the worst.
Indexing logic is presented in Figure 7.

Category other emissions.

Categories transportation and energy industry.
11
0,36 (other) + 1,32 (transportation) + 2,10 (energy industry) = 3,78 (total)
10

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli

Index value for

city emissions
Sum all parts
and scale to 0-1
for comparison
Baseline -
(actual value -
trend line)

Other

Not
temperature
correlated

Energy industry

Weather
adjustment

Not
temperature
correlated

Transportanon

Figure 7. Temperature adjusted city CO2 emission index logic.

As all cities are put in order, this improves Krakows ranking by 7, from 19th position to 12th. All cities,
their index values, initial rankings with original CO2 emissions and with new method are presented in
Table 1.
It can be seen from the results that cities that improved their CO2 ranking with temperature adjusting
with five spots or more were Stockholm (7), Seoul (5), Tallinn (12), Ljubljana (5), Krakow (7), Warsaw
(7), Winnipeg (8), Calgary (7), Quebec (7), Oslo (6) and Helsinki (6). On the other hand, cities that
worsened their CO2 ranking with temperature adjusting with five spots or more were Lisbon (-6),
Barcelona (-7), Tokyo (-8), Osaka (-6), Nice (-10), Rome (-5), Dublin (-5), Phoenix (-5), Washington (-5)
and San Francisco (-5).
Table 1. Results of temperature adjusted CO2 emissions in different cities. Initial ranking was based on straightforward CO2 emissions
published by (OECD, 2014) and adjusted ranking to the temperature adjusted city CO2 emission index logic. Difference implies the
change in the position for the given city as the ranking type has been changed.

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli


Name of the city Initial rank
Guadalajara
1
Stockholm
9
Seoul Incheon
8
Mexico City
2
Tallinn
17
Monterrey
3
Athens
6
Mlaga
4
Copenhagen
12
Ljubljana
15
Lisbon
5
Krakw
19
Warsaw
20
Barcelona
7
Madrid
14
Milan
16
Munich
21
Tokyo
10
Osaka
13
Paris
18
Nice
11
Budapest
23
Brussels
24
Stuttgart
26
Winnipeg
33
Graz
27
Rome
22
Marseille
25
Calgary
36
Montreal
30
Quebec
38
Berlin
28
Prague
31
Dublin
29
Oslo
41
V ancouver
34
Phoenix
32
Helsinki
44
V ienna
39
Washington
35
Amsterdam
42
San Francisco
37
Miami
40
Linz
46
Las V egas
45
Los Angeles
43
New York
47

Adjusted rank
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47

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Difference Index value

0
0,00
7
0,02
5
0,04
-2
0,09
12
0,10
-3
0,11
-1
0,13
-4
0,14
3
0,15
5
0,16
-6
0,17
7
0,18
7
0,21
-7
0,22
-1
0,22
0
0,22
4
0,23
-8
0,25
-6
0,25
-2
0,27
-10
0,29
1
0,34
1
0,36
2
0,40
8
0,41
1
0,42
-5
0,43
-3
0,45
7
0,51
0
0,52
7
0,53
-4
0,54
-2
0,57
-5
0,57
6
0,59
-2
0,67
-5
0,69
6
0,69
0
0,70
-5
0,71
1
0,78
-5
0,81
-3
0,88
2
0,93
0
0,96
-3
0,98
0
1,00

5. Discussion
5.1 Used data
OECD reports CO2 emissions for metropolitan areas in three different categories: transportation,
energy industry, and other. Transportation for a given city is a good metrics since it is locally used no
significant energy flows are moving between areas. However, this does not apply for energy industry.
As many cities are reported to have no CO2 emissions for energy industry in their given metropolitan
area, it is reasonable to believe that only the energy production is accounted for, not the energy
consumption. This raises an issue of the fact that energy can be transported between locations and
energy hubs can account for a significant amount of areas energy production, as some metropolitan
areas, such as Guadalajara, Quebec and Malaga, might produce none of their consumed electricity.
This would also explain the lack of correlation with the energy industry emissions and temperature,
because common sense approach would lean toward the exact opposite; consumption of energy
increases with larger temperature fluctuations. Therefore the data used for this primary analysis
contains a lot of emission allocation that is unjust. This could be easily corrected if OECD would start
reporting the emissions occurring from the energy consumption within the metropolitan area.
Another addressable concern is the amount of manufactured goods. As only three different
categories for emissions were announced, none of which were industry activity, the emission
allocation can be assumed to be in the category other. The same logic applies for them as they can be
easily transported between locations, so only accounting for the amount of manufactured goods is
not a sufficient approach. To fairly calculate the emissions for a metropolitan area, the emissions
occurred from the consumption of the goods should be accounted for. This situation was clearly seen
in the cases of Aachen and Edmonton, for example.
Results of this study raised another concern about the validity of the data used from OECD. According
to the source used, Oslo and Helsinki have CO2 emissions of 14,61 and 15,78 tonnes, respectively, per
capita. However, several sources such as (MetroVancouver, 2011) and (YTV, 2011) suggest that
Helsinki had CO2 emissions per capita of 6,3 in 2004 and 5,5 tonnes in 2010. Additionally, sources such
as (Siemens, 2014) and (WWF, 2013) suggest that Oslo had CO2 emissions of 2,19 and in 2007 and
2,20 in 2011. This magnitude of CO2 emissions for Oslo and Helsinki are also supported by Samsungs
Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli


Green City Index Data (Siemens, 2014). Therefore, the ultimate results in this study can be questioned
despite the added value by the chosen approach.

5.2 Alternative data source

As the OECD data used for this analysis has proved in some cases to be questionable, additional data
should be acquired to increase the trustworthiness of the results made.
An initiative called Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) provides a voluntary climate change reporting
platform for city governments. The program is open to any city government, regardless of size or
geographic location (CDP, 2014a). As the results of this platform are based on volunteering, the data
is not available on every major city but could work as a starting point for further, more in-depth
analysis. Currently the CDP data is available for more than 200 cities, however, no single list of the
emissions have been composed by CDP, which makes an extensive city comparison much more
difficult. Additionally, restricted access to this data of 200 cities was a limiting factor of using this
database for this analysis.
CDP survey follows the same logic from city to city, but unfortunately not all cities answer all the
questions fully provided by CDP. This limits significantly the amount of usable data obtained from the
platform. For our indicator, information provided in the section C1.6, which is aimed to provide
information about the communitys greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by given segment, would prove
useful for further analysis. Reported segments vary, and may include residential, non-residential,
commercial, industrial and municipal consumers. Additionally, some cities report their transportation
and waste disposal related GHG emissions. Therefore this data would provide more insight on the
results than the data from OECD.
Other source for relevant data could be Siemens Green City Index database, which holistically collects
environmental data about several cities around the world, including data about water usage, air
pollution, commuting, waste amounts, carbon emissions and energy policies. However, this platform
was unfortunately discovered too late to be used for extensive usage but its future implementation
with the findings of this study would be complementary for improved results.

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli

5.3 Policy recommendations

The promotion of Energy Efficiency and renewable energy through Energy Auditing can
encourage more successful governments to share experiences on existing audit methodologies
and best practices with the aim to improve the effectiveness and quality of commercially
available audit services.

To the transfer of knowledge and the harmonization of audit schemes, allows strengthening
regional policy frameworks.

Since buildings take up a majority of the electrical consumption, (in some cases over 40% of
entire citys consumption) it is critical that more successful countries in our indicator share the
best more.

Some measures to improve efficiency and reduce demand of buildings that may be
incorporated as norms by local and national governments, either in the form of incentives for
good performance or, on the other hand, penalties for poor ones should concentrate on:
o Modification of set point temperatures
o Improvement in the insulation level
o Influence of level of infiltration
o Incorporation of free cooling and heating recovery
o Modification of system: cool/heat production systems, transport system, terminal
units, etc.
o Use innovative technologies and materials available

Public bodies can play a pivotal role as awareness raisers of the issues relating to energy use
(such as air conditioning and heating threshold tempratures) and as providers of incentives to
improve energy performance towards the main stakeholders of their territories. Therefore
Public Bodies should be promoter of campaigns or projects actively involving a wide range of
citizens on the issue of energy saving/efficiency!

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli

5.4 Building the Perfect Indicator: Scope and Shortcomings

A major factor that affects CO2 emission is the nature of the power supply itself. Cities, commonly
have power stations that use generators that convert energy (mostly mechanical) into electrical
energy. The energy source harnessed to turn the generator varies widely. It depends chiefly on which
fuels are easily available, cheap enough and on the types of technology that the power company has
access to. Most power stations in the world burn fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas to
generate electricity, and some use nuclear power, but there is an increasing use of cleaner renewable
sources such as solar, wind, wave and hydroelectric.
These factors can have significant impact on the overall power consumption from a sustainability
standpoint, which allows for discrepancies in producing a fair indicator.
In order to make the indicator highly accurate, one must now consider the nature of the involvement
of such data, and its affect on the overall outcome. The following points would help make this
indicator more holistic. We can classify this based on the following:
Logical/Empirical assessment:

Heating Degree Day (HDD)/Cooling Degree Day (CDD) as mentioned in the earlier part of the
paper is a measurement designed to reflect the demand for energy needed to heat/cool a
building. It is derived from measurements of outside air temperature. The heating
requirements for a given structure at a specific location are considered to be directly
proportional to the number of HDD/CDD at that location. This metric is generally used for
buildings, thus our report relies on an underlying assumption that cities are a dense cluster of
buildings that consume energy based on its nature and size.

The range of optimal temperature has been taken within range of global standard of 17-23
Degree Celsius. The rankings between cities may vary slightly when this range is tweaked.

Data measurement and quality assessment:

Data on break down of emissions based on type of industry emitting it. Lack of clear
definitions or classifications of data carries with it discrepancies, for instance, in the
classification of goods, types of employment, or classification of companies within industries.

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli

Detailed breakdown of emissions: Currently all the emissions are broken into Energy,
Transportation and other. A holistic and informed policy change would surely would require
access to data with further breakdown of emissions such as residential, commercial, public
transportation, private transportation etc.

A more holistic temperature component than HDD/CDD that would consider cities in general,
which was that can be used for a limited resource project

Data on percentage of the industrial sector (high power consuming) presence within city limits
with type of industry classified is currently done when discrepancies in our graph was found.
There may yet be some uncovered facts that lay hidden among the cities that landed in the
average.

Bureaucracy within cities: Classification of the dynamic relationship between the power
distribution board, and the local government.

An indicator that gives data about the geographical factors of cities that affect the total
amount of power used for public utility like water supply (such as proximity to a river, dam,
ocean) so we can group and analyze better.

Percentage of building cover (and type of building, say LEED rating that can help us categorize
and detect pain points of cities) opposed to overall land cover would help analyze per capita vs
per built up area consumption.

Looking at overall public psychology toward the need to save or demand for clean electricity in
would help analyze softer patterns within cities.

Cross validation of data used by a third party to strengthen the indicator

Transportation network structure plays a huge role in commuting the cities population from
one place to the other. Data that classifies different cities based on their efficiency of moving
each person would be very beneficial to further derive conclusions for certain trends.

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli

6. Conclusion
Results from temperature-adjusted city CO2 emission approach are encouraging. Never before has the
cities emissions been adjusted with climate conditions even though it is inevitable that cities in very
cold or very hot climates have to use more energy to reach the same comparable living standards.
This approach could increase the amount of comparing city efficiencies with each other as it brings
more justice to the benchmarking approach than earlier existing indicators of straightforward CO2
emissions. This would in turn encourage for global city comparison and effective policies.
However, a lot more in-depth analysis should be done. Especially the allocation of energy generation
emissions for cities seems to be incorrect in the OECD data, and more in depth breakdown of the
generation sources for CO2 should be available. Especially high level of manufacturing industry offsets
clearly results for any given city, just like was seen in the cases of Edmonton, Kansas City and Aachen.
Later on it was also found that Linz, a city that stood last but fourth in the study, is one of the major
chemical manufacturing centrals of Austria, which has a clear effect on the results.
This new kind of indicator could work as a step towards environmentally better performing cities. If
more data could be accessed for various locations, the causes for the city emissions could be further
analyzed and reflected to the results more thoroughly. As existing indicators such as the Green City
Index does holistically rank cities based on several categories, CO2 emissions being one of them, the
temperature adjusted emissions that were found in this study to make a significant difference for
some cities, could be used to improve Green City Index results.
We really do think that used CO2 emissions for city rankings require redefining, and our approach
could offer an alternative way of benchmarking cities and metropolitan areas by taking into account
the climate in the given location.

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli

Appendix 1
Table 2. All used data in the analysis.

Name of the city Population Area [km2]
Vi enna
2710331
9093,10
G ra z
614454
3074,20
Li nz
609054
3523,70

Density Total CO2 per capita Energy industry CO2 Transportation CO2 Other CO2

HDD

CDD

Total DD

298,06

14,23

3,29

3,44

7,50

2750

137

2887

199,87

10,69

3,95

2,71

4,03

2986

127

3113

172,85

17,58

1,24

0,03

16,31

3009

96

3105

B rus s el s

2510626

30326,00

82,79

9,48

1,21

2,48

5,79

2726

36

2762

Edmonton

1199616

1414,20

848,26

44,07

25,21

3,28

15,58

5444

29

5473

Ca l ga ry

1306924

12478,50

104,73

13,84

0,69

2,39

10,76

4658

34

4692

Wi nni peg

813580

19808,00

41,07

13,41

0,12

4,45

8,83

5370

100

5470

Va ncouver

2358711

12478,50

189,02

13,44

0,04

3,79

9,61

2568

2572

Quebec

834215

21715,50

38,42

14,21

0,00

3,37

10,84

4739

47

4786

Montrea l

4226756

5063,60

834,73

13,02

0,04

3,29

9,69

3784

107

3891

Pra gue

1848898

3929,00

470,58

13,04

3,15

1,77

8,13

3353

66

3419

B erl i n

4380489

6176,40

709,23

12,1

3,07

2,06

6,97

2893

69

2962

Muni ch

2874409

6263,10

458,94

8,48

1,91

1,42

5,14

3287

66

3353

S tuttga rt

1957507

1987,60

984,86

10,31

3,25

1,87

5,20

2951

73

3024

Aa chen

578522

775,30

746,19

29,69

24,67

1,78

3,24

2755

42

2797

Copenha gen

1998568

4083,70

489,40

7,05

1,41

2,18

3,46

3072

3078

Ta l l i nn

530698

4326,30

122,67

7,7

3,63

1,18

2,89

4137

4145

Ma dri d

6640335

11537,60

575,54

7,14

0,14

3,11

3,89

1887

483

2370

B a rcel ona

3716802

1362,00

2728,93

5,74

0,42

2,26

3,05

1008

229

1237

M l a ga

849191

1623,10

523,19

4,43

0,00

1,06

3,37

739

288

1027

H el s i nki

1466120

6350,70

230,86

15,78

2,33

2,29

11,16

4235

11

4246

Pa ri s

11777101

12089,40

974,17

7,91

0,25

2,70

4,96

2389

66

2455

Ma rs ei l l e

1734789

4230,80

410,04

9,53

2,61

1,61

5,32

1530

259

1789

Ni ce

850073

3096,90

274,49

6,82

0,02

1,21

5,60

1197

174

1371

Athens

3555307

1656,10

2146,79

5,13

0,08

2,23

2,83

991

695

1686

B uda pes t

2854222

6056,90

471,23

9,45

1,90

1,72

5,83

2759

223

2982

D ubl i n

1690947

4767,20

354,70

12,37

2,39

4,03

5,95

2793

2794

R ome

4042286

5686,50

710,86

9,11

2,33

1,50

5,27

1384

325

1709

Mi l a n

4084591

2637,80

1548,48

7,43

0,67

3,08

3,68

2345

216

2561

Tokyo

35204263

8592,10

4097,28

6,8

1,29

1,44

4,08

1420

380

1800

Os a ka

17270651

7003,90

2465,86

7,06

1,25

1,51

4,30

1478

534

2012

S eoul I ncheon

22938013

4673,10

4908,52

5,74

0,30

1,49

3,95

2979

297

3276

Monterrey

4291614

10984,40

390,70

4,42

1,27

0,97

2,18

404

958

1362

G ua da l a ja ra

4509743

2478,40

1819,62

2,42

0,00

0,89

1,52

515

391

906

Mexi co Ci ty

19522493

5101,70

3826,66

3,42

0,04

1,72

1,66

658

106

764

Ams terda m

2383313

2819,80

845,21

15,06

6,34

2,05

6,67

2672

22

2694

Os l o

1490619

7099,20

209,97

14,61

0,06

2,05

12,50

4476

4481

Wa rs a w

2994909

8611,70

347,77

8,33

2,51

1,60

4,23

3375

79

3454

Kra kw

1354499

3749,10

361,29

7,99

2,10

1,32

4,57

3420

91

3511

Li s bon

2818338

3988,30

706,65

5,1

0,98

1,77

2,36

1014

186

1200

S tockhol m

1978017

7106,90

278,32

6,17

0,54

2,24

3,39

3830

3838

Ljubl ja na

571708

3145,00

181,78

7,28

1,88

2,16

3,25

3007

139

3146

New York

16582772

9882,10

1678,06

17,71

1,97

8,19

7,55

2232

201

2433

Wa s hi ngton

5336371

12085,40

441,56

13,5

2,75

4,38

6,37

1790

420

2210

Ka ns a s Ci ty

1937235

16608,30

116,64

23,25

12,44

5,79

5,02

2220

547

2767

S a n F ra nci s co

6883043

17089,90

402,76

13,87

1,35

5,38

7,14

1400

12

1412

La s Vega s

2065960

67988,50

30,39

16,97

5,98

3,99

7,00

1359

904

2263

Los Angel es

17214555

83682,20

205,71

15,3

1,06

5,81

8,43

544

50

594

Phoeni x

3900900

23889,10

163,29

13,38

2,40

4,12

6,86

1825

460

2285

Mi a mi

5623920

14179,40

396,63

14,47

1,11

4,44

8,92

43

1041

1084

Suraj Nambiar & Heikki Keskivli

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