On Monday, April 20, Felix Creutzig from Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change spoke about “Sustainability at the Nexus of Land Use and Energy.” The presentation focused on his work concerning bioenergy, sustainability, and environmental policy.
Although Creutzig’s current work focuses in determining the sustainability of bioenergy and research surrounding greenhouse gas emissions, his path to energy systems and land use research is unconventional and unique. In fact, Creutzig, who is currently the Head of Working Group for Land Use, Infrastructures, and Transport, even worked as a consultant for the Energy Foundation in Beijing.
Cretuzig opened the talk with the question: How sustainable is bioenergy?
In academia, this question creates two contrasting opinions. According to integrated assessment models (IAMs), IPCC’s Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN) states that using bioenergy is a best option for high energy production and low greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. However, other life-cycle assessment (LCAs) models claim that using biofuels creates potential for further problems, as harnessing energy from biomaterials may cause environmental harm and heighten GHG emissions.
The use of bioenergy has its tradeoffs, and issues concerning land, land use, and people dependent on land arise when discussing bioenergy deployment. By deploying bioenergy, there are potential risks concerning the current 1.5 billion subsistence farmers reliant on their land, biodiversity, and food security. With such issues, Creutzig asserts that the discussion of implementing bioenergy use must be held in consideration of both science and policy. The impact of biodiversity cannot be determined solely by subjective decisions and it cannot be determined solely based on facts. Uncertainty from both sides, states Creutzig, should be openly communicated between scientists and policymakers.
The second half of Creutzig’s talk centered on the question: What drives direct urbanenergy consumption?
In a colorful graphic of London with the counties labeled by the average household energy consumption, Creutzig demonstrated that low-emission households were associated with young professionals, while the high-emission households were associated with older professionals.
Along with these interesting trends, Creutzig observed that few studies make use of the valuable opportunity to investigate the sustainability of cities using urban economics.
In cities such as Beijing and Barcelona, Creutzig noted variables for analysis such as the marginal cost of car driving, noise, climate change, air pollution and congestion – all variables endemic to urban areas.
“Urban economics provide a suitable framework for explaining direct energy use,” Creutzig said.
However, the same bioenergy implementation procedure will not work for all cities, as all cities are structured differently. Bioenergy has a high uncertainty, and understanding city topologies is necessary when discussing bioenergy deployment, a spatially differentiated policy.
References:
1 Creutzig, F., “Sustainability at the Nexus of Land Use and Energy.” Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College. Hanover, 23 April 2015.
2 Creutzig, F., Popp, A., Plevin, R., Luderer, G., Minx, J., & Ottmar, E. (2012). Reconciling top down and bottom-up modelling on future bioenergy deployment. Nature Climate Change,
3 Creutzig, F., Baiocchi, G., Bierkandt, R., Pichler, P., & Seto, K. C. (2015). Global typology of urban energy use and potentials for an urbanization mitigation wedge. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,doi:10.1073/pnas.1315545112