title: Global scenarios of urban density and its impacts on building energy use through 2050.
abstract: Although the scale of impending urbanization is well-acknowledged, we have a limited understanding of how urban forms will change and what their impact will be on building energy use. Using both top-down and bottom-up approaches and scenarios, we examine building energy use for heating and cooling. Globally, the energy use for heating and cooling by the middle of the century will be between 45 and 59 exajoules per year (corresponding to an increase of 7-40% since 2010). Most of this variability is due to the uncertainty in future urban densities of rapidly growing cities in Asia and particularly China. Dense urban development leads to less urban energy use overall. Waiting to retrofit the existing built environment until markets are ready in about 5 years to widely deploy the most advanced renovation technologies leads to more savings in building energy use. Potential for savings in energy use is greatest in China when coupled with efficiency gains. Advanced efficiency makes the least difference compared with the business-as-usual scenario in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa but significantly contributes to energy savings in North America and Europe. Systemic efforts that focus on both urban form, of which urban density is an indicator, and energy-efficient technologies, but that also account for potential co-benefits and trade-offs with human well-being can contribute to both local and global sustainability. Particularly in growing cities in the developing world, such efforts can improve the well-being of billions of urban residents and contribute to mitigating climate change by reducing energy use in urban areas.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843; bguneralp@tamu.edu.|Center for Geospatial Science, Applications and Technology (GEOSAT), Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843.
authors.forename: Burak
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Güneralp
authors.affiliation: Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011.
authors.forename: Yuyu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Centre for Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Policy, Central European University, 1051 Budapest, Hungary.
authors.forename: Diana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ürge-Vorsatz
authors.affiliation: Centre for Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Policy, Central European University, 1051 Budapest, Hungary.
authors.forename: Mukesh
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gupta
authors.affiliation: Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, College Park, MD 20740.
authors.forename: Sha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, College Park, MD 20740.
authors.forename: Pralit L
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Patel
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Boise State University, Boise, ID 83725.
authors.forename: Michail
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fragkias
authors.affiliation: Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011.|Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511.|State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xiaoma
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511.
authors.forename: Karen C
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Seto
keywords: cities; climate change; mitigation; urban form; urbanization