Posts in the 'Energy + Climate Change' category
April 22, 2015 marks the 45th anniversary of Earth Day, an event first held in 1970 that helped mobilize the modern environmental movement in the United States. This year’s Earth Day will include events that focus on the intersection of ...
It would take farm land the size of Mexico just to grow the amount of food that humans produce, but do not eat, every year. More food goes uneaten at the consumption phase of the supply chain—in places like homes, ...
In 2012 alone, Latin America saw 131,000 preventable air pollution-related deaths. To reduce emissions and improve air quality, it’s essential that public transit fleets—like buses—become more fuel-efficient. Adopting cleaner fuels—like natural gas or low-sulfur diesel—and upgrading to technologies that produce ...
Editor’s note April 14, 2015: This article was updated to include a reference to the Bus Rapid Transit Centre of Excellence. The world has never been more urban than it is now, and this trend isn’t expected to slow down ...
This is the second installment of the China’s Clean Air Challenge series, exclusive to TheCityFix. This series examines the increasing social, environmental, and economic impacts of serious air quality issues in Chinese cities, and investigates the source of emissions and ...
In 2002, Brazil produced 60,000 metric tons of waste per day, 76 percent of which was disposed of in landfills with no long-term management or water treatment. In response to growing challenges with waste production and trash dumping, the country ...
Buildings are an important part of the sustainability picture for Mexico City. At least 20 percent of the city’s total greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings, with growth in coming decades expected to increase energy demand. This means that improving ...
Cities in the 21st century face two monumental shifts: growing urban populations and a rapidly changing climate. As the world’s urban population nears five billion, cities will need to build more infrastructure in the first 30 years of this millennium ...
Cities contribute 70 percent of the world’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions and play an essential role in climate change mitigation. However, since average global temperatures are already rising and the effects of climate change are becoming increasingly palpable around the world, ...
Taking even a quick look at India’s current pattern of growth, it’s not hard to see both the rising energy insecurity and the stress that cities across the country are experiencing. Congestion, urban sprawl, and poor access to reliable energy ...
Yesterday, Bogotá, Colombia celebrated the 15th anniversary of its annual car-free day. Between 5am and 7:30pm, residents left their cars behind and turned to a variety of other modes of transport—a symbolic act that 63 percent of citizens institutionalized through ...
What will the city of the future look like? How can we unlock the potential of urbanization to create safe, accessible and prosperous societies? At Transforming Transportation 2015 – the annual conference co-organized by the World Resources Institute and the World Bank– we learned about ...
As China urbanizes, buildings in the country’s cities are a growing source of emissions and air pollution. Energy use from public sector buildings rose 15 percent between 2006 and 2010, and heat and electricity from emissions-intensive coal now account for ...
The city is like an organism, and the swift movement of people and goods is the oxygen that sustains its well-being. When this circulation is inhibited, it significantly compromises the quality of urban life. For example, private cars account for ...
This article was originally published on January 15, 2015 by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Last year marked an important tipping point: for the first time, half of the global population lives in cities. Cities currently add 1.4 million people each ...
