GLOBAL WARMING

What is cool cities

What is a Cool City? These are cities that have made a commitment to stop global warming by signing the U.S. Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement. Begun in 2005, the Cool Cities campaign empowers city residents and local leaders to join and encourage their cities to implement smart energy solutions to save money and build a cleaner, safer future.

Four steps to become a cool city

There are some steps you should take before becoming a cool city. The first step is to ask you mayor or governor to join the U.S Mayor Climate Protection Agreement. The second step is to conduct an inventory of your city's current global warming emission. This information will identify the city's major CO2 sources. After completing the city's global warming inventory, then the city will be ready to go further to step three which is to make plans and develop a solution to reduce emissions while lowering energy costs for the city. Even though all the city plans will be unique there are some strategies are required in all the city plans: 1- Green Vehicle Fleets, 2- Energy Efficiency and 3- Renewable Energy. The fourth step is that the city has to put the plan into action and monitor its progress periodically.

Cool cities:how this relates to Abu Dhabi's development

Abu Dhabi is promoting initiatives to minimize the negative environmental footprint of urban development and reduce consumption of energy. The Cool City concept - using available green technology in transport, urban development and architecture with a low carbon footprint - is being promoted by the Sustainable Urban Development Consortium for Japan and Gulf States Partnership, orchestrated by Nikken Sekkei, one of the world's largest architectural design firms. Cool City would consume up to 60pc less energy than a conventional urban area by using cutting-edge technologies already tried and tested in Japan. 'The UAE is one of the biggest oil producing countries in the world,' Yuriko Koike, a member of the Japanese House of Representatives and former Japanese minister of environment, told the symposium.

Masdar developmet.description and analysis.

The Masdar Initiative is”a global cooperative platform for open engagement in the search for solutions to some of mankind’s most pressing issues: energy security, climate change and truly sustainable human development.” The city itself will be formed inside of a 6×6km2 square-shaped floor plan and will provide homes for some 50.000 people. The city will be zero-waste, zero-carbon and car-free, cooling: concentrated solar power, electricity: photovoltaic (solar) panels and water: solar-powered desalination plant.

This depends on whether Masdar is part of a genuine national devocalization strategy or a one-off green billboard at the airport. When the oil is ‘gone’, what will Masdar produce that can justify the bloated population in the desert metropolis? These questions are not really being addressed - but to me this vision would be more interesting than Masdar as the solar mall it is presented as. What effort avoidance and technology substitution strategy can be used? What are the structural shifts prepared? It is possible and even likely that the planning team has developed these concepts, but visible in the promo material is only a limited and expensive piece of hardware.

Masdar developmet.Can it work in practice?

This depends on whether Masdar is part of a genuine national devocalization strategy or a one-off green billboard at the airport. When the oil is ‘gone’, what will Masdar produce that can justify the bloated population in the desert metropolis? These questions are not really being addressed - but to me this vision would be more interesting than Masdar as the solar mall it is presented as. What effort avoidance and technology substitution strategy can be used? What are the structural shifts prepared? It is possible and even likely that the planning team has developed these concepts, but visible in the promo material is only a limited and expensive piece of hardware.

Comment on the article in The Independent

One thing consumers have to do is stop buying new cars - unless the cars are near zero emission or electric. This should have happened in 1990, and car makers would all be making zero emission cars by now.

However, consumers doing their greenest best, and becoming activists too, will not be enough - the big industrial emitters also need to change, possibly as a result of the consumer activism, but still they need to reduce their carbon emissions.