How Can Cities Reach Their Climate Goals?
Volume 31, Issue 3 September 2022
A decade ago, the global network of “megacities” known as C40—so named for the forty cities that founded it in 2005—released a report titled “Why Cities Are the Solution to Global Climate Change.”[1] Seoul, Mumbai, Paris, Cape Town, and other cities have won awards for their leadership on climate, and U.S. cities are, C40 suggests, doing more on climate than major cities elsewhere.[2] In 2019, the mayor’s office of New York City (NYC) stated that it was “leading the fight against climate change” and would achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and pledged to “electrify the city with 100 percent clean electricity sources.”[3]
Today, hundreds of cities have adopted ambitious climate targets, committing to reduce fossil-fuel dependency, use more renewable energy, green their transport systems, and be more energy efficient.[4] Networks of mayors and other municipal officials committed to climate action have proliferated.[5]
The fact that cities have positioned themselves as climate leaders is a big deal. Cities occupy just 2 percent of the Earth’s surface, but they account for more than 70 percent of CO2 emissions.[6] So if cities can take the lead in reducing their emissions, then who is to argue? The benefits to the climate could be enormous.
Of the many targets adopted by cities, “100 percent renewable energy” is perhaps the most important from a climate perspective. Improved energy efficiency is also essential, but it is the electrification of transport, heating, and cooling in buildings, among other things, that will be make or break for cities. By the end of 2019, more than 230 cities globally had adopted targets for 100 percent renewable electricity.[7] Of the ninety-seven “megacities” currently in the C40 network, twenty-four have committed to achieving 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030.[8] Many smaller cities have done the same. The Sierra Club recently reported that 170 U.S. cities have made the 100 percent commitment.[9]
By the end of 2019, more than 230 cities globally had adopted targets for 100 percent renewable electricity.
But how will the ambitious targets adopted by cities be reached? Declaring climate leadership is today very fashionable, but delivering on the commitments made is something altogether different. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stated recently, “Cities are where the climate battle will largely be won or lost.”[10] True, but it was Guterres who raised eyebrows when he warned that the latest climate science had exposed the world’s failure to address the climate emergency. “Some government and business leaders,” he stated, “are saying one thing, but doing another. Simply put, they are lying.”[11]
Green Gentrification
Lying or not, many corporate CEOs hope to ensure that the path toward reaching climate targets is paved with money-making opportunities. Networks like C40 and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy are well-resourced platforms that have promoted “public private partnerships” (P3s) where cities use public money to “de-risk” private investment.[12] For example, the Coalition for Urban Transitions has ties to the New Climate Economy think tank, which is led by Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank chief economist. “Low-carbon investments in cities,” Stern notes, “could yield returns worth US$24 trillion over the next thirty years.”[13]
However, here and there, the left is organizing around a different agenda, one that locates quality public services at the heart of city-level climate action. For example, transport unions and mayors of some of the world’s leading cities have joined together to call on governments to invest in public transport systems. C40 and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) seek a doubling of the share of journeys by public transport in cities.[14] In the U.K. city of Leeds, the Labour Party–controlled City Council has committed to cutting the city’s carbon emissions by around 55 percent by 2025 and to net zero by 2030.[15] The city’s unions have developed a plan “to retrofit almost all homes to an excellent standard of energy-efficiency and install electrically powered heat pumps as the primary method for space and water heating. We believe that Leeds City Council must lead the way, setting the pace for a rapid roll-out of such a scheme across the country.”[16]
These initiatives are part of a progressive trend that some have termed “new municipalism.”[17] Many European cities have pushed back against the tide of privatizations and outsourcing and have brought essential services back into public ownership.[18] While mostly in the Global North, cities in the Global South—New Delhi, for example—have also taken similar measures.[19] The Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute has documented 374 cases of energy-related “remunicipalizations.” German cities like Hamburg have taken their electricity grids back into public ownership, and cities in Spain have either set up or partnered with cooperatives in both energy retail and renewable energy generation.[20] Representing millions of municipal workers, Public Services International recently produced a how-to guide for unions titled “Taking Our Public Services Back in House.”[21] These and similar efforts are building a platform for a progressive pro-public agenda at the municipal level.
Energy Unlimited?
Nevertheless, a 100 percent renewable energy goal poses several major challenges for cities, and as we shall see, this has also created political challenges for the left.
On a technical level, as less electricity is generated from coal and gas, renewable sources of electricity will need to replace the generation capacity that is coming offline through the retirement of existing coal-fired and gas-fired power stations. On its own, that is a heavy lift. But at the same time, cities will need to acquire a lot more electricity to decarbonize transportation and buildings that today rely on fossil fuels. So where will this electricity come from?
Many progressives have not been sufficiently mindful of the formidable nature of these challenges. This is due in large part to the political influence of Germany’s energy transition, or Energiewende. Germany’s experience—and its status as a renewable energy pioneer—reinforced a number of misconceptions, the impact of which is still being felt across the left. Two misconceptions stand out. The first misconception concerns the role played by individuals and communities in driving the energy transition through the installation of “behind the meter” solar systems accompanied by wind installations situated close to urban areas. It is worth remembering that, in 2012, roughly one-third of the solar panels installed in the world were in Germany, and nearly all of them were on the rooftops of German homeowners. This instilled the idea that local generation could replace traditional large-scale electricity generation, rendering centralized systems based on power stations obsolete. Green groups remain strong advocates of local generation, and the “energy citizenship” movement is a potent political force in Europe and the United States.[22] According to the Europe-based energy cooperatives network known as REScoop,
A socially fair energy transformation means putting renewable energy into the hands of communities and people—taking back power from the fossil-fuel industry, which has consistently blocked action that threatens its own financial interest, at the expense of people and the planet.[23]
Early advocates of distributed generation—and solar photovoltaic (PV) in particular—firmly believed that it had almost unlimited potential to meet energy needs, and many still do. In the early 2000s, Hermann Scheer, perhaps the main architect of Gemany’s Energiewende and long-serving Social Democratic Party member of the German parliament, pointed to the unique characteristics of renewable energy technologies and their capacity to convert unlimited supplies of wind and sunlight into electricity. His writing consolidated the idea that vast numbers of individuals, communities, and cooperatives would seize the opportunity to participate as energy “producer-consumers” (or “prosumers”).[24] On this basis, cities could take great strides toward reaching what he termed “energy autonomy.”[25] Many progressive city administrations looked to Germany as the model for a citizens-led energy transition based on distributed generation.[26]
Small Is Limited
Today, it is becoming increasingly clear that Scheer’s confidence in the capacity of distributed generation was wide of the mark. It is worth noting that Scheer rarely provided empirical data to back up his “unlimited clean energy” claims. Even today, beyond a handful of technical journals, there have been surprisingly few studies that have sought to quantify the potential contribution of distributed renewable energy to a renewables-based future.[27] A smattering of studies that have been conducted suggest that cities could meet some of their energy needs through distributed generation, but its contribution is likely to be small.
In 2007, NYC, led by then-Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, launched its “PlaNYC.” The plan imagined a role for solar projects on city brownfield sites and committed to develop “small and large wind projects to serve New York City.”[28] In 2011, the city identified 650,000 buildings (from a total of roughly one million) with the potential to generate solar power and concluded that the city could add 5.8 gigawatts (GW) to its generation capacity. However, solar arrays would need to be installed on all 650,000 rooftops. But the additional capacity would meet only 14 percent of NYC’s annual electricity consumption.[29] The city still likes to talk up its record on solar: “Installed solar capacity has increased sevenfold [since 2014] and we now have enough solar installed across the city to meet the needs of nearly 50,000 households.”[30] But by late 2020, a miniscule 137 MW of solar had been installed.
. . . [I]f every rooftop in the European Union that is solar-compatible were utilized, this would meet around 7 percent of the European Union’s annual electricity needs.
Studies of other major cities tell a similar story. In February 2020, Amsterdam released its “Climate Neutral Roadmap 2050,” proposing that, by 2040, “all suitable roofs should be used for the generation of renewable energy.”[31] The report added, “We will be able to produce a maximum of 30 percent of the electricity that we need sustainably, on our own territory.”[32] If Amsterdam uses all of its rooftop solar potential, and doubles its wind deployment by 2030, it will still need to source roughly 70 percent of its electricity from outside of the city. But, as with New York, the distance between what is technically possible and what is actually happening remains very wide. As of 2017, wind and solar together contributed just 1.5 percent of Amsterdam’s energy use.[33]
Barcelona adopted its Sustainable Energy Action Plan in 2010 and also committed to reach 100 percent renewable energy, although without specifying when it might do so. In January 2019, the city established a public entity, Barcelona Energia (BE), to harness the city’s solar energy potential by pursuing “maximum local energy generation.”34 But what does this amount to? According to BE, if fully utilized, the city’s rooftops could generate about 8 percent of the city’s current electricity needs. Even in a city as sunny as Barcelona, it is clear that distributed generation has its limits.[35]
Although increasing, rooftop solar power capacity currently contributes barely 1 percent to the world’s electricity supply (and all solar energy contributes less than 3 percent.)[36] A recent EU-funded study reported that solar PV meets 1.5 percent of total electricity demand in Italy and 7.3 percent in Germany.[37] Residential and commercial rooftop installations probably generated no more than 2.5 percent of the European Union’s electricity in 2017.[38] Recent estimates suggest that, if every rooftop in the European Union that is solar-compatible were utilized, this would meet around 7 percent of the European Union’s annual electricity needs.[39]
These numbers tell a clear story: distributed generation has the potential to play a significant role in helping cities reach their renewable energy targets, but its contribution is unlikely to come anywhere close to the levels imagined by Scheer or his latter-day followers.
Return of the Dinosaurs
However, the confidence in the potential of distributed generation led to a second serious misconception: the idea that the decades-long dominance of the traditional power utilities would quickly collapse because of their falling market share, reduced revenue streams, and imploding investor confidence. The utilities—often depicted as lumbering dinosaurs on the verge of extinction—would not go gently into that green night; therefore, anything that hastened their (inevitable) demise should be a political priority because of their ties to “dirty energy,” principally coal and gas.[40]
But the experience of recent years tells a different story about the energy transition than many had anticipated. This story needs to be fully understood if the left is to build on the gains it has made at the municipal level. Although cities may be major consumers of energy, municipal authorities have, in most instances, limited control over how it is generated.[41] Lofty claims about the potential of distributed generation and city-level autonomy led many progressives to believe that the incumbent utilities were about to shuffle off their mortal coil. This has not happened, and it is not going to.
Although cities may be major consumers of energy, municipal authorities have, in most instances, limited control over how it is generated.
Rather than being disrupted by renewables, utilities have become major investors in wind and solar power, as well as battery storage and digitalization. Globally, more than 80 percent of investment in renewable energy capacity in 2018 took the form of utility-scale projects. Utilities are procuring power from large solar and wind developers and channeling the power into transmission and distribution systems.[42]
For the left, this reality means that the utilities must become the focus of political attention. For as long as the electrical power they provide from coal, gas, and nuclear is needed—and that period could in some countries span decades—the utilities will not disappear. When utilities have teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, governments have found various ways to restore their profitability.[43] This is not a symptom of, as some environmental nongovernmental organizations claim, a morose addiction to fossil fuels; rather, it reflects the need to keep the lights on during a period where renewables and storage batteries are not sufficiently developed to provide a reliable alternative.
Reclaimed Utilities and Cities: Partners for the Public Good
As things stand now, the only plausible way for cities to reach their 100 percent renewable energy targets is through the utilities.[44] The left can play a role in helping cities reach their climate targets by advocating for what some unions have called a comprehensive reclaiming of privatized and marketized energy systems to public ownership.[45] As we have seen, through “remunicipalization” many cities have the power to take back distribution grids, partner with cooperatives, and—up to a point—control energy prices. But these measures must be viewed as first steps toward a more far-reaching extension of public ownership that includes power generation and transmission systems and the supply chains that serve them.
If cities are to reach their climate and renewable energy targets, utilities will need to partner with municipalities to reduce demand while at the same time decarbonizing supply.
In a forthcoming report, the “Trade Union Task Force for a Public Energy Future” details what role reclaimed utilities can play in helping cities reach their climate targets. Convened by the French energy unions, Public Services International, and Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, the report notes,
The problem is not the utilities themselves; the problem is the rules that govern their behavior—rules that have forced these companies to operate on a commercial basis, and have made them less accountable to the public, less transparent, and less concerned about the needs of working-class consumers than was the case when they were publicly owned.[46]
The physical infrastructure (such as power stations, transmission lines, and the like) were once public assets, but over time large parts of generation infrastructure and some of the transmission infrastructure have become private property. This infrastructure needs to be taken back into public ownership because, for the foreseeable future, much of it continues to be essential.
Leaving things as they are is not an option. The effects of a four-decade global push to privatize and liberalize energy systems has installed an “energy for profit” regime that is preventing cities from reaching their climate and clean energy goals. The large energy utilities are in the business of selling electricity, not in reducing its use. Any municipality that wishes to promote energy efficiency will be pushing in one direction, while the utilities will be pushing the opposite way. If cities are to reach their climate and renewable energy targets, utilities will need to partner with municipalities to reduce demand while at the same time decarbonizing supply.
Under a new public system that can respond to social and ecological necessities, the effort to reach cities’ climate targets can be liberated from the need to secure profit for private interests. The technical challenges are such that careful planning and transparency are essential. Such a system will allow both cities and utilities to show leadership in ways that go beyond speeches and press releases.
Notes
1. C40, “Why Cities are the Solution to Global Climate Change,” 2012, available at https://www.c40.org/ending-climate-change-begins-in-the-city.
2. https://www.c40.org/news/c40-awards-the-11-best-cities-of-2016-for-addressing-climatechange/.
3. https://onenyc.cityofnewyork.us/.
4. REN21, GSR2019, p. 179.5. More than 2,500 local and regional governments are today part of the Local Governments for Sustainability network, available at https://iclei.org/about_iclei_2/.
6. C40, “Why Cities? Cities Have the Power to Change the World,” available at https://www.c40.org/why_cities.
7. REN21, Global Status Report 2019, 184, available at https://www.ren21.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/gsr_2019_full_report_en.pdf.
8. C40, 2019 Annual Report, available via: C40 2019 Annual Report—Message by Mark Watts, April 23, 2020, available at https://www.c40.org/blog_posts/c40-2019-annual-report-message-
by-mark-watts.
9. Sierra Club, available at https://www.sierraclub.org/ready-for-100/commitments. The Sierra Club also urges municipalities to pressure utilities to source more renewable energy, to consider power purchase agreements with renewable energy companies.
10. https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/sgsm19835.doc.htm.
11. https://www.un.org/press/en/2022/sgsm21228.doc.htm.
12. Coalition for Urban Transitions, 2019, “Climate Emergency, Urban Opportunity: How National Governments Can Secure Economic Prosperity and Avert Climate Catastrophe by Transforming Cities,” available at https://urbantransitions.global/en/publication/climate-emergency-urban-opportunity/.
13. Coalition for Urban Transitions. “Climate Emergency, Urban Opportunity,” available at https://urbantransitions.global/en/publication/climate-emergency-urban-opportunity/. The quote is from Nicholas Stern.
14. C40 and International Transport Workers Federation, “Making COP26 Count: How Investing in Public Transport This Decade can Protect our Jobs, our Climate, our Future,” November 2021, available at https://www.c40.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ITFC40-joint-report-Making-COP26-count-Nov-2021-EN.pdf.
15. https://democracy.leeds.gov.uk/documents/s198403/Climate%20Emergency%20Cover%20Report%20191219.pdf.
16. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tVVwqf57Bq01oAkCBi31JNgcg3Ce4dn1HYnZIIKYRt4/edit.
17. Barcelona en Comu et al., 2019, cited in Thompson, M. (2020) What’s so new about new municipalism? Progress in Human Geography Early, online version available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132520909480.
18. David Hall, “Re-municipalising municipal services in Europe,” May 2012, PSIRU, University of Greenwich.
19. David Hall, Sandra van Niekerk, Jenny Nguyen, Steve Thomas, Energy liberalisation, privatisation and public ownership, Public Service International Research Unit, September 2013, available at https://www.world-psi.org/sites/default/files/en_psiru_ppp_final_lux.pdf.
20. Satoko Kishimoto, Lavinia Steinfort, and Olivier Petitjean, The Future is Public: Towards Democratic Ownership of Public Services (Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2020); Catalan Network for Energy Sovereignty and Transnational Institute: Municipal Actions for Building Energy Democracy and Energy Sovereignty: Municipalist Manifesto from 2020 Onwards; Lavinia Steinfort, The Future Is Public, Transnational Institute, December 2019, available at https://www.tni.org/en/futureispublic. Andrew Cumbers, and Soren Becker, “Making Sense of Remunicipalisation: Theoretical Reflections On and Political Possibilities from Germany’s Rekommumalisierung Process,” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy 11 (2018), 503-17.
21. https://publicservices.international/resources/publications/taking-our-public-services-backin-house—a-remunicipalisation-guide-forworkers-and-trade-unions?id=11108&lang=en.
22. For example, in 2007, led by then-Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City launched its “PlanNYC.” The plan imagined a role for solar projects on city brownfield sites and committed to develop “small and large wind projects to serve New York City.” Available at http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc/downloads/pdf/publications/planyc_2011_planyc_full_report.pdf.
23. Friends of the Earth Europe, Greenpeace EU, REScoop.eu, Energy Cities, and Friends of the Earth Spain and Hungary, “Unleashing the power of community renewable energy,” February 14, 2019, available at https://www.foeeurope.org/unleashing-power-community-energy.
24. Hermann Scheer, The Energy Imperative: 100 Per Cent Renewable Now (New York: Earthscan, 2012).In addition to being an elected official, Scheer was also a major solar industry lobbyist.He played a central role in founding and/or leading a number of political and industry advocacy organizations—including the European Association for Renewable Energy (now EUROSOLAR) in 1988 and the World Council for Renewable Energies (WCRE) in 2001—and he was the recipient of numerous awards on the basis of his advocacy of renewable energy.
26. Antonio Barragán, and Julio Terrados, “Sustainable Cities: An Analyses of the Contribution Made by Renewable Energy under the Umbrella of Urban Metabolism,” International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning 12, no. 3 (2017), 416-24, SSN: 1743-7601 (paper format), ISSN: 1743-761X (online), available at http://www.witpress.com/journals. DOI: 10.2495/SDP-V12-N3-416-424. This paper is part of the Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Urban Regeneration and Sustainability (Sustainable City 2016), available at www.witconferences.com.
27. Barragán and Terrados, “Sustainable Cities,” 416-24. See also Peter Droege, The Renewable City: The Future of Low-Carbon Living, Liechtenstein Institute for Strategic Development Vaduz, Liechtenstein, October 30, 2018, available at http://www.lowcarbonlivingcrc.com.au/news/news-archive/2018/12/ renewable-city-future-low-carbon-living.
28. http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc/downloads/pdf/publications/planyc_2011_planyc_full_report.pdf.
29. Lisa DiCaprio, December 17, 2014. 350NYC General Meeting, “Transitioning NYC to 100% Renewable Energy Why the Jacobson Study Is Not a Blueprint.” Notes provided by author.
30. OneNYC 2050: A Livable Climate, 7.
31. New Amsterdam Climate, “Amsterdam Climate Neutral Roadmap 2050,” February 2020, City of Amsterdam, available at https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/policy/sustainability/policy-climate-neutrality/.
32. New Amsterdam Climate, 122.
33. New Amsterdam Climate, 122-23.
34. https://energy-democracy.net/barcelonaenergia-public-power-to-tackle-energy-poverty-and-achieve-energy-sovereignty/. See also: https://energia.barcelona/en/incentive-programme-generating-solar-energy.
35. https://energia.barcelona/en/map-how-much-energy-can-you-generate; https://energia.barcelona/en/incentive-programme-generating-solar-energy.
36. IRENA, Renewable energy in cities, 2016, available at www.irena.org/publications/2016/Oct/Renewable-Energy-in-Cities.
37. https://www.pvp4grid.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/D2.1_Existing-future-prosumer-concepts_PVP4G-1.pdf; https://www.statista.com/statistics/497340/installed-photovoltaic-capacity-germany/.
38. Eurostat (online data code: nrg_105m) https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/d/d6/Electricity_production_by_source%2C_EU-28%2C_2018_%28%25%29.png, also: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3217494/11478276/KS-DK-20-001-EN-N.pdf/06ddaf8d-1745-76b5-838e-013524781340.
39. CE Delft, “The potential of energy citizens in the European Union,” September 2016, available at https://www.cedelft.eu/publicatie/the_potential_of_energy_citizens_in_the_european_union/1845. See Chapter 2.
40. Xse, “Defendiendo la soberanía energética,” Ecologistas n. 81 (June 2014). See Xse, We’ve Got Energy! Challenges of the Transition Towards Energy Sovereignty.
41.Xse, We’ve Got Energy, May 2018, p. 10 According to Xse, “Secure access to energy is vital for us to develop a decent quality of life. However, its control does not lie in the hands of the population, but in the hands of a small number of transnational companies which prioritise making profits from energy supply over guaranteeing universal energy access.” See also Andrew Cumbers, “Remunicipalization, the Low-Carbon Transition, and Energy Democracy.” In Worldwatch Institute, State of the World (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2016), available at https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-756-8_23.
42. Frankfurt School-UNEP Centre/BNEF, Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2019, available at https://www.unenvironment.org/ resources/report/global-trends-renewable-energy-investment-2019. Bloomberg NEF, “Late Surge in Offshore Wind Financings Helps 2019 Renewables Investment to Overtake 2018,” January 16, 2020, available at https://about.bnef.com/blog/late-surge-in-offshore-wind-financings-helps-2019-renewablesinvestment-to-overtake-2018/.
43.Arnaud Coibion and John Pickett, “Capacity Mechanisms Reigniting Europe’s Energy Markets,” Linklaters, July 1, 2014, available at https://www.linklaters.com/capacitymechanisms.
44. Jeffrey J. Cook, Bryn Ursula Grunwald, Alison Holm, and Alexandra Aznar, “Wait, Cities can do What? Achieving City Energy Goals through Franchise Agreements,” Energy Policy 144 (2020), 111619, available at https://doi. org/10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111619.
45. https://mronline.org/2017/09/21/uk-unionscall-for-energy-to-be-returned-to-public-ownership/.
46. Fédération Nationale des Mines et de l’Energie, Public Services International, Trade Union for Energy Democracy, Transnational Institute, Report of the Trade Union Task Force for a Public Energy Future, 2022.
Author Biography
Sean Sweeney is the director of the International Program on Labor, Climate & Environment at the School of Labor and Urban Studies, City University of New York. He also coordinates Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED), a global network of eight-three unions from twenty-four countries. TUED advocates for democratic control and social ownership of energy resources, infrastructure, and options.
