How can we make cities greener?

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The world is increasingly urbanizing: today, half of humanity – 3.5 billion people – lives in cities and by 2050, two-thirds of the population will call a city home. As a result of this urbanization, our cities are growing by the minute. Every minute, we add 10,000 square meters of city space. Every five days, a new Paris. And every month, the equivalent of a New York City. With this trend, we need to rethink how our cities are designed, built and operated. Despite cities occupying only 3% of the world’s land, they have a huge environmental footprint. From energy consumption to construction and from transportation to industrial processes, cities account for 70% of global carbon emissions.

The Lead2030 Challenge for SDG 11 Supported by Holcim was launched to support solutions that make cities greener by pushing the boundaries of sustainable construction and urbanization.

All climate scenarios that prevent the overshoot of 1.5°C of global warming involve Carbon capture technologies (1). Although crucial to support climate goals, the carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) market is relatively small and is not widely implemented since the costs are too high. In 2021, only 40 million tonnes of CO2 were captured for storage underground. The oil and gas industry utilized some 70 – 80 million tonnes for enhanced oil recovery (2).

OOYOO is developing low-cost, high-performance filters that can selectively capture CO2 from a mixture of gases from emission sources with a low CO2 concentration, such as power stations or cement factories. OOYOO then produce high concentrations of CO2 with increased cost savings. With larger cost savings for carbon capture, the faster the implementation of CCUS technologies globally. This is expected to support a carbon recycling economy, reduce dependency on key resources, create additional value across the carbon recycling value chain, reduce associated emissions, and ultimately make cities greener.

(1) IEA (2020), CCUS in Clean Energy Transitions, IEA, Paris 

(2) IEA (2021), About CCUS, IEA, Paris