Urban Metabolism Analysis to Be2er Understand Complex Urban Systems

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1 Urban Metabolism Analysis to Be2er Understand Complex Urban Systems Stephanie Pincetl, Director California Center for Sustainable Communi?es October 14, 2014 Interna?onal Symposium on Life Cycle Assessment for Pavements

2 Urban Metabolism The sum total of the technical and socio- economic processes that occur in ci?es resul?ng in growth, produc?on of energy and elimina?on of waste. Kennedy et al 2007

Our built environment is a large in- use repository or stock humans have accumulated Humans use approximately 60 billion tons of material every year, or the equivalent of the natural produc?

3 Our built environment is a large in- use repository or stock humans have accumulated Humans use approximately 60 billion tons of material every year, or the equivalent of the natural produc?on of all plants on earth Urban metabolism studies are the quan?fica?on of the flows into ci?es or communi?es (electrons, water, wood, air, other materials, food...) flows out as pollu?on, other waste or losses in the form of heat and distribu?on losses, plus what has remained inside.

4 Brussels, Belgium early 1970s. Souce: Duvigneaud and Denayeyer- De Smet 1977

5 What is Missing in UM Today? Systems approach LCA and environmental impacts (EIO- LCA) Embedded Energy Ground- up analysis Linking to policy drivers the so] infrastructures of codes, conven?ons, rules, laws and cultural expecta?ons.

6 Los Angeles County, a UM 2.0 Experiment in Research UM a good integra?ve framework Lends itself to systems analysis With more ground- up data, relevance could be enhanced Highly empirical to start Policy drivers to be derived, or selected. Mission: science for ac?on

7 NASA views of Los Angeles County Image above: sensors for GHG emissions Monitoring, proposed by NASA

8 Our Approach Quan?fying flows from the ground up Matching the flows to census characteris?cs, Building types, vintages, sizes, construc?on types NAICS codes Cal Enviro Screen and other as possible Pucng a face on the uses/users Linking to embedded energy and materials

9 Different than top down NASA or imputed use generated by models or generalizing from a few studies based on self- reported data or small survey samples. Can yield baselines and longitudinal understandings.

10 Urban Metabolism analysis of Los Angeles County

11 A Flexible and Responsive Research Platform DATA SOURCES END USERS Utilities County Assessor ENERGY DATA REPOSITORY CA State Census Building Energy Data Weather & Climate Models Standardize DATABASE Aggregate, Analyze, Evaluate Security Permissions Agencies Local Gov t Utilities Other (EE,LCA, Solar, etc.) Researchers * CCSC has already completed for LA County (25% of statewide energy consumpbon) 11

12 Median residen*al electricity use by city council district FY , LADWP 12

13 13

14 Sample Interactive Maps Interac?ve GIS tools allow users to play with data and get a big picture sense of how energy pa2erns vary across space and relate to different variables h2p://devmaps.environment.ucla.edu/profiles/neighborhoods/ h2p://devmaps.environment.ucla.edu/profiles/ci?es/ h2p://devmaps.environment.ucla.edu/memo/results h2p://devmaps.environment.ucla.edu/ci?es/ 14

15 Quin*le Ranking of Los Angeles County Industry Sectors Economic Round Table

16 Embedded GHGs in Urban Fabric

17 Los Angeles Embedded Energy Single Family energy factors Chester et al. 2014

18 Factors by Category and Time Period Chester et al

19 Building Count by Vintage and Type Chester et al 2014

20 GHG Emissions by Vintage and Type Chester 2014

21 Next Steps Matching up the buildings and current energy use Developing trade- off analysis between densifica?on and re- use and new building Thinking about roads and freeways and what the embedded energy means

22 Water Consumption Income Mini, C., T.S. Hogue, and S. Pincetl, 2014: PaMerns and Controlling Factors of ResidenBal Water Use in Los Angeles, California, Water Policy, doi: /wp

23 NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION California Center for Sustainable Communi?es at UCLA Grants: NSF WSC # , Haynes Founda?on

24 NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION California Center for Sustainable Communi?es at UCLA Grants: NSF WSC # , Haynes Founda?on

25 Next Steps and Developing the Conceptual Framework Funding to expand to all of Southern California and the rest of the state Developing policy briefs and ac?onable analysis for stake holders Using the research to help move to a post carbon energy system Publishing peer reviewed papers and a web atlas Working on theorizing this approach under: Thick Mapping, an IntegraBve Framework.

Urban Metabolism The Political Ecology of Energy and Ecosystems STEPHANIE PINCETL INSTITUTE OF THE ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY UCLA

Urban Metabolism The Political Ecology of Energy and Ecosystems STEPHANIE PINCETL INSTITUTE OF THE ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY UCLA The World has Changed... Challenges of a Human Engineered Urbanizing