Residents Decide their City’s Future Emissions

Palmerston North is a city on New Zealand’s North Island. It is the 8^th largest city in the country and is located about 140 kilometres north of Wellington, the country’s capital city.

What’s unique about the city is that they have created an interactive carbon model that allows residents to predict the city’s future emissions by 2050.

“The ‘climate calculator’ presents different policy choices and economic changes to let users explore how changes to transport, land use, industry, buildings, and energy will impact the city’s overall yearly carbon emissions” (Karauria, 2020).

The city has an eco-city goal and working towards a low-carbon economy. It has reduced its emission by 20% since 2016 and in 2020  became Toitū’s top 10 carbon reducer.

Toitū is a government-owned Crown Researcher Institute that provides tools and resources to help private and public entities in New Zealand to reduce and offset emissions. It is also a provider of various certification programs – carbon zero, carbon reduction, and enviromark to businesses and local councils in New Zealand.

Adam Jarvis, a senior climate change adviser, says that the model will help residents understand the city’s emission in context.

“As users make decisions on different outputs, such as travel demand or solar power, the 3D model will reflect those decisions by showing fewer cars on the road or more buildings with solar panels,” Mr. Jarvis says.

He added that “the model provides an interactive way for the people of Palmy to reflect on how they think the city will change over the next 30 years and how those changes will affect our city’s carbon outputs.”

To know more, watch the video below: