0:06 [Music] communities around the world are currently faced with a number of large-scale environmental challenges including dangerous irreversible climate change many of these challenges stem from cities and are resource intensive urban lifestyles fortunately an array of Concrete Solutions to these challenges are already being developed and implemented in cities around the globe so we set off on an inspirational journey to explore the most innovative ideas Technologies and initiatives being used by cities today as they strive to create more livable and sustainable cities and with
0:54 the potential to stimulate widescale change which would set us on the path towards a one Planet future where humans live in harmony with nature the struggle for a sustainable future on this planet will be one or lost in our cities in the next 30 years we expect a doubling of the global Urban population and with that a doubling of the global Urban Urban infrastructure that is a very short window of opportunity to get things right so Urban investment decisions taken today will determine whether people will be locked
1:41 into resource inefficient and fossil fuel dependent infrastructures and Lifestyles or if they will enable cities to become places where we can live attractive and healthy and sustainable lives over the next 30 Years more than five times the global GDP will be invested in urban infrastructure and its use so it's critical that those Investments are made in a sustainable and resilient way a number of actions that cities have to take and actually take together is first of all to try to become low carbon to shift from fossil fuel towards renewable energy secondly to become resilient we are going to face
2:28 the impacts of climate change and they will beit different from one part in the world to the other part we have to look thirdly into how can our existing ecosystems our biodiversity we have in urban areas how can that support us in our sustainability well the urban challenge in the world is is tremendous I mean we'll soon have 75% of the world population living in cities and I would argue that the number one challenge for cities is actually not inside the city it's to recognize that it has to be sustainable in its entire inflows and outflows of energy of water of food of all materials so to see itself like a part of a wider ecosystem so that you plan every urban area for every citizen that it keeps itself within a circular
3:14 economic model in terms of resources in and out and the second most important is to build resilient cities so how are leading green cities around the world responding to this enormous challenge one of the most ambitious climate action plans has been adopted by the city of Vancouver whose goal is to run the city on 100% renewable energy by [Music] 2050 Vancouver's plan focuses on vibrant and inclusive neighborhoods and creating a city that meets the needs of generations to come they intend to achieve this by working with a broad range of stakeholders throughout society when I first came campaign for mayor in
4:01 2008 one of my key priorities was to make Vancouver the world's greenest city by 2020 so we put together an action plan worked with citizens and businesses and neighborhoods uh put together 10 targets uh in water food Clean Air U green business green jobs reducing our carbon reducing our consumption and uh zero waste [Music] at the beginning we were worried this was too much for people like that they wouldn't be able to see a point of entry into it and we were totally wrong um we've had over 35,000 residents 180 organizations who engaged in writing our plan tens of thousands of residents
4:46 who've been involved in implementing cuz when they write the plan they own the [Music] plan and as a result we've had over 150 separate City policy initiatives that ra from uh big farms in the middle of a dense City like Vancouver uh Waste Recovery that we've had we've had technology that we're doing um green economy we've raised our green jobs by 19% we've reduced our water usage by 18% uh greenhouse gas emissions are way down cuz many more people are biking and walking and taking Transit um but it's really The Innovation is how you marry a government to the residents to the businesses to the different Civil Society groups and make it a collective effort [Music]
5:34 creating a fossil fuel-free city is possible but requires a shift to Green energy in all areas our new goal is to be 100% renewable in the city of Vancouver with all of our energy sources and it will be a challenge with transportation in particular we don't know when we will have uh electric vehicles for the whole city we're waiting on uh the industry side to to get a clear sense of what year that's possible we're planning out the timeline right now basically making decisions to eliminate fossil fuels from our city many experts today refer to Renewable Energy Technologies as disruptive in the sense that they're radically different from conventional Technologies and are so much better for consumers and society
6:21 that they will very quickly disrupt current paradigms once the technology is ripe they happen very quickly and I think uh electric cars and solar energy and wind energy they're ripe a lot of people think they have these forecasts for you know 2040 we're having just a bit more percentage of these I think the transformation is going to happen so quickly that most of these forecasts are going to be quite short you know uh quite often because these are disruptive Technologies they're better Technologies for the consumers and we've crossed the price points where they make sense so once that happens it's basically a matter of awareness getting around Word of Mouth the understanding the experience and as that grows it grows exponentially and we're going to see a rapid I think transformation you know comparable to the Industrial Revolution
7:08 or such so this is a solar energy installation here in Vancouver British Columbia in fact when we first started 10 years ago people told us we couldn't do this that it didn't make sense here but we recognized that there were some people that wanted to install solar that wanted to do something Leading Edge that wanted to do something to reduce their environmental footprint um so we started with these panels uh this system uh since then uh the installation growth has been about 40% per year uh so in fact it could be done here there was a demand people want to see more renewable energy installed locally the research that we're doing is looking at the transportation sector because that's a a huge part of our greenhouse gas emissions and about how we can connect our transportation system to Renewables
7:55 and we're finding that um really Electric Mobility is an essential part of meeting our deep greenhouse gas emissions reduction so to have that 80% reduction by 2050 we need to have a big Fleet of electric vehicles uh really almost in every city around the world and the research we're doing founds that there's a lot of potential demand there's a lot of consumers out there who be willing to pay extra for some type of plug-in hybrid vehicle or pure electric vehicle but currently they they can't do that because it's not available in the model they want or in the variety or color or whatever it is that they want and so what we're finding is there's some areas that are showing us good examples of policy that can trigger that change and California has the best example uh that we
8:40 found California right now is leading the standards they've said that 10% of the vehicles sold in California have to be electric vehicles they have committed to an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases if other states walk Washington Oregon British Columbia Ontario Quebec and nine eastern states were to adopt that kind of California policy we would create a demand for electric vehicles that would make them very commonplace and we would get to the point where using the weight of states and the weight of cities we could begin to transform our our emissions and that's where we need to go
9:27 because we cannot wait for national government to take us there anymore and once people understand that an electric vehicle is actually cheaper it saves the money all of a sudden that will turn the market in in a massive way like Transportation housing is also a major challenge in the aim of creating sustainable cities the Vancouver Convention Center is a prime example of how buildings can be designed to minimize environmental impacts we're here at the Vancouver Convention Center's West building which opened in April 2009 and it's actually one of the greatest convention facilities in the world and just to give you a few examples we have really visible sustainable features such as our 6 acre
10:14 living roof which is the largest in Canada we have um a very sophisticated um blackwat recycling treatment plant in house as well as um we utilize sea waterer Heating and Cooling because we're right on the Harbor here at the Vancouver Convention Center living roof this is 6 acres and it's actually one of the 10 largest green roofs in the world so what makes this green roof really unique is the fact that we've chosen plants that are all indigenous to British Columbia so we've actually planted over 400,000 plants and grasses on top of this area it really connects to other green spaces here in downtown Vancouver so if you're looking at downtown Vancouver from an aerial perspective you're going to see that this space connects to the park next door and it connects to Stanley Park and it really
11:00 was part of the vision of our [Music] Architects so the mega City and capital of South Korea has seen a remarkable positive change thanks to Courageous green initiatives the city has been recognized for its determination to ramp up the use of renewable energy and building citizen [Music] engagement there may be many diverse options and policies to combat the
11:47 climate change issues the city like so has more than 10 million uh citizens so we should provide more environmental transportations and also so bring solutions to the uh buildings which is more environmental but most important thing is to mobilize the citizens engagement and participation in this process during our development period there are too many roads and too many cars and citizens accustomed to using cars so instead of it we should build
12:34 the more ecofriendly public transportation such as Subway or bikes so uh I'm really encouraged the citizens to have their own ideas and actions [Music] an impressive initiative by the city of soul is its goal to achieve 20% electricity self-reliance by 2020 obviously renewable energy plays an important role in this [Music]
13:21 transition so the solar panners here are installed on top of a filtering reservoir of the water purification plant that uh filtering Reservoir has a cooling effect so the solar panel become more efficient so the average uh Power Generation hours in so is 3.1 or 3.2 hours per day but here thanks to that cooling effect the figure is higher than the average which is 3.7 or 8 hours per day so Metropolitan government has this campaign of one less nuclear power plant and and this uh PV plant contribute to the campaign so we hope that this type of plant or distributed and expanded
14:09 around the soul [Music] City along with renewable energy production lowering a city's overall energy consumption by constructing buildings and houses that consume very little or no energy is key one approach is to use passive design in any Green Building the first thing we have to do is work on passive design maximizing the energy that we can get from passive design passive design means we use a lot of insulation we use special glass and special curtain walls to make the envelope optimal so that the energy does not leak through the walls let nature
14:56 work with you instead of trying to work against against nature let nature cool us and heat us passive design techniques allow us to do that to tap the nature to provide us with our needs one of the great features of this um building is are these incredible green Walls it brings nature into our Urban environment and some scientist say that when we see green it just helps us feel good and relieve our stress on the whole rooftop there's um solar panels so this building is generating a lot of um renewable energy to provide electricity to this
15:57 building gothenberg in Sweden has been recognized for its innovative climate strategies the introduction of green bonds and for its work to decrease residents consumption-based carbon emissions another key to success is cooperation with Academia and the financial sector I think the reason for the success uh story about gburg and the environmental work and especially climate work is that we have been good at cooperation and one one example for us is like when we together with AB Volvo and others uh built the new completely new electric bus a bus Which didn't exist but we decided we want that bus and the city plant in in their way
16:44 Volvo plant of course with creating the bus and the bus was there after less than 2 years and now you can see the light green bus going up and down uh the streets of gothenberg gothamberg is a leading City when it comes to looking at the larger picture for example taking its resident consumption-based carbon footprint into account when considering how they impact the environment a consumption based carbon footprint means that when we calculate the emissions in the city from the citizens we not only look at the emissions that are are emitted within the city's borders we also take into account our consumption of products and services that causes emissions in other countries and other parts of SW
17:29 by doing so we also get New Perspectives on which uh uh climate issues that we have to focus on normally when we have a geographical perspective that is the traditional way in cies and and countries there's a lot of focus on transport energy production and Industry and that's important but with the consumption based carbon Footprints we also got to focus on the consumption of food uh the consumption on air travel and other kind of consumption [Music] in 2008 green bonds was launched by the World Bank as a tool to guarantee that money is invested in sustainable projects gothamberg was the first city in the world to issue such
18:14 bonds I think the Cornerstone for for green bonds is the Simplicity the essence of the green bond is that is earmarked money in that way when we issue a bond to offer the investors the opportunity to invest in specific projects so they know exactly where their money money is going so far we have invested in electric cars biog gas production and also in water purification filter when you take those two extremely strong forces finance and sustainability and make them move forward together you create something really exciting actually sometimes there's a political will for sustainable change but the city lacks the financial resources to see it through one such example of how to help bridge the gap between private and
19:01 public sectors is the Swedish company sustainable lifestyle Scandinavia the world is facing a huge challenge in coming decades with close to 3 billion people moving into urban districts which means that we we have to take on a sustainable approach in order to build the urban environments and there we saw that the political will is there but there is a lack of knowhow knowledge and capital and that's where we in sustainable Liv Scandinavia bridge that [Music] Gap the concept has already been proven successful and is now being implemented in the chongyang county in China where private capital is fueling the sustainable expansion of the
19:57 city fore fore the first step is making it a demonstration project to secure governmental support next step is making
20:45 the master planning and infrastructure design and then comes attracting the finance the capital and then final step is implementation [Music] the City of Paris host of The United Nations conference on climate change has been recognized for its huge commitment to create a more sustainable City by focusing on sustainable Mobility renewable energy and the reintroduction of nature in the city
21:41 [Music] we have now in Paris a big issue about hair pollution this is big trouble for health as well so we have decided to develop many measure on one hand we give incentive to people that they shift to uh sustainable mobility and on the other hand we have a special program that step by step is going to forbid the most polluted cars within the City by 2020 that just like the cleanest one can circulate it in the city to lower lower that pollution we are subsidizing uh for taxis and individuals the purchase of uh clean electric vehicles also the buying of um electric bicycles if you buy an electric bicycle
22:28 uh you get a subsidy of of a Fourth of the total price from the city of Paris so we are really pushing very hard on electric vehicles it's one of our priorities and now we can see the result that par are promoting the electric vehicles increasing investments in renewable energy and retrofit programs is a clear priority for Paris as is their sustainable development Action Network in Paris we're going to have many action in the next years to implement our climate action plan but I would say we have three big issues right now it's to develop green energies in the city it's also to strengthens our retrofit plan to uh mitigate G emission but also to tackle energy poverty we
23:14 have in Paris created what we call the sustainable development action networks and it gather individuals Association but also startups that have make commitments to face climate issues and instead of being alone in that in that fight we are gathering them helping them to share experiences to go to grow bigger and also to be more known from the Paris population and this network now is gathering nearly 10% of the Paris population two South African cities Cape Town and Shuan have both been praised for their commitments to sustainable
24:00 development while simultaneously battling challenges such as poverty and social inequality in the city of T and in South Africa in general we've got we are faced with triple challenges that of unemployment poverty and inequality so it's important that you are able to skill people to participate in the mainstream economy we all have a responsibility as Citizens to do what we can to protect the planet from the harmful effects of climate change and it is an imperative that we see a shift from our Reliance on traditional energy sources and look to as many cleaner energy sources as possible one of our
24:46 natural advantages is the number of Sundays so we must exploit that resource and that's why we're introducing solar powered energy but we also want to use it to resolve the housing question in our city so as we expand and give more free houses to the poor we the roof panels must be designed in a manner that we are able to put the solar panels so in this way you are resolving both an existing and immediate question but also a future question with regards to your energy mix and that's how we want to use solar H going forward it's clear that cities need the support of national politicians and strong policies in order to achieve their real potential and ambitious goals
25:34 a combination of both a top down and bottom up approach is absolutely necessary and Demands a common effort that truly involves City residents changing our Energy System to renewable energies is possible technically possible but we have to move very fast the economical framework the legislative framework work we have to inform people we have to make actions on all level I myself on my roof and everyone else in his City in his municipality and in his region and if we do that then we can reach a 100% renewable World in 20150 leaders in a city do have to approach individuals to make them
26:21 Partners it cannot be done toed down people have to embrace Solutions and feel that they are part of of a new world [Music]
