ESSAYS ON CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION, BUILDING ENERGY EFFICIENCY, AND URBAN FORM
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- March 21, 2019
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of City and Regional Planning
- This dissertation includes three self-contained and interrelated papers on climate change mitigation, building energy efficiency, and urban form. Paper 1: Urban form and household electricity consumption: a multilevel study While urban form affects building energy consumption, the pathways, direction and magnitude of the effect are disputed in the literature. This paper uses a unique dataset to examine the effect of urban form on residential electricity consumption in Ningbo, China. Using survey and utility bill data of 534 households in 46 neighborhoods in the city, I model the electricity use of households using a multi-level regression model. I find that neighborhood street configuration and tree shade are important in controlling residential electricity consumption and, consequently, greenhouse gas emissions. The results suggest that seasonality and dwelling type condition the effect of neighborhood densities on electricity consumption. Neighborhood density is associated with household electricity consumption in summer months, while there is no such association in the winter months. As neighborhood density increases, households in slab and tower apartments in dense urban neighborhoods consume more electricity in summer months, which can be partly explained by exacerbated heat island effect. Interestingly, the neighborhood density is negatively associated with electricity consumption for single-family houses, suggesting that the effect of neighborhood density is different for different types of dwelling units. Paper 2: Explaining spatial variations in residential energy usage intensity in Chicago: the role of urban form and geomorphometry Understanding the spatial pattern of energy consumption within buildings is essential to urban energy planning and management. In this study, I explore the spatial complexity of residential energy usage intensity, with a focus on urban form and the geomorphometry attributes of urban ventilation, solar insolation, and vegetation. I use building energy use data in Chicago at a Census tract level and merge information from various datasets including parcel attributes, three-dimensional data geometry, aerial imagery, and Census. Using spatial regression models, I find that while vegetation has more local impact on energy intensity, urban porosity and roughness length have consistent spillover effects on building electricity usage intensity in Chicago. Additionally, these relationships are seasonally varied: while vegetation, ventilation, and insolation affect electricity usage in summer, they have no impact on the winter gas consumption. The results highlight the importance of spatially explicit policies and clear urban design and form frameworks for reducing urban energy consumption and mitigating climate change. Paper 3: Government response to climate change in China: a study of first-generation provincial and municipal plans In this paper, I provide an overview of the first-generation local and regional climate change plans in China by scrutinizing planning documents of 16 cities, four autonomous regions, and 22 provinces. I develop and apply an evaluation protocol to understand goals, process, and strategies in these plans. The results indicate that provincial and local plans include numerous policies and strategies, yet some important types of local policies, such as land use and urban form, are not well identified in the plans. The results also indicate that current climate change planning in China is characterized by the “top-down” approach, in which the central governmental incentives play a vital role in shaping provincial and municipal plans. In addition, most plans have the following issues: vague definition of what characterizes a low carbon city/region, deficiency in the quality of GHG inventory and reduction targets, inadequate stakeholder engagement, and weak horizontal coordination. Finally, I offer recommendations to improve climate change planning in China.
- Urban planning
- Urban sustainability
- Low carbon city
- Energy use intensity
- Plan evaluation
- Geomorphometry
- https://doi.org/10.17615/7kkx-f797
- Dissertation
- Doctor of Philosophy
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
- June 13, 2018
This work has no parents.
- UNC-Chapel Hill Climate Change Resources
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