Responsive Carbon Neutral Settlements

Carbon neutrality could become a necessary condition for human settlements to attain liveability, sustainability and resilience. For most cities, this implies the need for decarbonisation. The replacement of fossil fuels with clean energy not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions, but also improves outdoor and indoor air quality. In urban centres that primarily rely on fossil sources for electricity production in or close to the city, decarbonisation could also reduce the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon, which poses a severe threat to tropical and subtropical cities. Cities emit more than two-thirds of global greenhouse gases, yet they have the potential to achieve carbon neutrality or even become carbon negative. Towns, villages and low-density settlements can transition from being fossil energy consumers to renewable energy producers, thereby reducing the global carbon footprint of urban regions. To implement such changes, city governments need to develop convincing holistic data-driven scenarios through simulations. For this purpose, we build a digital urban climate twin, using a federation of coupled models. We start with climate, transportation and energy models, followed by socioeconomic models for a holistic simulation. In parallel, we consider technological advances, social responsiveness and fair Artificial Intelligence (AI), which are crucial in achieving carbon-neutral settlements.