Vertical greening and reduced carbon emissions: Explore new research results in SUGI Nexus

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Vertical greening and reduced carbon emissions: Explore new research results in SUGI Nexus

Curious about climate-neutrality and the food-water-energy nexus? We met with two experts to explore their latest results. What have they concluded, and how can cities better step up the game towards circular urban economies? Explore the latest projects' results in the Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative (SUGI)/Food-Water-Energy Nexus.

Vertical Greening is a low-cost source of food, energy, and building cooling

The Vertical Green 2.0 project has developed tools to predict the cooling potentials of vertical greenings and their water demands to better understand and manage vertical greening as a viable source of food and energy. “What makes vertical greening so interesting is that it can contribute to numerous urban transitions”, says one of the project coordinators Karin Hoffmann. The project results help answer one of the big questions on this topic, namely why vertical greening has not been applied on a large scale before despite its promising nature.

“This enables cities to transition towards more circular systems since surface runoff water and grey water are upcycled for plant growth and cooling”

Results from M-NEX help policy makers redesign urban environments to lower CO2 emissions

How do you meet the everyday needs of citizens, and lower CO2 emissions simultaneously? The M-NEX project has designed a measurement system that allows urban policymakers to pinpoint and quantify exactly which neighbourhoods produce the most CO2. The system provides a nine-step methodology to reduce carbon emissions.

“In Tokyo, we have made the commitment to be a zero-emission city by 2050. This tool helps us measure how we are going to do that.”