Hooman FARZANEH
Abstract:
Cities throughout Asia have experienced an unprecedented economic development over the past decades. In many cases, this has contributed to their rapid and uncontrolled growth, and has resulted in multiple problems, which include a rapid population increase, enhanced environmental pollution, collapsing traffic systems, dysfunctional waste management, as well as a rapid increase in the consumption of energy, water, and other resources. Given their growing scale and significance, Asian cities will have to be active in the global fight against climate change if it is to be effective. Municipal authorities in Asian cities therefore have a significant scope to pursue urban low emission strategies and clean energy initiatives in ways that will also foster economic development.
Moreover, clean energy initiatives at the city scale could generate knowledge and innovations that can have wider economic and social benefits, in addition to inspiring climate action in other cities and at a national scale. Without more coordination between international, national, regional and local institutions, integration into different sectoral priorities and policies, and engagement between the public, private and civic sectors it seems likely that the cities in Asia will lock in more fully to high-cost, high carbon development paths. Because of the global significance of Asian cities, policies and programs, facilitating large-scale adoption and deployment of clean and renewable energy will need to play a central role in this area.
There are significant benefits from climate change mitigation strategies, including improvement in local air quality, economic savings, public health and safety in Asian cities. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) can be achieved through considering the additional, which would enable local governments to obtain comprehensive insights into the potential co-benefits of their future climate mitigation strategies. This research will demonstrate a new strategic planning mechanism for achieving multiple energy, environmental, public health and economic benefits of clean energy development strategies in Asian cities, together with a robust analytical framework that can be used to assess those benefits during the development and implementation process. The research will address in detail the role of executive clean energy policy targets to support the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission and air pollution in selected Asian cities. The final part will summerize the opportunities for and the institutional barriers to mainstreaming concerns about clean energy development in Asian cities.
Dr. Hooman Farzaneh is a Jr. Associate Professor at the Institute of Advanced Energy (IAE), Kyoto University, Japan. He has a BSc in Chemical Engineering and MSc and PhD in Energy Systems Engineering from Azad University, Tehran, Iran. Dr. Hooman worked at the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability, Tokyo, as a Postdoctoral research fellow, before joining the Kyoto University. He also collaborated with the graduate school of energy science, Kyoto University as a research fellow and a member of the GCOE scenario planning group. Dr. Hooman is particularly interested in issues related to quantitative and qualitative analysis focusing on developing research patterns of low carbon energy scenarios and policy implementations designed to tackle air pollution problems in both regional and local scales. Particular interests are in energy systems integration studies, energy systems modeling (Demand and Supply), Low Carbon Society, energy management in industrial and transportation sectors and energy recovery systems design. Dr. Farzaneh serves as an editorial board member for J-SustaiN and as a regular reviewer for several international journals in the field of energy engineering. He is currently conducting a comprehensive research on clean energy development for urban sustainability and serving as the Principle Investigator of a funded project entitled ” Assessing the multiple benefits of clean energy policies in Asian mega-cities” at the Institute of Advanced Energy, Kyoto University.