Some of the world’s top climate scientists have expressed their mounting hopelessness at the prospect of reaching 3°C by 2100. This hellish scenario, well in excess of the 1.5°C countries agreed to aim for when they signed the 2015 Paris agreement, would indeed spell disaster for much of life on Earth.

As a lecturer in sustainability, I often hear my anxious students bemoan the impossibility of building a way out of ecological collapse. However, the greatest danger is fatalism, and assuming, as Margaret Thatcher claimed, that “there is no alternative”.

There is a vast ocean of possibility for transforming the planet. Increasingly, cities are in the vanguard of forging more sustainable worlds.

Car-free futures

Since the early 1900s, the car has afforded a sense of freedom for some while infringing on the freedoms of others.

Cars, particularly SUVs, are a major source of air pollution and CO₂ emissions globally. Motorways and car parking spaces have transformed Earth’s terrain and monopolised public space. For those of us in industrialised societies, it is difficult to imagine life without cars.

Global sales of electric vehicles are projected to continue rising. Yet even these supposed solutions to an unsustainable transport sector require a lot of space and materials to make and maintain.

With cities set to host nearly 70% of all people by 2050, space and livability are key concerns. As such, cities across Europe and beyond are beginning to reclaim their streets.

Between 2019 and 2022, the number of low-emissions zones, areas that regulate the most polluting vehicles in order to improve air quality and help to protect public health, expanded by 40% in European cities. Research suggests that policies to restrict car use such as congestion charges and raised parking fees can further discourage their use. However, providing viable and accessible alternatives is also crucial: as such, many cities are also widening walkways, building bike lanes and making public transport cheaper and easier to access.

An estimated 80,000 cars used to pass daily through the centre of Pontevedra, a city in north-west Spain. Mayor Miguel Anxo Fernandez Lores instituted a ban on cars in 1999 and removed on-street parking spaces. The city has since drastically reduced air pollution and hasn’t had a vehicular death in over a decade.

Living cities

Cement and concrete are widely used to make major infrastructure such as roads, bridges, buildings and dams. The cement industry accounts for up to 9% of global emissions. Moreover, the open-pit quarrying of limestone, a key ingredient in cement, involves removing topsoil and vegetation which rips up ecosystems and biodiversity and increases flooding risks.

A burgeoning “depaving” movement originated in Portland, Oregon in 2008 and has removed concrete and asphalt from cities including Chicago, London and several cities across Canada, replacing it with plants and soil.

Depaving is an example of the wider urban rewilding movement which aims to restore natural habitats and expand green spaces in cities for social and ecological wellbeing.

Multispecies coexistence

A new report by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) has documented an average 73% decline in the abundance of monitored wildlife populations globally since 1970. Despite such unfathomable losses, many cities are being transformed into oases of multispecies life.

Prized for their fur, beavers were hunted to extinction in the UK by the 16th century. Their water damming activities create homes for other species such as birds and invertebrates and help prevent flooding. Eurasian beavers have been thriving in Sweden, Norway and Germany since their reintroduction in the 1920s and 1960s, respectively.

In 2022, beavers were designated a protected species in England. In October 2023, London saw its first baby beaver in over 400 years.

Melbourne has launched a project to create a 18,000 square-metre garden in the city by 2028, with at least 20 local plant species for each square metre. An 8-kilometre long pollinator corridor is also being created to allow wildlife to travel between 200 interconnected gardens and further help local pollinators flourish.

Living alongside larger predators brings unique challenges. However, as with any functional relationship, respect is key for coexistence. Los Angeles and Mumbai are two major cities that are learning to live alongside mountain lions and leopards. Local officials have launched public education initiatives urging people to, for instance, maintain a safe distance from the animals and not walk alone outside at night. In cases where wildlife conflicts occur, such as between wolves and farmers who have lost livestock, non-lethal methods such as wolf-proof fences and guard dogs have been found to be more effective solutions than culls.

Environmental justice now

Cities, particularly in wealthy countries, are only a small part of the story.

At just over 500 years old, the modern capitalist system, imposed globally through European colonialism, is a relatively recent development. Despite its influence, the visionary author Ursula K. Le Guin reminded us that “any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings”.

Indigenous peoples numbering 476 million across 90 countries represent thousands of distinct cultures that persist as living proof of the enduring possibilities of radically different ways of living.

An online database tracks 4,189 environmental justice movements worldwide. From multi-tribe Indigenous Amazonian alliances keeping illegal miners at bay, to countless local communities and activist groups resisting the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure. Over the last few years, these place-based struggles have either stopped, stalled or forced the suspension of at least one-quarter of planned extractive projects.

These examples demonstrate hope in action, and suggest that the radical changes required to avert climate and ecological breakdown are often a simple question of will and collective resolve.

Reality, like the future, is never fixed. Whether the world is 2, 3 or 4-degrees warmer by 2100 depends on actions taken today. The terrain ahead will be full of challenges. But, glimmers of a better world are already here.

For example, poor levels of walkability are associated with higher rates of obesity, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Parks and greenery are associated with better mental and cognitive health.

Australian cities sprawl. Many suburbs are hard to get to by public transport or cycling and walking.

Our sprawling cities use a lot of land per person. Their resource use and carbon footprints are massive. They also produce huge amounts of waste.

To resolve such issues, government planners should think beyond our capital cities. Australia needs to develop strategies that connect these capitals with surrounding regional cities to create “megacity regions”.

It’s a settlement model that could work better than our big cities do now, making urban growth more sustainable. The emergence of hybrid work, fast internet and high-speed rail favours this form of settlement.

What are megacity regions?

A megacity region, according to the OECD, is a network of urban areas linked to a capital city by home-to-work commuting. Megacity regions connect these urban centres more efficiently to make them more sustainable and productive.

An early example is the Bos-Wash corridor (including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC) in North America that emerged around the mid-20th century. Megacity regions are now common across Europe (for example, Germany’s Rhine-Ruhr region including Dortmund, Essen, Duesseldorf and Cologne, and the Netherlands’ Randstad region including Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht). The Taiheiyō Belt in Japan (including Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima and Fukuoka) is one of many Asian examples.

How ready is Australia for megacity regions?

The 2019 CSIRO Australian National Outlook explored the question “What will Australia be like economically, socially and environmentally in 2060?” Its modelling showed “stronger regions” created major benefits across transport, health, education, jobs and housing. One scenario involved 16 million people living in regional Australia by 2060, with 10 million in regional cities.

CSIRO concluded that “investing in the growth of regional satellite cities with strong connectivity to those capitals” creates many opportunities. This growth would benefit the regions while easing pressures on the capitals.

In recent years, the New South Wales government has developed ideas for Sydney to grow into a Six Cities Region from Newcastle to Wollongong.

The Committee for Melbourne has called for an Australian East Coast Megaregion to boost economic growth and attract foreign investment.

In 2023, the Victorian government indicated a statewide strategy, Plan Victoria, would replace Plan Melbourne.

However, without robust regionalisation policies, Melbourne and Sydney are likely to become sprawling megacities of ten million people or more this century. This will add to the strain on transport, infrastructure and housing.

What makes change possible?

Cities and their central business districts are important for their agglomeration effects – the accumulated benefits of concentrated social and economic activity. But this also often leads to social, economic and environmental problems.

Integrating regional cities into the economic life of their capital cities can reduce some of these problems. It can also produce many benefits, including new and more efficient industries, enhanced communication networks and stronger labour markets.

Settlement systems have evolved throughout history. Walking cities became rail-oriented cities, which became car-based cities. All these models in their day supported a daily return commute averaging one hour (Marchetti’s constant).

Our research explores how new technologies and work practices can enable a fourth transition to the megacity region. The drivers of this change include ubiquitous fast internet, hybrid work and high-speed rail.

Ubiquitous fast internet

NBN broadband data from 2012 to 2021 showed little difference between Melbourne and Victorian regional cities in the uptake of typical residential internet connections. There was a major difference for higher-speed business connections.

Major capital cities continue to act as engines of bandwidth-hungry, information economy industries in Australia. They have more high-skilled workers and higher uptake of fast internet.

Overall, the data reflected that regional cities in Victoria mostly house “population-serving” rather than “producer-services” industries. Fast internet can open up job opportunities, but is not by itself enough to decentralise knowledge industries.

Hybrid work

Working both from home and in the office has become established since COVID. Hybrid work improves sustainability, mostly by reducing car use and road congestion.

Today, only 18% of Australian knowledge workers work “only in the office”.

Not having to go into work every day means knowledge workers can live further from their workplace. This changes the employment landscape in regional centres. Many information economy jobs can be done in non-metropolitan locations where housing costs less.

High-speed rail

Fast rail systems have long been debated in Australia, with various options proposed.

Victoria introduced “faster” regional rail in 2005-06. The populations of urban centres served by these lines have since grown faster than “off-line” ones.

The gap in job growth rates between on-line and off-line centres was greater for producer services than people-serving jobs. The latter are tied more closely to demand from local residents.

Designated growth areas on the outer fringes of Melbourne had much higher population and employment growth rates, indicating that current transport polices have supported urban sprawl. High-speed rail can help urban growth to “leap over” outer suburbs to the regional cities.

What could high-speed rail lead to? In England, the advent of high-speed rail (speeds of more than 200km/hr) resulted in notably higher population growth in on‑line local area districts compared to off-line. The on-line districts, across the board, experienced a stronger shift towards information and knowledge-based industries than off-line ones. Some even outperformed outer metropolitan London districts.

Why is this important now?

Both federal and Victorian governments are preparing strategic plans to guide long-term urban development. Both have issued discussion documents for public feedback.

These documents are long on planning principles but short on mission-scale programs capable of transformative change. This sort of change is now the focus of long-term planning internationally. Land-use planning of megacity regions needs to feature strongly in Australian urbanisation plans too.

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to achieve urban development at a scale and in a form that can transform Australia’s settlement system.

Mr. Torero noted that if current trends persist, around 582 million people will still face hunger in 2030, half of them in Africa.

Despite progress in combating stunting and in promoting breastfeeding, global hunger levels have remained stubbornly static for three consecutive years. 

Between 713 million and 757 million people were undernourished in 2023, around 152 million more than in 2019, according to the report, a joint publication by FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP), and the UN World Health Organization (WHO).

Africa, Asia, Latin America in focus

Regional trends show a stark contrast with hunger continuing to rise in Africa, affecting 20.4 per cent of the population, while remaining stable in Asia at 8.1 per cent. This is a significant concern given that the region houses more than half of those facing hunger worldwide. Latin America has shown some progress with 6.2 per cent of its population facing hunger. However, from 2022 to 2023, hunger increased in Western Asia, the Caribbean, and most African subregions.

FAO’s Mr. Torero highlighted that Africa faces a unique challenge as it is the only region where hunger has risen owing to all three major drivers: conflict, climate extremes and economic downturns. 

Of them all, he emphasized that war remains “a major driver” of hunger, exacerbating the food crisis across countries.

Getting enough food is out of reach

The report's other key findings include that access to adequate food remains out of reach for billions. In 2023, approximately 2.33 billion people globally were moderately or severely food insecure, almost the same number as during the COVID pandemic. 

Over 864 million people experienced severe food insecurity, meaning having to go for periods without food. While Latin America has seen some improvement in food security, in Africa, a full 58 per cent of the continent’s people are moderately or severely food insecure.

The economic reasons for global remain a major issue, too: the report found 2.8 billion people couldn’t afford a healthy diet in 2022. The contrast between high-income and low-income countries is stark, with just 6.3 per cent of people in the former unable to afford a healthy diet, compared to 71.5 per cent in poorer nations. And although Asia, North America and Europe saw improvements, the situation worsened in Africa.

Coronavirus link to hunger

COVID-19 remains a significant marker in the fight against global hunger, with the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet by 2022 falling below pre-pandemic levels in upper-middle and higher-income countries.

On the other hand, in low-income countries by 2022, the number of people unable to buy enough healthy food reached its highest level since 2017. In 2020, 1.68 billion people globally could not afford a healthy diet, with a 59 per cent increase in lower-middle-income countries. Mr. Torero attributed this disparity to "the significant increase of inequalities among countries and regions caused by COVID-19".

Targets hit – and missed

Progress in child nutrition has been mixed, the UN report shows.

Although exclusive breastfeeding rates have increased to 48 per cent, low birthweight levels remain stagnant at around 15 per cent and stunting in children under five decreased to 22.3 per cent - still short of targets.

There was little movement in combating wasting and anaemia in women, while adult obesity continued to rise, reaching 15.8 per cent in 2022, with projections of more than 1.2 billion obese adults by 2030.

These numbers show the complexity of malnutrition in all its forms and the need for targeted interventions, the report’s authors maintained, amid a backdrop of persistent food price inflation, conflicts, climate change and economic downturns that is making food insecurity and malnutrition worse globally.

Digging deep to end hunger

In line with the theme of this year’s report - “Financing to End Hunger, Food Insecurity and All Forms of Malnutrition” – its recommendations focus on a comprehensive approach to achieving SDG 2: Zero Hunger. This includes transforming agrifood systems, addressing inequalities and making healthy diets affordable and accessible. 

The report calls for increased, cost-effective financing and a standardised approach to food security and nutrition.

Mr. Torero explained: “One of the major recommendations is to come up with a common definition so that we understand what we are financing and the key elements to include in this definition. This will enhance accountability for donors and provide a clearer picture of financial flows.”

UN agency heads, including FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Catherine Russell, stressed that closing the financing gap is crucial. They emphasized that substantial investment is required to end hunger and malnutrition, framing it as both a future investment and a fundamental obligation.

Of the 119 low and middle-income countries featured in the report, 63 per cent have limited access to financing. These countries are also affected by multiple factors of food insecurity. Better data coordination, higher risk tolerance and more transparency are key to bridging the financing gap and strengthening global food security efforts, the report maintains.

“We need to understand that our agri-food systems are under increasing risk and uncertainty due to climate change…donors must adopt greater risk tolerance to activate effective finance,” Mr. Torero said.

1. Planetary health check shows Earth nearing many critical thresholds

UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan said that a “significant increase” in material support for renewable energy in developing countries is “crucial” for the world to reach its climate goals by 2030.

Poorer countries left behind

While investment in renewables has nearly tripled since the adoption of the Paris Agreement almost eight years ago, poorer nations have been largely left out.

Ms. Grynspan said that more than 30 developing countries have not registered a single international investment in utility-size renewable energy generation since the landmark climate change treaty was adopted in 2015.

According to UNCTAD, the amount of foreign direct investment in clean energy attracted by developing countries in 2022 stood at $544 billion – well below needs.

Slowdown in SDG financing

Some good news from the report is that energy companies among the top 100 multinationals have been increasingly turning towards renewables and divesting fossil fuel assets at a rate of about $15 billion per year. 

However, the report also shows an overall slower pace of investment in renewable energy in 2022, “as international project finance deals declined”.

In developing countries, the largest gaps in Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs)-related investments were in energy, water and transport infrastructure, UNCTAD said.

Challenges to foreign direct investment

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is also on the decline, according to UNCTAD, as global flows fell by 22 per cent in 2022, to $1.3 trillion. In Least Developed Countries, the vast majority of which are in Africa, FDI inflows dropped by as much as 16 per cent.

UNCTAD’s report says that the slowdown was driven by “overlapping crises”: the war in Ukraine, high food and energy prices and debt pressures. 

With these factors still in play during 2023, the agency said that it expects “downward pressure on global FDI” to continue this year.

New ‘compact’ for investment

The report calls for a series of policies and financing mechanisms to be put in place to help developing countries attract the necessary investments.

UNCTAD stressed the importance of debt relief for developing economies, to provide them with the fiscal space needed for clean energy spending and to help lower country risk ratings, a prerequisite for attracting private investment.

The agency also recommended reducing the cost of capital for clean energy investment through partnerships between international investors, the public sector and multilateral financial institutions – a measure that can reduce the spread on borrowing costs for energy investment projects in developing countries by up to 40 per cent.

‘The only show in town’

Ms. Grynspan insisted that investment played a “huge part” in achieving the SDGs.

She said they were simply “too big to fail”, calling them “the only game in town” which requires collective action and global solidarity.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — More than 1 billion people in the world live in acute poverty, over half are children and nearly 40% live in conflict-torn and fragile countries, according to a report released Thursday.

"It tastes like umami with a certain salty flavour, despite not containing such high levels of salt. I would say it's a great flavour enhancer for seafood dishes and products, but the possibilities to explore are endless. Why not protein smoothies or 'blue burgers' from the sea?" says João Trigo, PhD in Food Science at Chalmers, about the dark green powder, which is a concentrate of proteins from sea lettuce, scientifically known as Ulva fenestrata. Sea lettuce is a type of macroalgae, commonly called seaweed, which grows on rocks in calm waters, or free-floating on the surface, and resembles ordinary lettuce leaves in appearance.

The so-called protein shift -- switching from red meat to more sustainable and healthy protein sources -- is a way to reduce the climate impact of food production while providing everyone with a nutritious diet. Many alternative protein sources, mainly based on pea, soy and mushroom, are common in our grocery stores. But all the vegetarian protein that is found under the sea is still an untapped source.

The CirkAlg-project, led by Chalmers University of Technology, has explored the possibilities of developing processes that can create a new, "blue-green" food industry in Sweden, and make use of seaweed as a promising source of protein. Within the framework of the project, a newly published scientific studyshows a unique way of extracting proteins from sea lettuce, so that it is now possible to extract three times more protein from the seaweed than was possible with previous methods.

"Our method is an important breakthrough, as it brings us closer to making it more affordable to extract these proteins, something that is done with pea and soy proteins today," says João Trigo.

Contains several essential nutrients

In addition to essential proteins, sea lettuce contains several other substances of great nutritional value for humans, such as vitamin B12 and the same kind of omega-3 fatty acids found in oily fish, like salmon. People who do not eat animal products are at risk of developing a deficiency of vitamin B12, which is necessary for the body to form red blood cells, among other things. And the cultivation of sea lettuce has several advantages compared to land-growing proteins -- such as the fact that the seaweed does not need to be watered, fertilised or sprayed with insecticides. Sea lettuce is also hardy and grows well under many different conditions, such as different salinity and access to nitrogen.

"Humanity will need to find and combine the intake of many more diversified protein sources than we have available in our diet today, to meet sustainability and nutritional requirements. Algae is a good addition to many of the products already on the market. We need all these solutions and so far, the sea-based possibilities, the so-called blue proteins, have been overlooked," says Ingrid Undeland, Professor of Food Science at Chalmers and coordinator of CirkAlg.

In addition to the newly published extraction method, the Chalmers researchers are working together with the University of Gothenburg to increase the actual protein content in the seaweed. By cultivating sea lettuce in process water from the seafood industry, the protein content can be increased significantly, while nutrients that would otherwise be lost are circulated back into the food chain. At Tjärnö Marine Laboratory (part of the University of Gothenburg) in northern Bohuslän in Sweden, a large number of successful cultivation experiments have been carried out within the CirkAlg-project, based on industrial water side currents.

"In the future, we also want to be able to make use of the parts of the algae that are not proteins, and that could be used in food, materials or for medical applications. The goal is that no molecules should go to waste, to achieve both sustainability and commercial opportunities," says Ingrid Undeland.

More about the extraction method

In addition to proteins that are water-soluble, sea lettuce also contains plenty of fat-soluble so-called membrane proteins. This means that the seaweed proteins are more complex to extract than, for example, soy and pea protein. In a first-step of the new process, the cell membranes of the sea lettuce are opened up in order to access the fat-soluble proteins. The different types of proteins are then extracted with water adjusted to a high pH, and in the next step, by making the solution acidic, the proteins are precipitated into aggregates that could then be separated from the water and utilised as a protein-rich ingredient. It was also seen that the marine omega-3 fatty acids were enriched in the protein ingredient, and a follow-up study confirmed that the same was true for vitamin B12. The new algae protein ingredient can thus help meet a wider range of nutritional needs compared to soy protein.

SDG 7 is to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy. The goal includes reaching universal access to electricity and clean cooking, doubling historic levels of efficiency improvements, and substantially increasing the share of renewables in the global energy mix. Attaining this goal will have a deep impact on people’s health and well-being, helping to protect them from environmental and social risks such as air pollution, and expanding access to primary health care and services.

The 2024 edition of Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report warns that current efforts are not enough to achieve the SDG 7 on time. There has been some progress on specific elements of the SDG 7 agenda – for example, the increased rate of renewables deployment in the power sector – but progress is insufficient to reach the targets set forth in the SDGs.

The latest report confirms that the number of people without access to electricity increased for the first time in over a decade, as population grew—mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa—at a higher rate than that of new electricity connections, leaving 685 million people without electricity in 2022, 10 million more than in 2021. A combination of factors contributed to this including the global energy crisis, inflation, growing debt distress in many low-income countries, and increased geopolitical tensions. However, promising trends in the rollout of decentralised energy solutions, largely based on renewable energy, are helping accelerate progress, particularly in rural areas where eight in ten people without access live today.

Meanwhile, 2.1 billion people still live without access to clean cooking fuels and technologies, with the number remaining largely flat last year. This carries with it huge implications for health, gender equality, and the environment, contributing to 3.2 million premature deaths each year. Renewed political momentum within the context of G7, G20, and new financial commitments made at the Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa are buoying prospects for stronger progress later this decade. Still, efforts remain insufficient to reach universal access to electricity or clean cooking by 2030.

Other parts of the SDG 7 agenda have fared better recently. Renewable energy has seen robust growth over the past two years, and energy efficiency improvements is gradually improving after a drop-off during the pandemic, albeit still not enough to meet the SDG 7 target. New global targets pledged by over 130 countries in the UAE Consensus reinforce the objectives of SDG 7 by aiming to triple renewable generating capacity and double the rate of energy efficiency. Immediate concrete actions are required to fulfil these targets, especially in addressing the large disparity in clean energy investment, of which 80% remains concentrated in just 25 countries in 2022.

Key findings of the report:

• 2022 saw a reversal in progress, with the number of people living without electricity growing for the first time in over a decade. Today, 685 million people live without access – 10 million more than in 2021. In 2022, 570 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are living without electricity, accounting for more than 80% of the global population without access. The access deficit in the region has seen an uptick relative to 2010 levels.
• The world remains off track to achieve universal access to clean cooking by 2030. Up to 2.1 billion people still use polluting fuels and technologies for cooking, largely in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The traditional use of biomass also means households spend up to 40 hours a week gathering firewood and cooking, which makes it difficult for women to pursue employment or participate in local decision-making bodies and for children to go to school.
• Household air pollution created by using polluting fuels and technologies for cooking results in 3.2 million premature deaths each year.
• Renewable electricity consumption grew more than 6% year-on-year in 2021, bringing the share of renewables in global electricity consumption to 28.2%.
• Installed renewable energy-generating capacity per capita reached a new record in 2022 at 424 watts per capita globally. However considerable disparities exist. Developed countries (at 1,073 watts per capita) have 3.7 times more capacity installed than developing countries (at 293 watts per capita).
• The rate of energy intensity improvement saw a slight advance of 0.8% in 2021 compared with 0.6% a year earlier. However, this remains well below the long-term average. The slow progress in 2021 occurred amidst the robust economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw the largest annual rise in energy consumption in 50 years. Average annual improvements through 2030 must now accelerate to over 3.8 percent to meet the SDG 7.3 target.
• International public financial flows in support of clean energy in developing countries rebounded in 2022, to USD 15.4 billion, a 25% increase over 2021. However, it is still around half of the 2016 peak of USD 28.5 billion.
• By 2030, under current policies there are still 660 million people lacking electricity access and around 1.8 billion without access to clean cooking technologies and fuels. Progress in energy efficiency rates also lags, reaching just 2.3%, well below the level needed to reach the SDG 7 target.

The report will be presented to top decision-makers at a special launch event on 15 July at the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development, which oversees progress on the SDGs. The authors urge the international community to refocus efforts on providing the required financial, technological and policy support to close the access deficit and ensure that all countries and communities can benefit from accelerated renewable energy deployment and improved energy efficiency.  

Fatih Birol, Executive Director, International Energy Agency: “To achieve Sustainable Development Goal 7, we will need much more investment in emerging and developing economies to expand access to electricity and to clean cooking technologies and fuels. Today, only a fraction of total energy investment is going to the countries where the problems of electricity access and clean cooking are critical, not least in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to climate and environmental benefits, addressing these challenges will bring a range of societal and economic advantages, linked to gender equality, health, education and employment. Our recent Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa mobilised USD 2.2 billion, building momentum for further progress”

Francesco La Camera, Director-General, International Renewable Energy Agency: “Year after year, renewables prove to be a leading player in increasing energy and electricity access through steady expansion of renewable power capacity. But distribution disparity remains stark, as reflected in the international public financial flows in support of clean energy. The rebound in the flows does indicate a positive signal, but it is nowhere near the needed amount to achieve SDG7. This should serve as a strong reminder that not only we are racing against time to reach the goal, but we also still fail the most underserved in the world. There must be a strong sense of urgency from the international community to accelerate investments in renewables infrastructures and sustainable technologies, with a focus on the least developed and developing economies.”

Stefan Schweinfest, Director, United Nations Statistics Division: “Sustainable Development Goal 7 has been a guiding star in the mobilization of efforts to provide affordable and clean energy to more and more people, while current trends make the SDG 7 targets seem elusive. Access to electricity and to clean cooking has advanced since 2015, but now it seems most low-hanging fruits have been picked. Deployment of renewable electricity is on a growing trend, whereas other kinds of renewable are lagging, and energy efficiency improvements seem to have reached a bottleneck. Time is running short and more focused policies and investment are fundamental to ensure the provision of sustainable energy for all by 2030.”

Guangzhe Chen, Vice President for Infrastructure, World Bank: “Electricity access is essential for development, and we need to work extra hard for the 685 million people deprived of this resource – 10 million more than the year before. There are solutions to reverse this negative trend, including accelerating the deployment of solar mini grids and solar home systems. The World Bank is actively working to support this acceleration, and jointly with the African Development Bank we have committed to providing electricity to an additional 300 million people by 2030.”

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization: “Air pollution and energy poverty are claiming lives, inflicting suffering and hindering development. Transitioning more rapidly to clean energy and cooking technologies is essential for protecting the health of the 2.1 billion people without access, and the health of the planet on which all life depends.”

Approximately 85 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector are related to the surface transportation system.

Public transportation use is one of the most effective actions individuals can take to conserve energy. Riding public transportation far exceeds the benefits of other energy-saving household activities, such as using energy-efficient light bulbs, adjusting thermostats, or using energy-efficient appliances.

A single person who switches from a 20-mile commuting alone by car to existing public transportation, can reduce their annual CO2 emissions by 20 pounds per day, or more than 48,000 pounds in a year. That is equal to 10% reduction in all greenhouse gases produced by a typical two-adult, two-car household.

By eliminating one car and taking public transportation instead of driving, a saving of 30% of carbon dioxide emissions can be realized.

U.S. public transportation saves 37 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to the emissions resulting from the electricity generated for the use of 4.9 million households or every household in Washington DC; New York City; Atlanta; Denver; and Los Angeles combined.

Public transportation in Kansas City

Locally, RideKC buses have used the equivalent of 1,000,000 diesel gallon equivalents (DGEs) of compressed natural gas (CNG) since starting to use the fuel in August 2014.

The move from diesel to CNG fuel is creating cost savings and environmental benefits. By reaching the milestone of 1,000,000 DGEs of CNG, KCATA reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 1,870 metric tons. This is the equivalent of taking 395 passenger cars off the road for one year.

Reducing fuel dependency

Public transportation use saves the U.S. the equivalent of 4.2 billion gallons of gasoline annually — and more than 11 million gallons of gasoline per day.

Public transportation use saves the equivalent of 300,000 fewer automobile fill- ups every day.

Public transit use saves the equivalent of 300,000 fewer automobile fill-ups every day

Reducing congestion

Public transportation has a proven record of reducing congestion.

The latest research shows that in 2011, U.S. public transportation use saved 865 million hours in travel time.

Without public transportation, congestion costs in 2011 would have risen by nearly $21 billion from $121 billion to $142 billion in 498 urban areas.