Accounting and management of city carbon emissions: Trajectories towards 
advanced data use

Will Brown * , Kristen MacAskill
University of Cambridge, Centre for Sustainable Development, Department of Engineering, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, United Kingdom

A R T I C L E  I N F O

Keywords:
Urban carbon accounting
Carbon emissions
Data
Literature review

A B S T R A C T

Cities simultaneously play a significant role in the production of global carbon emissions, whilst being essential 
in facilitating their reduction. It is common practice for cities to monitor, assess and manage their carbon 
emissions to inform approaches to reducing emissions. Whilst carbon accounting practice is evolving alongside 
accessibility of data and availability of resources, city authorities remain limited in their ability to accurately 
assess the carbon emissions produced within their respective city – often being constrained by political, financial 
and capacity factors. This paper reviews academic literature concerning the utilisation of carbon emission data to 
establish trajectories for advancing urban carbon accounting practice. The cases reviewed expand more typical 
contemporary urban carbon accounting practice through at least one of five trajectories: combining different 
data sources, visualising carbon emissions, developing district level mitigation policies, accounting for project 
level emissions, or estimating policy emission impacts. These are discussed in relation to broader narratives 
within urban carbon accounting research. Each trajectory offers potential development routes for city authorities 
as their urban carbon accounting practices mature, thereby working towards closing the gap between carbon 
accounting practice and academic research.

1. Introduction

Cities are simultaneously responsible for an estimated 70 % of the 
world’s emissions (IPCC, 2023) whilst being critically important to the 
reduction of global carbon emissions. City authorities have been 
considered to be more active in pursuing mitigation policies when 
compared to national governments (Lo, 2014), supported by their local 
knowledge, creativity, and resources to reduce them (Kennedy et al., 
2009). However, cities are fundamentally complex (Alberti et al., 2018), 
which produces significant challenges for urban governance and poli
cymaking (McPhearson et al., 2016). This complexity increases the 
likelihood of undesirable outcomes emerging from well-intentioned in
terventions (Pak et al., 2017), thereby requiring systemic approaches to 
consider the connections between different systems (Carr, 1996) and the 
utilisation of carbon emission data to inform and enhance decision 
making.

Whilst many city authorities are actively working to account for 
carbon emissions, their actions are limited. City emission baselines are 
predominately constructed through accounting for scope 1 and scope 2 
emissions (GPC, 2021), whilst scope 3 emissions, often the most 

significant urban emission sources (Goodwin et al., 2023), are seldom 
accounted for. This is owing to the complexities of accounting for them, 
with city authorities lacking direct control over these emission sources 
and reliable data to account for them (Millward-Hopkins et al., 2017), as 
well as complexities around how to measure a city’s consumption of 
goods and services; the driver of urban scope 3 emissions (Dorr et al., 
2022).

Another element to consider within urban carbon emission reduction 
is the maturity of a city’s ability to conduct carbon accounting and 
utilise emission data to inform decision making. City authorities often 
utilise city-wide carbon emission inventories, usually produced through 
a combination of approaches, including: the ‘downscaling’ of national 
carbon emission data, produced via the use of input–output methods 
based on national economic data (Davey, 2025); leveraging connections 
with local utility providers to estimate household emissions (Baltar de 
Souza Leão et al., 2020); and, estimating transportation emissions via 
the application of an emission factor to city-wide fuel sales data 
(Kongboon et al., 2022).

Whilst city-wide emission data is useful at the city-wide scale, it is 
limited in application at smaller scales, owing to the complexity of 

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wghb2@cam.ac.uk (W. Brown). 

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Sustainable Cities and Society

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2025.106677
Received 2 December 2024; Received in revised form 24 July 2025; Accepted 24 July 2025  

Sustainable Cities and Society 131 (2025) 106677 

Available online 25 July 2025 
2210-6707/© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ). 

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accurately ‘downscaling’ the data (Gately & Hutyra, 2017). Whilst there 
are examples of cities pursuing more advanced carbon accounting, the 
minimal standard of urban carbon accounting (GPC, 2021) requires 
cities to develop city-wide carbon emission inventories (Davey, 2025), 
resulting in this level of accounting being the most prevalent globally.

To address these limitations, a literature review of academic research 
on the application of carbon emission data in cities has been conducted. 
In comparison to the current practices adopted by many cities such 
research represents the ‘state of the art’, defined as ‘very modern and 
using the most recent ideas and methods’ (Cambridge Dictionary, 2025).

This paper demonstrates to city authorities, practitioners, and 
academia potential trajectories associated with advancing carbon ac
counting in the urban realm. These trajectories characterise the appli
cation and use of carbon emissions data, marking an important 
contribution towards bridging the gap between academic research and 
carbon accounting practice applied by city authorities.

This paper has conducted a literature review to surface the different 
approaches to using urban carbon emission data by reviewing 41 case 
studies covering different cities from across the globe. During the review 
process, five distinct trajectories were revealed, each of which can be 
pursued by cities to develop their carbon accounting practice. Each is 
discussed in relation to the relevant literature in Section 3, with the 
article concluding by discussing the key insights derived from this re
view. The next section provides an overview of the methodological 
approach used.

2. Methodology

This literature review is an ‘extending review’ (Xiao & Watson, 
2019) and whilst being structured around a rigorous search process, it is 
intentionally not a systematic review. This is owing to the purpose of the 
search. A typical goal of a systematic literature reviews is to quantify the 
results of the literature search, here the authors sought to identify aca
demic articles which place a detailed focus upon the application of 
carbon emission data in the urban realm.

Key terms from the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse 
Gas Inventories (GPC) (GPC, 2021), the leading standard for structuring 
urban carbon emission inventories, used by over 13,000 cities world
wide (Global Covenant of Mayors, 2024), were applied as a search term 
framework (Dixon-Woods, 2011). This standard is premised upon the 
identification of six sectors: Stationary energy, Transportation, Waste, In
dustrial processes and product use, Agriculture, forestry, and other land use 
and other scope 3 (GPC, 2021). These sectors were used as initial search 
terms (the Web of Science journal database was utilised for all searches) 
with eight individual searches being conducted by applying either En
ergy, Transport, Waste, Industrial, Product Use, Agriculture, Forestry or 
Scope 3 to the below search term: 

“Urban [GPC sector] Carbon Emissions”

A review process focused on long-listing city-specific case studies. 
This selection criteria was included to reflect the focus on city ap
proaches to carbon accounting. Subsequent refinements (described in 
Fig. 1). led to 41 articles for review. A paper was selected for review if it 
featured a city-specific case study where carbon accounting was con
ducted, with the resulting emission data being applied to produce more 
nuanced or detailed findings beyond the initial creation of an inventory. 
The five manifestations of this data application formed the trajectories 
discussed in Section 3.

An example of a leading paper which did not meet this requirement 
was Lenk et al.’s study comparing territorial and consumption carbon 
accounting in Berlin, producing an emission inventory which was not 
subsequently applied to the city to produce more nuanced or detailed 
findings (Lenk et al., 2021). This paper and others like it (See: Appendix) 
were removed at the ‘refinement 4′ stage. Conversely, Marchi et al. 
(2023) for example, produced similar insights into the Italian munici
pality of Grosseto, but used them to map the emission profiles of 

different districts and proposing specific policies to combat them 
(Marchi et al., 2023).

This development of the five trajectories (detailed in Section 3) was 
supported by developing a series of codes which focused on the context, 
use of emission data, methods used, governance, urban environment and 
type of transition investigated within each paper. This review includes 
older papers dating back to 2010. Despite the relative vintage of this 
research, the methods included remain more advanced than the pre
vailing norm for urban carbon accounting today.

Throughout, the term ‘carbon emissions’ is used to describe the 
gasses being accounted for, owing to all articles reviewed either solely, 
or in combination with other greenhouse gasses, accounting for carbon 
dioxide emissions. There is the potential for the selective reporting of 
cases, where less successful examples or attempts are less likely to be 
formally reported. The role of this paper is to capture potential trajec
tories of advancing urban carbon accounting. In doing so it does not 
claim to explore all the complexities of their implementation or provide 
a comprehensive review of current practices used within cities.

The authors are aware of numerous governance barriers, beyond 
issues relating to data, which can manifest themselves within the context 
of advancing urban carbon accounting. The European Union’s Net Zero 
Cities project has identified three barriers which prevent the advance
ment of carbon neutrality – institutional, behavioural and infra
structural barriers (Net Zero Cities, 2024). A reflection of urban 
governance and capacity limitations is provided in the discussion sec
tion, but concerns of governance are not a central focus of this review. 
Another element to raise is that whilst different technological ap
proaches to carbon accounting are discussed in the context of setting the 
scene for different case-studies, the scope of this paper is to focus upon 
the potential trajectories of future applications of carbon emission data 
within cities, rather than on the merits of different technologies in 
producing emission data. Therefore, the different forms of sensing 
technologies and techniques are solely discussed in the context of their 
application to produce carbon emission data.

3. Findings

Within the 41 case studies (summarised thematically in Table 2) 
most of the reviewed articles use the city as a case study, rather than 
being a representation of the actions of a city authority – although there 
are examples of collaboration between researcher and authority 
(Goodwin et al., 2023; Keller et al., 2023; Marchi et al., 2023). There is a 
diversity of cities represented, demonstrated by Fig. 2, which maps each 
case study and carbon accounting trajectory onto Loughborough Uni
versity’s Globalization and World Cities research network’s (GaWC) 
ranking (GaWC, 2024). This ranking classifies cities into 12 levels of 
world city network integration, from alpha ++ (the most economically 
integrated cities) through to sufficiency (cities with their own services 
that are not reliant on other world cities), based on the prevalence of 
leading financial firms within the city and the connections between 
them. Owing to the multiplicity of factors which make a particular city 
attractive for investment (Murray, 2022) the world city ranking provides 
a multifaceted means of categorising the city case studies reviewed here. 
While alpha cities slightly dominate the analysis, there is generally a 
reasonable spread across the city rankings, suggesting the findings of the 
paper could be generalized beyond a particular city type. Although, the 
significant majority of cases are based in high-income countries, a point 
that will be returned to in wider discussion in Section 4.

The majority of case studies included in this review are based upon 
bottom-up accounting practices as opposed to the top-down approach 
adopted by many cities today. This distinction is important considering 
the time and skillset required to conduct a bottom-up analysis in com
parison to the relative simplicity of a top-down assessment (Davey, 
2025), especially within the constraints of urban governance. The five 
trajectories are presented within the context of a starting point scenario, 
with this paper exploring how each trajectory builds on this scenario. 

W. Brown and K. MacAskill                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Sustainable Cities and Society 131 (2025) 106677 

2 



While there is variability in existing practice, for the purpose of this 
paper this scenario (Table 1) is framed as a city currently conducting the 
‘BASIC’ level of carbon accounting contained within the GPC standard 
(scope 1 and 2 emissions for stationary energy, transportation and 
waste) using either top-down or bottom-up accounting. Owing to the 
less labour-intensive nature of ‘top-down’ carbon accounting, this 
starting point will be based on a city performing top-down accounting.

The first two trajectories centre upon better ways to utilise pre- 
existing data, firstly by combining emission data with other data sour
ces to support more enhanced, holistic decision making, and secondly 
through detailing approaches to the visualisation of carbon emissions. 
The trajectories subsequently expand from current practice by applying 
emission data in a more targeted manner to develop neighbourhood/ 
district level carbon reduction policies (rather than at a city-wide scale), 
through conducting carbon accounting of project emissions to assess 
their emission reducing potential and impact, and by estimating the 
emission impacts of proposed and already existing governmental actions 
through the carbon accounting of policy initiatives.

Each trajectory is discussed through the relevant cases. Initially with 
a thematic overview involving a brief description of case studies and a 
reflection upon urban carbon accounting maturity, before delving 
deeper into a featured case study. This expanded analysis unpicks spe
cific thematic elements, with supporting cases that more widely 
demonstrate application of the trajectory in question.

3.1. Trajectory 1: Combining data sources

A crucial element of enhancing urban carbon accounting is the 
alignment and combination of different data sources. Be this through: 
the combination of different scales of top-down emission data (city- 
wide, regional and national), as demonstrated by Wiedmann et al. 
(2016) development of Melbourne’s ‘carbon map’, a chart-based tool 
which demonstrates the link between emission sources and consumption 
within the city; the implementation of bottom-up accounting practices, 
whereby activity data is utilised to calculate and estimate a city’s carbon 
emissions via the application of an emission factor (Dorr et al., 2022; 
McPherson & Kendall, 2014; Sigurðardóttir et al., 2023); the combina
tion of socio-economic or census data to further interrogate the pro
duction of urban emissions (Goodwin et al., 2023; Millward-Hopkins 
et al., 2017; Patarasuk et al., 2016); or the use of carbon emission data 
with economic or financial data to support the prioritisation of carbon 
neutrality efforts within a city. A New York case study (explored below) 
(Eicker et al., 2020) not only demonstrates an approach to combining 
different forms of urban data to support decision making, but also pro
poses an approach to developing better data integration.

3.1.1. New York
Whilst America’s largest city has passed legislation to reduce their 

carbon emissions by 80 % until 2050, it is essential that the data utilised 
to inform mitigation policies reflects New York’s dense complexity, 
entailing a diversity of data forms, sources and applications. Eicker et al. 

Fig. 1. Diagram for literature search process.

W. Brown and K. MacAskill                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Sustainable Cities and Society 131 (2025) 106677 

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Fig. 2. Reviewed papers’ case study city world city rankings mapped according to key trajectory themes (some of the 41 cases feature more than once). Cities listed 
as ‘not included’ (purple) are deemed to be non-world cities by GaWC and therefore do not feature in the world city ranking.

W. Brown and K. MacAskill                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Sustainable Cities and Society 131 (2025) 106677 

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(2020) identified these challenges facing New York and proposed the 
development an open urban data platform, which centres upon urban 
data collection and analysis from a diverse range of sources, such as 
sensors, municipal data records, knowledge repositories and social 
media streams. Yet, these are often siloed, disconnected from each other, 
rarely exchanging data. Therefore, the role of an open urban data plat
form is to interconnect data from multiple urban infrastructures – such 

as built environment, transportation, natural environment and utilities. 
To overcome data siloisation, the CityGML building modelling standard 
was utilised within the platform as a common format for data exchange 
between datasets. The platform analyses and optimises urban in
frastructures (energy, water and food or goods consumption) and was 
applied to investigate the food-water-energy nexus of Borough Hall 
(Brooklyn).

Open-source data related to the energy demand of the building, food 
and water sector was collected and combined, supporting a range of 
nuanced policy recommendations, with the authors arguing that dis
tricts with a high ratio of home ownership and high-income population 
could afford to modernise their built environment more easily in com
parison with low income or city-owned apartments, where other ap
proaches are needed. Another insight concerns the importance of 
building age, where informed refurbishment and system modernization 
decisions can be made. However, as is argued byEicker et al. (2020), the 
use of multiple data sources can be challenging, because they are not 
always on the same level and scale and are usually in different data 

Table 1 
Overview of starting point city scenario.

Element City Scenario

Data Source Top-down national level data downscaled to city
Scope GPC scopes 1 and 2 - BASIC accounting
Advancements Limited awareness of potential carbon accounting advancements/ 

next steps + Limited data availability and expertise to conduct 
bottom-up accounting

Data Use No connection between decarbonisation actions and currently 
available carbon emission data

Table 2 
Summary of the trajectories and the 41 shortlisted cases.

Trajectory Sub-Theme Featured Case Study Other Relevant Cases

Combining Data Sources Combining Data Sources Eicker, Weiler, Schumacher and Braun (2020) - New York 
Demonstrates the combination of different forms of urban data 
to support decision making, proposes an approach to 
developing better data integration

Dorr et al. (2022) Montreuil, McPherson and Kendall (2014)
Los Angeles, Sigurðardóttir et al. (2023) Reykjavik, 
Patarasuk et al. (2016) Salt Lake City, Goodwin et al. (2023)
Canberra, Millward-Hopkins et al. (2017) Bristol, 
Wiedmann et al. (2021) Melbourne

Mapping Emissions District/ 
Neighbourhood Mapping

Tan et al. (2021) - Shenzhen 
Demonstrates the mapping of emissions at district level and 
across different communities.

Marchi et al. (2023) Grosseto, Han & Ge (2021) Suzhou

Fine-Scale Mapping Keller et al. (2022) - Auckland 
Represents the fine-scale carbon emissions of a geographically 
complex area, demonstrating the need for this type of 
approach.

Cai et al. (2020) Hong Kong, Zhou and Gurney (2010)
Indianapolis, Boitor et al. (2019) Cluj-Napoca, Schandl, 
Marcos-Martinez, Baynes, Yu, Miatto and Tan (2020)
Canberra

Representing Building 
Level Emissions

Zhang et al. (2022) - Xi’an 
Models building emissions across a city, identifying themes 
which expand beyond political boundaries

Kellett et al. (2013) Vancouver, Wu, Tao, Cao, Fan and 
Ramaswami (2019) Shanghai, Lorenzo-Sáez et al. (2020)
Quart de Poblet

Mapping Directly 
Monitored Emissions

Doukalianou et al. (2020) - Xanthi
Lee et al. (2017) - Vancouver
Pugliese et al. (2018) - Toronto

Granular Neighbourhood 
/District Specific 
Policies

Granular Neighbourhood 
/District Specific Policies

Cheng et al. (2022) - Chongqing 
An informative example of creating granular policies which 
reflect the specific contexts of the areas they are proposed for.

Rivera-Marín, Alfonso-Solar, Vargas-Salgado and 
Català-Mortes (2023) Valencia

Marchi et al. (2023) - Grosseto 
Creates new forms of understanding carbon reduction through 
devising new districts to focus policies and actions.

Dorr et al. (2022) Montreuil

Patarasuk et al. (2016) - Salt Lake City 
Brings in socio-economic data which proposes creating policies 
along not only physical or energy consumption lines, but also 
social factors such as wealth.

Tan et al. (2021) Shenzen, Kellett et al. (2013) Vancouver, 
Huang et al. (2017) Adelaide

Assessing Project 
Emissions

Built Environment/ 
Retrofit

Kaandorp et al. (2022) - Amsterdam 
Example of assessing the impact of installing energy efficiency 
technologies in retrofit scenarios across different contexts.

Sigurðardóttir et al. (2023) Reykjavik, Lin et al. (2017)
Tainan

Nature Based Solutions McPherson and Kendall (2014) - Los Angeles 
An in-depth analysis of the carbon costs, and benefits, of 
planting trees within the urban realm. Emphasises the 
importance of systemic benefits of trees, via the reduction of 
HVAC associated emissions.

Gómez-Villarino et al. (2021) Madrid, Li et al. (2020)
Singapore, Liu et al. (2023) Xiamen

New Approaches Dong et al. (2014) - Kawasaki 
An illustrative example of assessing the emission reductions 
associated with adopting circular economy practices in the 
urban realm.

Kumdokrub et al. (2023) Ithaca, Hsu et al. (2010) Los 
Angeles

Estimating Policy 
Emissions

Estimating Proposed 
Policy Impacts

Dorr et al. (2022) - Montereuil 
An example of combining the accounting for urban emissions 
and neighbourhood level analysis. This is combined with 
estimating the impact of the policies on emissions across the 
area.

(Millward-Hopkins et al., 2017) Bristol, Goodwin et al. 
(2023) Canberra, Yang, Wang, Liu and Zhou (2018) Ningbo, 
Sugar and Kennedy (2013) Toronto

Assessing Government 
Policies

Chen, Zhang, Chen, Li and Cui (2023) - Nanjing 
Estimates the effectiveness of national policy on a city’s efforts 
to become carbon neutral. Further assesses what would be 
required to achieve this end goal.

​

Proposes Policies, but 
does not assess their 
impacts

​ Lombardi, Laiola, Tricase and Rana (2018) Foggia, (Lwasa, 
2017) Kampala, Gu, Fu, Thriveni, Fujita and Ahn (2019)
Shanghai, Zhang et al. (2015) Beijing

W. Brown and K. MacAskill                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Sustainable Cities and Society 131 (2025) 106677 

5 



formats. Combining these diverse data sources however provides in
formation that can be crucial to making sensible scenarios for a future 
renewable and CO2-reduced city planning.

This case study illustrates the benefits of using different forms of data 
to create more informed analysis of complex urban environments, 
marking an important step towards the development of holistically 
informed decarbonisation decisions, and represents the first trajectory 
towards advancing carbon accounting practice.

3.2. Trajectory 2: Mapping emissions

Another development towards enhanced urban carbon accounting is 
the visualisation of a city’s carbon emissions. Given the imperceptible 
nature of carbon emissions, the surfacing of their distribution across a 
city can support more informed decision making (Marchi et al., 2023; 
Wiedmann et al., 2016). Four forms of emission visualisation were 
identified in the review, representing: district/neighbourhood level 
emissions; city emissions at fine scale; emissions at the building level; 
and the representation of emission data collected through direct sensing 
(Fig. 3).

3.2.1. District/Neighbourhood mapping
A form of emission mapping concerns those which represent the 

relative differences across neighbourhoods. Tan et al. (2021) analysis of 
emissions from passenger transport in Shenzhen is an example of this. 
Here, the authors analysed five communities within the city, which were 
split into a total of 34 ‘traffic analysis zones’ (TAZ). Bottom-up data was 
collected through using local authorities and research institutes and 
accessing statistical reports, literature and other online resources (ibid). 
This data collection identified the requisite variables for the study, 
which were divided into four categories: vehicular energy, land use, 
socioeconomic factors, and transport accessibility. After ascertaining the 
travel demand for each TAZ, the authors applied emission factors to the 
vehicle activity data to estimate the car and bus emissions across the 
study area. The study provides maps relating to the distribution of 
vehicular emissions, per capita emissions and emission intensity across 
the 34 TAZs, revealing the impact of cars and the significant role of 
‘spatial inequalities’ of travel demand, transport emissions and land use 
layouts on passenger transport emissions. This form of mapping is also 
demonstrated in the work of Marchi et al. in Grosseto and, at a less 

granular scale, by Han and Ge’s investigation into the role of land-use 
and urban carbon emissions in Suzhou (Han & Ge, 2023).

3.2.2. Fine-Scale mapping
Auckland is working to half its carbon emissions by 2030 and to 

reach net-zero emissions by 2050 (Keller et al., 2023). Keller et al. 
(2023) argue that detailed, sector-specific emission monitoring is 
required. In 2016, the city produced a city-wide emissions inventory, 
serving as the basis for the development of Mahuika-Auckland, a spatially 
and temporally resolved fossil fuel CO2 emissions data product for the 
city. The genus of this tool came from the inadequacy of pre-existing 
tools to effectively monitor urban carbon emissions at a scale which 
accurately represents geographic complexity.

Using the city’s emission inventory, the scope 1 emissions of various 
sectors were mapped at a scale of 500 × 500 m across the political 
boundary of Auckland: operating at a finer scale than those at the dis
trict/neighbourhood level. One particular benefit is the ability for this 
form of mapping to reveal different conceptualisations of urban carbon 
emissions, moving beyond comparison of districts or census data zones, 
providing a visual means of categorising areas of a city along more 
nuanced lines.

Other papers which develop a finer resolution of visualisation are Cai 
et al.’s (2020) study of Hong Kong and Zhou and Gurney’s (2010)
analysis of Indianapolis. Both adopted a combination of top-down and 
bottom-up methods, with the former modelling building and trans
portation emissions through accessing open data (Cai et al., 2020) and 
the latter downscaling US national data and combining it with 
bottom-up datasets and conducting building energy simulations (Zhou & 
Gurney, 2010). Another example of fine scale carbon emission mapping, 
but solely from the perspective of those produced through mobility and 
traffic, is Boitor et al.’s (2019) use of GPS tracking and vehicle speed 
assessment to estimate vehicle emission hotspots in the Romanian city of 
Cluj-Napoca, observing that the spaces which feature both congested 
streets and high-speed roads are those which produce the most carbon 
emissions.

3.2.3. Representing building level emissions
Another scale is at the level of buildings. This form of mapping is 

often conducted through creating ‘building architypes’, a bottom-up 
approach to accounting for carbon emissions based on the geometry of 

Fig. 3. A visual representation of the four different forms of carbon emission visualisation, produced by the authors using Google Earth as a base image: District/ 
neighbourhood level emissions (Green); City emissions at ‘fine scale’ 
(Blue); Emissions at the building level (Yellow); Emission data collected through direct sensing (Wifi symbol).

W. Brown and K. MacAskill                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Sustainable Cities and Society 131 (2025) 106677 

6 



the building stock and building characteristics (building area, height, 
type) by combining emissions from the manufacture of construction 
materials, building stock and the construction industry (Zhang et al., 
2015). Archetypes are produced via Geographic Information System 
(GIS) maps (Kaandorp et al., 2022), LIDAR (Kellett et al., 2013), ma
chine learning (Wu et al., 2019) and satellite imagery programmes such 
as Google Earth (Zhang et al., 2022). Schandl et al. (2020) used building 
archetypes to assess the carbon impacts of land-use change over time in 
the Australian suburb of Braddon (Canberra), estimating the embodied 
carbon emissions produced over a 60-year period.

Another example is Zhang et al.’s (2022) case study of Xi’an. 
Applying a hypothesis that each building is defined by its land use to 
estimate the city’s building carbon footprint, the authors utilised GIS 
mapping software to locate buildings within different land-use data 
zones. Eight building types, with a combined total of 17 archetypes, 
were identified. These were utilised to identify 15 emission hot spots 
across the city. Whilst this section commenced with an overview of 
district or neighbourhood level mapping, Zhang et al. identified a trend 
for the building emissions of Xi’an to cross such boundaries, observing 
the influence of building type over that of functional and administrative 
zones. Whilst this does not invalidate district/neighbourhood level 
mapping as an approach, for local decision making is often conducted at 
the district level as is the allocation of city budgets, it does represent the 
benefits of different approaches to visualising carbon emissions within 
cities.

It is of note that whilst building archetypes are often utilised to 
calculate building emissions, not all studies which map building emis
sions use archetypes as an approach. An example of this is the use of pre- 
existing building energy certificate data to calculate building emissions 
in the Valencian suburb of Quart de Probert (Lorenzo-Sáez et al., 2020).

3.2.4. Mapping directly monitored emissions
Despite the difficulties of directly measuring carbon emissions in the 

urban realm, four papers included in this review applied sensor-based 
approaches to directly measure carbon emissions– three of which 
mapped their findings (the fourth case via Hsu et al. (2010) is covered in 
Section 3.4).

Doukalianou et al. (2020) assessed the potential for carbon mitiga
tion in the peri‑urban hillside forests of Xanthi, Greece, by utilising the 
static closed chamber technique, assessing gas exchanges between the 
soil below and above the chamber. This was conducted to assess the 
impacts of novel forest thinning activities on carbon sequestration. 
Another paper which directly assessed urban emissions was Pugliese 
et al. (2018) development of the ‘Southern Ontario CO2 Emissions’ in
ventory through monitoring the carbon emissions of Toronto from four 
local sites. Here, the authors used optical techniques for detecting gases 
to monitor carbon emissions and create a new emission inventory for 
Canada’s largest city. Lee et al. (2017) developed a mobile sensor 
network in Vancouver, by modifying five cars and a single bicycle to 
assess the carbon flux across a range of different neighbourhoods within 
the city.

Each of these papers conducted different forms of assessment: one 
remote (Pugliese et al., 2018), one mobile (Lee et al., 2017) and one in 
the ground (Doukalianou et al., 2020). Whilst each paper operates at 
different scales, the two Canadian city studies produced similar maps 
based around identifying emission hot spots. Whilst these Canadian 
studies produced fine scale maps, the analysis of Xanthi’s peri‑urban 
forest followed an approach akin to district/neighbourhood mapping, by 
identifying nine plots where different forms of tree thinning would take 
place and utilising GIS to map their impacts (Doukalianou et al., 2020).

Whilst the forms of mapping described in this section possess 
differing attributes and limitations, they each provide a means of visu
ally demonstrating the intra-city reality of urban carbon emissions. 
Owing to the adoption of systemic perspectives being supported by vi
sual artefacts and the visualisation of complex phenomena, the visual
isation and mapping of a city’s carbon emissions serves an important 

function in the pursuit of advanced carbon accounting.

3.3. Trajectory 3: The development of more granular, neighbourhood/ 
district specific emission reduction policies

The drive to reduce urban carbon emissions is promoted and 
informed by the actions of the local or city authority and is often man
ifested through the development of ‘roadmaps’ for the entire city. Whilst 
this process is important, they do not necessarily relate to the complex 
differences present within a city’s boundaries. Policies which reflect 
such intra-city differences are better positioned to succeed (Chandler, 
2014), with several papers utilising local carbon emission data to create 
granular, local-scale policy recommendations.

This marks the first trajectory which advances practice towards the 
need for more advanced forms of data collection. Many cities reliant 
upon downscaled national level data may face challenges in finding 
appropriate methods to downscale further to the neighbourhood level. 
Rivera-Marín et al. (2023) work in Valencia attempted such down
scaling, where the authors utilised a downscaling approach to account 
for the decarbonisation potential of the scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions of the 
city’s La Carrasca neighbourhood—focusing upon the built environ
ment, transportation, consumption of goods, waste management and 
green areas. This work produced an emission inventory for the neigh
bourhood, enabling the authors to propose policies to reduce the emis
sions contained within. A similar study in geographical scope, but 
different in methodology, was conducted by Dorr et al. (2022) in the 
Parisian suburb of Montreuil, where building retrofit, transportation and 
food related strategies were assessed—which will be covered in more 
detail in Section 3.4.

In another Valencian neighbourhood, Lorenzo-Sáez et al. (2020)
developed a methodology to map primary energy consumption and 
carbon emissions in buildings, with the findings utilised to support the 
implementation of the city authority’s building retrofit policy. In the 
Australian city of Adelaide, Huang et al. (2017) used LCA to model the 
emissions of the built environment (both embodied and activity) and 
transportation in two precincts. The authors observed estimated re
ductions in emissions if residents increased public transportation use 
and increased installation of photovoltaics, with a significant difference 
between the two locations—emphasising the importance of incorpo
rating local features in carbon neutrality policy setting.

In Shenzhen, Tan et al. (2021) applied a development model to assess 
the carbon emissions from passenger transport, identifying that a lack of 
mixed land use contributes to more intensive private vehicle use. 
Another paper which proposes neighbourhood specific approaches to 
reducing emissions is Kellet et al.’s (2013) bottom-up modelling of a 
residential neighbourhood in Vancouver, produced by focusing on 
buildings, transport, people (food, waste and the carbon emissions of the 
human body itself) and plants. The impacts of three scenarios were 
modelled in comparison to the baseline scenario, with optimising 
existing approaches, transit-oriented development and maximising low 
carbon approaches, with the latter producing 31 % of the baseline 
emissions. Below are three case studies which apply neighbourhood and 
district level policies through different approaches.

3.3.1. Chongqing
Cheng et al. (2022) developed a carbon accounting methodology and 

an efficiency assessment model designed to be applicable at the neigh
bourhood level to measure the carbon emission characteristics and 
reduction potential of each neighbourhood. The authors identified 19 
emission sources and sinks across 15 communities. Bottom-up activity 
data was collected from a variety of sources, through different methods, 
from statistical yearbooks and data from neighbourhood committees, 
alongside surveys and semi-structured interviews with residents, mer
chants and local institutions. This data was converted into emission data 
by using emission factors and used to assess each community’s carbon 
footprint and efficiency. The authors categorised communities into four 

W. Brown and K. MacAskill                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Sustainable Cities and Society 131 (2025) 106677 

7 



‘quadrants’ relating to whether they had high or low emissions and 
emission efficiency. This resulted in tailored policy recommendations, 
from promoting highly energy-efficient lifestyles for residents, rehabil
itating the building envelope and optimising the transportation network 
for those with high emissions and emission intensity, to promoting 
resident awareness of environmental conservation, improving land use 
efficiency and optimizing community resource allocation for those with 
low emissions and efficiency.

3.3.2. Grosseto
In 2018, the Italian municipality of Grosseto developed a carbon 

emissions inventory which was integrated with Geographic Information 
Systems based maps, to visualize the spatial distribution of the ‘green
house gas balance’ (Marchi et al., 2023). This inventory was created 
using the IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas inventories, map
ping prevalence of emissions across the municipality using primary data 
covering 46 emission sources provided by local authorities, companies, 
and sector operators. According to the authors these enable the 
connection of “human activities, GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions and 
landscape, providing tools to orient possible decarbonization measures 
for cities and rural areas” (ibid, p9). It was through these maps that four 
GHG ‘action zones’ were identified: the City of Grosseto, agricultural 
areas, coastal areas and agro-forestry surfaces. Each zone was subse
quently paired with policy suggestions and the departments and stake
holders able to assist in their delivery.

3.3.3. Salt Lake City
Patarasuk et al. (2016) quantified Salt Lake County’s fossil fuel 

carbon emissions across eight sectors to ascertain the main drivers of the 
city’s emissions. To this end, the authors applied a bespoke bottom-up 
dataset and conducted regression analysis concerning population sta
tistics, resident affluence and building age; mapping the results across 
the Salt Lake City region. Whilst the authors observed that population 
levels have the greatest proportional influence on carbon emissions, 
they also argued that resident wealth is an important factor. The policy 
implications of this finding suggest “that emissions reductions may find 
greatest efficacy among the high-income census block groups” (p1032). 
This illustrates another form of granular policy development. Rather 
than targeting different neighbourhoods or districts within a city, an 
authority could tailor their emission mitigation policies to different 
socio-economic groups. Given the proportional significance of con
sumption emissions within the urban realm (see: Goodwin et al., 2023), 
and the well observed link between wealth and increased emissions, 
tailoring policies towards wealthier residents may be a fruitful policy 
approach to reduce city emissions, as well as supporting more just 
decarbonisation practices (Fuller, 2017).

3.4. Trajectory 4: Assessing project emissions

A further step in the enhancement of a city’s carbon accounting 
practice lies in assessing and quantifying the emission impacts of actions 
envisaged to reduce a city’s carbon footprint. It is at this stage that a city 
expands from monitoring its carbon emissions, towards understanding 
the impact of their actions to reduce them. The gap between the moni
toring of citywide emissions and those from reduction approaches rep
resents a significant hurdle for cities to overcome. However, there are 
examples of cities working towards the closing of this.

For example, some Nordic cities, such as Oslo (City of Oslo, 2024) are 
applying emission factors to city council procurement data to calculate 
their organisational scope 3 emissions, an approach which can lay the 
foundations for calculating bottom-up project level emission data. 
Within the review, examples of accounting for a project’s carbon emis
sions include Liu et al.’s (2023) assessment of the impact of wetland 
renovation for rural wastewater treatment through conducting a LCA in 
the Chinese city region of Xiamen. By using the data to estimate the 
long-term emission impacts of the project, the authors estimate the 

carbon impacts of the project and the corresponding carbon recovery 
period. Another nature-based project is covered in Gómez-Villarino 
et al.’s (2021) assessment of the carbon emission mitigation potential of 
an agricultural and forestry project in Madrid, identifying the net 
sequestration benefits of the project outweighing the emissions pro
duced through its implementation. On a different scale, Li et al. (2020)
assessed the carbon impacts of indoor farming systems in Singapore, by 
modelling different energy sources and crop choices, identifying the 
importance of solar energy and recycling materials in reducing carbon 
impacts.

Within the built environment sector, Sigurðardóttir et al. (2023)
analysed the embodied emissions of the development of a new neigh
bourhood in Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavik, by utilising planning 
documentation to conduct an LCA. Here the authors estimated the 
emission impacts of using timber instead of reinforced concrete, iden
tifying potential emission reductions of 43 % within the neighbour
hood’s construction. Lin et al. (2017) explore building energy 
consumption by modelling the impacts of solar panel installation, using 
building archetypes for analysis in Tainan. Another approach to 
assessing project emissions is to validate new approaches to reducing 
emissions. One such example is (Kumdokrub et al., 2023) tracking of the 
energy and material flows in the energy, food waste, and construction 
materials sectors of Cornell University to assess the metabolism and the 
feasibility of a circular economy approach to reducing emissions, 
highlighting the importance of renewable energy generation and com
posting of food waste as key elements.

Beyond assessing the emissions of a project, Hsu et al. (2010) took 
the step to validate the emission data itself, by conducting a verification 
study of a carbon and methane inventory which covered the Los Angeles 
area. The authors used a suite of sensors at the Mt Wilson observatory to 
produce a top-down inventory and compared it with a prior, bottom-up 
inventory produced by the California Air Resources Board, observing 
that the top-down inventory reported a third-greater level of emissions 
in comparison with the bottom-up approach. Below are three examples 
which highlight the assessing of emissions bound in projects at different 
scales—building retrofit, city-wide nature-based solutions, and the 
adoption of new practices to reduce emissions.

3.4.1. Amsterdam
Kaandorp et al.’s (2022) analysis of building insulation and elec

tricity decarbonisation across three sites in Amsterdam exemplifies the 
assessment of novel approaches across different contexts within a city. 
The authors investigated the configuration of urban heat systems to 
identify the lowest cumulative carbon emissions over time. To ascertain 
the emission impact of the assessed heat systems, a bottom-up heat 
demand model was developed, comprising of GIS informed, building 
archetype derived models of heating demand, heating system emission 
factors and insulation and decarbonisation trajectories. Based on the 
study’s findings the authors argue that the viabilities of technologies for 
heat supply depends on the ambitiousness of the policy to decarbonise 
electricity as well as the rate of building insulation. This finding has a 
systemic quality, requiring consideration of the available technology is 
required as well as how it operates within its context.

3.4.2. Los Angeles
McPherson and Kendall’s (2014) LCA research into Los Angeles’ 

‘Million Trees’ programme assesses fuel use, material inputs, and 
biogenic carbon flows for each life stage of the programme over 40 
years. This analysis covers planting, maintenance, growth, removal and 
disposal of three types of tree planting, street, park and yard trees. This 
inventory accounted for the impact of shading from trees on energy 
demand, revealing that whilst the project overall would be a net carbon 
emission sink, this was not true for all types of tree planting, with park 
trees projected to be net carbon emission sources; owing to the emissions 
associated with their planting, maintenance and removal not being 
balanced by their sequestration. Nor do they provide secondary benefits, 

W. Brown and K. MacAskill                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Sustainable Cities and Society 131 (2025) 106677 

8 



like in building shading, which could reduce building heating, venting 
and air conditioning emissions. This finding further illustrates the virtue 
of accounting for project emissions. The conventional wisdom is the 
more trees planted within a city, the more carbon will be sequestered, 
yet, if the processes behind the actual implementation and management 
of the trees is accounted for, then they could be a net source of carbon 
emissions.

3.4.3. Kawasaki
Dong et al. (2014) analysed carbon emission reduction through in

dustrial and urban symbiosis in the Japanese industrial city of Kawasaki. 
Urban symbiosis is the use of by-products (waste) from cities as alter
native raw materials or energy sources in industrial operations. This 
form of ‘circular economy’ is of importance within reducing urban 
carbon emissions, given the significant embodied emissions contained 
within materials such as steel and concrete. The authors evaluated the 
carbon footprint from a lifecycle perspective along three lifecycle stages: 
upstream, onsite and downstream. If emissions occurred within the 
administrative boundary, they were classified as onsite direct carbon 
footprint, whilst emissions which occurred outside the administrative 
boundary were classified as upstream or downstream depending on 
whether they were produced before or after those onsite. The authors 
categorised the carbon footprint into six ‘parts’ and collected activity 
data from technical documents, published literature and an onsite sur
vey, then applied emission factors. Regarding the reduction of emissions 
from urban symbiosis, its largest impacts concerned the city’s iron and 
steel industry, where emission reductions were mainly found in material 
carbon footprint reduction, which contributed to the positive impact of 
urban symbiosis on reducing overall emissions. In opposition to 
consuming new materials, the recycling of materials central to urban 
symbiosis reduced the eco-town’s carbon footprint.

3.5. Trajectory 5: Modelling future policy impacts

Beyond assessing project emissions, the development of policy level 
emission data is a complex, but important task to conduct to understand 
the possible emission impacts of policies going forward. This is owing to 
the influence city authorities have on reducing emissions currently being 
unaccounted for in terms of their carbon impact. Despite city councils 
often being constrained by national level policies—for example the 
inability to introduce carbon taxes—the passing of local, city level car
bon neutrality policies, especially in relation to reducing consumption 
and scope 3 emissions, is a key source of leverage for city authorities to 
reduce their city’s carbon emissions. However, the ability for a city 
authority to estimate the carbon impacts of a policy or range of policies 
is a particularly advanced and complex form of carbon accounting. This 
is in part due to the complexities of setting the boundary of accounting, 
thereby raising questions of what is determined to be impacted by a 
policy and what is not, as well as the requirement to do speculative 
accounting grounded in assumptions which is predominately beyond the 
capacity for city authorities.

However, within academia, several papers have estimated the 
emission impact of different policies upon a city’s carbon footprint. 
Adopting a broad perspective on urban emission reduction approaches, 
Sugar and Kennedy (2013) modelled a range of different interventions 
within building retrofit, green infrastructure, alternative energy supply 
and transportation. The estimated impacts of which were assessed in line 
with current policy and more aggressive policies in 2031 for the city of 
Toronto (Sugar & Kennedy, 2013).

In Bristol, Millward-Hopkins et al. (2017) calculated the production 
and consumption emissions of the British city, as well as estimating its 
future emission trajectory up to 2035. The authors proposed mitigation 
scenarios to reduce production emissions but find that these measures 
will have a limited impact on the consumption emissions of the city, 
which are estimated to be three times larger than production emissions. 
Another paper which targeted consumption emissions was an 

assessment of Canberra’s emissions, identifying that consumption 
emissions of the Australian capital were 83 % of its total carbon footprint 
(Goodwin et al., 2023). The authors estimated that by implementing 
policies designed to a 1.5 ◦C warming scenario, the city’s emissions 
could be reduced by 85 % by 2045.

Another paper which sought to estimate the potential impacts of 
policies was Yang et al.’s (2018) assessment of the Chinese city of 
Ningbo in relation to the national government’s launching of a 
low-carbon city pilot program. This assessment was conducted through 
the development of a long-range energy alternatives planning system 
model which simulated the emission impacts of six energy sectors, with 
the authors observing the need to both emphasise increasing energy 
efficiency and reducing consumption rates.

The review also identified papers which propose policies to reduce 
carbon emissions, but do not estimate their impacts. Examples of this 
include: Lombardi et al. (2018) developing an action plan for the Italian 
municipality of Foggia, based upon the calculation of the city’s territo
rial (scopes 1 and 2) carbon footprint; Lwasa (2017) accounting of 
Kampala’s territorial carbon footprint identified interventions from the 
building, transportation and nature based solutions sectors; Zhang 
et al.’s (2015) analysis of the carbon emissions of the different sectors of 
Beijing’s economy; and Gu et al. (2019) system dynamics modelling of 
Shanghai’s carbon footprint, identifying that improving energy intensity 
would be the most effective means of reducing emissions.

3.5.1. Montreuil
Owing to the detailed carbon data collected and focus on consump

tion emissions, Dorr et al. (2022) assessment of the Parisian suburb of 
Montreuil’s carbon emissions features an insightful estimation of policy 
induced emission reductions. Through applying environmental model
ling across different sectors— combining food, mobility and buil
dings—the authors evaluated the impact of various climate mitigation 
interventions, involving data collection from a range of sources. For 
food, national level data was downscaled for use at a city level, using 
socio-economic data to facilitate this process. Mobility and residential 
buildings were modelled by adopting the widely used four-step trans
portation modelling process (to generate resident trips and associated 
emissions) and by applying a building energy simulation model (which 
created 14 building archetypes representing various heating loads and 
environmental impacts across building lifecycles).

These models produced an emissions baseline against which to assess 
eight policies across the three sectors: reducing food waste and replacing 
red meat in local diets; increasing electric and hybrid vehicle use as well 
as implementing a speed limit of 15 km/h and not allowing car journeys 
below 3 km; and the replacement of windows, renewal of gas boilers and 
the insulation of building facades. The study predicted a 23 % reduction 
of Montreuil’s carbon emissions as a combined impact of these policies. 
The authors found that the building sector emissions reduction had the 
most impact from local intervention. However, the food sector emissions 
are mostly created by agricultural sites outside the city’s boundaries and 
thus are not under the direct influence of elected officials.

3.5.2. Nanjing
Whilst the above papers estimated the impacts of hypothetical 

emission reductions, another form of estimating policy impacts is to 
model currently enacted policies. Considered to be a vital economic 
centre in East China, Nanjing is home to heavy industry which accounts 
for >90 % of city energy consumption—a critical issue given the its 
reliance on energy derived from coal and oil (Chen et al., 2020). To this 
end, the Chinese government has proposed emission reduction policies 
designed to control industrial energy consumption, promote new power 
system construction, waste classification management, the development 
of green transportation and industry restructuring. Within their case 
study, Chen et al. (2020) coupled these policy approaches with three 
contextual factors: economic development, population growth and the 
urbanisation rate. They then set four scenarios covering the 

W. Brown and K. MacAskill                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Sustainable Cities and Society 131 (2025) 106677 

9 



implementation of all government policy carbon reduction measures 
without any additional measures, through to ‘vigorously’ implementing 
various carbon emission reduction measures with green and low carbon 
as the primary goal.

These were assessed through applying baseline energy data (coal, oil 
and natural gas) sourced from statistical yearbooks and development 
plans to a Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning System model which 
simulated and forecasted energy demand and carbon emissions in 
Nanjing from 2020 to 2035. This uncovered that, owing to the city’s 
growth rate and subsequent energy use, Nanjing’s annual carbon 
emissions would rise under government policy and high growth sce
narios and the government mandated approaches to reducing emissions, 
which would fall short of achieving 2030s ‘carbon peak target’. Carbon 
emissions would eventually fall if ‘vigorous’ approaches—promoting 
energy-efficient buildings, encouraging the use of renewable energy 
sources and implementing energy saving technologies in industri
es—were pursued.

This section has presented the five urban carbon accounting trajec
tories cities can adopt to enhance their practice. Beginning with the 
application of currently accounted for emission data, vis-à-vis the 
combination of emission data with other sources and the visualisation of 
carbon emissions, through to practices which require novel accounting 
approaches beyond that which is required for ‘BASIC’ carbon accounting 
through the GPC standard, be it the development of neighbourhood level 
decarbonisation policies or the accounting of project and policy emis
sion impacts. The following section discusses these trajectories in rela
tion to broader narratives and challenges acknowledged within wider 
urban carbon accounting literature.

4. Discussion

This paper has illustrated the research taking place within academia 
in relation to the future trajectories of urban carbon accounting and the 
use of emissions data. To position the five trajectories discussed within 
broader narratives within academic research, this section briefly ex
plores four areas: carbon accounting in low and middle income countries 
(LMIC); developing scope 3 and consumption-based carbon accounting 
capabilities; urban governance barriers preventing the advancement of 
carbon accounting, and the relation between carbon accounting and 
justice. This is informed by a wider engagement with city-oriented 
carbon accounting literature on these themes, not limited to the initial 
search constraints.

To address the first two areas in combination: while at different 
levels of maturity in practice, there are similarities in challenges facing 
cities in LMICs working towards implementing initial carbon accounting 
and developing emission inventories, and cities in high-income coun
tries (HICs) seeking to advance their current practice to more broadly 
account for scope 3 emissions. A key element in both contexts is the need 
for reliable, high-quality data. Issues around inadequate scope 3 data are 
commonly reported (Kim, Kim, Jeon, Oh, Han, & Yi , 2025; Świąder, 
Schafer, Lysák, & Henriksen, 2025). Issues around data limitations are 
also prevalent in LMICs such as Brazil and within Africa where carbon 
accounting is in a less advanced state (Baltar de Souza Leão et al., 2020; 
Liu et al., 2024). Another common limitation across contexts is the lack 
of relevant emission factors, with uncertainty in the calculations of a 
Mexico City university’s carbon footprint being cultivated using global 
emission factors, rather than those developed in Mexico – an issue 
imposed by a lack of national emission factors (Mendoza-Flores, Quin
tero-Ramírez, & Ortiz, 2019). The same issue is identified by 
Muñoz-Arango et al. (2025) through their calculation of the consump
tion emissions within a Valencian neighbourhood.

Broader concerns around the capacities of a city authority to conduct 
carbon accounting are also prevalent. Here, a lack of knowledge is 
observed as an important barrier across both HIC and LMIC contexts. 
Within the African context, Liu et al. (2024, p1384) observes that “an 
inherent scarcity of resources (capital, know-how, technology, etc.), has 

limited the allocation of resources toward carbon accounting activities 
at the city level”. Jagarnath and Thambiran (2018) argue that the bar
riers are often organizational, or knowledge-related, rather than finan
cial. This observation is supported by Earley and Korn (2024) in the 
Canadian context.

Beyond the limitations and challenges of data collection and the 
limitations of those implementing carbon accounting, there are a range 
of elements which can either hinder or support such actions. One 
element of advancing carbon accounting is the complexity inherent with 
expanding practice (Andrade, Dameno, Pérez, de Andrés Almeida, & 
Lumbreras, 2018). Many cities establish different forms of collaboration, 
be it with other cities (Wiedmann et al., 2021; Earley & Korn, 2024), 
through collaborating with the private sector (Dovie et al., 2020; Earley 
& Korn, 2024) or with entities who have access to different datasets 
(Andrade et al., 2018; Baltar de Souza Leão et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2024; 
Sudmant et al., 2018). Such collaborations enable the cities to overcome 
practice, capacity or data limitations which can limit the effectiveness of 
their carbon accounting.

Another approach to brokering any impasses within the desired 
carbon accounting methodology is through the imposition of multi-level 
governance. Dovie et al. (2020) advocate for a ‘Multi-Vector Approach’ 
to urban carbon governance, identifying health, mobility, resources, 
buildings, and economy as being sectors which need to collaborate for 
more effective decarbonisation. This is important for the development of 
more effective carbon governance, especially given the propensity for 
siloisation to be prevalent within city carbon governance (Buylova et al., 
2025), with Linton et al. (2022) reporting that many cities in the United 
States lack cohesiveness within their carbon mitigation plans paying 
testament to this.

Our final observations concern the role of justice within urban car
bon accounting. An important dimension here is the allocation of 
emission responsibility. According to Sovacool (2023) concerns on 
carbon removal are often filtered through antecedent food, fuel, and 
resource conflicts, which are especially relevant in LMICs. Reinforcing 
this observation is the strong correlation between wealth and carbon 
emissions (Sudmant et al., 2018), which is of importance when devising 
policies to reduce consumption emissions in particular, owing to their 
unequal distribution across a city (Fuller, 2017). This notion of distri
butional justice (Yang et al., 2021) is a legacy of accurate carbon ac
counting. If the sources of carbon emissions are properly identified, and 
there are policies to reduce them, then the emitting communities or 
neighbourhoods can be identified (Jagarnath & Thambiran, 2018). 
Therefore, whilst carbon accounting is a somewhat technocratic exercise 
rooted in the quantification of urban phenomena, it has an important 
role to play in the advancement of just urban decarbonisation.

This section has provided a broader contextual overview of the 
challenges and realities of carbon accounting within areas which were 
not directly captured by the original case analysis. A key observation 
here is the similarity between the challenges facing cities in LMICs who 
are implementing ‘basic’, production-based carbon accounting practices 
(in relation to the minimum carbon accounting standard advocated by 
the GPC) and those in HICs pursuing the incorporation scope 3 emissions 
(predominantly through consumption-based approaches) into their ac
counting. This may be due to challenges around data scarcity, avail
ability or quality, or the lack of ability of city governance to advance 
their practices or the necessity to collaborate with different levels of 
governance or other cities.

5. Conclusion

This paper has conducted a review of academic literature concerning 
the utilisation of carbon emission data to establish trajectories for 
advancing urban carbon accounting practice. While some papers 
included in the review are somewhat dated (>10 years old) they still 
represent relatively advanced methods compared to what the authors 
have observed in practice.

W. Brown and K. MacAskill                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Sustainable Cities and Society 131 (2025) 106677 

10 



What has emerged are five trajectories that cities can pursue to 
advance carbon accounting. The first two trajectories (1. combining data 
sources to produce more nuanced insights into a city’s carbon emissions 
and 2. the visualisation of a city’s carbon emissions) centre on better 
applications of carbon emission data. The final three trajectories point 
the way towards more advanced data collection and application: 3. the 
use of granular emission data to produce district or neighbourhood level 
policies 4. the accounting of project level emission impacts and 5. the 
estimation of policy carbon emission impacts.

Despite the diversity of methods, approaches and contexts, each 
article presents the argument that more nuanced data collection and use 
produces better understanding of urban carbon emissions, leading to 
more effective reductions. However, the barriers for cities to adopt the 
practices reviewed here are complex, requiring further analysis to better 
bridge the gap between academic and ‘real-world’ practice – a problem 
which, despite its significance, falls beyond the scope of this article. 
Therefore, continued research into the barriers preventing the 
advancement of urban carbon accounting is called for.

By surfacing the varying trajectories and emergent practices towards 
better urban carbon accounting within research, this article defines and 
portrays the value and scope of enhancing such practices. This presents a 
step towards more informed, and thus improved, urban carbon emission 
reduction.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Will Brown: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, 
Visualization, Validation, Resources, Project administration, Method
ology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. 
Kristen MacAskill: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Funding 
acquisition, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare the following financial interests/personal re
lationships which may be considered as potential competing interests:

This project has received funding from Horizon Europe UKRI Un
derwrite Innovate project n◦ 10079041: Urban Planning and design 
ready for 2030. Through this project, the authors have been Associated 
Partners with UP2030. UP2030 has received funding from the European 
Union’s Horizon Innovation Actions under the grant agreement n◦

101096405. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s).

Appendix. Papers not included in analysis

Title: Thermal Calculation for the Implementation of Green Walls as 
Thermal Insulators on the East and West Facades in the Adjacent Areas 
of the School of Biological Sciences, Ricardo Palma University (URP) at 
Lima, Peru 2023

Authors: Alejandro Gómez, Doris Esenarro, Pedro Martinez, Stefany 
Vilchez and Vanessa Raymundo

Journal: Buildings
Location: Lima
Brief Description: Assessment of green walls as thermal insulators at 

university with carbon accounting.
Reason for Non-Inclusion: No further application of urban carbon 

accounting data collected in the study.
Title: Development of a Heat Consumption Model Group and Anal

ysis of Economic Adjustments and Carbon Reduction Efforts in 
Centralized Heating Upgrades in the Beijing Urban–Rural Fringe

Authors: Yimin Liu, Zhe Tian, Yong Cao, Yue Cen, Qing Qiao and 
Xiaolin Wang

Journal: Buildings
Location: Beijing
Brief Description: Assessment of different heat consumption model 

group to estimate emission impacts of district heating.

Reason for Non-Inclusion: A non-urban milieu
Title: Experimentation of Mitigation Strategies to Contrast the Urban 

Heat Island Effect: A Case Study of an Industrial District in Italy to 
Implement Environmental Codes

Authors: Cecilia Ciacci, Neri Banti, Vincenzo Di Naso, Riccardo 
Montechiaro and Frida Bazzocchi

Journal: Atmosphere
Location: Mugello
Brief Description: Investigating the impact of micro climates on 

urban heat island effect in an industrial park.
Reason for Non-Inclusion: Doesn’t monitor or account for carbon 

emissions
Title: Monitoring and Analysis of Outdoor Carbon Dioxide Concen

tration by Autonomous Sensors
Authors: Paulo Henrique Soares, Johny Paulo Monteiro, Hanniel 

Ferreira Sarmento de Freitas, Luciano Ogiboski, Felipe Silva Vieira and 
Cid Marcos G. Andrade

Journal: Atmosphere
Location: Maringa
Brief Description: Direct sensing of carbon dioxide at three different 

locations using autonomous sensors
Reason for Non-Inclusion: No further application of urban carbon 

accounting data collected in the study.
Title: Assessment of urban CO2 budget: Anthropogenic and biogenic 

inputs
Authors: Yaroslav Bezyk, Izabela Sowka and Maciej Gorka
Journal: Urban Climate
Location: Wroclaw
Brief Description: An investigation into the role and interactions of 

anthropogenic and biogenic CO2 emission sources and sinks in the 
carbon cycle of Wroclaw

Reason for Non-Inclusion: No further application of urban carbon 
accounting data collected in the study.

Title: Quantitative assessment of environmental impacts at the 
urban scale: the ecological footprint of a university campus

Authors: C. Genta, S. Favaro, G. Sonetti, G. V. Fracastoro and P. 
Lombardi

Journal: Environment, Development and Sustainability
Location: Turin
Brief Description: Applies a consumption-based ecological footprint 

method to conduct a quantitative assessment of the sustainability of a 
university campus

Reason for Non-Inclusion: No further application of urban carbon 
accounting data collected in the study.

Title: Energy performance certificates as tools for energy planning in 
the residential sector. The case of La Rioja (Spain)

Authors: Luis M. Lopez-Gonzalez, Luis M. Lopez-Ochoa, Jesús Las- 
Heras-Casas and Cesar García-Lozano

Journal: Journal of Cleaner Production
Location: La Rioja
Brief Description: Analyzes how energy performance certificates can 

be used as a planning tool by calculating and verifying the average 
primary energy consumption and the corresponding CO2 emissions per 
square meter and per year for the residential sector.

Reason for Non-Inclusion: Not in a single-city case study
Title: Extending urban stocks and flows analysis to urban greenhouse 

gas emission accounting
Authors: Maud Lanau, Luca Herbert and Gang Liu
Journal: Journal of Industrial Ecology
Location: Odense
Brief Description: Conducted a bottom-up, high resolution urban 

stocks and flows analysis of Odense’s carbon emissions.
Reason for Non-Inclusion: No further application of urban carbon 

accounting data collected in the study.
Title: Road Traffic Emission Inventory in an Urban Zone of West 

Africa: Case of Yopougon City (Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire)

W. Brown and K. MacAskill                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Sustainable Cities and Society 131 (2025) 106677 

11 



Authors: Madina Doumbia, Adjon A. Kouassi, Siélé Silué, Véronique 
Yoboué, Cathy Liousse, Arona Diedhiou, N’Datchoh E. Touré, Sékou 
Keita, Eric-Michel Assamoi, Adama Bamba, Maurin Zouzoua, Alima 
Dajuma and Kouakou Kouadio

Journal: Energies
Location: Abidjan
Brief Description: Conducts bottom-up carbon emission inventory of 

road traffic emissions
Reason for Non-Inclusion: No further application of urban carbon 

accounting data collected in the study.
Title: Urban CO2 Budget: Spatial and Seasonal Variability of CO2 

Emissions in Krakow, Poland
Authors: Alina Jasek-Kaminska, Mirosław Zimnoch, Przemysław 

Wachniew and Kazimierz Rózanski
Journal: Atmosphere
Location: Krakow
Brief Description: Assesses the seasonal variability of carbon emis

sions in Krakow to create a carbon budget
Reason for Non-Inclusion: No further application of urban carbon 

accounting data collected in the study.
Title: Comparison of city-level carbon footprint evaluation by 

applying single and multi-regional input-output tables
Authors: Yin Long, Yoshikuni Yoshida, Qiaoling Liu, Haoran Zhang, 

Siqi Wang and Kai Fang
Journal: Journal of Environmental Management
Location: Tokyo
Brief Description: A study comparing the difference of carbon foot

print accounting between single- and multi-regional input-output tables 
in Tokyo.

Reason for Non-Inclusion: No further application of urban carbon 
accounting data collected in the study.

Title: Pinch analysis of GHG mitigation strategies for municipal solid 
waste management: A case study on Qingdao City

Authors: Xiaoping Jia, Siqi Wang, Zhiwei Li, Fang Wang, Raymond 
R. Tan and Yu Qian

Journal: Journal of Cleaner Production
Location: Qingdao
Brief Description: Adopts a hybrid approach for the planning of a 

carbon-constrained municipal solid waste management system, based 
on Life Cycle Carbon Accounting and Carbon Emission Pinch Analysis.

Reason for Non-Inclusion: Not in an urban location

Data availability

No data was used for the research described in the article.

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	Accounting and management of city carbon emissions: Trajectories towards advanced data use
	1 Introduction
	2 Methodology
	3 Findings
	3.1 Trajectory 1: Combining data sources
	3.1.1 New York

	3.2 Trajectory 2: Mapping emissions
	3.2.1 District/Neighbourhood mapping
	3.2.2 Fine-Scale mapping
	3.2.3 Representing building level emissions
	3.2.4 Mapping directly monitored emissions

	3.3 Trajectory 3: The development of more granular, neighbourhood/district specific emission reduction policies
	3.3.1 Chongqing
	3.3.2 Grosseto
	3.3.3 Salt Lake City

	3.4 Trajectory 4: Assessing project emissions
	3.4.1 Amsterdam
	3.4.2 Los Angeles
	3.4.3 Kawasaki

	3.5 Trajectory 5: Modelling future policy impacts
	3.5.1 Montreuil
	3.5.2 Nanjing


	4 Discussion
	5 Conclusion
	CRediT authorship contribution statement
	Declaration of competing interest
	Appendix Papers not included in analysis
	Data availability
	References