Developing the GHG inventory method for new urban areas in Hanoi associated with land use planning

Abstract

The assessment report of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in early 2013 affirmed that climate change is one of humanity's biggest challenges. The main cause of climate change is carbon emissions from human living and production activities. Urban areas, although only 2% of the global area, are responsible for 70% of carbon emissions.

Vietnam's urban areas are growing at a rapid pace, with the urbanization rate increasing from 23.7% in 1999 to 40% in 2020. The development of new urban areas (KDTM) contributes significantly into this urbanization process, especially in large cities like Hanoi. By 2020, the country has about 2,500 urban housing and new urban area projects being implemented, including 764 new urban area projects. Hanoi leads the country with 146 new urban area projects. If all of these projects come into operation, the population of new urban areas in Hanoi will be 2.8 million people, accounting for more than 1/4 of the entire city population, meaning that new urban areas will become the major emissions of Hanoi.

Currently, Hanoi has set a goal by 2025: carbon emissions reduce by 12.14% compared to 2025 emissions without carbon emission reduction measures (about 6.68 million tons of CO2);
By 2030: carbon emissions will decrease by 18.71% compared to 2030 emissions without carbon emission reduction measures (about 13.76 million tons of CO2). However, GHG inventory has only been carried out for the city level, or at production facilities and some specific projects, but has not been implemented in new urban areas level. Therefore, it is not possible to clearly identify emission and carbon sink of these new urban areas, as well as assess the emission levels to provide specific solutions to contribute to the overall emission reduction goal of Hanoi.

In the Action Plan to respond to climate change of the Construction Ministry for the period 2022-2030, vision 2050, Vietnam committed at COP26 that by 2030, 25% of new urban areas will meet the criteria of green urban areas, low carbon emissions, and this rate will increase to 50% by 2050 [4]. However, the Construction Ministry has not yet developed criteria to evaluate what low carbon urban areas are, nor are there any guidelines for inventorying, evaluating, and monitoring carbon emissions for new urban areas. Realizing that new urban areas have different characteristics from other urban residential areas, the author of the article combined the technical criteria specified in Vietnam National Standards and Regulations related to planning with a survey of land use characteristics of the new urban areas in Hanoi to propose a method to build carbon emission scenarios for new urban areas right from urban planning step. The goal is to propose a method to estimate carbon emission for new urban areas in Hanoi right from the planning step.

Keywords: Low carbon; New urban area; Neighborhood; Urban planning; sustainable development; GHG inventory; land use.