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Dynamics of societal material stocks such as buildings and infrastructures and their spatial patterns drive surging resource use and emissions. Building up and maintaining stocks requires large amounts of resources; currently stock-building materials amount to almost 60% of all materials used by humanity. Buildings, infrastructures and machinery shape social practices of production and consumption, thereby creating path dependencies for future resource use. They constitute the physical basis of the spatial organization of most socio-economic activities, for example as mobility networks, urbanization and settlement patterns and various other infrastructures. This dataset features a detailed map of material stocks for the whole of Germany on a 10m grid based on high resolution Earth Observation data (Sentinel-1 + Sentinel-2), crowd-sourced geodata (OSM) and material intensity factors. Temporal extent The map is representative for ca. 2018. Data format Per federal state, the data come in tiles of 30x30km (see shapefile). The projection is EPSG:3035. The images are compressed GeoTiff files (*.tif). There is a mosaic in GDAL Virtual format (*.vrt), which can readily be opened in most Geographic Information Systems. The dataset features area and mass for different street types area and mass for different rail types area and mass for other infrastructure area, volume and mass for different building types Masses are reported as total values, and per material category. Units area in m² height in m volume in m³ mass in t for infrastructure and buildings Further information For further information, please see the publication or contact Helmut Haberl (helmut.haberl@boku.ac.at). A web-visualization of this dataset is available here. Visit our website to learn more about our project MAT_STOCKS - Understanding the Role of Material Stock Patterns for the Transformation to a Sustainable Society. Publication Haberl, H., Wiedenhofer, D., Schug, F., Frantz, D., Virág, D., Plutzar, C., Gruhler, K., Lederer, J., Schiller, G. , Fishman, T., Lanau, M., Gattringer, A., Kemper, T., Liu, G., Tanikawa, H., van der Linden, S., Hostert, P. (accepted): High-resolution maps of material stocks in buildings and infrastructures in Austria and Germany. Environmental Science & Technology Funding This research was primarly funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (MAT_STOCKS, grant agreement No 741950). ML and GL acknowledge funding by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (CityWeight, 6111-00555B), ML thanks the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC; project Multi-Scale, Circular Economic Potential of Non-Residential Building Scale, EP/S029273/1), JL acknowledges funding by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF), project ESR17-067, TF acknowledges the Israel Science Foundation grant no. 2706/19.

The integration of Grid-Connected PV systems into buildings or public areas is one of the most usual applications of the photovoltaic solar energy in developed countries. Since early 2009, the University is working on an ambitious project, the so-called UNIVERSOL project, where its main goal is to convert the University Campus in a big public area which combines the PV electricity generation with the common uses of a university place. The aim of this paper is to show to the scientific community the main results of this project and that the methodology proposed for the “large urban-area photovoltaic potential” estimation can be easily exportable to other locations with similar characteristics, so the photovoltaic generators integration examples proposed in this project, and the software tools used to represent it, can be helpful for other designers, taking into account that this project has been adapted to the new Spanish legislation. 26th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 4068-4072

Twenty-minute neighbourhoods highlight the importance of well-connected and mixed-used neighbourhoods and communities with proximate access to employment, essential services, public transport, and open spaces. Shorter distances together with re-prioritised public spaces encourage more active transport choices, resulting in public health benefits and reduced environmental pollution. Higher liveability brought about by mixed-use developments enables people to have equitable access to local facilities, amenities, and employment opportunities, promoting vibrancy, social cohesion, and intergenerational connections. The attributes of 20-minute neighbourhoods also combine to create places, that are acknowledged as friendly for all ages, address changing needs across the life course, and provide better support for the ageing population. Furthermore, there are indications that 20-minute neighbourhoods may be more resilient against many of the negative impacts of stringent public health protocols such as those implemented in periods of lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this article, we evaluate and compare planning policies and practices aimed at establishing 20-minute neighbourhoods in Melbourne (Australia) and Scotland (the UK). Using case studies, we discuss similarities and differences involved in using place-based approaches of 20-minute neighbourhoods to address 21st-century challenges in key areas of health and wellbeing, equity, environmental sustainability, and community resilience.

This chapter presents an overview of positive motivators for students, lecturers, and educational managers to prioritize Sustainable Development in education. Very often, we implicitly assume that students and colleagues should all be motivated by the great challenges that the world faces. And if they appear not to react sufficiently to these challenges, we sometimes tend to give these challenges an apocalyptic character. But is this the right motivator for students and colleagues to work on Sustainable Development? We all know that if you only use a stick and no carrot… So why don’t we use more carrots? The bureaucracy that comes with tools for checking/auditing/evaluating the (SD content of) programs/curricula is not particularly a strong motivator for university lecturers. And building courses that add another subject to the erudition of the graduate might not be the right motivators for students that want to make a difference. We are often still in the process of convincing university managers to add SD to the curriculum, convincing colleagues to address SD, and convincing students to pick SD electives and address SD in their projects. How to motivate them to do this when this gives them no direct personal reward and even might increase their workload? The paper will explore options to develop motivating educating by reviewing case studies on educational renewal in four universities. It concludes that there are various options for more motivating education. However, to fully utilize these options, more priority should be given to education. Peer Reviewed

3D city models are a useful tool to analyze the solar potential of neighborhoods and cities. These models are built from buildings footprints and elevation measurements. Footprints are widely available, but elevation datasets remain expensive and time-consuming to acquire. Our hypothesis is that the GIS cadastral data can be used to build a 3D model automatically, so that generating complete cities 3D models can be done in a short time with already available data. We propose a method for the automatic construction of 3D models of cities and neighborhoods from 2D cadastral data and study their usefulness for solar analysis by comparing the results with those from a hand-built model. The results show that the accuracy in evaluating solar access on pedestrian areas and solar potential on rooftops with the automatic method is close to that from the hand-built model with slight differences of 3.4% and 2.2%, respectively. On the other hand, time saving with the automatic models is significant. A neighborhood of 400,000 m2 can be built up in 30 min, 50 times faster than by hand, and an entire city of 967 km2 can be built in 8.5 h.

This research studied the impacts of the environmental Kuznets curve and the determinants of economic growth for Visegrad countries from 1990 to 2018. This paper reflects on the effects of renewable and non-renewable energy, urban population, foreign direct investment, economic growth, and carbon dioxide emissions. According to our results, the panel of unit root tests showed that the variables under study are integrated into the first differences. Considering the empirical results for the environmental Kuznets curve, we observe that economic growth is positively correlated with pollution emissions; nevertheless, the squared income per capita is negatively impacted by carbon dioxide emissions. Energy consumption increases carbon emissions, and foreign direct investment confirms the pollution halo hypothesis. Therefore, the econometric results showed that renewable energy consumption promotes regional growth. Consequently, urban population and foreign direct investment positively correlate with economic growth.

Energy mix persistence is a defining characteristic of energy systems, for reasons including the long‐lived nature of energy infrastructure and the role of local endowments. This persistence is evident in current energy‐type use being strongly influenced by past use. Our analysis uses data for eight energy types and a large sample of countries, finding varying degrees of energy mix persistence. We also find evidence that carbon pricing appears to have played a key role in tilting energy mixes from coal towards renewable energy. Our estimates provide empirical support to policymakers seeking to implement carbon pricing to transition their energy systems in a lower‐carbon direction.