Webinar title: Tracing Carbon Footprint From Household Consumption
Speaker: Yin Long
Webinar time: 13:30 pm, November 12, 2023 (Sunday)
Venue: Room 200, New Environmental Building; Tencent Meeting 581530370, Password 204204
Inviter: Wendong Wei
Abstract:
As urbanization accelerates worldwide, substantial energy and services are required to meet the demand from cities, making cities major contributors to adverse environmental consequences. To bridge the knowledge gap in the absence of fine-grained city-level climate protection measures due to data availability and accuracy, this study provides a detailed carbon emission inventory for analyzing the monthly fluctuations based on citizens’ daily consumption behaviors. Here, carbon emissions embodied in approximately 500 household consumption items were calculated in 47 prefectural-level cities in Japan from 2011 to June 2021. We analyzed the results considering the regional, seasonal, demand, and emission way-specific aspects, and compared the emission before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, the carbon footprints during the pandemic were consistent with the previous level despite downtrends in specific categories. This study provides an example of utilizing city-level emission data to improve household green consumption behavior as references for enriching city-level decarbonization paths.
About the speaker:
Dr. Long Yin is an Associate Professor and Ph.D. Supervisor specializing in TMI (Transdisciplinary Environment and Social Sciences for Sustainable Society) at the Graduate School of Engineering in the University of Tokyo. She is also recognized as an Excellent Researcher by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and an Excellent Researcher at the University of Tokyo. She obtained his Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the University of Tokyo in 2019. Dr. Yin has previously held positions at prominent research institutions, including the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan. Currently, she serves as an Editor for the Global Environmental Change journal under Elsevier and as a Guest Editor for the Urban Climate journal. Over the past five years, she has authored over 70 SCI/SSCI-indexed publications in esteemed journals such as One Earth (a Cell journal) and Nature Climate Change. She has been awarded the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) scholarships on two occasions. In 2022, her research group received funding support from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Excellent Researcher program and the Faculty of Engineering Start-Up Fund. The research group is dedicated to the quantification of carbon emissions from the consumer side and emission reduction models, as well as studies on sustainable dietary transitions at the household level.