Designing Decarbonization of Mediterranean Cities: A Ten Steps Strategic Plan in Reggio Calabria

The European Green Deal aims at achieving Carbon Neutrality in Europe by 2050 and member states have started implementing policies towards this goal. Nevertheless, current approaches still look inefficient and concrete solutions are needed to drive action at regional and sub-regional level, including clear assessments to address decarbonization strategies. Carbon accounting has been widely used as decision support system to address choices at local level. In particular, this research accounts for the Carbon Footprint of a target city through a simplified greenhouse gases inventory. A set of integrated solutions for carbon footprint mitigation have been identified and an ex-ante evaluation of their effect in terms of avoided emission has been performed for selecting and validating most effective transition scenarios. The paper shows outcomes form the assessment of Reggio Calabria, taken as test bed, considering main emission sources: energy use, mobility, waste and water management, food consumption. Results show that the current Carbon Footprint of the municipality is 1,002,610 t CO2eq/year and the equivalent forestland needed for offsetting would be 160,675 hectares, 6.7 times bigger than the area of the municipality. Finally, an integrated decarbonization strategy in ten steps has been hypothesized to achieve 80% emission reduction and drive action.