Author: HSBC Centre of Sustainable Finance, Greg Clark CBE; Zoe Knight

Published/Created by: HSBC Centre of Sustainable Finance

This report provides signposting for the types of activities that can be put in place by local authorities and business to deliver an emission reduction pathway. It showcases success stories that have already been implemented by cities across the world and demonstrates how the different stakeholders of city infrastructure can participate.

The report highlights the six most relevant challenges for cities:

• Managing energy demand, because global electricity consumption is set to grow almost 60% by 2050.
• Controlling the construction boom, which means that cities must deal with the population rise by building new housing.
• Responding to infrastructure pressure, because more people mean more demand placed on public transport, health care systems, schools, logistic, water and waste infrastructure.
• Optimising the use of new technologies, cities must take advantage of the changes brought on by the Fourth Industrial Revolution to shift to new sources of energy, promote new construction materials and harness the potential of digital technologies to improve carbon efficiency.
• Fostering a behavioural change for corporate investors and citizens. Cities must encourage movement towards impacting investing models that better account for the external returns on investment as well as the internal returns to balance sheets and include longer time frames for investment returns.
• Optimising new economic models, as cities must exploit the power of the circular economy, where recycling plays a major role and goods can be loaned out multiple times.