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Shining light on residual emissions for cities

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Many cities are developing plans and strategies to achieve net-zero emissions and combat climate change. However, the operational value of residual emissions remains unknown, thus challenging the integrity, transparency and impact of such pledges.

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Fig. 1: Schematization of the conceptual framework to establish (qualitatively) the level of unavoidability of remaining emissions.

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Acknowledgements

The views expressed are purely those of the authors and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy

    Giulia Ulpiani, Paolo Bertoldi & Christian Thiel

  2. European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Brussels, Belgium

    Nadja Vetters

Authors
  1. Giulia Ulpiani
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  2. Nadja Vetters
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  3. Paolo Bertoldi
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  4. Christian Thiel
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Contributions

G.U. conceptualized the article, developed the figures, and crafted the main messages with input from all co-authors. The initial draft was written by G.U. with contributions from C.T., N.V. and P.B. All authors contributed to reviewing and editing the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Giulia Ulpiani.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Climate Change thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Ulpiani, G., Vetters, N., Bertoldi, P. et al. Shining light on residual emissions for cities. Nat. Clim. Chang. 14, 302–305 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-01961-z

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