The “Concept of the APEC Low Carbon Town (LCT)” aims to provide a basic idea of what is a low-carbon town and an effective approach on how to develop it. The LCT Concept aims to promote the development of low-carbon towns in the APEC region by providing a basic principle that can assist the central and local government officials of the member economies in planning effective low-carbon policies and in formulating an appropriate combination of low-carbon measures while taking socio-economic conditions and city specific characteristics.
The APEC Low Carbon Town (LCT) means towns, cities and villages which seek to become low carbon with a quantitative CO2 emissions reduction target and a concrete low carbon developing plan irrespective of its size, characteristics and type of development (greenfield or brownfield development).
The overall planning to develop the LCT proceeds on a step by step basis. The first stage of the planning is to create a basic low carbon town development plan, which builds upon the existing town development plan and goals and backgrounds of the central and local government’s low carbon plan
The following stage is the formation of a low carbon town development strategy, two essential features of which are to 1) set quantitative low carbon reduction targets with a time frame to achieve them, and 2) select the most appropriate set of low carbon measures in a comprehensive manner. In this planning process, it is vital to completely grasp the characteristics of the town under consideration, because the characteristics of town makes a difference in selecting the most appropriate set of low carbon measures.
There are several different characteristics of towns including climate conditions, geography, industrial structure, town structure or intensity of land use and town infrastructure. Unlike the first two characteristics, industrial structure, town structure and town infrastructure are variable. Therefore, the government officials responsible for low carbon town development, especially in the developing economies where rapid growth of town is being observed, should look at the future picture of the town, or even think about guiding these changes from a view point of reducing CO2 emissions in the town.
The LCMT project offers a very good opportunity for the central as well as local government officials in the APEC economies to refine and enhance their current low carbon town development plans based on the “Concept of the APEC Low Carbon Town”.