Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona's Profile

Barcelona, a Mediterranean city, is the regional capital of the autonomous community of Catalonia. With approximately 1.6 million inhabitants, it is Spain's second-largest city. It should not be confused with the Province of Barcelona (a larger entity with over 5 million inhabitants) or the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (approximately 3 million inhabitants), which is the sixth-largest city-region in Europe, accounting for roughly 12.5 percent of total Spanish gross domestic product. Historically, the City of Barcelona has been a major industrial center, with both heavy and light industries; however, over the last decades the importance of finance, banking, and tourism has increased. The city's 10 administrative districts have some powers in the area of planning and infrastructure, but most power lies with the Barcelona city council (Ajuntament de Barcelona), which has jurisdiction in the fields of urban planning, transport, municipal taxation, policing, environment, culture, and health—though it should be noted that many competencies are shared with the regional government (Generalitat de Catalunya) and the central Spanish state (and the latter two take legal precedence).

Climate Change

The city council is signatory to a series of international agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and it is a member of the Klimabündnis, Energie-Cites, ICLEI, and the C40. The Heidelberg Declaration (1994) committed the city to reduce carbon (equivalent) emissions by 20 percent by 2005 with respect to 1987 levels (a target that was not met), and as a member of Klimabündnis, carbon (equivalent) should be reduced by 27 percent by 2010 with respect to 1997 levels. Barcelona also created its own Agenda 21, an attempt to involve a broad range of stakeholders in the city. In 2006, Barcelona emitted 5.3 million tons of carbon dioxide, a 10.78 percent increase since 1999; however, Barcelona's per capita emissions (about 3 tons carbon dioxide equivalent in 2002) are low compared with those of other cities (5–10 tons in northern European cities). This is attributed to a benign climate, a low-carbon energy mix (mainly nuclear), a compact city model, and increased use of natural gas. This low baseline is in part the reason that commitments to reduce emissions are not being met (other reasons identified being negative financial returns on the required investments to further reduce emissions). Emissions by sector show that almost a third are from waste (landfill and incineration), 25 percent from transport, 19 percent from the domestic sector, 8 percent from commercial [Page 24]activities, and 15 percent from industry. Across the sectors, over 73 percent of emissions are from the city's energy use.

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