Exploring the performances of urban local symbiosis strategy in Algiers: potential for energy use optimization and CO2 emission mitigation

Chaker, Mazia [École Polytechnique d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme Alger] Berezowska-Azzag, Ewa [École Polytechnique d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme Alger] Perrotti, Daniela [UCL]

Algeria's interest in the fight against global warming and its commitment to reduce its GHG emissions by 2030 requires research into operational solutions to support this effort. That entails establishing new urban planning tools, especially at the local scale in cities, since cities must exploit their full potential to set up mitigation strategies. The interest of Industrial Symbioses in optimizing the industrial metabolism led us to explore such a potential for the operational urban planning needs focused on reducing CO2 emissions. This article aims to study a Low Carbon Urban Symbiosis (LC-UrS) performance at Algiers local scale. Based on a systemic approach, the study defines, firstly, the concerned urban system. Secondly, it explores its perimeter's symbiotic potential to build a database allowing develop the possible symbiotic scenarios and quantify their performance in energy optimization and CO2 emissions reduction. The gains are then estimated for each scenario. An urban design strategy for the considered optimal scenario is proposed under an action plan for LC-UrS. The results bring interesting insights into energy optimization and CO2 emissions reduction, with estimated rates of 30.5% and 13.27% per year, in Algerian's capital city case. This optimizing potential will be even more significant for other cities in the world, particularly with the increase in urban waste. However, implementing such a strategy would require background conditions.