New paper in “Nature Sustainability” co-authored Prof. Dhakal and led by Prof. Anu Ramaswami of Princeton University titled “Carbon analytics for net-zero emissions sustainable cities” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00715-5 has been published. This is a collaborative research paper by experts from from Princeton, Stanford, Yale, AIT, NASA, World Resources Institute, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO Australia, National Institute for Environmental Studies Japan and ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability. The paper, addressed the question of what is a net-zero carbon city? The paper makes the case to consider defining a net-zero carbon city as one that has net-zero carbon infrastructure and food provisioning systems. A focus on 7 key community-wide infrastructure and food systems has several advantages. 7 physical provisioning systems- energy, transportation-communications, food, construction materials, water supply, green infrastructure, and waste management systems – cover ~90% of global GHG emissions. They connect many urban agendas such as Smart Cities, Nature Based Solutions, Net Zero Mobility, Net Zero Food, Net Zero Buildings etc. They enable urban decarbonization to systematically link with SDGs on health and wellbeing, inequality, climate, water, land, energy and cities. They also allow city-scale decarbonization efforts to systematically align with larger-scale Net Zero efforts of regional electricity grids, other transboundary infrastructure and nation-scale effort beyond cities’ themselves.