Monitoring CO₂ emissions: new "reliable" approach in Zurich, thanks to the European "Icos Cities" project

The city of Zurich's CO₂ emissions can now be reliably measured thanks to the methodologies designed by the European research project entitled "ICOS (Integrated Carbon Observation system) Cities", announced the public Health federal office of Switzerland, on 09/12/2025.

Until now, "a region's carbon emissions could only be calculated using emissions inventories. These act as an accounting system, calculating total emissions from different sources based on activity data, such as natural gas consumption, and corresponding emission factors".

The researchers of the EMPA (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology) said that, with this new method, the monitoring data collected from various sources on the urban territory were "surprisingly close to the calculated ones" and will help the city of Zurich to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040.

Lukas Emmenegger, scientific lead of the Icos Cities project for Zurich, said that the measurements "provide an independent and faster method for observing CO₂ emissions. This is essential for determining whether climate protection…