Climate change has become a major global environmental issue that is widely concerned by countries around the world. There has been a very clear scientific consensus that global carbon emission has to be cut urgently, towards global warming and extreme climate. Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis published by IPCC confirms that “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15) finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching” transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. However, energy consumptions are special actions for direct emission sectors of industry, construction, transportation, and electricity. Currently, few studies on the urban energy consumption have been performed, especially the quantitative research on the scale of urban blocks, which is actually required by cities, in order to adopt precise control, optimize energy structure and reduce carbon emissions. It is time for joint action of the four sectors to accurately calculate synthesized energy consumption of each region, realize spatial energy consumption visualization, and formulate energy reduction targets and strategies more accurately.

Also, it is very necessary to realize dynamic assessment and monitoring of energy consumption with the help of big data such as remote sensing and POI. Therefore, papers are welcome to use remote sensing, big data and other methods to evaluate spatial quantitative distribution of urban energy consumption.

The purpose of the “Spatial Quantitative Analysis of Urban Energy Consumption” special issue (SI) is to: (i) help to clear on quantitative analysis methods on precise scales of urban energy consumptions (ii) joint analysis of the four sectors to accurately calculate synthesized energy consumption (iii) spatial synthesized energy consumption visualization (iv) discover new technologies help to dynamic assessment and monitoring of energy consumption.