Positive energy districts: Mainstreaming energy transition in urban areas

This paper poses the question: ‘can energy innovation initiatives in Innovation Playgrounds foster a new ‘energy urbanity’ through active citizen participation in the energy transition?’ The concept of ‘Innovation Playgrounds’ and an accompanying Framework are described and linked to implementation evidence of the EU H2020 positive energy research and innovation project +CityxChange, related to emergent active citizen participation in two cities: Limerick, Ireland and Trondheim, Norway. The purpose of the study is to demonstrate that spatially clustered energy innovation initiatives in urban areas involving active citizen participation contribute to a new ‘energy urbanity’ for the energy transition. The research methods are based on a comparative case study approach and close observation of two case sites, with a focus on the ‘Innovation Playground’ area of each city. The article’s three main conclusions are: that a Framework approach to active citizen participation in energy innovation initiatives in urban areas facilitates new models of active citizen and community participation around energy innovation; emergent active citizen participation in energy innovation initiatives in urban areas suggests a new type of engagement that is information-rich, blended, action-led, citizen-focused, and spatial; and that a new paradigm of ‘energy urbanity’ for the energy transition can be proposed.

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Smart Cities and Positive Energy Districts: Urban Perspectives in 2020

Energies ◽

10.3390/en14092351 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (9) ◽

pp. 2351

Author(s):

Paola Clerici Maestosi

Keyword(s):

Urban Development ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Smart Cities ◽

Energy Transition ◽

Sustainable Urban Development ◽

Positive Energy ◽

Low Carbon ◽

Special Issue ◽

Contemporary Research ◽

Low Carbon Energy

This Special Issue of Energies “Smart Cities and Positive Energy Districts: Urban Perspectives in 2020” introduce contemporary research on Smart Cities and on Positive Energy Districts. The topic highlights the variety of research within this field: from the analysis of 61 Positive Energy Districts cases to papers illustrating the Positive Energy Districts dimension or Smart Energy Communities supporting low carbon energy transition as well as selected Smart Cities Experiences. The focus is thus given on how RD&I stakeholders and Municipalities are facing sustainable urban development challenges. An overview of Horizon Europe RD&I program on sustainable urban areas is provided.

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Towards 100 Positive Energy Districts in Europe: Preliminary Data Analysis of 61 European Cases

Energies ◽

10.3390/en13226083 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (22) ◽

pp. 6083

Author(s):

Silvia Bossi ◽

Christoph Gollner ◽

Sarah Theierling

Keyword(s):

Data Analysis ◽

Preliminary Data ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Energy Transition ◽

European Countries ◽

Positive Energy ◽

Research And Innovation ◽

Sustainable Urbanization

Positive Energy Districts and Neighborhoods (PEDs) are seen as a promising pathway towards sustainable urban areas. Several cities have already taken up such PED-related developments. To support such approaches, European countries joined forces to achieve 100 PEDs until 2025 through a comprehensive research and innovation program. A solid understanding and consideration of cities’ strategies, experiences and project features serve as the basis for developing and designing the PED program. JPI Urban Europe has been collecting information on projects towards sustainable urbanization and the energy transition across Europe. The collected cases are summarized in a PED Booklet whose update was recently published on the JPI Urban Europe website. Results presented in this paper provide insights from the analysis of 61 projects in Europe and offer recommendations for future PED developments.

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Towards Positive Energy Districts in Smart Cities: A Data-Driven Approach Using Aggregation and Disaggregation of Energy Balance Calculations

Environmental Sciences Proceedings ◽

10.3390/environsciproc2021011001 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 1

Author(s):

Selma Čaušević ◽

George B. Huitema ◽

Arun Subramanian ◽

Coen van Leeuwen ◽

Mente Konsman

Keyword(s):

Energy Balance ◽

Urban Area ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Energy Demand ◽

Service Sector ◽

Smart Cities ◽

Energy Transition ◽

Positive Energy ◽

Modeling Approach ◽

Energy Demands

Positive energy districts (PEDs) are seen as a promising pathway to facilitating energy transition. PEDs are urban areas composed of different buildings and public spaces with local energy production, where the total annual energy balance must be positive. Urban areas consist of a mix of different buildings, such as households and service sector consumers (offices, restaurants, shops, cafes, supermarkets), which have a different annual energy demand and production, as well as a different consumption profile. This paper presents a data modeling approach to estimating the annual energy balance of different types of consumer categories in urban areas and proposes a methodology to extrapolate energy demands from specific building types to the aggregated level of an urban area and vice versa. By dividing an urban area into clusters of different consumer categories, depending on parameters such as surface area, building type and energy interventions, energy demands are estimated. The presented modeling approach is used to model and calculate the energy balance and CO2 emissions in two PED areas of the City of Groningen (The Netherlands) proposed in the Smart City H2020 MAKING CITY project.

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Challenges and Barriers for Net‐Zero/Positive Energy Buildings and Districts—Empirical Evidence from the Smart City Project SPARCS

Buildings ◽

10.3390/buildings11020078 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 78

Author(s):

Daria Uspenskaia ◽

Karl Specht ◽

Hendrik Kondziella ◽

Thomas Bruckner

Keyword(s):

Smart City ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Smart Cities ◽

Scale Up ◽

Practical Experience ◽

Positive Energy ◽

Low Carbon ◽

Net Zero ◽

Multidimensional Representation

Without decarbonizing cities energy and climate objectives cannot be achieved as cities account for approximately two thirds of energy consumption and emissions. This goal of decarbonizing cities has to be facilitated by promoting net-zero/positive energy buildings and districts and replicating them, driving cities towards sustainability goals. Many projects in smart cities demonstrate novel and groundbreaking low-carbon solutions in demonstration and lighthouse projects. However, as the historical, geographic, political, social and economic context of urban areas vary greatly, it is not always easy to repeat the solution in another city or even district. It is therefore important to look for the opportunities to scale up or repeat successful pilots. The purpose of this paper is to explore common trends in technologies and replication strategies for positive energy buildings or districts in smart city projects, based on the practical experience from a case study in Leipzig—one of the lighthouse cities in the project SPARCS. One of the key findings the paper has proven is the necessity of a profound replication modelling to deepen the understanding of upscaling processes. Three models analyzed in this article are able to provide a multidimensional representation of the solution to be replicated.

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A new clustering and visualization method to evaluate urban energy planning scenarios

10.31224/osf.io/b9znk ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Sara Torabi Moghadam ◽

Silvia Coccolo ◽

Guglielmina Mutani ◽

Patrizia Lombardi ◽

Jean Louis Scartezzini ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Energy Consumption ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Energy Demand ◽

Planning Process ◽

Energy Transition ◽

Climatic Conditions ◽

Energy Planning ◽

Transition Strategies ◽

Urban Energy ◽

The City

The spatial visualization is a very useful tool to help decision-makers in the urban planning process to create future energy transition strategies, implementing energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies in the context of sustainable cities. Statistical methods are often used to understand the driving parameters of energy consumption but rarely used to evaluate future urban renovation scenarios. Simulating whole cities using energy demand softwares can be very extensive in terms of computer resources and data collection. A new methodology, using city archetypes is proposed, here, to simulate the energy consumption of urban areas including urban energy planning scenarios. The objective of this paper is to present an innovative solution for the computation and visualization of energy saving at the city scale.The energy demand of cities, as well as the micro-climatic conditions, are calculated by using a simplified 3D model designed as function of the city urban geometrical and physical characteristics. Data are extracted from a GIS database that was used in a previous study. In this paper, we showed how the number of buildings to be simulated can be drastically reduced without affecting the accuracy of the results. This model is then used to evaluate the influence of two set of renovation solutions. The energy consumption are then integrated back in the GIS to identify the areas in the city where refurbishment works are needed more rapidly. The city of Settimo Torinese (Italy) is used as a demonstrator for the proposed methodology, which can be applied to all cities worldwide with limited amount of information.

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An Alpine Energy Transition: The Piave River from Charcoal to “White Coal”

Environmental History ◽

10.1093/envhis/emaa028 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 25 (4) ◽

pp. 687-710

Author(s):

Giacomo Bonan

Keyword(s):

Environmental History ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Industrial Revolution ◽

Raw Materials ◽

Energy Transition ◽

Eastern Alps ◽

Economic Activities ◽

Railway Network ◽

Economic Relationships ◽

Italian Case

Abstract This article analyzes the environmental history of the Industrial Revolution by examining the evolution of the usage and management of the waters of the Piave, a river stretching from the eastern Alps to the Venetian Plain. In the preindustrial period, the Piave played a fundamental role in defining the flows of raw materials and energy in the region, representing the main route for transporting timber—the most important resource of the time—from Alpine forests to lowland urban areas. The onset of industrialization, especially the development of a railway network, undermined both this role and the economic activities that had been based on the exploitation of Alpine forests. The subsequent rise of hydroelectricity transformed the Piave from a transport route to an energy source. This transformation caused, in a shift applicable to more than just the Italian case, a redefinition of the social and economic relationships between upland and lowland areas: after the energy transition, the Alpine region ceased to be a constituent part of an interdependent system and instead became a periphery to an urban core.

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Demographic Impact on Environment - A Case Study Focussing on CO2 Emission in China

Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health ◽

10.1177/101053959801000205 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 81-87

Author(s):

Kenji Hayashi ◽

Jianqun Gao

Keyword(s):

Population Size ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Fossil Fuels ◽

Energy Transition ◽

Population Increase ◽

High Fertility ◽

Economic Activities ◽

The North ◽

Per Capita ◽

The Impact

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emission derived from economic activities results primarily from the fossil fuels consumed. The variety of fossil fuels used, the degree of efficient consumption of energy, economic growth and national population size determine the total amount of CO2 emission in a country. Considering its population size as well as its potential for economic development, China is expected to play a key role in the global warming issue in concert with other industrialized Asian countries, including Japan. In the present study, the impact of population increase on total CO2 emission in China during the period 1982-1990 was analyzed. During the study period, population increase and CO2 emission per capita were 21 per cent and 70 per cent, respectively. In terms of population increase by region, some provinces in the inland areas and megacities, like Shanghai and Beijing, contributed the highest figures. To cope with high fertility in the inland areas as well as massive population inflow into the urban areas simultaneously, increasing the number of medium-sized cities to be located in the inland areas could be a solution. For CO2 emission per capita, the figures for the North-Eastcrn provinces and South-Eastern provinces along the coast are remarkable. The estimate of total emission of CO2 by 2010 is 1.6 million tons, a 74 per cent increase from 1992. Energy transition is the key to the stabilization of CO2 emission in China.

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Underutilised Resources in Urban Environments

Resources ◽

10.3390/resources9040038 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (4) ◽

pp. 38 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Sigrid Kusch-Brandt

Keyword(s):

Circular Economy ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Energy Transition ◽

Essential Elements ◽

Urban Environments ◽

Household Waste ◽

Special Issue ◽

Positive Role ◽

Regulatory Frameworks ◽

Sound Management

An important opportunity for more sustainable development pathways in an urbanising world is missed where resources remain underutilised, when they could be valorised in a sound and environmentally favourable mode. This Special Issue of the journal Resources was initiated to identify promising solutions and specific challenges in the context of underutilised resources in urban environments. The compiled contributions address two main areas, namely the establishment of circular economy schemes based on valorising wastes that occur in urban areas and the exploitation of renewable energies. Circular economy and renewable resources hold key potential for making cities more sustainable, and the authors of this Special Issue, with their publications, enhance our understanding of how to unlock this potential. Effective regulatory frameworks and policymaking processes which balance the powers between stakeholders are required to successfully manage energy transition and the transition to more circular economies. The positive role of community engagement merits high attention. To recover valuable resources from household waste, a focus on technology and infrastructure is required but is not enough; motivational factors and knowledge of citizens are most essential elements. It also becomes evident that the need to more reliably quantify and better characterise recyclable material streams, especially where population numbers are further growing, remains. The publications compiled in this Special Issue are a rich source to identify promising solutions, challenges and research needed for the sound management of urban resource demands.

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Managing the Demise of the Necessary Evil

Global Energy Law and Sustainability ◽

10.3366/gels.2020.0033 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 228-233

Author(s):

Andy Hartree

Keyword(s):

Urban Areas ◽

Energy Demand ◽

Fossil Fuels ◽

Fossil Fuel ◽

Significant Proportion ◽

Energy Transition ◽

Pollution Levels ◽

The Future ◽

Fossil Fuel Industry ◽

Necessary Evil

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a unique collapse in global energy demand and provoked a significant reappraisal of many aspects of our way of life, including working habits and travel behaviours, impacting the outlook for energy demand in the future. Assisted by tangible reductions in pollution levels in urban areas worldwide, there is even a perception growing that post COVID, we will somehow have accelerated on the path of energy transition, and the fossil fuel industry may never recover. This article reviews just where we are on the path to fossil fuel freedom, and tempers the over-optimism by highlighting how small the steps are that we have made to date and the scale of the challenge we face on the long road still ahead. Further, it emphasises that even our greenest aspirations, far from signalling the eradication of fossil fuels, will still rely on our legacy industries for a significant proportion of our energy requirements decades into the future. The biggest challenge is to create a global political environment of consensus and commitment focused on delivering realistic and achievable environmental strategy. Governments need to see a common goal, backed up by co-ordinated lobbies – industry, science, environmentalists and investors – all pulling in one direction. COVID-19 has raised awareness and even given us a glimpse of a greener future, but by giving the impression that we can live without our legacy fossil fuels it poses the threat that we fail to support an industry still vital to the delivery of energy transition.

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