Energy for the sustainable city
Most of the world's energy is used in cities. Local transport, electricity supply, home living, services provision and manufacturing crucially depend on fossil fuels. In the last 50 years, fossil fuel combustion has increased nearly five times (Girardet 2008). Without routine use of coal, oil and gas, the growth of megacities would never have occurred, all the internal activities – local transport, electricity supply, home living, services provision and manufacturing – crucially depend on fossil fuels.
In a world in which climate change is becoming an ever-growing concern and in which oil and other fossil fuels are becoming scarce resources, we need to find other ways to power our cities. The European Union target is for 20% of energy production to come from renewable energy sources by 2020 (European Energy Council). As it has been up to now, renewable energy has been competing with fossil fuel technologies that have reached their economies of scale and have benefited by extensive government subsidies over many years.
The question is: How do we make cities run on renewable energy? We are exploring the possibility for renewable energy in cities by presenting case material on cities that had taken action towards this question.
We have taken our point of departure in the renewable energy resources and on the systems to provide electricity and heat and will along the way embrace knowledge about new systems and technology to use these resources. The focus will be on the attempts by cities to provide energy supply for their citizens. We have selected a variety of renewable energy-resources we find important in relation to sustainable urban planning. These resources and technologies are: Wind power, solar energy, biomass, geothermal energy, wave power, insulation and cooling and fuel cell technology. Besides energy resources we have chosen to also take a look at insulation and cooling.
Comments
Energy is very important to cities and people. we lack as cities officials making our citizens and people understand the energy situation and what are facing and future challenges. City officials need to make the people aware of the problems and encourage them to come up with solutions.
There are many years since i've heard for the first time that the hydrogen car was invented. Still i dont think i've seen 5 on the street. Looks like the process of improving this kind of motor should not be left to the very money oriented motor companies. Cant see why governments are not playing a visible role in this. Pity...
Possible to reduce, but impossible to avoid
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