Urban Sustainable Energy Transitions

Sustainable Energy Transition for Cities brings together empirical and applied research in both urban planning and sustainable energy, offering coherent and innovative best practices for urban energy transition planning. Using a multidisciplinary framework, the book views cities as an integrated system composed of components such as neighborhoods and districts within an overall net-zero energy balance. Intended for academics, practitioners and policymakers interested in sustainable energy transition, the book offers insights and best practices to promote the transition to a low carbon urban society. Includes real-world case studies from around the globe Examines replicable tools such as GIS, BIM and the E-City Platform for developing and implementing energy-efficient urban models Provides learning aids such as figures, maps, conceptual models, operative schemes, literature reviews, guideline tables, extensive bibliography, and links

This compendium of 29 chapters from 18 countries contains both fundamental and advanced insight into the inevitable shift from cities dominated by the fossil-fuel systems of the industrial age to a renewable-energy based urban development framework. The cross-disciplinary handbook covers a range of diverse yet relevant topics, including: carbon emissions policy and practice; the role of embodied energy; urban thermal performance planning; building efficiency services; energy poverty alleviation efforts; renewable community support networks; aspects of household level bio-fuel markets; urban renewable energy legislation, programs and incentives; innovations in individual transport systems; global urban mobility trends; implications of intelligent energy networks and distributed energy supply and storage; and the case for new regional monetary systems and lifestyles. Presented are practical and principled aspects of technology, economics, design, culture and society, presenting perspectives that are both local and international in scope and relevance.

Urban Energy Transition, second edition, is the definitive science and practice-based compendium of energy transformations in the global urban system. This volume is a timely and rich resource for all, as citizens, companies and their communities, from remote villages to megacities and metropolitan regions, rapidly move away from fossil fuel and nuclear power, to renewable energy as civic infrastructure investment, source of revenue and prosperity, and existential resilience strategy. Covers technical, financial, systems, urban planning and design, landscape, mapping and modelling, and sociological issues related to urban renewable energy transformations Presents city-wide renewable energy strategies and urban thermal performance planning, sector coupling, and smart distributed renewable energy and storage systems Examines individual and mass transport systems in the contexts of urban mobility trends and energy innovations Explains successful innovations in solar bond finance, blockchain technology enabled peer-to-peer renewable energy trading systems, and the case for renewable energy based regional monetary systems Features foci on societal, community and user enabling aspects such as energy justice, prosperity and democracy, and urban renewable energy legislation, programs and incentives Includes analytic case insights into successful practices from around the globe that provide local, regional and country-specific governance and organizational perspectives

As cities in developing countries grow and become more prosperous, energy use shifts from fuelwood to fuels like charcoal, kerosene, and coal, and, ultimately, to fuels such as liquid petroleum gas, and electricity. Energy use is not usually considered as a social issue. Yet, as this book demonstrates, the movement away from traditional fuels has a strong socio-economic dimension, as poor people are the last to attain the benefits of using modern energy. The result is that health risks from the continued use of wood fuel fall most heavily on the poor, and indoor pollution from wood stoves has its greatest effect on women and children who cook and spend much more of their time indoors. Barnes, Krutilla, and Hyde provide the first worldwide assessment of the energy transition as it occurs in urban households, drawing upon data collected by the World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme (ESMAP). From 1984-2000, the program conducted over 25,000 household energy surveys in 45 cities spanning 12 countries and 3 continents. Additionally, GIS mapping software was used to compile a biomass database of vegetation patterns surrounding 34 cities. Using this rich set of geographic, biological, and socioeconomic data, the authors describe problems and policy options associated with each stage in the energy transition. The authors show how the poorest are most vulnerable to changes in energy markets and demonstrate how the collection of biomass fuel contributes to deforestation. Their book serves as an important contribution to development studies, and as a guide for policymakers hoping to encourage sustainable energy markets and an improved quality of life for growing urban populations.

This book investigates and evaluates the opportunities and limitations of network governance in building local capacity for energy infrastructure governance. Presenting a comparative analysis of three city cases from across Europe- Birmingham, Frankfurt and Budapest- this book demonstrates how local factors shape the prospect of network governance to support low-carbon energy transitions. It maps out existing governance networks, highlighting the actors involved and their interactions with one another, and also discusses the role and embeddedness of networks in the urban governance of low-carbon energy. Drawing on case study evidence, Nochta develops a comparative analysis which discusses the intricate connections between network characteristics, context and impact. It highlights that organisational fragmentation; the complexity of the low-carbon energy problem and historical developments all influence network characteristics in terms of degree of integration and vertical (hierarchical) power relationships among network actors. Overall, the book concludes that understanding such links between context and networks is crucial when designing and implementing new governance models aimed at facilitating and governing low-carbon urban development. Low-Carbon Energy Transitions in European Cities will be of great interest to scholars of energy policy, urban governance and sustainability transitions.

This open access book reframes sustainable energy transitions as being a matter of resolving accountability crises. It demonstrates how the empirical study of several practices of legitimation can analytically deconstruct energy transitions, and presents a typology of these practices to help determine whether energy transitions contribute to sustainability. The real-world challenge of climate change requires sustainable energy transitions. This presents a crisis of accountability legitimated through situated practices in a wide range of cases including: solar energy transitions in Portugal, urban energy transitions in Germany, forestland conflicts in Indonesia, urban carbon emission targets in Norway, transport electrification in the Nordic region, and biodiversity conservation and energy extraction in the USA. By synthesising these cases, chapters identify various dimensions wherein practices of legitimation construct specific accountability relations. This book deftly illustrates the value of an analytical approach focused on accountable governance to enable sustainable energy transitions. It will be of great use to both academics and practitioners working in the field of energy transitions. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

In an era of big data and smart cities, this book is an innovative and creative contribution to our understanding of urban energy use. Societies have basic data needs to develop an understanding of energy flows for planning energy sustainability. However, this data is often either not utilized or not available. Using California as an example, the book provides a roadmap for using data to reduce urban greenhouse gas emissions by targeting programs and initiatives that will successfully and parsimoniously improve building performance while taking into account issues of energy affordability. This first of its kind methodology maps high-detail building energy use to understand patterns of consumption across buildings, neighborhoods, and socioeconomic divisions in megacities. The book then details the steps required to replicate this methodology elsewhere, and shows the importance of openly-accessible building energy data for transitioning cities to meet the climate planning goals of the twenty-first century. It also explains why actual data, not modeled or sampled, is critical for accurate analysis and insights. Finally, it acknowledges the complex institutional context for this work and some of the obstacles – utility reluctance, public agency oversight, funding and path dependencies. This book will be of great value to scholars across the environmental sectors, but especially to those studying sustainable urban energy as well as practitioners and policy makers in these areas.