Page 30 - European Energy Innovation - Summer 2017 publication

30 Summer 2017 European Energy Innovation
COMMUNICATION
The importance of integrating
energy and urban planning now
By Waltraud Schmid, Energy Center Wien, TINA Vienna
Many cities grow considerably and face
enormous pressure to provide new homes,
jobs and infrastructure. Annual population
growth rates of 1.5-2.5% mean that in bigger from now, nearly zero-energy buildings will become the
cities areas the size towns of 30.000 inhabitants have to
be built or refurbished each year. All these new buildings
and infrastructure impact the energy and CO2 performance
of 2050 and thus should already contribute to long-term
decarbonisation as committed to in the Paris Agreement.
But short-term investment decisions widely favour natural
gas as heat supply.
Ambitious large-scale urban developments such as
Stockholm Royal Seaport, Vienna Aspern Seestadt, Berlin
Adlerhorst or Paris Clichy-Batignolles show the direction.
Their common lesson: the more ambitious the development
projects, the more important is it to plan and develop
projects in an integrated manner – infrastructure, energy
and mobility – and to include energy supply considerations
at an early stage. But public authorities’ competences for
long-term energy planning got locally often lost with the
liberalisation of the energy markets in the EU.
With the URBAN LEARNING project, the cities of
Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Vienna, Warsaw,
Zaanstad and Zagreb joined forces to raise the profile
for long-term energy planning in their cities and beyond.
Furthermore, they work towards integrating energy planning
and urban planning and to share their ways forward
with other cities. Co-funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020
programme, it’s focus is on the governance for planning and
development of urban quarters and sites in cities. Why?
Vienna’s large urban development project 'Vienna Lakeside aspern'
© Wien 3420 Aspern Development AG.
NEW LOW CARBON SUPPLY OPTIONS
Technological, economic and regulatory changes make
more low-carbon solutions possible. Also, in a few years
standard. They will need considerably less energy, might
even produce energy. This will offer new possibilities to
supply city quarters with decentralised energy options,
using on-site renewable energies or low-exergy district
heating & cooling grids, etc. Electricity will generally gain
importance and - with the expected shift to e-mobility – will
bring energy and mobility issues close together. Differences
in availability of on-site renewables are also a spatial
dimension.
GRID OR NO GRID IS THE QUESTION FOR PLANNING
Supplying a single building with energy is not an urban
planning issue. But in dense urban areas, grid-connected
energy supply options are common and those require
public planning for economic reasons and because it
concerns public space and infrastructure. Thus possible
energy supply alternatives need to be discussed at a very
early planning stage to decide if and what kind of grid-
connected energy infrastructure should be foreseen. Again
there is a spatial dimension to energy planning.
THE URBAN LEARNING AGENDA
In the participating cities bits and pieces towards integration
of energy and urban planning exist already though not
yet incorporated into the standard governance processes.
URBAN LEARNING offers the external stimulus to dedicate
time and resources in each city and across the participating
cities to analyse
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