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Urban and Territorial Energy Planning
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Urban and Territorial Energy Planning

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2022) | Viewed by 8426

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Massimiliano Capezzali

E-Mail Website1 Website2
Guest Editor
School of Management and Engineering Vaud (HEIG-VD)，Route de Cheseaux 1,1401 Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland
Interests: territorial energy planning; energies in urban areas; networks convergence; decision-support tools for local stakeholders; renewable gases; blockchain technologies
Dr. Jakob Rager

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Center for Energy and Municipal Research (CREM), Switzerland
Interests: territorial energy planning; governance of urban energy systems; integration of renewable energies; simulation and cosimulation of energy networks and demand dynamics; GIS-based energy management and planning tools

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The energy systems (distribution networks and conversion technologies in buildings) supplying residential areas, as well as the commercial and industrial sites in cities and territories, remain poorly planned. Moreover, they are seldomly monitored and, in most cases, not foreseen to operate in a holistic fashion, as to identify the superior configurations or energy-saving and resilience-increasing synergies. Urban and territorial energy planning clearly provides a crucial set of approaches and tools making it possible to tackle the increasing complexity of modern living spaces and the challenging sustainability goals set by local authorities.

This collection will gather papers dealing from multiple disciplines and with methodological approaches that are usually scattered in a multitude of journals and book chapters. It will thus provide a comprehensive and updated tool to understand this emerging field. 

References:

  1. Cherix, G.; Capezzali, M.; Rager, J. Territorial energy systems: A methodological approach and case study. In Proceedings of 10th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (No. CONF). Dubrovnik, Croatia, 27 September–2 October 2015.
  2. Girardin, L.; Marechal, F.; Dubuis, M.; Calame-Darbellay, N.; Favrat, D. EnerGis: A geographical information based system for the evaluation of integrated energy conversion systems in urban areas. Energy 2010, 35, 830–840.
  3. Von Gunten, D.; Rager, J.; Kämpf, J.; Kuchler, F.; Poumadère, F. Retrofitting, district heating and energy storage: neighborhood energy planning. J. Phys.:Conf. Ser. 2019, 1343, 012108
  4. De Sède-Marceau, M.H.; Servigne, S.; Signoret, P. Numéro thématique" La transition énergétique. Enjeux informationnels et cognitifs". Rev. Int. De Géomatique 2017, 27, 1.
  5. Schüler, N.; Cajot, S.; Peter, M.; Page, J.; Maréchal, F. The optimum is not the goal: capturing the decision space for the planning of new neighborhoods. Front. Built Environ. 2018, 3, 76.
  6. Sejkora, C.; Kühberger, L.; Radner, F.; Trattner, A.; Kienberger, T. Exergy as Criteria for Efficient Energy Systems—A Spatially Resolved Comparison of the Current Exergy Consumption, the Current Useful Exergy Demand and Renewable Exergy Potential. Energies 2020, 13, 843.
  7. Wehkamp, S.; Schmeling, L.; Vorspel, L.; Roelcke, F.; Windmeier, K.-L. District Energy Systems: Challenges and New Tools for Planning and Evaluation. Energies 2020, 13, 2967.

Prof. Dr. Massimiliano Capezzali
Dr. Jakob Rager
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • energy planning territorial and urban energy planning
  • energy planning
  • renewables integration
  • GIS and decision-support tools

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 2879 KiB  
Article
Impact of Heat Pump and Cogeneration Integration on Power Distribution Grids Based on Transition Scenarios for Heating in Urban Areas
by Marten Fesefeldt, Massimiliano Capezzali, Mokhtar Bozorg and Riina Karjalainen
Sustainability 2023, 15(6), 4985; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15064985 - 10 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1606
Abstract
Electrification of final use sectors such as heating and mobility is often proposed as an effective pathway towards decarbonization of urban areas. In this context, power-driven heat pumps (HP) are usually strongly fostered as alternatives to fossil-burning boilers in municipal planning processes. In [...] Read more.
Electrification of final use sectors such as heating and mobility is often proposed as an effective pathway towards decarbonization of urban areas. In this context, power-driven heat pumps (HP) are usually strongly fostered as alternatives to fossil-burning boilers in municipal planning processes. In continental climates, this leads to substantially increased electricity demand in winter months that, in turn may lead to stress situations on local power distribution grids. Hence, in parallel to the massive implementation of electric HP, strategies must be put in place to ensure the grid stability and operational security, notably in terms of voltage levels, as well as transformer and line’s capacity limits. In this paper, three such strategies are highlighted within the specific situation of a mid-sized Swiss city, potentially representative of many continental, central Europe urban zones as a test-case. The hourly-based power flow simulations of the medium- and low-voltage distribution grids show the impact of various future scenarios, inspired from typical territorial energy planning processes, implying various degrees of heat pumps penetration. The first strategy relies on the implementation of decentralized combined heat and power (CHP) units, fed by the existing natural gas network and is shown to provide an effective pathway to accommodate heat pump electricity demand on urban power distribution grids. Two alternative solutions based on grid reinforcements and controlled usage of reactive power from photovoltaic (PV) inverters are additionally considered to ensure security constraints of grid operation and compared with the scenario relying on CHP deployment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban and Territorial Energy Planning)
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16 pages, 1693 KiB  
Article
Implementation of Local Energy Plans in Western Switzerland: Survey of the Current State and Possible Paths Forward
by von Gunten Diane, Fabien Poumadère, Marc Bungener and Damien Chiffelle
Sustainability 2021, 13(19), 10970; https://doi.org/10.3390/su131910970 - 2 Oct 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1503
Abstract
To successfully reduce their climate impacts, cities need a clear strategical path to decrease their energy consumption and increase their use of renewable energy. Consequently, local energy plans have recently become popular, notably in western Switzerland. These plans propose different pathways towards the [...] Read more.
To successfully reduce their climate impacts, cities need a clear strategical path to decrease their energy consumption and increase their use of renewable energy. Consequently, local energy plans have recently become popular, notably in western Switzerland. These plans propose different pathways towards the achievement of economic, social, and environmental energy objectives, often supported by an action plan describing the possible projects and policies necessary to enact these pathways. However, the implementations of these local energy plans show a strong variability in efficiency and effectiveness. In this study, we survey the state of the implementation of local energy plans in 57 municipalities in western Switzerland. Based on this survey, we make four concrete propositions to reduce the difficulties faced by cities during the implementation of local energy plans and we test these propositions in three partner cities. These new tools, which aim at reinforcing municipal energy policy, can now be reused by local administrations in the study area and beyond. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban and Territorial Energy Planning)
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18 pages, 2970 KiB  
Article
Influence of Population Income on Energy Consumption and CO2 Emissions in Buildings of Cities
by Irene M. Zarco-Soto, Fco. Javier Zarco-Soto and Pedro J. Zarco-Periñán
Sustainability 2021, 13(18), 10230; https://doi.org/10.3390/su131810230 - 13 Sep 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1773
Abstract
More than half of the world’s population lives in cities. A large part of the emissions and energy consumption corresponds to buildings, both in the residential sector and in the service sector. This means that a large part of the measures taken by [...] Read more.
More than half of the world’s population lives in cities. A large part of the emissions and energy consumption corresponds to buildings, both in the residential sector and in the service sector. This means that a large part of the measures taken by governments to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are focused on this sector. With this background, this paper studies energy consumption in city buildings and the CO2 emissions they produce. It only makes use of publicly available data. The analysis is made from the point of view of income per inhabitant, and the results are obtained per inhabitant and household. To facilitate the analysis of the results, an index has been defined. The main contributions of this work are to analyze energy consumption and emissions due to buildings, study them from the point of view of the income of their inhabitants, and consider cities individually. The proposed methodology has been applied to the case of Spain. A total of 145 Spanish cities that have more than 50,000 inhabitants have been studied. The results show that the higher the income, the higher the consumption and emissions. Electricity consumptions are almost inelastic, while those of thermal origin are greatly influenced by the level of income. Regarding CO2 emissions, the percentage of emissions of electrical origin with respect to total emissions is higher than that of thermal origin. In addition, the lower the income, the higher the percentage of emissions of electrical origin. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban and Territorial Energy Planning)
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24 pages, 1774 KiB  
Article
Linking Semantic 3D City Models with Domain-Specific Simulation Tools for the Planning and Validation of Energy Applications at District Level
by Edmund Widl, Giorgio Agugiaro and Jan Peters-Anders
Sustainability 2021, 13(16), 8782; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13168782 - 5 Aug 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2694
Abstract
Worldwide, cities are nowadays formulating their own sustainability goals, including ambitious targets related to the generation and consumption of energy. In order to support decision makers in reaching these goals, energy experts typically rely on simulation models of urban energy systems, which provide [...] Read more.
Worldwide, cities are nowadays formulating their own sustainability goals, including ambitious targets related to the generation and consumption of energy. In order to support decision makers in reaching these goals, energy experts typically rely on simulation models of urban energy systems, which provide a cheap and efficient way to analyze potential solutions. The availability of high-quality, well-formatted and semantically structured data is a crucial prerequisite for such simulation-based assessments. Unfortunately, best practices for data modelling are rarely utilized in the context of energy-related simulations, so data management and data access often become tedious and cumbersome tasks. However, with the steady progress of digitalization, more and more spatial and semantic city data also become available and accessible. This paper addresses the challenge to represent these data in a way that ensures simulation tools can make use of them in an efficient and user-friendly way. Requirements for an effective linking of semantic 3D city models with domain-specific simulation tools are presented and discussed. Based on these requirements, a software prototype implementing the required functionality has been developed on top of the CityGML standard. This prototype has been applied to a simple yet realistic use case, which combines data from various sources to analyze the operating conditions of a gas network in a city district. The aim of the presented approach is to foster a stronger collaboration between experts for urban data modelling and energy simulations, based on a concrete proof-of-concept implementation that may serve as an inspiration for future developments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban and Territorial Energy Planning)
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