Renewable Energy: Solar Urban Development

This week we were asked to choose a particular project, place or method that attracts us and do some in depth research. In the first assigned reading, Beatley provides some examples of European cities where urban development is being designed with solar energy “at its core”. These examples give environmentalists some hope that achieving their goal of incorporating solar energy as an element of the central design is not completely impossible. One town/project that was particularly attractive to me was the city of Linz, where planners created a design for a new solar city in the early 1990’s and they predicted that residents would occupy it in 2001. According to the city’s website, in 1992 the famous Austrian planner Roland Rainer was commissioned by the municipality to create a new regional urban plan for the Linz-Pichling residential neighborhood. One year later, the city set aside funds to conduct solar studies that would be tested in the new Linz-Pichling homes. In 1994, just two years after the initial comprehensive plan, the city’s most prominent non profit construction firms expressed their intentions to fund the planning and development of low energy homes in the Pichling district. One year later eight other firms committed to the project of constructing low energy residential areas in the Pichling district. This growing project was assigned to a team of planners, architects, and engineers who have been pioneers in sustainable development throughout their careers. The final plans were completed last year and construction has begun on what some consider the “city within a city” Solar City Linz. A note about the parameters for this sustainable energy efficient development: construction and design will achieve maximum possible density, maximum use, traffic routes that promote pedestrian and cycle traffic (the entire development will be closed to motor and vehicle traffic), individual homes will be built to make the most efficient use of space with green houses and winter gardens, and the development will also demand active citizen participation in that residents will be responsible for taking care of the development and other adjacent areas including public spaces. The most innovative aspect of this development is that the homes and other buildings will not be a part of the city’s electricity grid; instead, they will generate their own energy with solar installations that will eventually allow this development to be energy independent and even return surplus energy back to the city’s electricity grid. This solar urban development has ultimately become an example of how a solar energy community can be created and sustained. Beatley provides an overview of this inspiring example and through further research I was able to explore exactly how amazing this solar city within a city is developing. This example fits nicely into our class discussion and the topics that we have explored so far. The most pertinent aspect of this project, a reality that I continue to readdress, is the differences between implementing environmentally friendly and sustainable development in America and in Europe. There are real differences in process and even more real limitations in America that I don’t think are present in Europe. Just look at the timeline of the development in Linz-Puchling. Although construction is taking some time, the process of creating a comprehensive plan that incorporated innovative environmentally friendly development, allocating funds to the project, and getting a serious commitment from developers, the city and residents took less than 5 years. In reality this type of innovative solar urban development would be resisted in any American city. In American cities there isn’t a real concrete unwavering commitment to green development and protecting the environment. What I think I learned most from this example in Linz is exactly what I am being constantly reminded of in this course. Cities that are implementing innovative plans for “green urbanism” are doing so because they want to. American cities are failing because we don’t want to implement these types of innovative plans. It's really that simple. Unfortunately, there are real implications caused by our lack of desire to change, which include things like global warming and complete natural resource depletion. And of course the list goes on......and on....and on

Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energies

I read the chapter in Towards Sustainable Communities related to energy efficiency and renewable energy and the chapters in New Energy for Cities related to renewable energy and building performance. The readings supported my belief that renewable energies are now ready to take over the world’s electrical grids. As more coal plants get cancelled and even prohibited in some places, we will see further economies of scale of renewables further making these highly adaptable and suitable for sustainable growth.

From the first reading, it was very interesting to see what cities and utilities are doing to finance renewable energy and energy efficiency. It is typically cheaper to reduce energy use than it is to expand energy capacity. Many utilities do not understand this. Some utilities in the West (such as PG&E) actually provide incentives that reduce energy use in households, giving both homeowners and themselves the benefits of prevented energy expansion projects. In addition, such incentives are key to maintaining a vibrant economy, as the financial savings that homeowners accrue multiply across the economy as they flow. Another great example that came to my attention was the deep lake cooling project in Enwave, which uses cold water from the depths of Lake Ontario. Cornell has a similar system called Lake Source Cooling that cools the campus during the summer.

In the Apollo Alliance reading, there are many excellent examples of how cities are taking first steps. It makes a clear argument that renewable energies are not cost-competitive with fossil fuels, yet it fails to mention large renewable energy projects, of which there are many. I think the best case studies are those in the area of building standards and energy efficiency, where cities like Seattle, Dallas, and Chicago have set standards or provided incentives for green buildings. It is unfortunate, however, to not see an example of where standards for new buildings have been set for entire cities. This is a bold step that would probably require subsidies to offset the additional costs to low-income people, but it could well be funded with some type of energy efficiency mechanism that includes, for example, zero-interest on long-term payments.

In spite of all the great tools and examples being shown in these readings, these all fall short of what needs to take place to eliminate the use of fossil fuels. Cities need to be more committed to setting standards city-wide for energy efficiency and to training citizens to do these kinds of jobs. They also need to find ways of procuring more renewable energy in the city. One large obstacle, of course, is that there aren’t many states giving worthy incentives. In addition, the federal government hasn’t taken energy as a priority at all. Reducing energy use by roughly 10-20% is important, but it will not do the job we need to do. I think any overview of energy efficiency and renewable energy needs to discuss the underlying reasons for these. It also needs to discuss what the barriers to implementation are in a larger scale and what the possibilities of getting to that scale are.

Wind Cooperative Energy and Community Participation in Green Cities

For this week's assignment, I chose to read The Apollo Alliance's "New Energy for Cities" and Mark Roseland's chapter on Energy Efficiency and Renewables from "Toward Sustainable Communities." In the past, I have enjoyed reading Beatley's compendium of European-based sustainability initiatives, but this time I was drawn to look at some viable North American programs as well. I also enjoyed reading about so many different options in how sustainability is being addressed by different regions.

My readings this week continued to solidify an important lesson that has been formulated for me during this course: that sustainable cities require a diverse set of options in order to reduce their consumption and improve civic health. No one renewable resource, technology or green attitude will save an area from dependance from non-renewable resources. Rather, each community will have to diversify and look at a wide array of local options in order to move forward towards healthier systems. Increased community participation in civic decision-making and more social justice initiatives can help expand a region's green options by tapping into the knowledge and energy of a greater proportion of the population. Of course, creating site-specific and diverse sustainability options will tend to create very complex systems, but systems thinking approaches can help to sort this out and provide us with a deeper understanding of the immensely productive potential that ecological (and humans are included in this!) diversity can create.

Wind Turbine Cooperatives:

The Energy Efficiency and Renewables Chapter from "Toward Sustainable Communities" by Mark Roseland mentions cooperative wind turbines as an example of a useful green power program. The short paragraph focuses on Danish cooperatives that has joined together the efforts of over 150,000 Danish families and 6,300 wind turbines. The opportunity to research this amazing project was too good for me to pass up.

I am very interested in looking at wind power programs, particularly cooperative ones, because I think that such programs could be readily integrated into any regional power grid that has sufficient wind to operate a turbine. On an even more personal level, the precious growing area around my boyfriend's family farm is presently being threatened by plans to build a massive natural gas power plant. What better way to fight such an endeavor than to start a cooperative where the farmers can create and sell their own clean energy? The CREST (Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology) website claims that wind power is the fastest-growing green energy technology because it is the only one that can viably compete with fossil fuels in terms of cost.(www.crest.org)

One specific example of a Danish wind cooperative is the Working Group for Wind Turbines on Middelgrunden which was started in 1997. This project, located near Copenhagen, consists of twenty offshore turbines that are placed in a shallow area that was once used for dumping sludge and construction debris. The cooperative collaborated with Copenhagen Energy so that each organization built half the turbines. According to the project's website, "[t]he total effect of the wind farm will be 40 MW. The twenty 2000 kW turbines have a total estimated electricity production of about 89,000,000 kWh per year. This means that approximately 3% of the electricity consumption within the municipality of Copenhagen can be covered by these wind turbines."(www.middelgrunden.dk)

I found it interesting that the Middelgrunden wind turbines are placed offshore of Copenhagen. I have never seen offshore wind turbines in person, but I have often wondered why Toronto does not consider such an option in their quest for renewable energy sources. One of the arguments that I have heard against placing wind turbines offshore of the city is that people don't want such windmills marring their view of the water. I happen to think that wind turbines can be quite beautiful, and from the publicity statements from the Middelgrunden project, the Danish are very proud of both the energy production and aesthetic quality of the wind turbines. At this point, I think that the usefulness of wind turbines as a source of green power should outweigh our aesthetic condescensions. Well over 18% of Denmark's power supply now comes from the wind, and according to Wikipedia, Denmark isn't even all that windy! If Denmark can do this, why can't the United States and Canada?

Energy Efficiency- District Heating/Public Buildings

I found the two readings, “Energy Efficiency and Renewables” and Chapter 9 in Green Urbanism to be extremely useful. As I was reading these chapters, I kept thinking about how the different tools discussed could be applied to my own community. I decided to look into district more in depth, since before doing these readings I had never even heard of this method. So, I used Wikipedia (don’t judge! The article is referenced), and I now I better understand the concept of this system. Say you have a regular steam-electric power plant, where electricity is generated through the burning of fossil fuels to create steam to move a turbine. In this traditional mode of production, the process converts only 47% of the fuel into electricity; the rest is lost as heat, which gets dissipated into the plant’s surroundings. With districting heating, a cogeneration plant is used. In cogeneration, the heat that usually gets lost is trapped and used to heat homes nearby. The heat is transferred through insulated pipes, either in the form of hot water or steam. While this form of power generation does greatly reduce the amount of fuel needed to power and heat homes, it is very expensive to install. District heating would be practical in a new community with high density, but to implement it in an existing low density suburb would be silly.

One of the problems district heating is experiencing in the United States is that it is poorly funded and maintained by power plants. As a result, the quality of the systems has deteriorated and not as many people get their heat through cogeneration plants. However, “Energy Efficiency” mentions the fact that district heating doesn’t necessarily need a power plant to be viable. For instance, a new hospital or school could include a higher capacity heater, and the excess heat produced by the new building could be distributed to nearby residential developments. This is particularly significant to proposed communities like the SouthWest project in Ithaca. A district heating system could be installed in a community center or other public building and then used to power the more high-density buildings. The heating system could be community owned and operated, leading to greater neighborhood capacity and sustainability.

I really like the idea of using public buildings to set examples for the rest of an area. In Green Urbanism, the author mentions Colorado’s Rooftop for Schools Program. Besides setting a positive example, a program like this has the potential to help generate revenues for an area that can always use extra funds. While researching wind energy for my group project, I ran across an elementary school that installed a single windmill and was able to sell the excess energy it generated back into the power grid. The profit was used to make improvements to the school and generally create a better learning environment for the students. This whole bit got me thinking about the possibilities of installing solar roofs on public schools in Baltimore County and what that would mean for not just the schools, but the entire county. Parents would become more aware of solar options, and individual solar units might not seem as futuristic and unattainable.

Green Urbanism mentions how cities in Europe compete with each other for the title of most solar-oriented, and I feel that his type of mentality could easily be applied to the state of Maryland. Counties are constantly competing with each other for business and population, so why not compete with each other for leadership in sustainable options like solar power? Howard County has already appointed itself as the leading green county, and I have a feeling other county executives won’t be far behind in trying to claim this title.