Modelling of residential heat decarbonisation pathways in the republic of Kazakhstan

Globally, buildings account for one third of final energy consumption and are a significant source of CO2 emissions. Concerns with unsustainable use of energy in buildings, growing greenhouse gases emissions and energy poverty challenges all require effective planning, strategies and actions from policy makers. Energy systems models together with scenario analysis are widely applied tools to aid decision making in energy planning and in the assessments of technology pathways. Studies and analyses using energy systems models tend to focus on energy transition pathways and neglect energy poverty, energy affordability and local pollution. In addition, they generally do not simultaneously incorporate spatial, building type and urban/rural detail. This thesis addresses this gap, by introducing the first sub-nationally disaggregated energy system model with regional detail, representation of the building types (detached, flat) urban/rural disaggregation, and analysis of energy poverty..

Distributed Energy Infrastructure Development: Geospatial & Economic Feasibility in Rural West Virginia

Energy transition from conventional to centralized power plants, including coal-fired units, is critical for West Virginia’s long-term energy and economic future. The socioeconomic downturn in West Virginia was deeply connected with the dependence on the centralized coal industry and the coal economy. Most traditional coal communities in rural West Virginia struggle to maintain economic viability, potentially leading to outmigrations and poor energy resilience. I investigated the possibility of introducing community-sized distributed energy systems in these rural communities to improve energy resilience and accommodate the future transition from centralized coal-generated energy. My goal was to identify rural regions where distributed energy can be utilized at an optimal cost, thus improving energy resiliency within these communities and positively impacting the economy. This study provided a geospatial modeling approach with Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and Geographic Information System (GIS) suitability assessment to identify the feasible locations of small-scale distributed generation for wind, solar, and hydropower energies. The net value comparison analysis was conducted utilizing the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) and levelized avoided cost of energy (LACE) to determine the differences in investment costs for each distributed generation type compared with traditional coal-generated electricity. I expected the spatial analysis results to reveal optimal sites for the specific distributed energy types. I found that wind and solar distributed generation have stronger presences in southern and eastern West Virginia counties, while suitable small hydropower development locations are spread across the state. This study provided insight into future distributed energy and its infrastructure development possibilities in rural West Virginia

Integrating energy and land-use planning : Socio-metabolic profiles along the rural-urban continuum in Catalonia (Spain)

Abandoning fossil fuels and increasingly relying on low-density, land-intensive renewable energy will increase demand for land, affecting current global and regional rural-urban relationships. Over the past two decades, rural-urban relationships all over the world have witnessed unprecedented changes that have rendered their boundaries blurred and have lead to the emergence of "new ruralities." In this paper, we analyze the current profiles of electricity generation and consumption in relation to sociodemographic variables related to the use of time and land across the territory of Catalonia, Spain. Through a clustering procedure based on multivariate statistical analysis, we found that electricity consumption is related to functional specialization in the roles undertaken by different types of municipalities in the urban system. Municipality types have distinctive metabolic profiles in different sectors depending on their industrial, services or residential role. Villages' metabolism is influenced by urban sprawl and industrial specialization, reflecting current "new ruralities." Segregation between work activity and residence increases both overall electricity consumption and its rate (per hour) and density (per hectare) of dissipation. A sustainable spatial organization of societal activities without the use of fossil fuels or nuclear energy would require huge structural and sociodemographic changes to reduce energy demand and adapt it to regionally available renewable energy. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

Municipal transitions: The social, energy, and spatial dynamics of sociotechnical change in South Tyrol, Italy

With the aim of proposing recommendations on how to use social and territorial specificities as levers for wider achievement of climate and energy targets at local level, this research analyses territories as sociotechnical systems. Defining the territory as a sociotechnical system allows us to underline the interrelations between space, energy and society. Groups of municipalities in a region can be identified with respect to their potential production of renewable energy by means of well-known data-mining approaches. Similar municipalities linking together can share ideas and promote collaborations, supporting clever social planning in the transition towards a new energy system. The methodology is applied to the South Tyrol case study (Italy). Results show eight different spatially-based sociotechnical systems within the coherent cultural and institutional context of South Tyrol. In particular, this paper observes eight different systems in terms of (1) different renewable energy source preferences in semi-urban and rural contexts; (2) different links with other local planning, management, and policy needs; (3) different socio-demographic specificities of individuals and families; (4) presence of different kinds of stakeholders or of (5) different socio-spatial organizations based on land cover. Each energy system has its own specificities and potentialities, including social and spatial dimensions, that can address a more balanced, inclusive, equal, and accelerated energy transition at the local and translocal scale

Cities, traffic, and CO2: A multidecadal assessment of trends, drivers, and scaling relationships

Emissions of CO2 from road vehicles were 1.57 billion metric tons in 2012, accounting for 28% of US fossil fuel CO2 emissions, but the spatial distributions of these emissions are highly uncertain. We develop a new emissions inventory, the Database of Road Transportation Emissions (DARTE), which estimates CO2 emitted by US road transport at a resolution of 1 km annually for 1980-2012. DARTE reveals that urban areas are responsible for 80% of on-road emissions growth since 1980 and for 63% of total 2012 emissions. We observe nonlinearities between CO2 emissions and population density at broad spatial/temporal scales, with total on-road CO2 increasing nonlinearly with population density, rapidly up to 1,650 persons per square kilometer and slowly thereafter. Per capita emissions decline as density rises, but at markedly varying rates depending on existing densities. We make use of DARTE's bottom-up construction to highlight the biases associated with the common practice of using population as a linear proxy for disaggregating national- or state-scale emissions. Comparing DARTE with existing downscaled inventories, we find biases of 100% or more in the spatial distribution of urban and rural emissions, largely driven by mismatches between inventory downscaling proxies and the actual spatial patterns of vehicle activity at urban scales. Given cities' dual importance as sources of CO2 and an emerging nexus of climate mitigation initiatives, high-resolution estimates such as DARTE are critical both for accurately quantifying surface carbon fluxes and for verifying the effectiveness of emissions mitigation efforts at urban scales.https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1421723112Published versio

A step toward energy efficiency at the municipal level

UID/SOC/04647/2013 SFRH/BD/94702/2014At present, energy efficiency represents one of the foremost challenges to achieve the transition toward a low-carbon society. Reducing energy use spans a broad range of technical issues and spatial scales: from building to districts, from cities to rural areas, and from energy power plants to electricity grids. In this frame, the challenge of enhancing energy efficiency can be understood as an extremely relevant topic for planning at the municipal level. Nevertheless, recent studies provide evidence that significant gaps exist in the enhancement of energy efficiency within municipal boundaries. The present research recognises that a comprehensive assessment of municipal energy performances is an essential starting point to facilitate local planning in enhancing energy efficiency. However, how can this challenge be translated into practice and applied to the implementation of local planning? As new models result from the transformation of existing ones, the development of a methodology associated with a case study in Portugal was deemed the most appropriate approach to contribute to knowledge in these fields. The primary objective of this study is to move toward more integrated process of planning for energy efficiency, supporting the definition of priorities and strategies to address energy saving improvements at municipal level. The assessment process involves a statistical analysis that using Geographical Information System, is combined and translated into spatial models to determine needs and set priorities within a Municipal Master Plan review. Based on this top-down approach, it becomes clear that energy efficiency is a cross-cutting issue interrelated with a blend of various disciplines: geography, spatial planning, urbanism, architecture, and civil engineering. The results enable us to understand why municipalities should be called upon to enhance energy efficiency by first looking at a comprehensive energy performance assessment. Embracing the whole municipal territory rather than only urban areas, is key to articulate energy efficiency and geographical, social, environmental and economic factors that are at the core of local planning.publishersversionpublishe

Spatial and performance optimality in power distribution networks

(c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.Complex network theory has been widely used in vulnerability analysis of power networks, especially for power transmission ones. With the development of the smart grid concept, power distribution networks are becoming increasingly relevant. In this paper, we model power distribution systems as spatial networks. Topological and spatial properties of 14 European power distribution networks are analyzed, together with the relationship between geographical constraints and performance optimization, taking into account economic and vulnerability issues. Supported by empirical reliability data, our results suggest that power distribution networks are influenced by spatial constraints which clearly affect their overall performance.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Spatial proximity and distance travelled: commuting versus non-commuting trips in Flanders

This paper examines the relationship between daily travel distance and spatial characteristics in Flanders (and partly also in Brussels), in the north of Belgium. Important regional variations in commuting trip lengths are noticed, which are related to the spatial-economic structure including aspects of population density and spatial proximity. Commuter data obtained from the General Socio-Economic Survey 2001 are area covering and offer a lot of information. It is obvious that residents in the economic core areas produce less commuter mobility than people living in remote areas that have still access to the Brussels-Antwerp region. Proximity between home and work locations is paramount, when proximity is defined at a large geographical scale. Next, the spatial distribution of commuting distances, based on residential location, is compared to overall daily travel patterns including non-work travel. Since the second kind of data is only available in the form of a rather small sample, a multivariate regression equation based on spatial characteristics has been developed in order to extrapolate sample data throughout the Flanders region. When assessing overall daily travel patterns, including non-work travel, variables based on the spatial distribution of jobs do not show significant effects on the travel distance. However, spatial proximity is again paramount, although proximity should now be defined at a much smaller geographical scale. When considering all daily travel, the distance between the residence and an even small urban centre is much more decisive than the distance to the economic core areas (which is mainly consisting of the Brussels-Antwerp region). This finding qualifies the limited importance of the commute: today, it is mainly non-professional travel that is growing. Furthermore, the results suggest that residential density and land use mix in urban areas is the best guarantee for curbing excessive forms of overall (but especially: non-commuter) mobility

Spatial proximity and distance travelled : commuting versus non-commuting trips in Flanders

This paper examines the relationship between daily travel distance and spatial proximity characteristics in Flanders (and partly also in Brussels), in the north of Belgium. Important regional variations in commuting trip lengths are noticed, which are related to the spatial-economic structure including aspects of population density and spatial proximity between homes and destinations such as jobs, schools or leisure. Commuter data obtained from the General Socio-Economic Survey 2001 is area covering and offers a lot of information. It is obvious that residents in the economic core areas produce less commuter mobility than people living in remote areas that have still access to the Brussels-Antwerp region. Proximity between home and work locations is paramount, when proximity is defined at a regional scale. Next, the spatial distribution of commuting distances, based on residential location, is compared to overall daily travel patterns including non-work travel. Since the second kind of data is only available in the form of a rather small sample, a multivariate regression equation based on spatial characteristics has been developed in order to extrapolate sample data throughout the Flanders region. When assessing overall daily travel patterns, including non-work travel, variables based on the spatial distribution of jobs do not show significant effects on the travel distance. However, spatial proximity is again paramount, although proximity should now be defined at a local scale. When considering all daily travel, the distance between the residence and an even small urban centre is much more decisive than the distance to the economic core areas (which is mainly consisting of the Brussels-Antwerp region). This finding qualifies the limited importance of the commute: today, it is mainly non-professional travel that is growing. Furthermore, the results suggest that residential density and land use mix in urban areas is the best guarantee for curbing excessive forms of overall (but especially: non-commuter) mobility