Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
3.2 Energy Generation from Renewable Sources
Overview
This section considers renewable generation in urban areas both at building
and district levels, highlighting barriers and areas of innovation for renewable
technologies.
The direction of this report has been shaped by stakeholder input in the Smart-
ECO project, including direct survey of industry experts and findings from interac-
tive workshops that took place during the development of the research.
On the topic of renewable energy generation, the key opinions expressed by
stakeholders were:
• no European-wide renewable solution, but systems need to be designed to suit
local conditions focussing on multiple sources at building and district level;
• the potential of existing technologies is not being fully utilised. Both improving
existing and developing new technologies is important, but the focus should be
on implementation and integration of existing technologies;
• the most important issues to help improve innovation are applied R&D and
exchange of know how. This is considered a higher priority than policies and
market measures;
• existing buildings pose the greatest challenge and priority should be given to
residential buildings and offices;
• renewable energy technologies are the primary aspect towards the creation of
Smart-ECO solutions (in particular solar thermal, earth energy and co-generation).
Using the stakeholder views as a starting point, this section aims to identify areas
of innovation with the greatest potential to impact Smart-ECO buildings in the
period 2010-2030.
Understanding the problems
Sources of energy used in buildings vary significantly based on economic develop-
ment: electricity and natural gas are dominant inputs in OECD countries, while
developing countries use a higher proportion from renewable and waste sources
(Stern
2007
).
As people move towards urban living environments, the total energy consump-
tion of high density cities is also increasing. At a global scale, cities consume
80 % of the energy and release 75 % of carbon emissions (United Nations Human
Settlements Program
2012
). In the world, half of the population lives in cities
and in the next four decades this percentage is expected to rise at 70 % (United
Nations
2013
). In the EU-27, today around 40 % of the population lives in urban
areas and only 25 % in rural regions (Eurostat
2010
). In addition, it is estimated
that at least 90 % of buildings today will still be standing in 2030 (Tofield and
Ingham
2012
), hence the main challenge in the next 20 years will be to improve
the energy efficiency of the existing building stock in urban areas.
Although there is the potential to increase energy generation at building level,
