energy in urban and regional planning

A new partnership between German and South African researchers aims to support decision-makers by integrating energy planning with climate protection within the context of economic growth.

Climate change modelling is a complex exercise that is being refined continuously based on the steady evolution of the science underpinning it. Each year there are hundreds, if not thousands, of individual research projects that look back in time to see better how climate varies, and to strengthen understanding of the linkages between cause and effect. Some scientists spend years studying more recent, better documented periods, and watching changes as they happen. Still others look ahead using global climate models (GCM) that use the results of all these studies to forecast what might happen in future.

And then there are those who take the results of the GCMs and try to make sense of them for local and regional planning purposes. This area of study is just as challenging, in part because the global models are too coarse to form the basis of detailed local-level forecasting. But this too is being taken forward as governments begin in earnest to plan for climate change; Bruce Hewitson is a key player in this field within Southern Africa, as I have written previously.

Each region needs to understand future conditions so that it can plan for adaptation, and it also needs to establish the most effective local strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A project is currently underway in South Africa to assess the intersection of these two needs, with an economic energy model that initially will be used to analyse the entire energy system of Gauteng Province.The May 2009 newsletter of EnerKey, a partnership involving a number of local and international stakeholders, outlines the purpose of the TIMES model.

We will be able to provide policymakers with information which would lead to a least-cost expansion plan for the energy sector while meeting important political, environmenta, and social objectives. Uncertainties, such as energy prices and population, are addressed through a sensitivity analysis.

The resulting energy profile for the province will consider supply and consumption, efficiency, emissions, etc.; and by evaluating the risks of different energy supply and demand technology investment scenarios, the model becomes a tool for advanced local energy planning (ALEP). This should strengthen planners' ability to identify the most effective energy technologies based on the needs of a range of sectors that need energy inputs, such as transport, government, residential, commerce, office and industry.

A trend analysis will reveal the drivers of energy demand, such as population growth, household growth, income, and technology permeation. The demand drivers will enable us to demonstrate plausible scenarios for the future development of energy demand in the different sectors. Using these scenarios, we can compare alternative pathways - such as options for renewable energy supply and demand side technologies and other energy carriers - against the business as usual case.

The EnerKey project considers the concept of climate efficiency as an important sustainability goal within the development trajectory of a city or region. So for example in the field of transport, the project considers the following as key influences in planning mobility strategies:

• Rational use of energy, energy efficiency and energy saving measures;

• Use of renewable energy resources like biomass;
• GHG emissions, specific urban and local air pollutants ;
• Emission control such as inspection and maintenance influences on the environment;
• Non-technical measures like modal split; and
• Economic effects of the modal split.

This range of assessments should allow for identification of the most appropriate strategies for reducing dependence on fossil fuels without compromising economic growth. What the newsletter and web site don't say explicitly is that there should also be a strategy for de-linking ecnomic growth from growth in the need to travel, through a planning approach that meets the needs of a range of sectors including health, education, transport and urban land use planning. In other words, the need for mobility itself should be addressed through an integrated process that considers a matrix of policy objectives.

Such an approach may be too complex for this particular project, but I would hope that - at the very least - the model framework would be structured so that it becomes a practical planning tool with adequate flexibility. Planning generally has been mired in an inability to grasp the potential of multi-sector strategies, and every new framework that fails to nudge current practise towards this goal makes it harder to establish a sustainable growth trajectory.