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Empowered Cities
Garry’s Diigo Tags on Cities:
Energy systems and the Future of Legislation, Taxes, Financial Incentives, Data, Behavior Change, et al.
Concepts to Explore:
Energy Poverty – Ensuring access to clean reliable energy
Energy Commons – Rethinking the ‘rights’ of energy access in age of abundant renewables
(PDF); Energy as a Common Good;
Unlocking the Energy Commons (2018)
DAISE Project for Energy Commons; Is Renewable Energy a Common?
Solar Commons Project
Examples of Empowered Cities at Intersection of Energy & Transportation:
- England – London started early with congestion pricing schemes
- France – Paris – banning diesel vehicles; creating incentives for bicycles and electric vehicles
- Germany – courts supported ban on older diesel vehicles across multiple cities
- China – building master planned neighborhoods that are pedestrian friendly
- Bans or Restrictions of driving in city centers of Madrid, Oslo, et al.
Exploring Implications of Cities and…
- Health & Wellness
Physical Health: Air quality; Water; Food Deserts;
Mental Health – Social Services; Training; Trauma-informed School Practices; Noise reduction - ‘Smart Connected’ IoT
Amsterdam is set to implement “The Things Network”, joining Taipei and Brasilia to become one of many emerging smart cities.
Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs in Toronto
Learn More
CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) – World Renewable Cities
Over 100 cities receive more than 70% of their energy needs from hydro and renewables.
U.S. cities already over 70% include Seattle; Eugene, Oregon; and Aspen, Colorado. Burlington, Vermont, is the most renewable, with fully 100% clean electricity already. Atlanta, Georgia, and San Diego, California, are the latest to commit to going to 100% of renewables, joining about 50 others, according to separate figures kept by the Sierra Club.
San Francisco has an ordinance saying that 15%-30% of new roof-space has to incorporate solar panels or green roofs.
UK’s Greater Manchester launched Big Clean Switch to promise households savings on their bills if they commit to clean energy instead of fossil fuels.
U.S. Conference of Mayors
Signed the New Bedford Principles in 2017 as a six-point energy recommendation to be included in the USCM National Infrastructure plan
The principles are:
- Seek an energy-friendly tax reform package that doesn’t undermine current progress:
- Keep tax-exemption on municipal bonds
- Keep state and local tax deductibility
- Preserve and extend tax credits and other incentives to support renewable energy
- Authorize additional tax and other incentives to promote more investment in microgrids, distributed generation, and storage systems.
- Direct funding to support the development of local energy assurance plans to advance local resiliency efforts, especially those to combat climatic events.
- Direct funding to municipal utilities or tax incentives to investor-owned utilities to modernize local grids, including microgrids, to increase resilience to climatic events.
- Direct funding to support local energy block grants to support city energy independence goals
- Restore federal challenge grants to incentivize smart grid efforts.
Energy Committee continues the work by focusing on:
- Increasing energy efficiency and conservation
Restructuring gas and electric utilities
Supporting smart grid initiatives
National Climate Change Legislation
National Renewable Portfolio Standards
Promoting energy independence
China’s Emerald Cities Planning for Smart and Green China
English Version of the Guidelines (PDF)
The Economist Report on Empowering Cities (PDF)
Power to Gas (H2) / Fuel Cell EVs
Garry’s Diigo tags on: Fuel Cells; Hydrogen; Power to Gas
News stories on Fuel Cells – fuelcells.io ; fuelcellsworks
The Future for Power to Gas Couldn’t be Brighter (Renewable World)
MicroGrid Knowledge: Power to Gas vs Battery – 2018
Southern California Gas’s pipeline system has about 13 tWh of equivalent electricity storage, he noted. Building battery storage facilities with the same amount of storage capacity would cost about $2.6 trillion.
Power-to-gas is currently not considered an eligible storage technology under the CPUC’s energy storage procurement mandate which requires state investor-owned utilities to procure 1.3 GW of storage by 2020
North America’s First MW Power to Gas – 2018
The Enbridge-Hydrogenics 2.5MW facility – designed and built on a 5MW scalable platform – features the Hydrogenics’ next-generation PEM electrolyser technology, which has the highest power density and smallest footprint of any such system in the world.
From Fat Duck to Green Gas – 2017