Urenio Watch Watch: Cities

Land, Best Paper Award

The Land Best Paper Award Committee selected the research paper “Net Zero Energy Districts: Connected Intelligence for Carbon-Neutral Cities” as the Second prize of the Land 2022 Best Paper Award.

The committee determined the award based on an overall evaluation of the papers’ originality and significance, considering citations and downloads. Six winners were chosen, including three research papers and three review papers. The announcement has been officially released here.

Net-zero energy Districts (NZEDs) are city districts where the annual amount of CO2 emissions released is balanced by emissions removed from the atmosphere. NZEDs constitute a major component in a new generation of smart-green cities that deploy connected intelligence, smart systems, and renewable energy technologies. They promote environmental sustainability, contribute to cleaner environments, and reduce global warming and the threats from climate change.

The paper describes a model to assess the feasibility of the transition of city districts to self-sufficient NZEDs based on locally produced renewable energy suitable for cities. It also aims to identify threshold conditions for a city district to become a self-sufficient NZED using smart city systems, renewable energy, and nature-based solutions. The transition to self-sufficient NZEDs is extremely important as it considerably decentralises and multiplies the efforts for carbon-neutral cities. The methodology combines literature review, model design, model feed with data, and simulations to assess the model’s outcome in various climate, social, technology, and district settings.

The conclusions assess whether the transition to NZEDs with locally produced solar panel energy is feasible and identify thresholds in terms of climate, population density, and solar conversion efficiency. The paper challenges the compatibility of self-sufficient NZEDs with compact city planning principles.