Identifying lessons for energy-efficient cities using an integrated urban energy systems model

Abstract

Energy consumption in urban areas is increasingly recognized as an important source of global greenhouse gas emissions. Modelling efforts to date have identified significant potential savings in individual sectors, such as transport or district energy systems, but there have been few attempts to model urban energy systems in a holistic manner. This paper presents SynCity, an integrated toolkit of optimisation and simulation models for urban energy systems, and applies it to three analyses. First, an assess-ment of urban form is made using Monte Carlo analysis to highlight the potential costs of planning restrictions on the maximum density of urban areas. Second, the efficiency of different energy system configurations are explored for a range of cities to reveal that cities need to be able to access a variety of technology sizes in order to achieve cost and energy savings. Finally, all three models within the SynCity system are used to evaluate the individual and joint effects of urban density, quality of the built envi-ronment, and energy systems design, suggesting that taken together, these factors can achieve primary energy savings of 41% and energy system cost savings of 49%. The results highlight the importance of designing holis-tic long-term urban energy planning frameworks and supportive market structures.