EDINBURGH, UK, March 28, 2007.
The city of Glasgow would need to install 1,344 wind turbines or 4.2 million solar PV roofs if it wants to sustain current consumption levels of electricity while reducing CO2 emissions by 60%.
The city could also build 1.9 of a nuclear reactor or 35 hydroelectric facilities, explains the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in Scotland in ‘City Climate Challenge: your city, your responsibility.’ The report examines the challenge facing the energy supply in Glasgow, transportation in Edinburgh and energy demand in Inverness, based on UK targets of reducing carbon emissions 60% by 2050.
Edinburgh would have to allow 57,500 fewer cars on the road or reduce the average distance driven by 35% by 2050, while Inverness would have to ensure that every building performs to the highest standards of energy efficiency based on half the city’s current growth rate. The findings reinforce the need for urgent action at national and local level to find different transition pathways to a low carbon city of the future.
“The prospect of every city like Glasgow needing a giant fleet of wind turbines, or needing more roofs for PV arrays than it physically has, or almost two nuclear power plants for that matter, highlights the scale of the challenge,” the report notes. “Without action on energy demand, it would require energy infrastructure development, with the associated impacts, on an unprecedented scale.”
The numbers would increase if there is any further increase in energy consumption.
“The built environment affects every aspect of the way that we live and work, and therefore commands a huge influence over carbon emissions and climate change,” says Graeme Hartley of RICS Scotland. “We need strong leadership from government and joined-up policies that will make the most of the planning, transport and construction expertise that already exists.”
“The implications of changes in the mix and nature of energy supply for other facets of urban life are wide reaching,” it continues. “The question of whether energy provision remains national or becomes more local raises interesting distributional and equity questions about the ability of communities to take control of their own power supplies.”
The scenarios consistently identify energy supply mix and energy security as key features of a low carbon future, with reliance on coal and gas (with and without carbon capture and storage), renewables (wind, wave and solar), nuclear, hydrogen, combined heat and power, fossil fuels and biofuels. The scenarios which envisage high energy demand require large scale investment in energy supply infrastructure, in some cases involving nuclear, while others foresee a market take-off in renewables, whereas “others predict that even though such technologies become commercially viable, high discount rates and low fossil fuel prices continue to preclude their widespread adoption.”
“In essence, cities today have an unparalleled opportunity to change the way they supply energy,” it explains. “In spite of the work already undertaken to understand and respond both to climate change mitigation and adaptation, there remains, in our judgement, surprisingly little detail about the implications for UK towns and cities.”
“While we know, for example, that renewable technologies or making fewer journeys by car are ‘good things’ and part of the solution, we know rather less about how many renewable technologies are required or how much less we need to drive,” it adds. “In recent years, there has been a huge rise in the number of planning applications for windfarms, especially in Scotland; however we should be under no illusions about the scale of the challenge facing us.”
“Technology alone is highly unlikely to achieve the necessary reductions without being coupled with substantial changes in behaviour; furthermore, in the absence of any action to reduce energy demand, the only way in which supply could meet its contribution would be through the expansion of the energy supply network on an unprecedented scale,” it cautions. “Any hopes that we have been harbouring about ‘fixing’ the problem through a new fleet of hybrid cars, or the mass take up of wind power, or a new generation of nuclear power plants, need quickly to be re-thought.”
