Urban areas were responsible for about 28.6 GtCO2eq of greenhouse gas emissions at the global level in 2020, including direct and indirect emissions from energy use as well as embodied emissions. With such an important share, capturing a turning point and rapid decrease in urban emissions at sufficient scale and pace is crucial for enabling pathways that are better aligned with the critically sensitive bounds of a 1.5°C global warming target. This lecture will first focus on urban emission scenarios that are constructed in the context of the SSP-RCP framework using data from over 10,000 urban areas as well as urban emission trends. The findings have significance for comparing urban emission scenarios that are able to reverse the drivers of urban emissions in a way that benefits from an urban advantage for accelerating climate mitigation. These include supporting the penetration of renewable energy in energy systems, integrating efficient urban energy infrastructure, and mobilizing sustainable behavioral change. Based on these scenarios, indices based on an urban identity that involves an integrated urban energy planning perspective are introduced to support the translatability of global targets to the local level. An original synthesis across multiple datasets is continued to obtain local urban emission scenarios for the top 10 urban areas in each of the main world regions plus South East Europe that is harmonized with parameters from the Global Human Settlement Layer. Connections across spatiotemporal dimensions are used to emphasize the need for diffusing effective urban climate mitigation action that takes into account the progress of pioneering urban areas for climate neutrality as well as climate positivity. The role of urban areas in integrating sectors for providing flexibility in 100% renewable energy scenarios is underlined as well as opportunities for further improving the SSP1-RCP1.9 scenario with a transition to renewable energy based, resource efficient and compact urban areas. The multi-dimensional feasibility of such options is put forth as well as the presence of tools to enable the vision for a SDEWES-Aware City for sustainable urban systems. Enabling the integration of energy, water and environment systems in urban areas is crucial for better safeguarding life-support systems for the well-being of the entire planet.
Prof. Şiir KILKIŞ
The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK)
Ankara, Turkey
Şiir Kılkış is alumna of KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Georgetown University, where she graduated magna cum laude with honors as the gold medalist in Science, Technology, and International Affairs. She served as a Lead Author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change with a focus on urban systems and sustainable development, engaging in cross-Working Group collaborations. For the Seventh Assessment Cycle, she is elected to serve in the IPCC Bureau as a Vice-Chair of WGIII. She is Senior Researcher and Science Advisor to the President at The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. She is double affiliated in the Earth System Science program of the Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences at Middle East Technical University as a Professor in energy systems engineering, climate change, and sustainable development. She takes place among the world’s top 2% scientists in the areas of energy, environmental science, and emerging/strategic technologies and is an International Scientific Committee member of the SDEWES Center. Her research work includes urban emissions and land use efficiency scenarios, the multi-dimensional SDEWES Index benchmarking 120 cities, novel net-zero district concepts, and the Rational Exergy Management Model to curb CO₂ emissions. She is an editorial board member of Energy Conversion and Management, The Journal of Sustainable Development of Energy, Water & Environment Systems, Smart Energy, and Energy Storage and Saving. She is a member of the Earth Commission on earth system boundaries, Steering Committee of Future Earth Urban Knowledge Action Network, Board of Governors of the Joint Research Centre, and the Mission Board for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is tasked to transparently and comprehensively assess our best scientific understanding of the risks of human-caused climate change. It consists of 195 individual countries, and is therewith the organisation with the greatest global influence on bringing science and scientific evidence into the international climate change negotiations. Every five to seven years, the IPCC publishes authoritative assessment reports on the physical science basis of climate change, impacts and adaptation, and mitigation of climate change. In this presentation, we will look at the latest assessment report of the IPCC, published in August 2021, on the physical science basis. This Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the IPCC represents a new milestone in our consolidated understanding of human-caused climate change and provides the scientific backdrop against which the political discussions at the next climate summit (COP26) will take place, November 2021, in Glasgow in the United Kingdom.
Dr. Joeri Rogelj
Imperial College London
London, United Kingdom
Dr Joeri Rogelj is Director of Research and Lecturer in Climate Change and the Environment at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, and a Senior Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. He explores how societies can transform towards more sustainable futures connecting Earth system sciences to the study of societal change and policy. He has published on the effectiveness of international climate agreements such as the Paris Agreement, carbon budgets, net zero emission targets, 1.5°C emissions pathways, and the interaction between climate and sustainable development. Joeri Rogelj has contributed to several climate change assessments over the past decade. He is a long-serving lead author on the annual Emissions Gap Reports by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). He also contributed to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), served as a Coordinating Lead Author on the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C of Global Warming and as a Lead Author on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. In 2019, he was the youngest member serving on the UN Secretary-General's Climate Science Advisory Group.
This presentation examines the current status of renewables in the world. The presentation starts with some facts about climate change, global warming, and the effects of human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels on the climate problem. It then outlines the status of renewables in the world, which includes their shares with respect to conventional fuel use for power and for electricity production alone, and their social dimension in terms of jobs created. Then the basic forms of renewables are examined in some detail, which includes solar thermal, both for low and high-temperature applications, photovoltaics, hydropower, onshore and offshore wind energy systems, and biomass/biofuels. In all these the basic technology is presented followed by the current status, the installed capacity in the last decade, which reveals their upward trend, as well as the prospects of the technology and some new research findings.
Prof. Soteris Kalogirou
Cyprus University of Technology
Limassol, Cyprus
Professor Soteris Kalogirou is at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Sciences and Engineering of the Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus. He is currently the Dean of the School of Engineering and Technology. In addition to his Ph.D., he holds the title of D.Sc. He is a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences and Founding Member of the Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts. For more than 35 years, he is actively involved in research in the area of solar energy and particularly in flat plate and concentrating collectors, solar water heating, solar steam generating systems, desalination, photovoltaics, and absorption cooling. He has a large number of publications as books, book chapters, international scientific journals and refereed conference proceedings. He is Editor-in-Chief of Renewable Energy and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Energy, and Editorial Board Member of another seventeen journals. He is the editor of the book Artificial Intelligence in Energy and Renewable Energy Systems, published by Nova Science Inc., co-editor of the book Soft Computing in Green and Renewable Energy Systems, published by Springer, editor of the book McEvoy’s Handbook of Photovoltaics, published by Academic Press of Elsevier and author of the books Solar Energy Engineering: Processes and Systems, and Thermal Solar Desalination: Methods and Systems, published by Academic Press of Elsevier. He is a member of World Renewable Energy Network (WREN), American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), Institute of Refrigeration (IoR) and International Solar Energy Society (ISES).
In order to adhere to the Paris agreement, decarbonisation is needed in all sectors. Decarbonisation is possible through high biomass consumption with potential effects on biodiversity and food supply - or through electrification. Decarbonisation of sectors such as the heat, transport and industry sectors will require a high degree of direct and indirect electrification, coupling the power sector closely to these sectors through Power-to-Heat and Power-to-X technologies. To undertake this, there will be a large increase in power demand, which will to a high degree be served by variable renewable energy such and wind and solar power. This requires great flexibility from the energy system, which may be supplied through flexible generation and transmission - as well as energy storage and flexible demands provided by the coupled sectors. The plenary keynote lecture illustrates important concepts and benefits from sector coupling with examples from large scale integrated energy system analysis applying the linear optimization model, Balmorel.
Prof. Marie Münster
Technical University of Denmark
Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
Marie Münster is Professor WSR in Energy System Modeling at the Technical University of Denmark. She holds a M.Sc. in Energy Planning and a PhD in Energy Modeling. Marie Münster has extensive experience within the field of energy system modeling with focus on integrated energy systems and smart sector coupling analyzing technologies producing power, heat, gas and transport fuels. She has been project leader and WP lead on several Danish and international research projects.
The aim of this plenary lecture is to discuss the main concepts about provision of flexibility and resilience from the so-called multi-energy systems (MES) whereby electricity interacts with other energy vectors and sectors such as heating, cooling, transport, gas, hydrogen, etc. Specific use cases and applications, covering technical, commercial, and regulatory aspects, will refer to a number of recent projects in the UK, Europe and Australia. These include ongoing work with electricity and gas system operators, transmission and distribution network operators, and energy regulators and policy makers to address how MES could support an affordable, reliable and resilient transition towards low-carbon and even net-zero energy systems, including potential futures dominated by green electricity-hydrogen systems.
Prof. Pierluigi Mancarella
The University of Melbourne
Melbourne, Australia
Pierluigi Mancarella is Chair Professor of Electrical Power Systems at The University of Melbourne (Australia) and Professor of Smart Energy Systems at The University of Manchester (UK). He received his MSc and PhD in Power Systems from the Politecnico di Torino (Italy), before working as a post-doc researcher at Imperial College London (UK). Pierluigi has also held visiting positions at NREL (USA), Tsinghua University (China), Ecole Centrale de Lille (France), NTNU (Norway), and Universidad de Chile (Chile). His research interests include techno-economic modelling of integrated multi-energy systems; technical and commercial integration of renewables and distributed energy resources; security, reliability and resilience of future networks; and energy infrastructure planning under uncertainty. He has been involved in/led around 50 research projects worldwide, is author of several books and of over 300 research publications, and is an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, and IEEE Systems Journal. Pierluigi is the Energy Systems Programme Lead of the Melbourne Energy Institute, an IEEE Power and Energy Society Distinguished Lecturer, the Convenor of the Cigre C6/C2.34 Working Group on “Flexibility provision from distributed energy resources”, holds the 2017 veski Innovation Fellowship by the Victorian Government for his project on urban-scale virtual power plants, and is a recipient of an international Newton Prize 2018 for his work on power system resilience in Chile. Pierluigi led the Melbourne Energy Institute’s work “Power system security assessment of the future National Electricity Market” for the Australian Chief Scientist’s “Finkel Review” in 2017 and is currently supporting technical and market developments in Australia, working closely with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC). He is also leading the energy system modelling activities in the Future Fuels Cooperative Research Centre, developing an integrated electricity-gas-hydrogen modelling tool to assess and plan for future energy scenarios in Australia.
As renewable energy shares increase with decreasing costs, available land may be the next stop block for the development of sustainable energy systems. Energy planning is therefore increasingly a matter of spatial planning as well.
For more than 20 years, geographical information systems have been used to describe and model current and future energy systems. Energy data has been disaggregated to local geographical scales and made available to the research community on massive scale. A magnitude of studies addresses the space-dependent distribution of sustainable energy resources, captures the spatial spreading of energy needs and consumption, and analyses the access to energy infrastructures.
What is often missing, though, is the intricate link between location suitability, and the quantification of potentials and costs. The present paper suggests a generic approach to assess these main constraints of local sustainable energy options. For each geographical entity, suitability mapping identifies available land by environmental constraints or political preference; potentials are quantified and located by technical limitations; and location-specific costs are assessed for place- and logistics-dependent technologies. The paper introduces to the methods of such analysis, and presents examples from past and current research.
Prof. Bernd Möller
Europa Universität Flensburg
Flensburg, Germany
Prof. Dr. Bernd Möller studied energy engineering at Flensburg University of Applied Sciences. He worked as a research fellow at Aalborg University in Denmark, where he obtained a PhD in Energy Planning at the Department of Planning and Development. As a member of the Sustainable Energy Planning Research Group he gathered experience with energy systems analysis and later on specialized in spatial analysis and the use of geographical information systems in energy and environmental planning. He has been a board member of Samsoe Energy Academy in Denmark, on an island dedicated to 100% renewable energy supply. Prof. Dr. Bernd Möller is chair of the M.Eng. programme of Energy and Environmental Management at Europa Universität Flensburg, a programme with a 30 year history, dedicated to sustainable energy systems and management in developing countries. Main areas of research are renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and biomass and the geographical aspects of sustainable energy systems in terms of technology, economy and planning. This includes studies of resource availability of biomass, landscape impact of wind energy, continuous resource economic models of offshore wind energy, the connectivity to district heating as well as heat atlases of demand and supply for Denmark and Europe.
The world is facing several sustainable development challenges at the same time, including the challenges to deal with climate change, biodiversity loss, hunger and access to energy and safe drinking water. The challenges are linked: solutions for climate change can have consequences for biodiversity and the other way around. Many scenarios in the literature, for instance, to keep warming below 1.5 or 2oC include land-use-based mitigation options, including bio-energy, with possible consequences for water and land. In the presentation, we look into this default climate mitigation approach, emphasising nexus challenges and discussing how these are coupled to the SDGs. Alternative routes that can limit reliance on land use for mitigation, including rapid electrification of energy demand based on renewable energy and lifestyle change. Although there are also challenges involved, these pathways could alleviate some of the stresses on nexus issues while providing essential co-benefits. Finally, the lecture will conclude with some of the critical challenges in the integrated assessment of global change: 1) how to deal with feasibility issues beyond technical and economic issues and 2) how to link issues across the scale. Scenario analysis has an instrumental role in guiding ways of addressing nexus issues in the context of climate change mitigation and sustainability goals. Through this lecture, it will be possible to explore what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement to sustain our future.
Prof. Detlef van Vuuren
PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agenc
Utrecht, Netherlands
Detlef van Vuuren is a Professor of Integrated Assessment of Global Environmental Change at Utrecht University’s Faculty of Geosciences and a senior researcher at PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, where he leads the IMAGE integrated assessment modelling team. He has published more than 360 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including high profile journals such as Nature and Science. He is among seven people worldwide who are listed as “highly cited researchers” in three different disciplines simultaneously. Detlef van Vuuren’s work focuses on global sustainability issues. With his team, he develops models to explore future climate and environmental changes through scenarios (i.e. projections of the future). The use of models allows accounting for the interaction between the economy and climate, land use and other environmental parameters, across geographic scales and over time. Detlef van Vuuren is a member and board member of the Integrated Assessment Modelling Consortium (IAMC), the Earth Commission (as part of Future Earth) and the Global Carbon Project (GCP). He is deputy editor of the scientific journal Climatic Change (a leading interdisciplinary journal on climate change). He participates in the editorial boards of Earth System Dynamics and Global Environmental Change. Detlef van Vuuren had a coordinating role in developing the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and subsequent Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), now used in the IPCC’s assessments. He led several international research projects, including the EU Funded PATHWAYS and COMMIT projects and participated in the scientific steering group of more than ten other European research projects. He participated as Coordinating Lead Author and Lead Author in more than 15 scientific assessments, such as the 5th and 6th Assessment Reports of IPCC, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, UNEP’s Global Environment Outlook, the International Assessment on Agricultural Science and Technology Development, and OECD Environmental Outlook.
