I suspect this may generate some comment.
Gentlemen and women, start your engines.
Paul Brown for Climate News Network:
Urban sprawl may not be as bad for the environment as we thought – as long as every home is fitted with solar panels and electric cars become the norm.
LONDON, 8 August – Modern planners are building compact cities, believing tightly controlled zones are better for the environment. New research suggests the opposite: urban sprawl might be a better option, with solar power fitted to suburban houses and the adoption of electric cars transforming the energy needs of a city.
Research in Auckland, New Zealand – the largest urban area in the country and a city built for the age of the motor car – shows that solar panels fitted to the average suburban home can produce enough power for that household, extra to charge an electric vehicle, and still generate enough watts to export a surplus to the grid.
Adopting a citywide approach to fitting solar panels and providing charging points for cars would enable suburban homes to provide most of the power for the city centre as well as keeping the transport running, according to Professor Hugh Byrd, from the School of Architecture at the University of Lincoln in England.
In collaboration with the New Zealand Energy Centre and the University of Auckland, Byrd and his colleagues found that detached suburban houses typical of a motor car age city are capable of producing ten times more solar power than is possible from skyscrapers or other commercial buildings. The calculations are based on a detailed cross section of Auckland, which has skyscrapers in its business centre but has most of its homes spread out over the surrounding countryside in an urban sprawl.
Transform planning
Although every city is different, the pattern of building in Auckland is repeated in many cities around the globe. Byrd’s idea is that if planners insist solar panels be fitted to properties and charging points be provided for electric cars, then cities judged to be damaging to the environment could be transformed.
“While a compact city may be more efficient for internal combustion engine vehicles, a dispersed city is more efficient when distributed generation of electricity by photovoltaic installations is the main energy source and electric vehicles are the principal mode of transport” says Byrd.
“This research could have implications on the policies of both urban form and energy. Far from reacting by looking to re-build our cities, we need to embrace the dispersed suburban areas and smart new technologies that will enable us to power our cities in a cost-effective way, without relying on ever dwindling supplies of fossil fuels.
Sprawl is good
“This study challenges conventional thinking that suburbia is energy-inefficient, a belief that has become enshrined in architectural policy. In fact, our results reverse the argument for a compact city based on transport energy use, and completely change the current perception of urban sprawl.”
Byrd concedes that the only way his ideas will work is if planning policy made fitting solar panels obligatory. Planning would also need to require the installation of photovoltaic roofing, smart meters and appropriate charging facilities for vehicles as standard in every household.
The advantages would be a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions, long term energy security, and a reduction in city pollution. – Climate News Network
From the paper” Measuring the Solar Potential of a City and its Implications for Energy Policy” (paywall):
For the purposes of this study, the use of PVs on vertical surfaces of tall buildings has been discounted for other reasons as well as efficiency. First, PVs can reduce the amount of daylight (passive solar energy in the visible spectrum) entering tall build- ings. The value of daylight for displacing electric lighting is far greater than the electricity provided by the PVs. Second, while PVs could be used as integral shading devices to reduce cooling load, the ability to implement this in Auckland is limited by the proximity of facades to plot boundaries (Byrd, 2012). Floor area is built to the boundary in order to maximise rental that, in turn, has a higher value than the energy required for excessive cooling loads. Third, without solar access rights in urban areas, there is no security of electricity production in the event of a new develop- ment overshadowing existing PV installations (Kellett, 2011).
6. Residential and commercial buildings
On all residential buildings, including high rise developments, it was assumed that solar panels for hot water would take priority over PVs on roofs, since the thermal conversion in these panels is significantly more efficient and cost effective than PVs.
It strikes me that there are more factors to consider than the ability to mount solar panels. Like the benefits (personal, environmental) that we get from having nature rather than yet another subdivision; efficiencies from large-scale solar plants; and the cost (fiscal, environmental) of producing, maintaining and recycling so many electric vehicles vs transit or bikes (which are poor in sprawl).
I think we should start building all our homes in space. We can get far more solar power in space than we can on Earth.
But, seriously, environmental degradation is measured in many more ways than simply power generation. We could consider first that we should just use less energy and thereby reduce our not only our carbon footprint but also our footprints in mining, land use, and water use, but we want more, more, more. More PVs to build more EVs to build more PVCs, DVDs, and LEDs. Grow it all! Forever!
No offense intended, but this should be an “environmentalist crock of the week” post. Urban sprawl in place of intact ecosystems? How could this not be anything but bad, no matter how humans get their energy source. Of course environmentalism today means making the environment suitable for human use under our current mode of industrial living, which is inevitably unsustainable for reasons enough to fill a book.
A shift away from energy usage and acceptance of localization is a turn towards an agrarian society which will result in an inevitable collapse of modern civilization and the guaranteed death of the species with the next major global catastrophe, if not before. We must not shy away from our continued efforts to master the generation and usage of energy even as we stand on the brink of a crisis, as humans are clearly crisis oriented. No, the obstacle to overcome is the shortterm-ism of our capitalist overlords preventing and discouraging any collective response to our problems. Our collectivity is of primacy, as it from within this that the answers will come: step away, retreat and we fracture, then the laws of entropy take over.
I recently returned to the UK for a visit, first in 4 years. I was surprised and enlightened to find fields of solar panels had cropped up, alongside an exponential growth in privately operated wind generators. Solar Panels. IN THE UK!!!! Now if it can work (financially) there, then surely there are a few fields in NZ we can spare? Perhaps farmers could view them as a cash cow, over the toxic cows we must currently suffer.
I am not a fan of urban sprawl. They may provide more roof space for solar panels but there are so many more negatives that outweigh this one benefit. Forcing everyone into their cars to get around is surely not something to be applauded.
I live in Auckland and it is definitely a car city. Public transport is poor, there are few almost no car-free urban spaces, it is blighted with the infrastructure required to support cars like concrete motorways and multistory car parks and they are all ugly and there is always dreadful traffic congestion. It is not my idea of a good place to live.
Wow. From Louisiana, USA I always idealized New Zealand. You are the first person in my whole life that I’ve ever heard criticize Auckland.
Guess I was being overly romantic
Well, if you swap out the roads to the suburbs with electrically driven mass transit, then I guess classic suburbia wouldnt be so bad. If there is farmland outside these areas, perhaps there could be some serious local food production too that is available for the people in that particular region. I do believe in the long term, cities are worse off than suburbia – especially if the suburban areas also have the ability to convert some of its land area into food producing gardens. Better fill up that swimming pool with some good soil instead! 🙂
It’s still bad in terms of habitat destruction, but if food gardens become the norm, instead of lawns, and every home is generating its own energy (and using sewage for biogas), and growing some of its own food, then yes – I could see suburbs being fine.
Still have to address the population problem, though.
Meh. I have a degree in urban planning and have looked at this sort of thing before. This is a poor study – it looks at a couple aspects of suburbs and uses a narrow definition of sustainability. Good planning is more integrated and holistic.
Their narrowing of the definition to “all power coming from rooftop solar” and “all commuting done by electric cars” is what leads them to their conclusion. If you open it up to “all power coming from various wind/solar installations, rooftop or otherwise” and “most commuting done by walking or rail” then the advantage turns back to dense development where walking and rail are practical.
Even if there weren’t any homes around the city, you can still put up solar panels there.
The problem I find with backyard gardening is how to make that sustainable, i.e. not replenishing the soil with industrial produced nutrients (potash, nitrogen, phosphorous) or actually purchasing soil from Home Depot. Composting helps, worms help, etc. But it’s hard to scale down something like the Norfolk rotation (wheat, legumes, cover crop, and something i’m forgetting) to a backyard. I’m thinking the only sustainable gardening will happen on the edge of a forest, where the forest replenishes the soil’s nutrients over time, naturally. That and you have the ability to do food forest type projects.