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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In recent years, interest for local energy production, supply and consumption has increased in academic and public debates. In particular, contemporary energy transition discourses and strategies often emphasize the search for increased local energy autonomy, a phrase which can refer to a diverse range of configurations, both in terms of the spaces and scales of the local territory considered and in terms of what is meant by energy autonomy. This book explores policies, projects and processes aimed at increased local energy autonomy, with a particular focus on their spatial, infrastructural and political dimensions. In doing so, the authors - Sabine Barles, Bruno Barroca, Guilhem Blanchard, Benoit Boutaud, Arwen Colell, Gilles Debizet, Ariane Debourdeau, Laure Dobigny, Florian Dupont, Zélia Hampikian, Sylvy Jaglin, Allan Jones, Raphael Ménard, Alain Nadaï, Angela Pohlmann, Cyril Roger-Lacan, Eric Vidalenc - improve our understanding of the always partial and controversial processes of energy relocation that articulate forms of local metabolic self-sufficiency, socio-technical decentralization and political empowerment. Comprising fifteen chapters, the book is divided into four parts: Governance and Actors; Urban Projects and Energy Systems; Energy Communities; and The Challenges of Energy Autonomy.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Foreword
Introduction
PART 1: Governance and Actors
1 Urban Planning and Energy: New Relationships, New Local Governance
1.1. Distributed energy: the constant adaptation of urban areas
1.2. “Sustainable cities” and new energy systems: from harmonization to a common origin
1.3. Reshaping local governance
1.4. References
2 Decentralized Energy and Cities: Tools and Levers for Urban Energy Decentralization
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Background
2.3. Woking, UK
2.4. London, UK
2.5. Sydney, Australia
2.6. Seoul, South Korea
2.7. Overall conclusions
2.8. References
3 The Third Industrial Revolution in Hauts-de-France: Moving Toward Energy Autonomy?
3.1. The industrial revolutions in the region
3.2. The TIR’s resources in Hauts-de-France
3.3. Initial assessments and analyses
3.4. References
4 Rethinking Reliability and Solidarity through the Prism of Interconnected Autonomies
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Four prospective scenarios for urbanized spaces
4.3. Intermediaries with new energy autonomies
4.4. A variety of decision-making scales relating to energy infrastructure
4.5. Conclusion: solidarities must be reinvented in the era of connected energy autonomies
4.6. Acknowledgments
4.7. References
PART 2: Urban Projects and Energy Systems
5 Critical Densities of Energy Self-sufficiency and Carbon Neutrality
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Energy consumption density
5.3. Renewable energy production density
5.4. Self-sufficiency, convergence: 1-W regions
5.5. Emission density and carbon neutrality
5.6. Conclusion
5.7. References
6 What Autonomy is Available in the Design of Energy Solutions within French Urban Development Projects? The Example of District Heating
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Urban heating within development projects: an opportunity for local monitoring of the energy system
6.3. The decision-based autonomy of urban heating projects from the perspective of urban development projects’ technical management
6.4. Conclusions and final thoughts
6.5. References
7 Positive Energy and Networks: Local Energy Autonomy as a Vector for Controlling Flows
7.1. Positive energy, autonomy and flow dynamics
7.2. The case of Lyon confluence and the Hikari block: a rhetoric of mutualization for achieving partial self-sufficiency
7.3. The “right” scale of autonomy and control over flows
7.4. From autonomy to flow management: who is in charge?
7.5. Conclusion
7.6. References
8 From Energy Self-sufficiency to Trans-scalar Energy
8.1. Self-sufficiency or sharing of the heat supply
8.2. Redefining the goal of self-sufficiency
8.3. The importance of strategic planning using project levers
8.4. Conclusion
PART 3: Energy Communities
9 Sociotechnical Morphologies of Rural Energy Autonomy in Germany, Austria and France
9.1. Introduction
9.2. Technical choices and autonomy processes
9.3. Actors of local energy autonomy
9.4. Spatial and autonomy temporalities
9.5. From the construction to the transferability of “models” of autonomy: what impasses and issue are there?
9.6. References
10 Community Energy Projects Redefining Energy Distribution Systems: Examples from Berlin and Hamburg
10.1. Introduction
10.2. Situational analyses of urban energy system transformation
10.3. People have the power? Citizens claiming energy infrastructure
10.4. Discussion: reconfiguring the social in sociotechnical?
10.5. Conclusion
10.6. References
11 Autonomy and Energy Community: Realities to Reconsider?
11.1. Introduction
11.2. Mapping and genealogy of energy community approaches
11.3. Scope and limits of existing works
11.4. Conclusion
11.5. References
PART 4: The Challenges of Energy Autonomy
12 Regional Energy Self-sufficiency: a Legal Issue
12.1. Self-sufficiency analyzed through the prism of the territory
12.2. Regional energy self-sufficiency: a legal issue
12.3. Conclusion
12.4. References
13 Electricity Autonomy and Power Grids in Africa: from Rural Experiments to Urban Hybridizations
13.1. Introduction
13.2. From the “crisis” to electrical experiments
13.3. Electrical hybridizations between pragmatic autonomy and new dependencies
13.4. Conclusion
13.5. References
14 Energy Self-sufficiency: an Ambition or a Condition for Urban Resilience?
14.1. Introduction
14.2. A matter of definitions
14.3. Technical systems and resilience
14.4. Self-sufficiency and functional resilience
14.5. Self-sufficiency and the meta-system: toward spatial resilience?
14.6. Conclusion
14.7. References
15 Urban Metabolic Self-sufficiency: an Oxymoron or a Challenge?
15.1. Introduction
15.2. Energy and matter: urban metabolism
15.3. The city and its hinterlands: the lack of physical autonomy
15.4. Decision-making self-sufficiency: a challenge?
15.5. Conclusion
15.6. References
List of Authors
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 2
Table 2.1. London’s CO
2
emissions reduction targets
Table 2.2. Delivering a 100% Renewable Energy Sydney by 2030
Table 2.3. City of Sydney major projects on its own buildings and operations
Table 2.4. Percentage of emissions the city offsets by carbon neutral credits
Chapter 5
Table 5.1. Some energy consumption flow values per country. The population data ...
Table 5.2. Some production density values by MacKay serve as average values to q...
Table 5.3. Evolution of land surface area per person for the last 350 years. It ...
Table 5.4. Summary and comparison of energy consumption between 2015 and 2050. “...
Chapter 6
Table 6.1. Favorable and unfavorable factors for local monitoring of urban heati...
Table 6.2. Linking of design arenas for the infrastructure of urban heating
Chapter 7
Table 7.1. Summary of the promoter’s choices for the energy operation for heatin...
Chapter 8
Table 8.1. Different supply scenarios and carbon impact
Chapter 9
Table 9.1. Comparative table and summary of sociotechnical morphologies for rura...
Chapter 11
Table 11.1. Approaches of energy communities
Table 11.2. The notions of community mobilized within the various approaches
Table 11.3. Liepins view of community approaches (2010)
Chapter 15
Table 15.1. Direct hydric footprint for the Paris metropolitan area, 1801–2 2050...
Table 15.2. The energy potential of the methanization of biowaste from residual ...
Table 15.3. The share of the food service industry (managed by the city and depa...
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1. The effective consumption of a building and its lifecycle (sources: ...
Figure 1.2. Mapping of new responsibilities of the authorities in area s related...
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1. Woking achievements from 1990 to 2007
Figure 2.2. Woking Energy Internet (source: Woking Borough Council (2 2004)). Fo...
Figure 2.3. Sydney’s energy and climate change targets
Figure 2.4. Sydney town precinct decentralized energy microgrid (source: City of...
Figure 2.5. Greenhouse gas emission savings from renewable gas grid injection (s...
Figure 2.6. Environmental upgrade agreements
Figure 2.7. Seoul City Hall decentralized energy microgrid (source: Allan Jones ...
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1. Energy balance for Hauts-de-France in 2015, produced by Enerdata and...
Figure 3.2. Energy targets and TIR trajectories for the Hauts-de-France region, ...
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1. Energy autonomy scales according to the possible combination of scen...
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1. Graph taken from the article “Dense Cities in 2050: The Energy Optio...
Figure 5.2. Incoming and outgoing flows for a given region
Figure 5.3. Individual consumption of primary energy (in W per person) and its c...
Figure 5.4. Energy consumption density according to latitude (according to Réfor...
Figure 5.5. An example of an energy harvesting plan carried out by Réforme [MEN ...
Figure 5.6. General view of the Fabrique de la Renaissance (169-architecture, Ob...
Figure 5.7. Some scenes near the Duc. Fabrique de la Renaissance Project (169-ar...
Figure 5.8. The non-convergence between demand and local production in 2050 in L...
Figure 5.9. Left: possible path for a densely populated region (100 pers/ha), th...
Figure 5.10. The before and after of Greater Paris. How to reduce cities’ energy...
Figure 5.11. Decreasing trend of global annual CO
2
emissions, compatible with li...
Figure 5.12. The balance between emission and sequestration densities
Figure 5.13. A diagram showing the energy consumption densities for French terri...
Figure 5.14. Some examples of regional energy catchment area consolidation. The ...
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1. District heating networks and urban development projects across the ...
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1. Summary diagram of the actors involved in the “energy” part of the H...
Figure 7.2. Presentation of the Hikari block (source: Bouygues Immobilier). For ...
Figure 7.3. Schematic representation of the Hikari block’s energy functioning (s...
Figure 7.4. The UrbanEra approach (source: Bouygues Immobilier presentation). Fo...
Figure 7.5. Scope of the heating network service (source: SPL Lyon Confluence). ...
Figure 7.6. The Community Energy Management System developed by Embix (source: E...
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1. Diagram of heat sharing between the efficient building and the old o...
Figure 8.2. Energy solidarity at the regional scale for the Nanterre Hoche eco-d...
Figure 8.3. Carbon impact of the thermal supply solutions at La Défense (in gray...
Figure 8.4. Cost–benefit analysis: the appropriate objective is defined by a poi...
Figure 8.5. This graph shows the marginal abatement cost (extra cost relative to...
Figure 8.6. Analysis of marginal abatement cost for users. For a color version o...
Figure 8.7. Diagram showing Self the contribution of buildings to their region
Figure 8.8. Less energy consumption, more pooling of heat sources. For a color v...
Figure 8.9. Comparative diagram summarizing gas and electricity solutions for co...
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1. Jühnde (Germany). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.c...
Figure 9.2. Mureck (Austria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.c...
Figure 9.3. Freiamt (Germany). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste....
Figure 9.4. Le Mené (France). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.c...
Figure 9.5. Güssing (Austria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste....
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1. BEB hands over 10,101 signatures in favor of a citizen-controlled g...
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1. Mapping analyses and their origins. For a color version of this fig...
Chapter 14
Figure 14.1. Urban systems model approach (HABITAT III 2015)
Figure 14.2. Summary of the main meta-system models. Red areas are the spaces th...
Figure 14.3. A main smart-shelter concept (seen in model B: Islands – Main land ...
Figure 14.4. Multiple smart shelters forming a network throughout the territory ...
Chapter 15
Figure 15.1. Energy, food (expressed in nitrogen) and water consumption in the P...
Figure 15.2. The three urban hinterlands: supply areas (inputs%), distribution a...
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Urban Engineering Set
coordinated by
Bruno Barroca and Damien Serre
Volume 1
Local Energy Autonomy
Spaces, Scales, Politics
Edited by
Fanny Lopez
Margot Pellegrino
Olivier Coutard
First published 2019 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd
27-37 St George’s Road
London SW19 4EU
UK
www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030
USA
www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2019
The rights of Fanny Lopez, Margot Pellegrino and Olivier Coutard to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019932361
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-144-4
Foreword
In taking the local dimension into account in urban operations, calling into question the human, urban, technological and so-called “natural” risks of urban balances, and discussing the rise of digital technology in the design and management of socio-technical systems or the ever increasing scarcity of resources, a systemic interpretation of urban structures and a geographical interpretation of the social and spatial distributions of today and tomorrow are called for. It is to this dual approach that the Urban Engineering set, which puts forward thematic issues of knowledge resulting from the mobilization of theoretical foundations, analysis of practices and prospective approaches, responds.
While urban territories play a central role in current global issues, this set of books presents an interdisciplinary vision of the relationships between urban spaces and their environments. Just as closely related to urban planning and geography as to urban sociology or engineering sciences, urban engineering is not fixed in a particular discipline but establishes connections between them. It provides urban actors with knowledge and approaches that link together planning, engineering and territory. To work as an urban engineer is to master the techniques corresponding to urban systems while integrating them into their local contexts. In urban engineering, the notion of technical optimum and reflection at the spatial and temporal scales is only relevant when considering other urban, social, territorial and environmental legitimacies.
Despite the advantages expressed by the scientific methods used, by the recognition of practitioners, local authorities and operational and institutional actors, urban engineering does not guarantee immediate and disciplinary unity. This assumed fact raises questions about its position in the field of academic research. The set is part of this questioning: it defends both the interdisciplinary nature of urban engineering and also its operational nature, which makes it possible to link research and action. These advantages lead to the reinterpretation of dominant models, the proposal of approaches to the evolution of practices and the exchange and confrontation of knowledge to stimulate reflection on the future.
This first book – Local Energy Autonomy – launches the Urban Engineering set based on a forward-looking theme and discusses particular social, economic, technical and environmental challenges.
Bruno BARROCA and Damien SERRE
Coordinators of the Urban Engineering set
Introduction
Energy and territories: towards new configurations
Energy production, supply and consumption in territories are once again provoking public debate. While the peak oil horizon seems to be constantly shrinking, particularly due to the development of non-conventional hydrocarbon exploitation, the challenge of climate change has imposed the theme of energy transition at international level. This is reflected in the discourses and (to a lesser extent) the actions of many actors (political, economic, associative) according to different registers: evolution of the primary energy mix of electricity or heat production systems; promotion of low-carbon or non-carbon renewable energies and reduction of dependence on fossil fuels (to which nuclear energy can be added, or not, depending on the country); the quest for energy efficiency gains in transport, buildings, productive activities (goods, services, food, etc.) and the promotion of less energy-consuming practices.
These forms of action have one thing in common, although they are not limited to it: they all aim, by their very principle, at a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions linked to energy production and consumption. There is, however, a modality of action that is experiencing increasing success – some would say a revival of fortune – in energy transition discourses and strategies, and that does not mainly rest on the same principle: the search for increased local energy autonomy [DOU 19]. This quest for autonomy was forcefully articulated more than 10 years ago by the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, as part of the “decentralized energy revolution” that he initiated in London and which his successors, Boris Johnson and the current Mayor of the British capital, Sadiq Khan, have essentially pursued. It is now expressed in a number of strategic documents issued by cities or other local authorities and confirmed, for example, by the growing interest among stakeholders in exploiting (more systemically) local energy potential. It also largely underpins, for instance, recent legislative provisions in France promoting the development of “self-production” and “self-consumption”.
The authors of this book have therefore chosen to examine contemporary reconstructions of the links between energy and territory through the issue of local energy autonomy, and the related processes of empowerment, a term used here to designate the increasing power of local actors on issues related to energy. The term “local energy autonomy” refers to a wide variety of existing or planned configurations and is not systematically used in documents or by the actors concerned. Three factors of diversity stand out in particular: the variable content and scope of the targeted autonomy (electricity, heating of buildings, travel, power, etc. separately or in combination); the diversity of the spatial scales envisaged (from buildings to the greater metropolitan area); and the various meanings of the notion of autonomy applied to energy production, circulation and consumption. Let us clarify this latter point.
Figures of local energy autonomy
In its original political sense, the notion of autonomy refers to the dual ability (of an individual or group) to define one’s own rules and to comply with them. In this perspective, local energy autonomy refers to the ability of an actor or, more often than not, a local system of actors (a system in which some are generally supra-local actors) to define the conditions of production, circulation, supply and consumption of energy of the “place” under consideration. This concept applies in particular to organized collectives: a population group under the same local political authority (commune, department, region, etc.) or an association of individuals on a voluntary basis (as in the transition towns movement).
It seems to us that two main types of energy autonomy should be distinguished in this political sense. On the one hand, secessionist autonomy, which refers to a radical independence project or community isolationism [MAR 16] or to groups or individuals wishing to break away from, especially, electricity operators for possibly very different reasons [LOP 14, VAN 15]. This is the consequence of the deliberate action taken by a group of individuals, a community or a State to establish an economy, or even a society, a closed and an energy system without any interconnection with traditional networks. Thus, secessionist autonomy is close to autarky or autarchy. On the other hand, there is a cooperative or generative autonomy which, differently from the first case, is open to the potential for achieving mutualization and interconnection between autonomous local networks according to a political project shared by the actors, and which could be referred to as “connectable places”. The scale can be as large as in the first case, and the actors and the levels of governance are more diverse [LOP 19].
The general perspective adopted in this book is to question local energy autonomy in its political meaning and scope, as we have just described it. However, the current uses of the notion of autonomy (in terms of energy in any case) also fall under two other meanings:
i) a
metabolic
meaning, referring to the notions of self-production, self-consumption and self-sufficiency, i.e. the idea that autonomy can be measured by the capacity of an individual, a household, a group, the population of a territory, to produce their own means of energy subsistence, to paraphrase François Ascher
1
(one could even speak of energy autotrophy);
ii) a
socio-technical
or organizational meaning, referring to the structure and management of energy systems, energy autonomy being assessed according to the capacity of a local energy supply system to operate more or less independently of neighboring or higher-level systems [RUT 14]. From this point of view, a solar panel installed on the roof of a detached house has a very different meaning depending on whether it is owned, managed and used by the house’s inhabitants (autonomous configuration) or by the regional or national electricity company (heteronomous configuration).
Taken together, the chapters in this book provide insights into these three registers of local energy autonomy and their inter-relationships. As detailed at the end of this introduction, the chapters have been grouped into four parts according to their main focus, i.e., respectively: actors involved in the governance of local energy systems; the consideration of energy issues in urban projects; energy communities; and the “challenges” of energy autonomy. This structure provides a first reading grid for the book. In the rest of this introduction, we would like to propose a second one, even if this double grid obviously does not exhaust the richness of the analyses, reflections and theories developed in each contribution.
Four major cross-cutting questions seem to emerge from the different chapters and objects of study presented by the authors:
– the form and dynamics of the links between the metabolic, socio-technical and political dimensions of local energy autonomy;
– the scales of structuring contemporary network spaces;
– energy autonomy as a context or a breeding ground for experimentation (innovations, appropriations, diversions, etc.);
– infrastructural diversification (in terms of socio-technical systems, decision-making structures and power relations).
Metabolic, socio-technical and political empowerment: congruences and tensions
The three dimensions of autonomy do not necessarily go hand in hand. There are examples of highly centralized policies to promote local energy self-sufficiency (for example, at the scale of large regions, or at the much finer scale of the housing block). Nor is there any strict infrastructural determinism. For instance, interconnection to major networks does not prevent the existence of forms of local decision-making autonomy, and the same infrastructure systems can be put to very different uses. In France, for example, decentralized production is currently perceived as an economic means of adjustment between supply and demand to the benefit of major suppliers. In the near future, hierarchies could be reversed: the large electricity grid could become a last-resort supplier for local “energy territories” in case of insufficient local generation or system overload, or to prevent a blackout. The deliberate design of energy islands is also justified in terms of energy security, in view of the possible increase in climatic disasters (hurricanes, tidal waves) or other major disruptions, as discussed by Bruno Barocca (Chapter 14).
However, the change in socio-technical configuration and organizational scale can also be accompanied by the advent of more localized energy governance, as shown by Laure Dobigny (Chapter 9) in her chapter on autonomous rural communities in Germany, Austria and France or by Arwen Colell and Angela Pohlmann (Chapter 10) in their study of electricity supply compensation projects in Hamburg and Berlin. The collective organization of “energy commons” or energy projects led by civic forces (inhabitants, local economic actors) will seek institutional and/or municipal support. To achieve progressive empowerment, it is the very notion of an energy community that must be redefined, as Ariane Debourdeau and Alain Nadaï explain (Chapter 11).
Thus, the search for local forms of energy autonomy can act, at the same territorial levels, as a factor of empowerment, in the energy field or more broadly. In other words, for a system of local actors, the issue of energy (supply) can be a factor of political empowerment. In particular, the “takeover” of the energy issue can give rise to a broader process of infrastructure transition aimed at defining (or reinventing) a unit of place (housing, housing block, neighborhood, city, territory) designed to be efficient in terms of energy, ecological and economic balance, based on a “relocation” of the entire chain (resource, production, management) of one or more service loops.
The structuring of network spaces: new logics and new scales
During the second half of the 20th Century, energy (as well as many flows) was largely “invisible” at a local level and particularly in cities, both literally by burying or removing part of the infrastructure and figuratively by “relocating” energy choices. Today, debates, reflections and projects concerning the relocation of energy and the search for forms of energy autonomy contribute to providing a new visibility to the question of energy, its production, circulation, uses, the income generated, associated pollution, etc. This visibility takes various forms: from “abstract” awareness through institutional or activist messages to the spatial materialization of energy systems (such as wind power installations), which are often a source of conflict. Bringing the question of local scale, short distances, decentralized or distributed energy production, local pollution, strategies and processes of energy transition back to the center of public debates contributes to or announces major transformations in the urban and territorial project, and in the organization and management of space. The energy issue also offers the actors of the territory the opportunity to build a new story. This was particularly the case in the Hauts-de-France where Eric Vidalenc analyzes the strategy of the Third Industrial Revolution (Chapter 3).
The links between the design of built-up areas and the design of energy systems question both the perimeters and scales of each other. Territories are subject to a certain density of “energy harvesting” and new consumption ratios, which produce scalar tensions. By extending the analysis to a set of flows (energy, but also water, waste, human and animal food, etc.) – in other words: metabolism – Sabine Barles (Chapter 15) shows that, in the current situation, any claim to autonomy for dense cities is impossible to achieve. However, if we look at it from a more forward-looking point of view, the perspective may change. Raphael Ménard (Chapter 5) thus places the massive reduction in energy consumption at the heart of the changes needed to achieve a carbon neutrality objective. Under these assumptions, a significant reduction in the gap between the supply perimeters and the emission and discharge areas of flows, particularly energy flows, seems conceivable.
It is also the divergent interests of actors that lead them to favor different scales or “scalar arrangements”. For example, some developers prefer the scale of the building or the micro-district, while energy companies project on a larger scale: large districts, even large territories. The spatial-technical approach to energy transition calls for an adaptation of governance in the light of the new links between energy and urban planning. Cyril Roger-Lacan (Chapter 1) thus defends the idea that urban planning and energy planning should be systematically associated, and details the issues and implications of this vision.
Energy autonomy projects reveal two divergent approaches. On the one hand, the attempt to identify “good” perimeters, giving priority to a certain scale: BEPOS, TEPOS, energy catchment area, etc. On the other hand, the gradual abandonment of this quest for dimensional optimum for rethinking energy empowerment in light of three distinct registers of action that are likely to refer to different scales or spaces. These include the mobilization of existing resources, the management of emergencies and climate and energy crises, and social (re)configurations that are conducive to empowerment.
Taking into account the existing situation as a lever makes it possible to promote mutualization and energy solidarity with what already exists in terms of the territory, i.e. not only to “land” a new technology or the new decentralized massive production of energy and to think upstream of the synergies between networks and buildings, both new and old (the latter in connection with thermal renovation). This requires moving towards weakened solutions where the relevance of the scale is determined on a case-by-case basis based on the reality of each project. This operational vision is confronted with divisions in decision-making and the contributions of Zélia Hampikian (Chapter 7), Guilhem Blanchard (Chapter 6) and Florian Dupont (Chapter 8), who describe and analyze the various clashes and tensions that result.
The perspective of climate and energy emergencies leads us to consider autonomy as a temporary and non-permanent condition (the notion of autonomy thus acquiring a temporal dimension), as well as a relative condition (partial autonomy). On the basis of different topics, Bruno Barroca (Chapter 14) and Allan Jones MBE (Chapter 2) both conclude that there is an interest in guaranteeing a minimum local energy supply, making it possible to respond to sudden crisis situations, limited in time and limited in space (i.e., to a specific portion of a territory, a specific facility, a subnetwork, etc.). The (micro) local solidarity scales (at least regarding functional solidarity) would be more robust (resilient) in the face of extreme events: see for example the doctrine developed by the State of New York, which supports an ambitious micro-grid development program.
Thinking about autonomy based on social (re)configurations thus means questioning the conditions of aggregation, mobilization, participation, the construction of a collective meaning, an ideology, even a conflicting vision, etc. One topic appears throughout these different visions: that of abandoning a universal system of local autonomy in favor of a plural vision of territories that do not have the same status or the same relationship with energy, and where infrastructural diversity prevails.
Infrastructure diversification, redistribution of skills and reconstruction of stakeholder systems
The social ideal of major infrastructure as a public service construction, which combines economy of scale, technical reliability and quality service for the greatest number of people, has been destabilized since the 1990s by the logic of liberalization and commodification [GRA 01]. The centralized technical object is confronted with new assemblages and changes in value. Attempts to rebuild public service from the commons [ALI 18] and “return to the public” or “de-privatization” changes at municipal or regional level are increasing and should not be perceived as a downturn [JEA 17]. Micro-installations for energy production and other citizen initiatives for energy relocation are most often a sign of the desire to re-energize the public at local level. As John Dewey [DEW 27] argued, the public concerned by infrastructure is not an immobile and predefined mass of citizens, but an active community of interest, part of which is increasingly engaged in the search for more collective and efficient governance of natural resources and new arrangements for the diptych of autonomy/solidarity, as Gilles Debizet (Chapter 4) points out.
Ultimately, it is appropriate to speak of forms of autonomy or processes of empowerment in the plural. Indeed, processes of infrastructure transition(s) are marked by a wide diversity of technical and political choices at local levels, often resulting in a socio-technical hybridization of existing systems rather than the deployment of new supply configurations independent of these systems. In her study on the supply of energy in urban and rural areas in Africa, Sylvy Jaglin (Chapter 13) highlights the ambivalence of the changes at work, between pragmatic autonomy and new dependencies, and the unexpected circulations between rural and urban areas. The organization of space and hierarchies within stakeholder systems are thus disrupted by energy changes and the quest for greater autonomy. The materialization of the transition is subject to a need to develop concurrent engineering and energy project management. This issue is addressed in many chapters, including those written by Guilhem Blanchard (Chapter 6) and Gilles Debizet (Chapter 4), who stress the need for “intermediate actors”. Historical actors in the energy or urban sectors are looking for new skills to imagine a redistribution of roles for the control of relocated energy flows, but also in the design-maintenance of systems. As Guilhem Blanchard (Chapter 6) and Zélia Hampikian (Chapter 7) show, new roles are also emerging for private actors in urban production (developers, donors, etc.): what place is there for new business models? Or for new forms of contractualization (performance guarantee, etc.)?
Transformation dynamics can be top-down or bottom-up. For Allan Jones MBE (Chapter 2), a top-down approach (strategy broken down into projects and actions) can work, particularly for large cities (London, Sydney and Seoul). The approach is based on a range of principles, tools and objectives that are flexible and adaptable to local contexts, rather than on the transfer of a “ready-made” model. Benoit Boutaud (Chapter 12) shows that French-style localism tends to rule out any idea of an autonomous “energy community” that would emerge more or less spontaneously from civil society or even local authorities, in favor of “territories” engaged in an autonomy approach circumscribed by state frameworks. This is why empowerment processes must also be understood in their legal dimension in order to highlight these frameworks. Conversely, the contributions of Laure Dobigny (Chapter 9) and Arwen Colell and Angela Pohlmann (Chapter 10) attest to the importance, in the German context, of bottom-up approaches among associations. The analytical opposition between “ascending” dynamics (conquered autonomy) and “descending” dynamics (granted autonomy) must however be relativized. Indeed, an empowerment that is initially top-down, granted or conceded by the State, can be appropriated by a community to be further developed, in the energy field or in other areas of common interest, even if the achievement of the empowerment processes requires a favorable legislative and regulatory framework and, more broadly, a congruence between citizen mobilization and action by local and national (and, where applicable, European) public authorities.
At the crossroads of innovation, experimentation and diversion
What are the possible forms of support for these changes by the public authorities? One way consists in establishing, by way of derogation, spaces allowing experimentation and the local appropriation of energy issues, at least temporarily. The notion of experimentation is important because it makes it possible to capture both projects framed by explicit procedures and more unexpected forms of action, diversions and overflows, “more subversive, informal and undisciplined dynamics of experimentation, shaping in their own way electrical autonomies that escape projects”. The notion of diversion opens up another important issue concerning the standardization of experiments and autonomy solutions and their relation to modelbased solutions. Sylvy Jaglin (Chapter 13) points out that, in some African countries, “the territorialization of electrical autonomy resists the standardization of electrical experiments”. From a dynamic perspective, “ready to use” models and experiments “without a safety net” thus appear as two particular modalities of a continuum of approaches combining the two action logics to varying degrees; indeed, local experiments often mobilize elements of models in circulation at international level. On a more theoretical level, the analyses in terms of the circulation of models and those in terms of experiments refer to two distinct conceptualizations of local public action, the first limiting the competence of local actors (or, more rigorously: local systems of actors or action) to the choice of “solutions” more or less adapted to the problems they wish to solve, the second granting these local actors an ability to assemble resources (cognitive, technical, financial, etc.) of diverse origin in real processes of local innovation.
Perspectives
To conclude, let us mention three perspectives opened up by this book.
Firstly, it seems to us that all the contributions confirm an assumed bias in the book, namely that it is the processes of empowerment rather than the degree of autonomy achieved within a given local territory that must be the focus of researchers’ attention. It is the study of these processes – understood as the provisional, incomplete, controversial, conflictual, even reversible, but also potentially transformative… outcome of the strategies and (interdependent) actions of a set of actors – that most accurately and completely illuminates the possible room for maneuver available to local action systems and the constraints they face.
Secondly, we would like to note that while the book highlights the spatiality (and “scalarity”) of energy empowerment processes and forms of local energy autonomy, it does not deal head-on with their temporality. However, this temporal dimension is of major importance in at least two inter-related respects. On the one hand, the quest for autonomy is based on a vision of a more desirable future whose imaginary, ideological, but also material modalities of construction must be questioned. Indeed, these visions of the future provide information for research on empowerment, and on transition dynamics more generally, both from an analytical point of view (what is important to study and how can it be studied?) and from a normative point of view (for what purpose should local energy autonomy be sought? Are the processes at work consistent with the visions of the future underlying them?). On the other hand, empowerment processes are long-term and must be understood as such. Over what time scale is autonomy sought? What trade-offs are there between the search for autonomy in the short term and in the long term? What are the links between the urgency of contemporary challenges and the powerful but slow dynamics of infrastructural reconfigurations?
Finally, the issues studied in this book cannot be dissociated from more general political questions. A change in the socio-technical energy regime, including a change in the primary energy source (from nuclear to solar, from coal to wind power), in infrastructure scale (large to small), in governance (from large globalized companies to citizen cooperatives, for example), can significantly reduce the negative impacts of existing energy systems on ecosystems. On the one hand, however, it does not in itself guarantee the emergence of a generally more virtuous political dynamic, i.e. one that would aim at a transition to an ecological society based on a radical transformation of production and lifestyle patterns in order to adapt our consumption to the planet’s carrying capacity. On the other hand, energy autonomy can serve different purposes: lower energy use, carbon neutrality, social cohesion, etc. But it is not the prerogative of progressive groups. It can be promoted by members of a gated community of white supremacists or by developers exposed to real estate speculation as well as by groups of degrowth activists in rural areas. Thus, the definition of an energy project that is ecologically compatible with the territories concerned is only one of the elements of a broader project. In the context of climate change and energy transition [LEP 18], it seems to us not only politically desirable, but also scientifically heuristic to place these questions on new territorial energy arrangements in the more general perspective of the advent of an ecological society, involving a decrease in consumption, the effective search for sobriety and the definition of a more global emancipation project [AUD 17].
Book structure
The 15 chapters of this book propose to jointly understand the spatial, infrastructural and political dimensions of projects and processes for energy empowerment. The authors – whether architects, historians, engineers, geographers, socio-anthropologists or urban planners – seek to shed light on the links between the forms of relocation of energy production, circulation and consumption at work, the underlying interplay of actors and the concomitant (re)articulation between small and large socio-technical regimes. The authors are particularly interested in the processes (partial and contested) of energy relocation that articulate forms of metabolic, socio-technical and political empowerment. The chapters are grouped into four parts according to their main purpose (questioning).
In Part 1 – Governance and Actors – four contributions question the notion of energy autonomy through the role of the actors involved, who support and promote it or who endure it. Based on case studies at different scales, the challenges of energy governance – actors’ skills, forms of solidarity and horizontal or vertical relations of coordination or coercion – are linked to those arising from broader political decentralization processes. The relevance and limitations of planning tools and various approaches promoting energy autonomy are examined.
The four chapters of Part 2 – Urban Projects and Energy Systems – are based on an analysis of recent urban projects in which the issues of local energy production and distribution have been a central element in the thinking of architects, urban planners, developers, builders and contracting authorities. They tend to demonstrate that the consideration of energy issues in these projects has had an impact not only on the choice of technical solutions adopted, but also on actors’ practices and the conduct of projects.
Part 3 – Energy Communities – sheds light on the notion of autonomy through the study of citizen initiatives. These are described throughout empirical studies of their development trajectories, highlighting local roots, contextual conditions and inter-relations (interdependencies?) with public action and private actors, at different scales. Additional insight is provided by an analysis of the growing scientific literature on energy communities.
The fourth and final part of this book – The Challenges of Energy Autonomy – brings together four contributions that examine the spatial and functional limits of energy autonomy from a specific analytical perspective: urban metabolism and territorial ecology; urban resilience; experimentation; and (French) local authority law.
The contributions collected in this book are the result of a series of three seminars organized under the aegis of Labex Futurs Urbains.
The first seminar, entitled Les territoires de l'autonomie énergétique and coordinated by Olivier Coutard (CNRS, LATTS), Fanny Lopez (ÉAV&T, LIAT) and Margot Pellegrino (UPEM, Lab'URBA), was held at the École nationale supérieure d’architecture Paris-Malaquais and the École d'architecture de la ville & des territoires in Marne-la-Vallée (ÉAV&T) on 17th and 18th February 2016. The second, entitled La fabrique de l'autonomie énergétique, coordinated by Guilhem Blanchard and Zélia Hampikian (ENPC, LATTS), François Balaye (Université Grenoble Alpes, PACTE), Milena Marquet (UGA, GAEL) and Charlotte Tardieu (EIVP, Lab'URBA) took place in Paris (EIVP & ENPC) on 13th and 14th June 2016. The third, entitled Grassroot initiatives in energy transitions: Paris/London/Berlin and coordinated by Olivier Coutard, Fanny Lopez and Margot Pellegrino, was held on 19th May, 2017 at the ÉAV&T.
In total, these seminars brought together about 30 speakers, half of whom were selected to compose the book after a revision process by the scientific editors.
References
[ALI 18] ALIX N., BANCEL J. L., CORIAT B., SULTAN F. (eds), Vers une république des biens communs, Les liens qui libèrent, Paris, 2018.
[ASC 01] ASCHER F., Les nouveaux principes de l’urbanisme, Editions de l’Aube, La Tourd’Aigues, France, 2001.
[AUD 17] AUDIER S., La Société écologique et ses ennemis. Pour une histoire alternative de l’émancipation, La Découverte, Paris, 2017.
[BAF 18] BAFOIL F., LEPESANT G. (eds), Énergies renouvelables. Les biomasses, l’éolien, le solaire. Stratégies nationales, structuration des réseaux et innovations en Grande-Bretagne, France, Allemagne, Report for the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, Sciences Po CERI, 2018.
[DEW 27] DEWEY J., The Public and its Problems, Ohio University Press, Athens, 1927.
[DOU 19] DOUZOU S., GUYON M., LUCK S. (eds), Les territoires de la transition énergétique, Lavoisier, Paris, 2019.
[GRA 01] GRAHAM S., MARVIN S., Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition, Routledge, London, 2001.
[JEA 17] JEANNOT G., “Les communs et les infrastructures des villes”, in CHATZIS C., JEANNOT G., NOVEMBER V., UGHETTO P. (eds), Les Métamorphoses des infrastructures. Entre béton et numérique, Peter Lang, Paris, 2017.
[LEP 18] LEPESANT, G. (ed.), Énergies nouvelles, territoires autonomes?, Presses de l’Inalco, 2018.
[LOP 14] LOPEZ F., Le rêve d’une déconnexion, de la maison autonome à la cité auto-énergétique, Editions La Villette, 2014.
[LOP 19] LOPEZ F., L'ordre électrique, infrastructures énergétiques et territoires, Édition MétissPresses, 2019.
[MAR 18] MARVIN S., RUTHERFORD J., “Controlled environments: an urban research agenda on microclimatic enclosure”, Urban Studies, March 2018.
[RUT 14] RUTHERFORD J., COUTARD O., “Urban energy transitions: places, processes and politics of socio-technical change”, Urban Studies, vol. 51, no. 7, pp. 1353–1377, 2014.
[VAN 15] VANNINI P., TAGGART J., Off the Grid: Re-assembling Domestic Life, Routledge, London, 2015.
Introduction written by Fanny LOPEZ, Margot PELLEGRINO and Olivier COUTARD.
1
Ascher (ASC 2001: 11) suggests to define cities as “groupings of populations that do not produce themselves their means of food subsistence”.
PART 1Governance and Actors
1Urban Planning and Energy: New Relationships, New Local Governance
The relationship between urban planning and energy dates back to the early stages of urbanization. However, in the last few decades, the development of energy systems, especially electricity and gas systems, has followed a specific technical logic, which revolves around extensive production and transport infrastructure on a larger scale. The relationship between energy and urban planning merely consisted in adjusting their technical development path to the urban fabric, public space and other construction constraints. This was certainly not the case for district heating grids that were, from the start, correlated with an urban project, even in the centralized models that marked their development between the 1960s and the 1980s. However, this relationship remained related to some simple and unequivocal equations, and the urban and built environment was treated as the offtaker of an energy that was produced outside of it.
This situation, which prevailed during most of the 20th Century without major changes, is currently undergoing a radical transformation due to the emergence of new local energy systems. Local communities become the crucible that enables the deployment of a new type of energy intelligence, an intelligence that sets two concrete dynamics in motion and makes them coherent.
The first of these dynamics concerns the energies themselves, the standardization of their production and uses, as well as their control and efficiency. It combines two sets of possibilities: on the one hand, the development of the resources of an area – the unavoidable energy waste and recoverable energy, the unused production potentials, all the renewable energy resources – and, on the other hand, the progressive re-engineering and efficiency improvements of their various uses.
The second dynamic is the need to link this energy intelligence more closely to the design and management of other policies: urban planning, land use, waste, housing, transport and intelligent mobility in particular. In order to progress in depth in the energetic field, it is necessary to connect it to these other policies, requiring renewed and strengthened local public governance.
The purpose of the following considerations is to briefly shed light on how the relationship between energy and urban planning is changing, and to understand the implications of such a change.
While the distribution of energy in all its components has already created a set of new challenges for those who plan and develop cities and land use, a second stage in this transformation has already started, initiating a new logic where urban development and local energy systems jointly arise from a common origin, and are part of a process of joint transformation.
Distributed energy is understood as the production of energy in a neighborhood, a group of buildings or a single apartment block; but it also includes the multiple possibilities of district energy exchanges in the subsystems which distribute the energy produced in a decentralized way, especially when buildings and networks are equipped with active and controlled demand systems. We can also include here the new uses of energy that develop alongside this transformation, such as electromobility.
The impact of this transformation on the institutions that run and manage cities, and those that design and operate energy systems, is manifold and engages new actors alongside the old ones. We will briefly try to list some of the issues that all those involved will have to solve together through a governance system that will have to be almost completely reinvented.
1.1. Distributed energy: the constant adaptation of urban areas
The possibility of using distributed energy systems is likely to have profound effects on urban planning and development. These effects are at first discrete but, at different stages, will modify a wide variety of parameters and approaches.
To fully understand the subject, the direct effects of these new urban planning possibilities must be considered – the integration of decentralized production in land-use planning or local building standards, for example – but also the indirect and systemic effects that are more difficult to foresee. As an example, let us note that an increase in the degree of energy autonomy of buildings can have opposite effects: reduce the networks’ pressure in the design of the urban fabric and thus, at first glance, lead to more isolated constructions; or, in the opposite sense, favor the emergence of small thermal networks, combining heat and cold, enabling energy exchanges and using storage components, which go hand in hand with a denser urban planning and increased community management, which allows economic models for these networks to appear, in connection with new lifestyles. These effects are therefore not unequivocal.
Once this clarification has been made, at least four main types of distributed energy effects can be distinguished in urban planning and construction.
First, the development of distributed energies leads to many changes regarding land use, creates new nuisances in inhabited areas (but can reduce them in other areas) and changes building standards. It therefore imposes multiple adaptations in terms of urban planning and land use.
The early integration of renewable energies into urban planning is both an urbanistic constraint and a condition for the efficient development of renewable energies. It concerns the sites and land reserved for the different installations, but also construction modes that favor “highly” distributed energy, such as rooftop photovoltaic installations or solar canopies, solar thermal heating or micro-cogeneration at the building level.
Beyond the technical adaptations of many urban planning documents, the question raised by these developments is twofold.
On the one hand, the determination in all European countries to promote more resilient local energy systems, based especially on the development of local and carbon-free energies, is pushing local actors, and the organizing authorities in particular, to take over the issue and act in common projects. The German renewable energy generation fleet, which exceeds 80 GW installed and is potentially 1.5 times the size of the French nuclear fleet, is owned by over 50% by local actors: citizen cooperatives, local investment firms created by small companies, farmers, etc. These collective grassroots commitments, the degree of which varies from one country to another, clearly resonate with the desire to develop renewable energies. In Denmark, the development of wind energy, on an unequaled scale in Europe, has mainly been based since the 1980s on the obligation to offer local communities and their citizens the opportunity to invest in the different projects.
On the other hand, the decisions that mark the development of renewable energies, whether regarding urban planning or the environment, are now part of an “environmental democracy” development context, based on the principle of public participation in decisions affecting the environment, a long-standing part of the European legal order (“Plans and Programs” Directive, Aarhus Convention), and constitutionalized in France by Article 7 of the Environmental Charter. This legal environment, and the resulting change in mentality that it conveys, slows down and complicates project development, both due to the consultations that it requires and the subsequent opportunities for litigation it can lead to. In France, as demonstrated by the changes back and forth that have affected the legal regime of wind energy, it has been difficult to find the right balance regarding this matter1.
Similar legislations will therefore have different impacts depending on the location and context, and on whether local stakeholders participate in the energy development within the region, the two situations at times arising at once. The paradox over the last few years in most European countries has been that increased cooperation of local communities in the development of distributed energies, expressing their desire to participate as much as possible in these new forms of energy production for territorial development and new forms of urban development and exploitation of local resources, has not, however, helped to prevent the increasing resistance faced by many projects, particularly those regarding wind energy. On the other hand, as will be seen later, the projects focusing on thermal energy and district heating and cooling grids have found new momentum in this interdependent relationship with urban planning.
Second, energy becomes a new component of urban development and planning models.
As an example, the conversion of military or industrial wasteland includes, often as a priority, the production of renewable energies: some of the largest solar power plants in France are a result of these types of projects. Similarly, in some rural areas in Europe, wind, solar and biogas projects of agricultural origin have changed the landscape and economic models linked to land use. In some countries, specific crops for biofuels have been used. However, this tendency is in sharp decline in Europe2. In Germany, almost one in two farms currently has income resulting from renewable energies3, and field data suggest that in the last 10 years, in countries where renewable energies have grown the most, revenue from leasing land to wind or photovoltaic installations, sometimes combined with direct participation in project companies and methanization projects, have offset, in varying proportions, the decrease in agricultural income resulting from market conditions or the evolution of European subsidies. Other data highlight the new links between the profitable development of renewable energy and the transformation of economic models of a growing number of farms4, far beyond alternative income.
Beyond the land use changes and modifications of urban planning documents that these energies require, the entire economic and urban planning dynamics for the land development are modified in advance when an energy component is included.
For example, the so-called solar cadastre techniques that make it possible to identify the energy potential of photovoltaic or thermal installations in the building network of a region using 3D mapping tools, when used as part of open and shared infographic tools, can enable both owners and developers to foresee and prioritize the performance of potential projects, and help the community develop its urban planning documents, or the characteristics of certain construction projects. They also enable measuring the progress of local collective projects for the development of solar energy in a region, compared to a better identified maximum potential.
Third, urban planning choices must include increasingly complex energy-related decisions. The often exaggerated ex ante energy performance of “efficient” new buildings raises complex questions about the viability of certain network infrastructures. The widespread idea is that an electrical connection is enough to ensure the energy supply required for these buildings, even though the collective and environmental optimum should lead to investment in public grids. The case of the Paris Saclay5 heating and cooling network is a good example of this type of decision: evidently, the geothermal solution was preferable in the long term and allowed for satisfaction of a large part of the heating and cooling needs of some research institutes and laboratories. In order to reach this solution, which is satisfactory for everyone, a modeling and systemic anticipation analysis was necessary. The addition of the institutions’ and promoters’ spontaneous preferences working on the real estate projects of the Plateau de Saclay would have led to a suboptimal and opposite situation, leading to the accumulation of autonomous solutions with limited scope for optimization. In order to avoid irrational choices in this area, the challenge is to establish a clear and transparent methodological framework that allows stakeholders to cooperate in a common frame of reference. This is not self-evident because the energy, environmental, economic and urbanistic parameters to be taken into account do not directly lead to an optimal solution; the choice depends on how they are weighted, and combined with long-term cost assumptions: for example, how is a geothermal solution valued, and the protection it entails against oil price fluctuations, when forecasts of said prices are highly uncertain? The organizing authority must also be given the power to promote, or sometimes impose, a solution in the name of the collective optimum or general interest, such as the compulsory connection to heating grids supplied by renewable energies at over 50%, or contractual modes of action in areas where development depends on public works.
