As anyone with the slightest interest in futurology will know, the predictive terrain is rigged with innumerable tripwires waiting to sabotage the deftest projection. Moon colonies and flying cars aside however, one fairly assured certainty is that an ever-increasing number of people are going to be living in ever-expanding cities; rippling out exponentially like the precession principle of a stone dropped in water.
A megacity is commonly defined as an urban area with over 10mn inhabitants. According to a 2014 UN report on urbanisation, the number of global megacities has nearly tripled in the last 24 years, soaring from 10 in 1990 to 28 in 2014. Rapid urbanisation has consigned over half the world’s population to cities, which ultimately consume 75% of the world’s energy and produce 80% of the emissions.
There is much currently being made of the development of ‘smart cities’. In December 2014, an Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) ‘Future Cities’ conference swept experts together to share ideas and discuss the potential for cities to interweave digital technologies and smart energy systems in a revolutionary new helix of urban living. A means by which the sprawling, polluted and congested cities of the 20th century can be alchemised into the clean, free-flowing, low carbon megacities of the 21st century.
The potential for achieving this is not only possible but increasingly paramount. Research conducted for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate in the lead-up to the recent Lima climate change summit, stated that the adoption of low carbon technologies across 30 megacities ‘could create more than 2mn jobs while avoiding 3bn tonnes of cumulative greenhouse gas emissions’.
Data and the Internet of Energy
One thing that is absolutely clear according to those at the IET conference and the wider community is that the march of cities towards an energy efficient future will be in firm lockstep with the expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) and ‘Big Data’.
Put simply, IoT is a network of interconnected devices – from your boiler to your fridge, even your toaster – all of which have the sensory capacity to intelligently collect and share data via a ‘cloud-based’ interface. One corporate driver of the IoT movement is Cisco Systems, which has estimated that 50bn machines/devices could be linked by as early as 2020, equating to a market worth $1tn. An equally keen champion is Siemens AG, working towards autonomous systems that will act ‘on perfect knowledge of residents’ habits, behaviours and energy consumption.’
This ‘better living through data’ is touted as a central component in cities being able to achieve energy efficiency goals, encapsulating what has been dubbed the ‘Internet of Energy’ (IoE). The expectation is that IoE devices will be integrated into a sophisticated dynamic ecosystem capable of communicating to ‘smart grids’ which will bind together power generation, supply and consumption. This is already being trialled with smart meters and time-of-use tariffs that, via financial incentives, try to ‘nudge’ consumers towards certain behavioural patterns.
IoT is also leading the way forwards for integrated low carbon transport systems through V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) and V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure) automation, allowing vehicles to respond and react to data provided by ‘smart’ street furniture (eg traffic lights, lampposts, dustbins), as well as surrounding vehicles, which could render congestion obsolete.
Hybrid and pure electric vehicles (EVs) are being developed at an accelerating rate, with consistent gains made on performance and affordability. Of course, EVs being only as clean as the electricity they use, vast sums are being invested into lithium-based research and nanotechnology to improve power output and charging times, all with an aim of driving gas-guzzling vehicles up the slip road to history.
Early examples
If these ‘intelligent future cities’ seem reminiscent of a fictive Wellsian hinterland, it’s worth considering that prototypes are already flourishing, most notably Songdo in South Korea. Songdo’s buildings have automated climate control whilst road, water, waste and electricity systems are all fertile with electronic sensors that track and respond to residents’ actions. Similarly, the uninspiringly named PlanIT Valley in Portugal is fitted with 100mn sensors to optimise energy efficiency through adjustable flows.
Surprisingly enough, these modern manifestations follow the legacy of the British ‘garden city’. Adopting the aesthetic centrifugal principle of ripples on water, Ebenezer Howard in 1902 published his seminal study, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, in which the optimal elements of city and country life were synergised and promoted as a new form of eco-urbanism; eventually to be implemented across both the UK and the US. Sure enough, in the government’s Autumn Statement, plans for a new garden city Bicester in the Home Counties were announced, and the way paved for more, given the dual political prongs they represent in terms of affordable low carbon housing and environmental targets.
But it is in China, a country that by 2012 estimates had 363 proposed coal-fired power projects waiting on the construction assembly line, that the holistic eco-friendly principle of the garden city has begun to be imported.
As Victorian England’s urban squalor demanded the respite of Howard’s proposals, so China’s rampant industrialisation has given rise to cities like Chengdu. Home to 14mn people, Chengdu is China’s fourth-biggest city and, on the outskirts, has begun applying the low-rise, low-density planning schemes together with zones of green open space, personal allotments and leisure areas that both meet the needs of the community and support the drive for low carbon development; concurrently helping to alleviate traffic congestion and improve air quality.
While the notorious smog of Beijing tends to cloud our impressions of Chinese urbanism, the government has begun investing billions in sustainable developments that aim to serve as global models for the future. One such example is the Tianjin Eco-City Project, a collaboration between China and Singapore that incorporates initiatives such as free electric bus networks, a 60% recycling rate and a minimum of 12 m2 of public green space per capita.
This is apparently far from the limit of China’s green ambitions. In terms of the spectacular, surpassing the proposed designs for ‘Cloud Citizen’ (winner of the Shenzhen Super City Competition) would be a considerable challenge for the imagination, reminiscent as it is of something from a Philip K Dick novel.
Touted as an ‘urban utopia’, the plans depict layers of almost organic cactus-like skyscrapers coagulating into one another, designed so as to ‘give back more to the environment than they cost’. Built-in mechanisms would harvest rain water, luscious gardens would serve as ‘green lungs’, whilst the city infrastructure would be powered with solar, wind and algae-based energy. The self-contained nature of the construction would enable localised food production to exert a much reduced demand on infrastructure; all helping to create what the designers anticipate will be a hyper-dense complex that the inhabitants have no need or desire to ever leave.
The potential of this technological utopia to manifest itself as a human dystopia scarcely demands a potent imagination. Of course, city planning has a rich history of architects from Charles Fourier to Robert Owen to Le Corbusier, designing ‘utopian urbanity’ in which humans will be free to live prosperously, harmoniously and free from strife. Yet for all their vaulting ambition, they remain chiefly that: utopian.
Is technology the solution?
A primary concern for the near future is that tech firms operating principally in accordance with corporate interests will succeed in harnessing the essential utilities on which we all rely to the extent that they cannot subsequently be wrested back; in the process becoming more opaque as the citizenry become more transparent. But it’s worth pondering just how vociferous the complaints may be if the principle agent causing privacy to dissipate is the reduction in the amount we are charged for energy?
What is strikingly clear from attending the Future Cities conference, and reading the vast expanse of available commentary, is that there is an unshakable, zealous faith in technology as a means of solving any conceivable problems that might afflict humankind. This is the prevailing consensus in human thinking, resembling almost a religious faith, that only an ever-increasing dependency on further technological development will ensure positive progress.
Readily available, low technology, green options are within our grasp currently; from retrofitting of buildings; to the digestion of organic materials as a method of biomass energy production; increased investment in urban public transport networks and encouraging incentives like bike schemes; and the recent resurgence in urban agriculture such as community gardens, agroforestry and even beekeeping.
It is interesting to note the profligacy with which developments such as IoE and ‘Big Data’ are labelled ‘smart’ and ‘intelligent’. Undoubtedly there is much – if it can be harnessed for societal good rather than corporate insouciance – which we can feasibly benefit from. Yet the fact remains that until we start applying the same demands for ‘smart’ and ‘intelligent’ thinking to impose upon the whole spectrum of energy policy, particularly in the run-up to the Paris climate change summit later this year, the possible ramifications of continued myopia and obfuscation on the part of global powers looks increasingly severe.
Ask yourself; is it ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ thinking to divert vital financial, time and intellectual resources away from renewable technologies and into the pursuit of yet more extractive fossil fuel processes in the face of climate change? Is it ‘smart’ for developed nations to fail to engage in negotiations with developing nations such as Ecuador as a means of preventing them from having to exploit their abundant oil resources? Is it ‘smart’ to allow oil companies to sit on vast ‘sunken asset’ reserves, fully intended to be extracted despite the combined total being many times over what the broad consensus of climate scientists have stated can be burned whilst remaining below ‘safe’ levels of warming?
If these are uncomfortable or contentious questions, then that is precisely the intention. Technological development of the kind currently shaping the energy infrastructure of future cities are necessary and welcome, if used positively, but should not be treated as a kind of elixir vitae that, if we bask in the slipstream of its accelerating momentum, will inevitably transform our and future generation’s lives ineluctably for the better. For the energy industry not to question, challenge and hold to account such developments as they continue to achieve prominence would be very far from smart thinking indeed.
Published in Energy World Magazine
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