Towards a Sustainability Assessment Model for Urban Public Space Renewable Energy Infrastructure

Kaan Ozgun
Additional contact information
Kaan Ozgun: School of Design, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane 4000, Australia

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 13, 1-19

Abstract: As cities develop new interventions for climate change mitigation, incorporating renewable energy in urban public spaces becomes a common norm to address sustainability objectives. However, current built projects and assessment practices mainly uses a “techno-fixes” approach focusing on strategies that are related to the environmental benefits and neglecting other potential strategies instigating social and economic benefits of renewable energy. The purpose of this study is to present a potential sustainability assessment model introducing new strategies for public space renewable energy use where social and economic benefits of renewables become evident. Supplemented with theories and principles from ecology, the model’s economic strategies refer whether the project considers meaningful part of the produced electricity for generating a local economy; environmental strategy comprises embodied energy, energy storage and self-maintenance; social strategy includes whether the project considers generating active and passive interaction using on-site electricity. Ballast Point Park in Sydney was used as a test bed to examine the model and sustainability of park’s renewable energy use. The findings showed that environmental strategies were evident in the park, social strategies remained average and economic strategies with renewable energy were lacking. Interactions with on-site produced electricity was further claimed to be an imperative feature of any public space. Recommendations were made specific to operational and planning impacts of the integrated model.

Keywords: renewable electricity distribution for public space; sustainability assessment model; integrated assessment for public space; tripartite altruism; urban renewable energy; ecological infrastructures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/13/3428/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/13/3428/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:13:p:3428-:d:379736

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().