Defining density and land uses under energy performance targets at the early stage of urban planning processes

Abstract

The energy demand of cities is highly influenced by urban planning parameters such as urban density and land use. These parameters are mostly determined during early stages of planning. However, the relationships between urban planning parameters and energy systems of districts are rarely incorporated. This paper aims to identify trade-offs between urban density, land use and share of renewable energy sources (RES). For this, we used a Mixed Integer Linear Programming formulation. The model is applied to a real case study of urban planning in Singapore. The results show that when the required share of RES increases from 20% to 70%, the maximum achievable density (floor area ratio) decreases from 32.2 to 2.9 with purely residential land use. While maximizing the self-consumption of electricity produced by PV panels, the resulting land uses are more diverse. These results provide urban planners with constraints from the perspective of energy performance of a district.