Holistic assessment methodology for Positive Energy Districts

Abstract

Globally, cities are responsible for most of the world’s energy consumption and most of the carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, the efficient transformation of urban energy systems is becoming a crucial step towards carbon neutrality and more effective climate protection. The Positive Energy District (PED) concept has been pointed out as one of the key principles of this path. The Positive Energy District concept leads towards an integrated and sustainable urban development with an emphasis on the use of renewable energy sources and attention shifting from energy performance at the level of individual buildings to the level of the entire district. However, PEDs represent a relatively new and still not sufficiently explored area in the field of sustainable development.The aim of this paper is to describe a new holistic assessment and innovative process of stakeholder engagement to identify Positive Energy Districts in the early development phase that arises within the PED-ID project. The early development phase is crucial since the structure of the urban area is being decided along with its sustainability and climate protection levels.The assessment methodology is based on the creation and optimization of energy balance scenarios.Case studies of existing urban areas have been developed in order to verify the methodology.It is concluded that this innovative methodology devised for PED evaluation, together with strengthening of knowledge-based and decision-making framework, will help to accelerate the process of transforming the current urban energy systems into more efficient and renewable systems.