Renewable Energy

Urbanization has been experiencing a great growth rate. It is predicted that about 5 billion of the world's population will live in the cities by 2030. As a consequence the energy demand from there urban areas will also see a dramatic increase further resulting in greater GHG emissions. This calls for an urgent need to revamp the energy infrastructure in the cities to incorporate more energy efficiency measures to reduce the overall energy usage in the cities and further shift to renewable energy to decarbonize energy production.

Many communities have been increasingly looking at renewable sources such as sun, wind, waves/tides, geothermal and urban waste to meet that demand with clean, safe, reliable energy. Fortunately, many of the key technologies that can unlock the power of these renewable resources are on the market today. Rapidly declining prices for many of these technologies, like solar energy, in combination with national, state, and local policy changes, are bringing increasing amounts of renewable energy into the mainstream.

Despite an increasing adoption of renewable energy in the cities, there is still a considerable untapped potential that is waiting to be tapped in cities. This is primarily because adopting renewable energy is often fraught with challenges and barriers. These barriers include complicated procedures for permitting and connecting systems to the grid and transmission networks, financing challenges, a lack of awareness of renewable solutions among key decision makers, and a lack of trained installation contractors. A methodical process of planning energy infrastructure, estimating renewable energy potential, looking at appropriate technology and policy mechanisms, and finally creating institutional capacity is of prime importance for successful implementation of renewable energy projects.

Local governments are often best positioned to adopt renewable energy in their communities since they have the best understanding about the local energy demands and infrastructure. Thus, local governments are in a unique position to remove many of the barriers to help aid in widespread renewable energy adoption and to make renewable energy more affordable and accessible for their residents and businesses. Local planners and policy makers in each Ukrainian city can take a comprehensive approach to bring renewables to their cities.

Because we realize that there is no one path to renewables market development, the following examples and guidelines will introduce a range of options to aid the decision making for deploying renewable energy in support of building sustainable infrastructure in the city.