Designing urban energy systems based on the urban climate

As cities grow at an ever-faster pace, concerns about global warming rise and fossil fuels become increasingly scarce, cities will have to adopt more sustainable energy solutions. EPFL researchers have developed a model that can be used to design urban energy systems by analyzing the building not as a standalone structure but as one piece in an urban puzzle. Up to now, architects, engineers, urban planners and public authorities have not taken account of how the urban climate affects a building's energy requirements when designing energy systems for renovation and construction projects. But thanks to a model developed by researchers at EPFL, they will now be able to adopt a holistic approach to the energy needs of a neighborhood - or an entire city - in order to create integrated and more sustainable energy systems. The researchers' work has been published in Applied Energy . Evaluating energy needs on an urban scale is the cornerstone of the concept of energy hubs. The new model, developed by the Urban Systems group within EPFL's Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory (LESO) in the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, combines an urban climate model with a building simulator and energy system optimization.