Integration of Urban Forms, Society and Governance in Planning Solar Cities of India
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The increase in energy consumption in cities has multiplied rapidly in the past few decades, often leading to a decline in fossil-fuel based energy sources and the consequent adoption of renewable energy resources. Integration of such complex systems into the electricity generation and distribution framework requires flexibility to adopt new technologies, affordability, reliability, and continuous monitoring of new additions to the system. Promoting urban sustainability requires extensive research into the potential applications of sustainable energy technologies. It is becoming increasingly important for cities to explore ways to reduce their environmental impact, and using sustainable energy technologies is one way to achieve this. Vast research and experiments are being conducted by the cities around the world to identify the most effective ways to use these technologies to achieve environmental sustainability. One such option is the ‘solar city concept’. In case of India, this is a scheme launched by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy to minimize 10% of the projected demand for non-renewable energy in the cities at the end of five years, through its combination with green energy sources. The programme aims to promote the use of renewable energy in urban areas by providing support to Municipal Corporations for the preparation and implementation of a road map to develop their cities as solar cities. The aim of the research is to primarily investigate the combination of different factors which promote feasibility of solar city planning in India. The research objective can be identified as follows: firstly, to identify the key driving factors of sustainability and energy efficiency of the solar cities of India which contribute to the viability of Solar Cities Missions in these cities, secondly, to examine the effectiveness of local energy planning processes in major proposed solar cities of India and finally, to delineate suitable sites in a city with an energy master plan, in order to identify any other suitable sites can be allocated for solar projects and without an energy master plan, such as to identify all suitable sites that can be allocated for solar projects.
In order to fulfil these objectives, GIS based Multiple Criteria Decision Making techniques were applied. The datasets were of both primary and secondary in nature and the results imply that Indian cities which are social sustainable, economically sufficient and have already taken initiatives to generate or purchase renewable energy to light their cities are more likely to attract solar technologies than the rest. Furthermore, cities lying in the north and north-west of India are both meteorologically and geographically endowed to harness solar energy, therefore, they receive more financial benefits and subsidies to install solar photovoltaic systems. With respect to site suitability analysis for solar establishments, both rooftop solar systems and solar park systems were considered. The study revealed that although most of the existing energy master plans have considered all sectors for solar energy generation, but most of the implementations have occurred in the municipal buildings. Therefore, this study has explored the energy generation potential in municipal buildings of a city without a master plan, such that the government can use this prototype immediately for such schemes in the future. Moreover in the predicted regions, recent developments are also visible in such areas. Thus, this research has successfully presented a detailed picturesque and analysis of the different parameters of urban forms, society and governance in solar city planning and investigate the integration of these parameters in Indian solar city planning.
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Solar city, Solar governance, GIS, MCDM, Site suitability analysis, TISM, Solar city efficiency