Pioneer City 2030: What the Energy System of the Future Looks Like

In early 2009, the US Congress passed a stimulus bill that directed $77 billion to new energy initiatives, including energy efficiency, green buildings, smart grids, plug-in vehicles, and renewable installations.

To help local communities think strategically about tapping the various pots of Federal money available to jumpstart a new national energy paradigm, we offer this vision of Pioneer City 2030, a midsized community  that decided 20 years earlier to embrace a systemic energy overhaul—and in so doing created an economically prosperous and vibrant carbon-neutral community.

BUILDINGS AND HOMES

Pioneer City in 2010 created a comprehensive effort to make the entire community’s building sector carbon-neutral by 2030, including:

• Development of a new institutional marketing and financing infrastructure for building efficiency retrofits and on-site clean power generation.
• A “patient” capital lending pool with low interest rates, that made it feasible to finance efficiency improvements with up to a 20-year payback.
• Advanced building codes to ratchet up efficiency to levels around 70 percent greater than new buildings in the mid-2000s.
• A consumer marketing effort that took efficiency door to door in homes and businesses, offering a full package from efficiency audits to finance and installation.  

So for the past 20 years, Pioneer City has systematically retrofitted old buildings and constructed new buildings that are increasingly efficient.  A combination of natural design that makes the best use of existing resources, including sunlight and rainfall, and smart building systems that manage energy and water use for greatest efficiency, has given Pioneer City a stock of living buildings that meet top sustainability standards.  

The smart buildings of 2030 partner with smart power grids to optimize operations for greatest efficiency.  Intelligent building systems communicate with the grid to manage demand in response to grid needs, which has significantly reduced peak demands, thus eliminating the need for costly power infrastructure used only limited hours of the year.  

Smart building controls also continually adjust and tune building systems based on real-time operating information.  With far more detailed power use data available than in the past, energy management has become a valuable tool for maximizing existing energy.

Many buildings now generate their own energy.  Solar photovoltaic has become the cheapest source of new energy, and ground geothermal heat pumps increasingly supply hot water and building heating.  Small, building-mounted wind turbines are  now practical in many locations.  Energy storage has also become ubiquitous, in the form of battery banks.  Both local and distant renewables feed the storage, improving the usability and economics for these on-again, off-again power sources.

NEIGHBORHOOD POWER NETWORKS

Pioneer City 2030 created a number of local microgrids that share power across neighborhoods. It turned out that having power networks deployed on a neighborhood level proved more economically practical to generate renewable energy.

Neighborhoods with numerous high-rise buildings are a case in point. A combination of large solar photovoltaic installations on major commercial and industrial roofs power microgrids, as do several utility-scale wind turbine clusters on the edge of the city, and combined heat and power plants fueled with biogas and biomass from urban waste streams.  

Those heat power plants supply not only electricity, but also hot water and heat through pipe networks that serve the central business district and other densely occupied areas.  Neighborhood heating and cooling substantially increase efficiency over each building having its own heating and cooling units.  

Pioneer City also draws substantial renewable power from distant, central installations including wind farms, solar photovoltaic and thermal plants, and wave and tidal installations.  These are delivered to the city on a smart transmission grid that has been upgraded to handle the complex power flows from varying and sometimes unpredictable renewable sources.  Substantial automation and intelligence in the grid enables it to manage what is becoming an increasingly renewables-driven grid.  

The smart grid, which in 2010 mostly existed at the long-distance transmission level, is now ubiquitous in local distribution grids down to the power user level.  Digital technologies now infused throughout the grid provide two-way communications capabilities.  This translates into unprecedented abilities to measure and manage power flow, both at the consumer and utility level.  

With two-way communications and control, the smart grid can handle large amounts of varying renewable energies.  Smart buildings, appliances and equipment are now programmed to adjust demand up and down in response to grid signals.  So varying output from wind and solar farms can be automatically matched to power loads.  A Pioneer City food processing plant uses surplus wind power at night to freeze its products, while washing machines and hot water heaters throughout the city cycle down or up in response to renewable energy availability.  

Digital automation also integrates the many building- and neighborhood-sited renewable installations in Pioneer City.  Interconnection is now a standard procedure, reducing costs and complications.  

GETTING AROUND TOWN

Over the past 20 years, Pioneer City has been at the forefront in the reinvention of personal mobility.  Today, vehicles are different, as well as the ways people use and access them.

Cars and trucks are now highly efficient, with many cars running on pure electricity and nearly all internal combustion vehicles hybridized and boasting plug-in features.  The bulk of ground transportation in town is propelled by electricity, and Pioneer City is rich in charging stations and battery-exchange locations.  What isn’t driven by electricity relies on advanced biofuels from waste streams and energy crops that do not compete with food.  

Electrified vehicles charge in coordination with the grid, which means that smart systems in vehicles communicate with the grid to charge up during hours when region-wide power demand is low and clean, low-carbon electricity is plentiful -.  This reduces grid stress and improves the greenhouse gas pollution performance of vehicle fleets.  By 2030, the use of plug-in vehicle batteries as energy storage for buildings and the grid has also become practical.  

By 2030, personal vehicles are no longer the norm.  Fewer and fewer people actually own cars, and more pay one of Pioneer City’s mobility services companies that provide a range of options. Those who want a personal vehicle through their service can have one. Typically it is a small urban car, but access to larger vehicles such as vans and trucks, even fun vehicles like sports cars and SUVs, is also part of the service.

Mobility service firms work in conjunction with public transportation, so include transit passes and transit system assistance.  Pioneer City has worked hard to upgrade transit, and implemented smart growth strategies to create more compact communities rich in stores, services, and amenities.  With reduced need for driving, many customers are content to use car-share services.

A PROSPEROUS CARBON NEUTRAL COMMUNITY

By 2030, Pioneer City has achieved the goal it set in 2010 for carbon neutrality in its energy sector:

 It has replaced petroleum in transportation with cars and trucks that now run on renewable electricity and fuels.  

• It has eliminated electricity generated by fossil fuels including coal and natural gas.
• By replacing fossil fuels with local and regional renewable resources, it has substantially improved circulation of dollars in the local economy.
  
•  The brown cloud that once hung over the city on smoggy days is gone and public health statistics reflect the improved air quality.
• As an early adopter, it has also generated new businesses and jobs in new energy technologies.  
• It is home to leading edge firms in building design and energy efficiency services delivery, as well as microgrid development and electric vehicle charging management.  

These achievements were intentional – in 2009 Pioneer City engaged its new energy agenda as both an economic development and environmental strategy.  

By 2030 communities all over the nation and the world look more and more like Pioneer City, building new energy systems that mesh super-efficient buildings, plug-in vehicles, and smart grids with new energy resources including renewables, demand management, and storage.  They are moving toward the carbon neutrality that Pioneer City has already achieved.

Successful models created by Pioneer City and other leading communities have demonstrated the new energy system in action, proven its benefits, and in doing so have made a vital contribution to energy security, economic prosperity, and climate stability.  It started with a vision made real with concerted civic action that made Pioneer City one of the energy leaders of the 21st century.