Empowering Urban Energy Transitions

Systemic approaches for a sustainable urban energy future

Key takeaways

  • Agile, integrated planning processes are essential for meeting renewable energy targets and addressing grid infrastructure challenges while aligning with urban development needs, avoiding delays and integrating distributed generation effectively. More than 3 000 GW of renewable power projects are currently awaiting connection globally.
  • Given the increasing complexity of urban energy systems and the urgency of meeting clean energy transition objectives, urban and energy planners and operators need more granular real-time insights. These can be derived from analysing an increasingly wide range of data sets as the number of connected sensors and devices rises from 13 billion today to exceed 25 billion by 2030.
  • Better alignment of energy system and urban planning processes and supportive policy action to help anticipate future changes and investment needs can result in reduced costs and assist energy efficiency implementation. In China, integrated planning enabled a reduction in investment of USD 13.5 billion.
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