The Transition of Manchester, Calgary into a Sustainable, Low-Carbon, 100% Clean Energy District

Date
2021-04-16
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Abstract
The transition into a post‐carbon world will require collaboration across all sectors and system‐wide changes. This design exploration models the transformation of an entire Canadian city district into a low‐carbon development using urban planning, 100% clean energy, and sustainable development. Sustainable buildings and transportation systems are designed first. The community’s heat, electricity, and transport energy demands are then modelled. Clean energy sources and technologies are analyzed to model their potential energy generation. After evaluating the space requirements and the economics between different energy system choices, an ideal energy system for the community was proposed and the potential greenhouse gas emissions reductions were calculated. Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, and wastewater heat recovery energy are combined with electrifying sectors, reducing energy demands, green buildings and infrastructure, mixed‐use developments, reducing automobile dependence, electric vehicles, and sustainable public transport to transition the Manchester district in Calgary, Canada into a post‐carbon city district. This study found that it is possible to meet Manchester’s energy needs using local clean energy sources and presents a ceiling for the number of energy generation technologies, the capital costs, and the space required for the energy mix. The proposed energy mix includes rooftop solar panels, a wind farm, geothermal heat pumps within the district, a geothermal power plant, a small modular reactor nuclear power plant, and a wastewater heat recovery plant. Sustainable infrastructure and energy will significantly reduce the district’s GHG emissions compared to implementing Alberta’s current unsustainable buildings, ICE vehicles, and fossil fuel-based energy mix. The final product of this research is a method to analyze the transformation of entire large‐scale communities into low‐carbon developments, which can be individualized and applied to communities to estimate their unique energy demands and create a customized clean energy mix to meet them.
Description
Keywords
low-carbon, sustainability, 100% clean energy, clean energy, renewable energy, energy system model, sustainable development, city planning
Citation
Amin, S. (2021). The Transition of Manchester, Calgary into a Sustainable, Low-Carbon, 100% Clean Energy District (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.