Henri PROGLIO - Chairman and CEO of Electricité de France

Energy in general, and electricity in particular, is one of the main challenges facing cities. As part of its contribution to the energy debate in France, EDF has developed an analytic method that gives an accurate view of the role electricity should play in the energy landscape over the long term.

The study conducted in France shows that we can realistically envision cities operating without fossil fuels provided that energy-efficient solutions are systematically adopted, especially for buildings, and that fossil energies are replaced with efficient solutions combining electricity and renewable sources.

While Beijing’s situation and challenges are very different from those faced by French cities, EDF’s method can be adapted to the Chinese capital to help pave the way for Beijing to become a benchmark for other megacities.

Energy: a cornerstone of sustainable development for cities

If they are to develop harmoniously and sustainably, cities must quickly take stock of four key challenges and implement appropriate solutions:

•Tackling climate change
•Energy independence to sustain economic development at a time when fossil resources are 
  scarce or expensive
•Air quality
•Equal access to water.

The specific objectives for China, and Beijing in particular, can be summarised as follows:

•Reinforce and expand communication networks within and between urban areas
•Reduce the environmental impact of human activity (air pollution, waste and water access),
•Enhance architectural and urban landscapes.

In Europe, climate change is the main problem to be factored into energy solutions for cities. Global in scope, climate change is also a real concern for urban China; however, the interrelated issues of chronic pollution and transport are more urgent there than anywhere in the West.

Looking beyond these differences, which arise mainly from differences in levels, rates and scale of development, some questions apply equally to both cases: how can we reduce our consumption of CO2-emitting and polluting energies? What types of energy, and which generation technologies, should be used? The fact is that in most developed countries, two sectors are responsible for the bulk of energy consumption and CO2 emissions: buildings (residential and tertiary) and road transport. As cities and their outskirts are on the front line of these two issues, tackling the problem of sustainable development in cities is a way to get to the heart of the problem.

In most developed countries and, perhaps surprisingly, in the Beijing region, agriculture accounts for a small percentage of greenhouse gas emissions and that of industry is declining in relative (and in some cases in absolute) terms.

It goes without saying that balanced growth requires urban planning and development schemes designed to make cities more pleasant and appealing for inhabitants. However, they must also increasingly incorporate concrete solutions for sharply reducing the urban pollution that results from the use of energy for heating and transport. Again, energy is the central question.

When making fundamental decisions about the city’s development, Beijing’s planners will have to factor in all of these challenges, while also recognising major obstacles:

• Like some other Western cities but on a scale not seen anywhere in Europe, Beijing is a heterogeneous urban sprawl with large areas that are entirely residential and located relatively far from hubs of industrial activity

• This has led Beijing authorities to develop mass transport (metro systems and buses) on a huge scale. Transport infrastructure must be planned with an eye to the long term, in order to ensure that the most efficient and least polluting solutions are chosen for commuting, business delivery and travel between homes and businesses. Today’s public transport systems need to include special traffic lanes and high-density centres of urban activity, while non-polluting private transport solutions (electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) require recharging infrastructure and adapted power grids

• Technical solutions chosen for building envelopes and heating and air conditioning systems are shaped in large part by incentive schemes and regulatory frameworks. Even though buildings being constructed in China today are probably only designed to last 30 to 40 years , new buildings that are not energy efficient will have long-term consequences on the energy equation. As regards making existing buildings energy eco-efficient, although extensive renovation of urban building stock would take significant financial resources and time, the potential gains are significant and should not be ignored.

In sum, the inertia inherent in “urban systems” calls for a long-term approach, and a clear and ambitious vision of what the future should look like.

These issues have of course been debated in France, where political authorities have set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by a factor of four (compared with 1990 levels) by 2050.

Electricity use in cities: a central question in the French energy debate

The importance of this issue led EDF to respond to the following question about the role electricity should play in France: is it part of the problem or part of the solution?

Before considering how this analysis might be translated or adapted to Beijing’s situation, it seems useful to outline here, in broad brushstrokes, the highlights of the debate in France.
As of today, France’s carbon emissions are low, thanks to the fact that the bulk of its electricity comes from nuclear and hydro power.

By rounding out the mix with a small contribution from fossil-fired generation, France is able to cover a large share of its seasonal heating needs with electricity. This means that overall CO2 emissions per kWh are lower than the average for heating systems based on fossil fuels.
If we consider the short term, while taking into account the time and debates necessary before nuclear power can be expanded as well as the very small potential for making greater use of hydro power in France, one might wonder whether it is wise to continue to develop electric solutions for heating (for instance with heat pumps), or whether this will not ultimately lead to generating more electricity from fossil fuels, and thus more CO2 emissions. Could we imagine a scenario in which nuclear capacity in France increases significantly beyond the current level? Can we realistically move toward an all-renewable mix, as some propose? How heavily can we rely on electricity from renewable, intermittent sources?

In a word, electricity is often seen as being part of the problem.

Massive use of gas resources may seem a convenient response to carbon emissions and pollution problems. Gas is a combustible fuel that has undeniable environmental benefits, but it also has two limitations:

•As burning natural gas emits large amounts of CO2, opting for widespread use of gas sets a limit on the overall efficiency that can be achieved in terms of CO2 emissions. For Western countries, this limit is above the reduction factors proposed. On the other hand, gas looks a promising transition solution for some cases, provided that it does not prevent targets from being met.

•For non-producing countries, large-scale reliance on gas raises a problem of political independence.

The place of electricity in city energy mixes is also important for Beijing

While the two cases may not be directly comparable, we can attempt to translate the questions being debated in France to China’s situation: since coal currently accounts for most of the country’s electricity generation, and given that coal emits more CO2 than other energy sources, would it be reasonable to rely on electricity to “rid cities of fossil fuels” and address the problems of urban air and noise pollution? What should it be used for, and under what conditions? How can the major Chinese cities develop an energy equation that makes them better places to live, without shifting the problem upstream to generation and transmission, thus creating insurmountable problems in terms of investment rates, independence with regard to primary energy sources, and carbon emissions?

Comparison of the energy mix in China and France



To put the debate about electricity’s place in the energy equation in its proper context, EDF has developed a new method that can be usefully applied to Beijing despite major differences with the French situation.

As part of its efforts to help address France’s energy future and clearly assess whether electricity is part of the problem or the solution, EDF produced a study that provided interesting insights. The study showed that if cities implement appropriate energy policies, they can conceivably operate with almost no fossil fuels, and this without making the energy generation equation impossible to solve upstream, placing unreasonable bets on miracle technologies or counting on unrealistic investments. EDF also found that under this scenario, France could meet its target of achieving a fourfold reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 without factoring in any excessively unrealistic assumptions.

Detailed results of the study on buildings are provided in an attachment.

Of course, the study reflects the French situation, i.e. limited growth, reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by a factor of four, buildings replaced only gradually (just 1% of stock destroyed each year), the difficulty of setting up new centralised electricity generation sites quickly. The conclusions obviously cannot be extrapolated directly to China without further in-depth analysis. On the other hand, the method applied does seem to be readily transferrable.

The method does not postulate the factor four target (Europe) or growth rates as input. Instead, based on a specific timescale, it works from a given level of population and human and economic activity (service and industry) corresponding to the economic growth assumed for the scenario, and then seeks to systematically eliminate fossil-fuel use from cities while simultaneously meeting energy needs. For the French study, for instance, the factor four reduction was shown to be achievable in fact more of a result to be achieved than a working hypothesis.

Likewise, while the French objective focuses chiefly on the issue of CO2 with, in the background, the question of energy independence, the key concern for Beijing will be air quality and the elimination of sources of pollution, i.e. SOx, NOx, dust and heavy metals. The methodology is nevertheless still relevant insofar as the energy eco-efficiency solutions that would be adopted to eliminate fossil fuels from urban transport and housing in cities also directly eliminate atmospheric pollutant emissions, without creating an unsolvable electricity generation problem on city outskirts.

Where France is concerned, technology penetration is depressed by slow economic growth. China’s high economic growth rate could result in a faster adoption of energy eco-efficient technologies in cities, since it is always easier to use them with new build than with renovated stock. Here again, this major difference does not make the method inappropriate, and the large base of existing buildings and infrastructures, taken together with the high cost of demolition and reconstruction, make wide-scale renovation a very attractive option if used in conjunction with a rapid improvement in the efficiency of new buildings.

Sustained energy eco-efficiency efforts can in fact be particularly beneficial to fast-growing regions: by reducing the need for generation or energy import infrastructure, they can free up more funds for investment “downstream” on the energy value chain; it would be more complicated to invest this money upstream given concerns about climate change and fossil fuel scarcity.

EDF is convinced that if the analytic method described here is applied by those thoroughly familiar with China’s situation, it can yield useful and pertinent results, as well as provide insight for the city of Beijing in its quest to find a harmonious way to become a model megacity.
As such, the summary below is a presentation not so much of the results of the French study as of the approach used, an approach that attempts to place the debate within its proper context and is applicable to different situations using reasonable and realistic assumptions.
The study begins with a target, but does not ignore the limitations of natural and financial resources or technologies

There have been many prospective studies conducted in the past, but the innovation of this approach is that it considers disruption in trends while also being pragmatic about a subject that is often dominated by ideology.

In other words it is not designed in the same way as many prospective studies on energy, which assume a more or less constant continuation of past trends. On the contrary, it starts with an objective: eliminate, as much as is reasonably possible, fossil fuels and CO2 from the energy mix starting downstream.

Since the approach is also pragmatic, it attempts to satisfy all constraints and only assumes the use of technologies that are already available or can reasonably be assumed to become available before long.

The study is based on a belief that, if used wisely, electricity is the key to carbon-free and air and noise pollution-free cities

Our underlying assumption is that electricity can be instrumental in solving the problem of CO2 emissions and urban issues such as air and noise pollution if it is seen as a valuable asset that must be used as efficiently and wisely as possible.

This hypothesis is underpinned by the fact that electricity is the only form of energy that we can reasonably hope to generate with minimal carbon emissions in the relatively long term (by 2050 in the case of the French study), regardless of the starting point. Most renewable and carbon-free sources have one thing in common: they can be used to generate electricity. Nuclear power and carbon capture are also medium- and long-term solutions for generating electricity at a reasonable cost. Our assumption seems all the more applicable to China after the government recently unveiled ambitious targets in this area.

But this reasoning is only valid if things are done in the proper order: electricity can be an effective way to systematically “rid” cities of fossil fuels only if it is used in buildings that have been made “energy efficient” beforehand.

Where France is concerned, one concrete example is the following: the electricity currently generated for heating systems could more or less suffice to heat much larger residential and commercial premises if, and only if, buildings were better insulated and equipped with more efficient heating systems like the heat pumps available today.

The same reasoning could be applied to China if, for instance, it were demonstrated that district heating systems fired by fossil fuels could be replaced by efficient heat pumps installed at street level after buildings underwent sufficient renovation to reduce heating energy needs by a factor of two or, even better, three.

This pragmatic and realistic study only calls for the use of technologies that are available or are almost certain to be ready for industrial use soon.

A second assumption is that most of the technologies that would allow cities to become energy eco-efficient and fossil fuel-free are in fact available today or will become so in the near future, and that the real difficulty lies in implementing public policies geared to the long term rather than making unreasonable bets on or working feverishly to generate major technological shifts or behavioural changes that are unlikely to happen.

Factoring in inertia and the time it takes for technologies to become accessible at reasonable cost, the timescale of the study runs to 2050. Since China is growing so fast and given how much more quickly buildings are replaced there, the end-date could possibly be moved closer, or an incremental solution could be envisaged with more or less immediate implementation.
Working on the principle that fossil fuels are to be as far as possible eliminated from cities, the study goes on to create, in several stages, a consistent picture of the future, based on assumptions that are deemed to be realistic.

The study conducted in France was designed to ensure that over the timescale of the study all of the city’s needs (buildings and transport) could be met:

•With no recourse to fossil fuels
•Without shifting any responsibilities to electricity systems when they can be more efficiently shifted elsewhere
•Without assuming any improbable changes in behaviour
•Without counting on uncertain technological shifts (energy storage on lower floors: cost, but also space required in cities that are already crowded) or on incentive schemes that are not credible
•Keeping investments at a reasonable level for both households and public authorities.

The “Building” section of the study conducted by EDF for France is attached in Appendix 2.
With the timescale established, the study is divided into several phases:

1.The first consists in taking an inventory of the different energy needs, broken down into “upstream” units of account for a given technological option: for instance, the reasoning would be based not on heating energy needs per se but rather on the number of square metres to be heated to a comfortable level. Likewise, for transport, calculations would be based on the number of kilometres to be covered for each means of travel.

2.The next step is to draw up a realistic list of technologies available both for energy end-uses and electricity generation and get a sense of how much they cost, taking efficiency into account, and in particular considering any limitations they may have.

    O  In France for instance, it is difficult to imagine that in 2050 the hydro and nuclear generation fleets will be much larger than today. This constraint would clearly not be as significant for China.
   
    O  Centralised fossil-fired generation with CO2 capture may become possible over the medium term, but it will still be costly, particularly for semi-base load.

    O  The scope for developing thermodynamic solar power is limited in France but worth examining in China. If there is sufficient available space with direct sunlight (as is the case in Spain for instance), this solution could, in the near future, offer competitive generation costs together with, in heat storage, a way to balance daytime and night-time production. 

    O  Biomass is a promising resource for France, although it is not used very efficiently for now. That said, its potential is limited due to farmland management concerns and transport logistics. Beijing’s situation is probably very different due to limited biomass resources.

    O   The heat pump technologies being developed will allow electricity to be used to produce both heat and cold with an average efficiency of over 3, or possibly 4 . EDF R&D is working with manufacturers on technologies to enable heat pumps to remain efficient even in extreme cold. Geothermal energy could also make a significant contribution.

    O  Solar thermal can be a very useful complementary technology, particularly for domestic hot water, provided that adequate roof space is available.

    O “ Low-carbon building” technologies must be assessed based on local climate situations and building types. The quality of building envelopes is crucial to meeting performance targets. For France, and in all likelihood for China as well, it is essential that owners be offered incentives in the form of appropriate subsidies to invest in renovation programmes that can reduce the energy needs of older buildings by a factor of two or three. In terms of economic efficiency, this is a wiser option than overinvesting in new buildings once the optimal level of efficiency is reached. Systematically relying on reconstruction is often a much costlier strategy than implementing renovation programmes.

Bioclimatic facades can substantially reduce air conditioning needs: blinds blocking direct sun in summer, screen walls and possibly vegetated facades and terraces. High-power air conditioning systems running on chilled water networks can bring air conditioning to buildings or small groups of buildings efficiently. They can also be used to store cold in the form of chilled water (slurry ice) so cold air production can be split between days and nights, and even concentrated in off-peak hours to avoid throwing the electric system out of balance during peak hours.

Appendix 1 features more specific information about energy eco-efficient building technologies

    O  Photovoltaic technologies have gained a real foothold but their growth is being hindered by the increasingly large surface areas required and limitations relating to local sunlight. They can nonetheless be considered an interesting option for cities if peak photovoltaic production is coupled with peak air conditioning demand. Thin-film technologies are being developed and should reach maturity quickly. With them, we can imagine photovoltaic panels integrated directly, at the factory, into façade panels, which will go a long way to reducing costs.

    O  Electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle technologies may make a real breakthrough in the road transport market if we assume that petrol prices will remain high and that governments will offer incentives to support their use. In the French study, the following assumptions were used for 2050:

   Private vehicles: 15% EV and 30% PHEV, powering most short-distance travel in electric mode
   Light utility vehicles (<3.5t): 70% PHEV, with 70% of mileage in electric mode
   PHEV technology developed for low-tonnage trucks (35% of fleet)
   70% of city buses PHEV or electric.

Massive development of electric transport for urban areas is advantageous in terms of air and noise pollution alike. Most city-centre travel is short distance, and it seems that battery technologies will be capable of covering related requirements in the near future. The main barrier is cost: to overcome it, petrol prices will have to increase, with battery costs coming down and consumers and companies being given additional investment incentives.

    O   Electricity storage solutions may be developed for short storage periods. Electric vehicles could make a real contribution to storage solutions (vehicle-to-grid concept), although this idea is still being debated and has yet to be proven. Our study for France does not factor in a development of long-term storage except for a few hydro pump stations that have already been identified and may be further developed.

3. The third step will be to establish one or more scenarios in which these different technologies can be rolled out, taking into account their technical and economic merit order as well as their limitations. After that, each scenario is matched against electricity demand scenarios. Since electricity cannot be stored, annual energy estimates will not suffice. Analysis must be taken further, at least to factor in seasonal swings, possibly beginning with monthly overviews based on seasonal averages; if time and financial resources allow, these analyses could then be honed to factor in daily random variations in relation to seasonal norms.

4.Lastly, the scenarios must take into account the electricity generation capacity required to create an energy equation that results in an acceptable carbon balance sheet and achieves the level of energy independence desired. They must also include an economic assessment, comparing all extra investment incurred to a baseline scenario (business-as-usual or change). This entire exercise serves to verify that the equation is sound both energy-wise and economically.

Based on a relatively simple methodology, the study proved extremely useful during the debates in France. It showed that for cities, energy eco-efficiency does not mean scrapping electricity: on the contrary, sustainable cities are energy-efficient cities without fossil fuels!

Simple in principle and therefore easily transferrable to contexts other than France, the study provided EDF with many new insights.

•It showed that, for France, electricity is not the problem but rather the cornerstone of the solution. It is indeed possible, and realistic, to imagine a “fossil fuel-free” city.

The solution involves a three-step approach that we believe is robust enough to warrant being applied to Beijing:

    O  Transform buildings to make them as energy efficient as is reasonably possible
    O  Systematically switch from fossil fuels to more efficient electricity end-uses
    O  Design an economically viable electricity generation mix that keeps carbon emissions and  pollution to a minimum.

•At least where Europe is concerned, it is probably crucial to take certain measures to guarantee efficient results at an acceptable cost: 

    o  Consider each city as a coherent whole, comprising a city centre, suburbs and more rural areas, working with energy firms and public authorities seeking to design and implement adapted and effective public policies. 

    O  Support the shift to energy eco-efficient buildings, including:

          Designs that limit sunlight exposure, i.e. blinds or screen walls
          Compact, well-insulated buildings 
          Development of “renovation from the outside” techniques that can rapidly reduce the energy needs of existing buildings
          Widespread use of heat pump technologies
          Reasonable use of photovoltaic.

    O   Find ways for residents and owners/investors to take part in energy conservation by introducing relevant pricing, aid and incentive mechanisms. One challenge will be to help households maintain their purchasing power while at the same time promoting public awareness that energy is a precious asset.

•Promote electric transport, especially through developing low-voltage charging infrastructure that allows for flexible management of recharging (smart grid-type systems), while keeping infrastructure investment in check. Favour slow charging, which requires less investment and puts less pressure on the grid. Involve local authorities in infrastructure financing.