Smart cities should focus their long-term energy investment into:

1.       Utilizing much more energy-efficient vehicles, and that’s going to save a lot of money and will make the cities more competitive by eliminating millions of euros a day in imports.

2.       Moving towards electrification of personal vehicles for traveling 300 miles or less.

3.       Introducing alternatives for liquid transportation fuels: glucose, agricultural waste products, and lumber waste products.

4.       Mastering the ability to capture more energy hitting the earth and long-term massive distribution and storage.

5.       Stimulating a second industrial revolution for a serious climate change action. This is a plan suggested by Dr. Steven Chu around 2009. Specifically, this is an aggressive timetable for reductions in emission levels which suggests the following:

·       By 2011 – Quarterly auctions began to distribute greenhouse-gas allowances.

·       By 2020 – 20% of electricity comes from renewable sources.

·       By 2023 – Total CO2 emissions from transportation fuels must drop 5% below 2005 levels.

·       By 2025 – Emissions from older coal-fired plants are capped at 1,100 pounds per megawatt-hour.

·       By 2030 – Greenhouse emissions fall to 42% below 2005 levels.

·       By 2039 – Hydro-fluorocarbons fall to 85% of 2006 levels.

·       By 2050 – Emissions meet the final target: 83% below 2005 levels.

Putting all this together, smart cities should be carbon-free by 2050 in the EU and US. We should not forget that the sun is the cleanest form of nuclear power. The amount of energy hitting Earth is more than 10,000 times what we need. If we achieve even 1% efficiency at low cost and we can store the energy, we’ll have enough for nine and a half billion people without polluting the world. The laws of physics say it’s possible. We don’t have to invent something better than the sun. The sun gives us solar, hydro, the wind, and the waves.

Georgios Ardavanis – 11/12/2023